Multiple approaches – including observational and experimental – are necessary to articulate powerful theories of learning. Our field’s key questions, which rely on these varied methods, are still open. How do children perceive and produce language? What do they encounter in their linguistic input? What does the learner bring to the task of acquisition? Considerable progress has been made for the development of spoken English (especially by North American learners). Yet there is still a great deal to discover about how children in other populations proceed, especially populations in rural settings. To examine language learning in these populations, we need a multi-method approach. However, adapting and integrating methods, particularly experimental ones, to new settings can present immense challenges. In this paper, we discuss the opportunities and challenges facing researchers who aim to use a multimethodological approach in rural samples, and what the field of language acquisition can do to promote such work.

The small-scale linear microphone arrays that are widely found in smartphones could be used to locate a sound source for indoor environments. After the Time Differences Of Arrival (TDOAs) in microphone pairs are estimated, a TDOA-based hybrid localisation scheme is proposed for a small-scale linear microphone array. The scheme contains two stages: the initialisation stage using the Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) algorithm, and the refining solution stage using the Weighted Least-Square (WLS) algorithm or the Multi-Dimensional Scaling-based (MDS) algorithm. Simulations and field tests show that the proposed indoor localisation scheme outperforms the existing schemes, and it can achieve an average error of 0·32 metres in an 8 m by 5 m area.

The microbiological implications of using a small-scale bucket-style washer are reported forchicken eggs. On average, the bucket washerreduced the total bacterial numbers on the surface of eggs under manufacturer-recommended conditions from 5.36 log CFU egg-1 to 2.82 log CFU egg-1. No evidence of enhanced bacterial contamination of the egg contents was found when microbiological examination was undertaken a few hours afterwashing. When washing visibly soiled free-range eggs, there was a tendency forthe wash-waterto become dirty afteronly a few batches of eggs had been washed. Washing in dirty water could increase the numbers of bacteria on the surfaces of those shells which were visibly clean before washing. These additional shell-surface bacteria however, were not detected in the egg contents (n=1032), when analyses were undertaken 1–2 hours after washing. In contrast, when washed eggs were stored for2 weeks at 15°C, we found that bacterial numbers in the egg contents were elevated when compared with unwashed controls. To determine if cool washing temperatures could cause water to taken up by egg contents, eggs were warmed to 37°C, 30°C, 25°C or 20°C and were submerged in aqueous protein stain at 15°C forup to 7 minutes. We did not observe take up of the stain solution unless its temperature was 15°C cooler than the egg contents and the eggs were immersed forat least 3 minutes.