Evaluation of the Villiers Park Scholars Programme

An evaluation of the Villiers Park Scholars Programme was carried out by Louise Gazeley, Judy Sebba, Sarah Aynsley and Angela Jacklin from the Department of Education at the University of Sussex between 2009 and 2011. The Villiers Park Scholars Programme identified young people from less advantaged backgrounds who displayed high academic potential and sought to improve their chances of gaining entry to 'centres of excellence at leading universities'. The evaluating team focused on tracking the impact of the programme on its first cohorts of scholars over a two year period. A multi-site case study approach was adopted for which data was collected in three phases for each of the 10 participating institutions. The main impact at school level related to improvements in the identification of high potential. Analysis of the quantitaive data showed Year 11 scholars in three schools performing favourably at GCSE level in relation to the top 25 per cent of their peer group. Feedback from the scholars themselves indicated that the mentoring they had received had contributed to changes in their academic and study skills that contributed to improved attainment. Staff, parents and scholars all felt that changes in the performance of identified scholars was seen in their motivation, self-esteem and confidence in particular. Greater impact was seen in relation to Year 11 scholars and those without a parent who had been to university. Staff and scholars also considered that the programme had improved scholars' knowledge of higher education. Analysis of the destinations data for Year 13 scholars revealed that around half of those for whom data was available took up places in 'leading' universities. Scholars who did not have a parent who went to university were found to be more likely to say that their involvement in the programme had changed their future plane

Country Profile on Disability: Arab Republic of Egypt

A brief report on disability statistics, public policy and disability-related organizations and activities in Egypt

Change in number of physicians providing abortion care in Texas after HB2

Population Research Cente

Density of abortion facilities in the four largest US cities

Population Research Cente

Evaluation of WGS-subtyping methods for epidemiological surveillance of foodborne salmonellosis

Background: Salmonellosis is one of the most common foodborne diseases worldwide. Although human infection by non-typhoidal Salmonella (NTS) enterica subspecies enterica is associated primarily with a self-limiting diarrhoeal illness, invasive bacterial infections (such as septicaemia, bacteraemia and meningitis) were also reported. Human outbreaks of NTS were reported in several countries all over the world including developing as well as high-income countries. Conventional laboratory methods such as pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) do not display adequate discrimination and have their limitations in epidemiological surveillance. It is therefore very crucial to use accurate, reliable and highly discriminative subtyping methods for epidemiological characterisation and outbreak investigation. Methods: Here, we used different whole genome sequence (WGS)-based subtyping methods for retrospective investigation of two different outbreaks of Salmonella Typhimurium and Salmonella Dublin that occurred in 2013 in UK and Ireland respectively. Results: Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-based cluster analysis of Salmonella Typhimurium genomes revealed well supported clades, that were concordant with epidemiologically defined outbreak and confirmed the source of outbreak is due to consumption of contaminated mayonnaise. SNP-analyses of Salmonella Dublin genomes confirmed the outbreak however the source of infection could not be determined. The core genome multilocus sequence typing (cgMLST) was discriminatory and separated the outbreak strains of Salmonella Dublin from the non-outbreak strains that were concordant with the epidemiological data however cgMLST could neither discriminate between the outbreak and non-outbreak strains of Salmonella Typhimurium nor confirm that contaminated mayonnaise is the source of infection, On the other hand, other WGS-based subtyping methods including multilocus sequence typing (MLST), ribosomal MLST (rMLST), whole genome MLST (wgMLST), clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPRs), prophage sequence profiling, antibiotic resistance profile and plasmid typing methods were less discriminatory and could not confirm the source of the outbreak. Conclusions: Foodborne salmonellosis is an important concern for public health therefore, it is crucial to use accurate, reliable and highly discriminative subtyping methods for epidemiological surveillance and outbreak investigation. In this study, we showed that SNP-based analyses do not only have the ability to confirm the occurrence of the outbreak but also to provide definitive evidence of the source of the outbreak in real-time

Money Guidance Pathfinder - A Report to the FSA

In April 2009 the Government and the Financial Services Authority launched the £12m Money Guidance Pathfinder service in the North-West and North-East of England. The service, known as Moneymadeclear, provides impartial information and guidance on a wide range of personal finance issues tailored to the individual's needs and circumstances. It is available through the web, over the phone or face-to-face across the North-West and North-East. An evaluation of the Money Guidance Pathfinder was undertaken by PFRC to provide an evidence base for decisions on the roll out of a national Money Guidance service

Evaluation Of The Cross-Border EU Citizens’ Dialogue on December 6, 2018 in Passau

The future of Europe: what holds us together? Citizens discuss cooperation in the border region, EU refugee policies and EU social policies. The set-up involved discussions in small groups followed by exchange with Martin Selmayr, Secretary-General of the European Commission as well as members of the European Parliament and mayors

OAIS as a reference model for repositories : an evaluation

The purpose of this document is to evaluate "whether OAIS is an appropriate reference model for use across the variety of repositories being developed within the JISC community" (Campbell 2005, p. 11). It follows on from discussions at the repositories strand of the JISC-CETIS Conference 2005 and the CETIS Metadata and Repositories SIG meeting held subsequently in March 2006. The Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS) has proved an extremely useful model in relation to 'archival systems’. This evaluation will consider the benefits and drawbacks of applying the OAIS across repositories in a more generic way, with reference to longterm preservation as outlined in the model, and, in addition, considering the model with reference to the other business requirements that a repository might fulfil. This evaluation is being carried out in the context of the JISC Digital Repositories Programme and will focus largely on repositories that serve the communities and domains covered by that Programme, although its conclusions should have wider relevance. It is not the intention of this evaluation to provide a detailed introduction to OAIS, but to draw on previous work in this area