All-Wales licensed premises intervention (AWLPI): a randomised controlled trial to reduce alcohol-related violence

Background: Alcohol-related violence in and in the vicinity of licensed premises continues to place a considerable burden on the United Kingdom’s (UK) health services. Robust interventions targeted at licensed premises are therefore required to reduce the costs of alcohol-related harm. Previous evaluations of interventions in licensed premises have a number of methodological limitations and none have been conducted in the UK. The aim of the trial was to determine the effectiveness of the Safety Management in Licensed Environments intervention designed to reduce alcohol-related violence in licensed premises, delivered by Environmental Health Officers, under their statutory authority to intervene in cases of violence in the workplace.<p></p> Methods/Design: A national randomised controlled trial, with licensed premises as the unit of allocation. Premises were identified from all 22 Local Authorities in Wales. Eligible premises were those with identifiable violent incidents on premises, using police recorded violence data. Premises were allocated to intervention or control by optimally balancing by Environmental Health Officer capacity in each Local Authority, number of violent incidents in the 12 months leading up to the start of the project and opening hours. The primary outcome measure is the difference in frequency of violence between intervention and control premises over a 12 month follow-up period, based on a recurrent event model. The trial incorporates an embedded process evaluation to assess intervention implementation, fidelity, reach and reception, and to interpret outcome effects, as well as investigate its economic impact.<p></p> Discussion: The results of the trial will be applicable to all statutory authorities directly involved with managing violence in the night time economy and will provide the first formal test of Health and Safety policy in this environment. If successful, opportunities for replication and generalisation will be considered.<p></p&gt

An analysis of the effectiveness of University counselling services

It is important to demonstrate replicable evidence of the effectiveness of counselling procedures. The study aimed to contribute to the currently limited evidence base examining the effectiveness of university student counselling in the UK. Information on therapeutic outcome [based on Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation-Outcome Measure (CORE-OM) scores] for 305 individuals attending a large UK university counselling service was analysed. Following counselling intervention: there was a statistically significant improvement in CORE-OM scores with 63% of individuals showing a reliable improvement and only 2% showing a reliable deterioration. Of those who began with a score in the clinical range, 49% showed a clinically significant change. These results provide additional evidence for the effectiveness of university counselling interventions. Future research should aim to build on this preliminary research using randomised controlled trial designs

Hot Routes: Developing a New Technique for the Spatial Analysis of Crime

The use of hotspot mapping techniques such as KDE to represent the geographical spread of linear events can be problematic. Network-constrained data (for example transport-related crime) require a different approach to visualize concentration. We propose a methodology called Hot Routes, which measures the risk distribution of crime along a linear network by calculating the rate of crimes per section of road. This method has been designed for everyday crime analysts, and requires only a Geographical Information System (GIS), and suitable data to calculate. A demonstration is provided using crime data collected from London bus routes

Development of a head-mounted, eye-tracking system for dogs

Growing interest in canine cognition and visual perception has promoted research into the allocation of visual attention during free-viewing tasks in the dog. The techniques currently available to study this (i.e. preferential looking) have, however, lacked spatial accuracy, permitting only gross judgements of the location of the dog’s point of gaze and are limited to a laboratory setting. Here we describe a mobile, head-mounted, video-based, eye-tracking system and a procedure for achieving standardised calibration allowing an output with accuracy of 2-3º. The setup allows free movement of dogs; in addition the procedure does not involve extensive training skills, and is completely non-invasive. This apparatus has the potential to allow the study of gaze patterns in a variety of research applications and could enhance the study of areas such as canine vision, cognition and social interactions

The match between climate services demands and Earth System Models supplies

Earth System Models (ESM) are key ingredients of many of the climate services that are currently being developed and delivered. However, ESMs have more applications than the provision of climate services, and similarly many climate services use more sources of information than ESMs. This discussion paper elaborates on dilemmas that are evident at the interface between ESMs and climate services, in particular: (a) purposes of the models versus service development, (b) gap between the spatial and temporal scales of the models versus the scales needed in applications, and (c) Tailoring climate model results to real-world applications. A continued and broad-minded dialogue between the ESM developers and climate services providers’ communities is needed to improve both the optimal use and direction of ESM development and climate service development. We put forward considerations to improve this dialogue between the communities developing ESMs and climate services, in order to increase the mutual benefit that enhanced understanding of prospects and limitations of ESMs and climate services will bring.This work and its contributors (B. van den Hurk, C. Hewitt, J. Bessembinder, F. Doblas-Reyes, R. Döscher) were funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union: Project ref. 689029 (Climateurope project). The co-author and editor of the journal states that she was not involved in the review process of the paper.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version