14,243 research outputs found
Implementing Health Impact Assessment as a Required Component of Government Policymaking: A Multi-Level Exploration of the Determinants of Healthy Public Policy
It is widely understood that the public policies of ânon-healthâ government sectors have greater impacts on population health than those of the traditional healthcare realm. Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is a decision support tool that identifies and promotes the health benefits of policies while also mitigating their unintended negative consequences. Despite numerous calls to do so, the Ontario government has yet to implement HIA as a required component of policy development. This dissertation therefore sought to identify the contexts and factors that may both enable and impede HIA use at the sub-national (i.e., provincial, territorial, or state) government level.
The three integrated articles of this dissertation provide insights into specific aspects of the policy process as they relate to HIA. Chapter one details a case study of purposive information-seeking among public servants within Ontarioâs Ministry of Education (MOE). Situated within Ontarioâs Ministry of Health (MOH), chapter two presents a case study of policy collaboration between health and ânon-healthâ ministries. Finally, chapter three details a framework analysis of the political factors supporting health impact tool use in two sub-national jurisdictions â namely, QuĂŠbec and South Australia.
MOE respondents (N=9) identified four components of policymaking âdue diligenceâ, including evidence retrieval, consultation and collaboration, referencing, and risk analysis. As prospective HIA users, they also confirmed that information is not routinely sought to mitigate the potential negative health impacts of education-based policies. MOH respondents (N=8) identified the bureaucratic hierarchy as the brokering mechanism for inter-ministerial policy development. As prospective HIA stewards, they also confirmed that the ministry does not proactively flag the potential negative health impacts of non-health sector policies. Finally, âlessons learnedâ from case articles specific to QuĂŠbec (n=12) and South Australia (n=17) identified the political factors supporting tool use at different stages of the policy cycle, including agenda setting (âpolicy elitesâ and âpolitical cultureâ), implementation (âjurisdictionâ), and sustained implementation (âinstitutional powerâ).
This work provides important insights into âreal lifeâ policymaking. By highlighting existing facilitators of and barriers to HIA use, the findings offer a useful starting point from which proponents may tailor context-specific strategies to sustainably implement HIA at the sub-national government level
Strategies for Early Learners
Welcome to learning about how to effectively plan curriculum for young children. This textbook will address: ⢠Developing curriculum through the planning cycle ⢠Theories that inform what we know about how children learn and the best ways for teachers to support learning ⢠The three components of developmentally appropriate practice ⢠Importance and value of play and intentional teaching ⢠Different models of curriculum ⢠Process of lesson planning (documenting planned experiences for children) ⢠Physical, temporal, and social environments that set the stage for childrenâs learning ⢠Appropriate guidance techniques to support childrenâs behaviors as the self-regulation abilities mature. ⢠Planning for preschool-aged children in specific domains including o Physical development o Language and literacy o Math o Science o Creative (the visual and performing arts) o Diversity (social science and history) o Health and safety ⢠Making childrenâs learning visible through documentation and assessmenthttps://scholar.utc.edu/open-textbooks/1001/thumbnail.jp
Biocontrol as a key component to manage brown rot on cherry
Brown rot, caused by Monilinia spp., is one of the most important diseases in stone fruits
worldwide. Brown rot can cause blossom wilts and fruit rots in the orchard as well as latent
infections of fruit, leading to post-harvest fruit decaying. Current control methods rely on
scheduled spraying of fungicides. However, the continuing pressure to reduce fungicide use has
seen an increase in research into alternative management methods, such as biological control.
NIAB EMR recently identified two microbes that significantly reduced sporulation of Monilinia
laxa under laboratory conditions. These two isolates were a bacterial species Bacillus subtilis
(B91) and yeast-like fungus Aureobasidium pullulans (Y126) and are currently being formulated
into commercial products. We are investigating how to optimise the use of these two potential
biocontrol products in practice, in terms of suppressing Monilinia sporulation on overwintered
mummies and preventing infection of blossoms and fruits.
When applied to mummified fruits in winter Y126âs population was stable through the winter but
at a low concentration. The B91 survived a little longer with the population reaching that of the
control group by week 4. Neither Biological control (BCA) treatments had an affected the
population of M. laxa when compared to the control treatment of sterile distilled water. The
interaction time between the BCAs and M. laxa showed the longer the interaction time the lower
the spore count of M. laxa.
Another study was performed looking into the ability of our BCAs to colonise and survive on
blossoms. B91 did not survive well on blossoms but could survive on fruits. However, its
antagonistic compounds need to be in relatively high concentration to be effective against M. laxa.
Therefore, it is best used as a fungicide, ensuring the antagonistic compounds are at a high
concentration when applied in the field. Y126 can persist throughout the season and was
marginally, though not statistically significantly, more effective at long term reduction in M. laxa.
This could be because Y126 works through competition, therefore the interaction time with the
pathogen could be important for efficacy and something worth investigating further. The
difference between the BCAs highlights the need to understand each BCAâs ecology to ensure
maximum efficacy.
In a latent infection experiment, we inoculated trees with M. laxa and then treated them with the
two biocontrol isolates two weeks before harvest. Post-harvest disease development was
assessed after four days of storage in 2019 and two weeks in 2020. There was a significant
reduction in rot incidence (p < 0.001) of 29% (Y126) and 27% (B91) in 2019 and 62 % (Y126)
and 80 % (B91) in 2020 when the harvested fruit was stored at cold store levels.
With new products to be introduced into the environment, it's important to understand the
effects they may have on the plant's microbiome. Using next-generation sequencing techniques,
we looked at the impact B91 and Y126 has on the blossom and cherry microbiomes. There was a
treatment effect in both the bacterial and fungal communities on the blossom and ripe cherry. But
the biggest variability was between blocks (Geographical effect) and between the years in which
we experimented (p < 0.0001). This research will assist in the development of management
strategies, especially spray timings for brown rot on stone fruit, integrating BCAs with other
management practices
Factors shaping future use and design of academic library space
COVID is having immediate and long-term impacts on the use of libraries. But these changes will probably not alter the importance of the academic library as a space. In the decade pre COVID libraries saw a growing number of visits, despite the increasing availability of material digitally. The first part of the paper offers an analysis of the factors driving this growth, such as changing pedagogies, diversification in the student body, new technologies plus tighter estates management. Barriers to change such as academic staff readiness, cost, and slow decision making are also presented. Then, the main body of the paper discusses emerging factors which are likely to further shape the use of library space, namely: concerns with student well-being; sustainability; equality, diversity and inclusion, and decolonisation; increasing co-design with students; and new technologies. A final model captures the inter-related factors shaping use and design of library space post COVID
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Meaning-Making Practices of Emergent ArabicâEnglish Bilingual Kindergarten Children in Cairo
The number of British Schools in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is growing. The National Curriculum of England is used by an increasing number of such schools. As well as exporting a culturally-specific curriculum, these schools usually adopt an ideology of monolingualism, thus potentially limiting communication for emergent bilinguals and failing to acknowledge the multiple ways of meaning-making.
Current studies of translanguaging are moving the focus to multimodal forms of communication as a resource for thinking and communicating (GarcĂa and Wei 2014, Wei 2018). Building on the work of Kress (1997, 2010) I explore pre-school emergent bilingualsâ wider signifying practices and create an analytical framework, which I call MMTL (multimodal translanguaging), used as a lens to illustrate meaning-making.
Valley Hill in Cairo, Egypt is a British school which encourages âEnglish-onlyâ as the medium of instruction in the kindergarten. Using a case study methodology, this research explores the meaning-making practices of eight emergent bilingual children aged 3â4 during child-initiated play, later reduced to four in the thesis to provide a detailed multimodal analysis. The principal aim is to explore their speech, gaze, gesture, and their engagement (layout/position) with artefacts during play.
The findings of this study suggest that although there is an âEnglish-onlyâ approach, these young emergent bilingual children are meaning-making in a variety of ways. Children are translanguaging but it is never in isolation from other modes of communication. Emergent bilinguals use a range of modes to mediate their understanding and communication with others. They use gesture, gaze, and artefacts alongside translingual practices to move meaning across to more accessible modes, enabling communication and understanding. The implications for schools should be to embrace such hybrid practices and for teachers to be more responsive to young childrenâs meaning-making to enable learning
Queer spies in British Cold War culture: literature, film, theatre and television
This PhD thesis investigates how male homosexuality has been represented in British spy
fiction from the 1950s to the 2010s in multiple media: literature, film, television and
theatre. Due mainly to the betrayal of the Cambridge Spy ring around the middle of the
century, British culture has associated spies with homosexuality, while the wider
Anglophone world was in the grip of a homophobic atmosphere created by McCarthy's
Red Scare. My thesis explores how this history is reflected in the spy genre from the Cold
War to the present, in which male homosexuality and secret agency intersect as âqueerâ,
in so far as they were both considered to be discreet and criminal, existing outside of the
heteronormative order. By following multiple texts across media and time, I discuss how
some writers, television and film directors and actors update queer identity in spy fiction,
creating a shifting image of queer spies through decades. I refer to the findings of
adaptation studies and queer studies, along with numerous studies on spy fiction.
I conclude that the interrelation of different media has contributed to the re-drawing of queer identity in spy fiction. These developments have enabled the spies'
queer identity to transcend its pejorative history in British culture, towards its more
flexible and pliant sense which is designated by the term's modern usage. I also discuss
that spiesâ homosexuality has been represented as a fleeting ghost in most of the texts
examined, hovering on the margins of pages and screen. Although homosexuality is not
âthe love that dare not speak its nameâ anymore, clandestine queer spies have been
preserved as spectral others in the genre for many years. Spy fiction is a cultural
repository retaining the memory of violence inflicted against those who have been called
âqueerâ in twentieth century Britain, and the spectral nature of queer spies narrates this
history reaching back to the Oscar Wilde trial in 1895, from which point British queer
identity as we know now developed.
This thesis benefits the study of spy fiction by filling a gap in the investigation of
homosexual representation. It also contributes to the field of gender studies of literature,
film, television, and theatre by illustrating queer history in a genre which has not received
a great deal of focus on its representation of homosexuality. Spy fiction occupies a
central position in British popular culture, and by exploring this genre in terms of
homosexuality, this research will identify the role which same-sex desire has historically
played in the British cultural imagination
âMental fightâ and âseeing & writingâ in Virginia Woolf and William Blake
This thesis is the first full-length study to assess the writer and publisher Virginia Woolfâs (1882-1941) responses to the radical Romantic poet-painter, and engraver, William Blake (1757-1827). I trace Woolfâs public and private, overt and subtle references to Blake in fiction, essays, notebooks, diaries, letters and drawings. I have examined volumes in Leonard and Virginia Woolfâs library that are pertinent, directly and indirectly, to Woolfâs understanding of Blake. I focus on Woolfâs key phrases about Blake: âMental fightâ, and âseeing & writing.â
I consider the other phrases Woolf uses to think about Blake in the context of these two categories. Woolf and Blake are both interested in combining visual and verbal aesthetics (âseeing & writingâ). They are both critical of their respective cultures (âMental fightâ). Woolf mentions âseeing & writingâ in connection to Blake in a 1940 notebook. She engages with Blakeâs âMental fightâ in âThoughts on Peace in an Air Raidâ (1940).
I map late nineteenth and early twentieth-century opinion on Blake and explore Woolfâs engagement with Blake in these wider contexts. I make use of the circumstantial detail of Woolfâs friendship with the great Blake collector and scholar, Geoffrey Keynes (1887-1982), brother of Bloomsbury economist John Maynard Keynes. Woolf was party to the Blake centenary celebrations courtesy of Geoffrey Keynesâs organisation of the centenary exhibition in London in 1927.
Chapter One introduces Woolfâs explicit references to Blake and examines the record of Woolf scholarship that unites Woolf and Blake. To see how her predecessors had responded, Chapter Two examines the nineteenth-century interest in Blake and Woolfâs engagement with key nineteenth-century Blakeans. Chapter Three looks at the modernist, early twentieth-century engagement with Blake, to contextualise Woolfâs position on Blake. Chapter Four assesses how Woolf and Blake use âMental fightâ to oppose warmongering and fascist politics. Chapter Five is about what Woolf and Blake write and think about the country and the city. Chapter Six discusses Woolfâs reading of John Milton (1608-1674) in relation to her interest in Blake, drawing on the evidence of Blakeâs intense reading of Milton. Chapter Seven examines further miscellaneous continuities between Woolf and Blake. Chapter Eight proposes, in conclusion, that we can only form an impression of Woolfâs Blake.
The thesis also has three appendices. First, a chronology of key publications which chart Blakeâs reputation as well as Woolfâs allusions to Blake. Second a list all of Blakeâs poetry represented in Woolfâs library including contents page. The third lists all the other volumes in Woolfâs library that proved relevant. Although Woolfâs writing is the subject of this thesis, my project necessitates an attempt to recover how Blake was understood and misunderstood by numerous writers in the early twentieth century. The thesis argues Blake is a model radical Romantic who combines the visual and the verbal and that Woolf sees him as a kindred artist
TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF EFFORTFUL FUNDRAISING EXPERIENCES: USING INTERPRETATIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS IN FUNDRAISING RESEARCH
Physical-activity oriented community fundraising has experienced an exponential growth in popularity over the past 15 years. The aim of this study was to explore the value of effortful fundraising experiences, from the point of view of participants, and explore the impact that these experiences have on peopleâs lives. This study used an IPA approach to interview 23 individuals, recognising the role of participants as proxy (nonprofessional) fundraisers for charitable organisations, and the unique organisation donor dynamic that this creates. It also bought together relevant psychological theory related to physical activity fundraising experiences (through a narrative literature review) and used primary interview data to substantiate these. Effortful fundraising experiences are examined in detail to understand their significance to participants, and how such experiences influence their connection with a charity or cause. This was done with an idiographic focus at first, before examining convergences and divergences across the sample. This study found that effortful fundraising experiences can have a profound positive impact upon community fundraisers in both the short and the long term. Additionally, it found that these experiences can be opportunities for charitable organisations to create lasting meaningful relationships with participants, and foster mutually beneficial lifetime relationships with them. Further research is needed to test specific psychological theory in this context, including self-esteem theory, self determination theory, and the martyrdom effect (among others)
Post-Millennial Queer Sensibility: Collaborative Authorship as Disidentification in Queer Intertextual Commodities
This dissertation is examining LGBTQ+ audiences and creatives collaborating in the creation of new media texts like web shows, podcasts, and video games. The study focuses on three main objects or media texts: Carmilla (web series), Welcome to Night Vale (podcast), and Undertale (video game). These texts are transmedia objects or intertextual commodities. I argue that by using queer gestures of collaborative authorship that reaches out to the audience for canonical contribution create an emerging queer production culture that disidentifies with capitalism even as it negotiates capitalistic structures. The post-millennial queer sensibility is a constellation of aesthetics, self-representation, alternative financing, and interactivity that prioritizes community, trust, and authenticity using new technologies for co-creation.
Within my study, there are four key tactics or queer gestures being explored: remediation, radical ambiguity and multi-forms as queer aesthetics, audience self-representation, alternative financing like micropatronage & licensed fan-made merchandise, and interactivity as performance. The goal of this project is to better understand the changing conceptions of authorship/ownership, canon/fanon (official text/fan created extensions), and community/capitalism in queer subcultures as an indicator of the potential change in more mainstream cultural attitudes. The project takes into consideration a variety of intersecting identities including gender, race, class, and of course sexual orientation in its analysis. By examining the legal discourse around collaborative authorship, the real-life production practices, and audience-creator interactions and attitudes, this study provides insight into how media creatives work with audiences to co-create self-representative media, the motivations, and rewards for creative, audiences, and owners. This study aims to contribute towards a fuller understanding of queer production cultures and audience reception of these media texts, of which there is relatively little academic information. Specifically, the study mines for insights into the changing attitudes towards authorship, ownership, and collaboration within queer indie media projects, especially as these objects are relying on the self-representation of both audiences and creatives in the formation of the text
Cost-effective non-destructive testing of biomedical components fabricated using additive manufacturing
Biocompatible titanium-alloys can be used to fabricate patient-specific medical components using additive manufacturing (AM). These novel components have the potential to improve clinical outcomes in various medical scenarios. However, AM introduces stability and repeatability concerns, which are potential roadblocks for its widespread use in the medical sector. Micro-CT imaging for non-destructive testing (NDT) is an effective solution for post-manufacturing quality control of these components. Unfortunately, current micro-CT NDT scanners require expensive infrastructure and hardware, which translates into prohibitively expensive routine NDT. Furthermore, the limited dynamic-range of these scanners can cause severe image artifacts that may compromise the diagnostic value of the non-destructive test. Finally, the cone-beam geometry of these scanners makes them susceptible to the adverse effects of scattered radiation, which is another source of artifacts in micro-CT imaging.
In this work, we describe the design, fabrication, and implementation of a dedicated, cost-effective micro-CT scanner for NDT of AM-fabricated biomedical components. Our scanner reduces the limitations of costly image-based NDT by optimizing the scanner\u27s geometry and the image acquisition hardware (i.e., X-ray source and detector). Additionally, we describe two novel techniques to reduce image artifacts caused by photon-starvation and scatter radiation in cone-beam micro-CT imaging.
Our cost-effective scanner was designed to match the image requirements of medium-size titanium-alloy medical components. We optimized the image acquisition hardware by using an 80 kVp low-cost portable X-ray unit and developing a low-cost lens-coupled X-ray detector. Image artifacts caused by photon-starvation were reduced by implementing dual-exposure high-dynamic-range radiography. For scatter mitigation, we describe the design, manufacturing, and testing of a large-area, highly-focused, two-dimensional, anti-scatter grid.
Our results demonstrate that cost-effective NDT using low-cost equipment is feasible for medium-sized, titanium-alloy, AM-fabricated medical components. Our proposed high-dynamic-range strategy improved by 37% the penetration capabilities of an 80 kVp micro-CT imaging system for a total x-ray path length of 19.8 mm. Finally, our novel anti-scatter grid provided a 65% improvement in CT number accuracy and a 48% improvement in low-contrast visualization. Our proposed cost-effective scanner and artifact reduction strategies have the potential to improve patient care by accelerating the widespread use of patient-specific, bio-compatible, AM-manufactured, medical components
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