Using a realist approach to explain outdoor activities and mobility in care homes: the ROAM Study

Background: Whilst outdoor activities and mobility are believed to be beneficial for older care home residents, UK best practice guidance is based on occupational therapy-led expert consensus. This thesis reports research which aimed to provide theory-driven explanations about residents’ occupational engagement in the gardens and outdoor spaces of UK care homes. Method: A systematic mapping review was used to identified gaps in the evidence base, which informed the research to be undertaken. A multi-phase, realist theory development cycle incorporated: identification of initial context, mechanism and outcome (CMO) components guided by the review literature and expert stakeholder consultation; CMO configuration (CMOc) using data from non-participant observations, Dementia Care Mapping (DCM) values, plus characteristics questionnaires; theory refinement which involved using a retroductive approach to triangulate and synthesise observational and staff focus group data and finally, theory articulation, in which the overall findings were interpreted in the context of the broader literature and substantive theories to produce a middle-range theory for further testing. Results: Contextual barriers to residents’ outdoor use were reported frequently in the mapping review articles, but explanations about why or how these operated as such were largely absent. A realist approach was selected to address this. Observational data provided by 50 residents and 35 care staff from three care homes, plus questionnaire data indicated that residents’ outdoor use was influenced primarily by the practice context rather than by intrinsic resident mechanisms. Data from three focus groups (14 staff) confirmed that staff reasoning about supporting outdoor use was characterised by risk aversion, which was partly a consequence of organisational and building design constraints. A middle-range theory posited that cognitive dissonance about outdoor use was experienced by a particular staff reference group – those who shared person-centred values and an outdoor ethos but felt that they lacked time to enact these. This dissonance was mediated by widespread attitudes about the influence and impact of weather on residents which resulted in outdoor opportunities being restricted to periods of sunshine and warm temperatures. Conclusion: As an unintended consequence of the prevailing social structures in the care home context, it is possible that many UK residents are being denied year-round opportunities to use care home gardens and outdoor spaces. To support practice change in this area, population-level, practice environment and resident-focused recommendations were produced. This study is the first to explore how and why residents’ use of care home gardens and outdoor spaces came about using a realist approach. Occupational therapy practitioners and researchers are well-placed to contribute to the evidence-base in this area

Broadening the Scope of Nanopublications

In this paper, we present an approach for extending the existing concept of nanopublications --- tiny entities of scientific results in RDF representation --- to broaden their application range. The proposed extension uses English sentences to represent informal and underspecified scientific claims. These sentences follow a syntactic and semantic scheme that we call AIDA (Atomic, Independent, Declarative, Absolute), which provides a uniform and succinct representation of scientific assertions. Such AIDA nanopublications are compatible with the existing nanopublication concept and enjoy most of its advantages such as information sharing, interlinking of scientific findings, and detailed attribution, while being more flexible and applicable to a much wider range of scientific results. We show that users are able to create AIDA sentences for given scientific results quickly and at high quality, and that it is feasible to automatically extract and interlink AIDA nanopublications from existing unstructured data sources. To demonstrate our approach, a web-based interface is introduced, which also exemplifies the use of nanopublications for non-scientific content, including meta-nanopublications that describe other nanopublications.Comment: To appear in the Proceedings of the 10th Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2013

An Investigation of 11 previously unstudied open star clusters

The main astrophysical properties of 11 previously unstudied open star clusters are probed with JHK Near-IR (2MASS) photometry of Cutri et al. [Cutri, R., et al., 2003. The IRSA 2MASS All-sky Point Source Catalog, NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive] and proper motions (NOMAD) astrometry of Zacharias et al. [Zacharias, N., Monet, D., Levine, S., Urban, S., Gaume, R., Wycoff, G., 2004. American Astro. Soc. Meeting 36, 1418]. The fundamental parameters have been derived for IC (1434, 2156); King (17, 18, 20, 23, 26)}; and Dias (2, 3, 4, 7, 8)}, for which no prior parameters are available in the literature. The clusters' centers coordinates and angular diameters are re-determined, while ages, distances, and color excesses for these clusters are estimated here for the first time.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure, the first version of this article was presented as a poster paper in the First Middle East-Africa, Regional IAU Meeting, Cairo, Egypt, April 5-10, 200

FerryBox-assisted monitoring of mixed layer pH in the Norwegian Coastal Current

The evaluation of marine carbonate system variability and the impacts of ocean acidification (OA) on coastal marine ecosystems increasingly rely on monitoring platforms capable of delivering near real-time in situ carbonate system observations. These observations are also used for developing models and scenarios of OA, including potential impacts on marine ecosystem structure and function. An embedded flow-through spectrophotometric pH detection system has been developed alongside an underway seawater sampling system – termed a FerryBox – operating on ships of opportunity (SOOP), and can deliver a continuous data stream of mixed layer seawater pH with an in situ uncertainty of < 0.003. We report metrological approaches behind the pH detection procedure and the evaluation of dye addition perturbation with analytical precision as low as 0.0005. In addition, we present field-based observations from a deployment of the pH detection system along the Norwegian Coastal Current in winter, spring, and summer periods of 2015. Spring and summertime pH was generally ~ 0.1 higher, and up to ~ 0.255 higher, in comparison to winter pH observations. Here we show the necessity for a regular, high density monitoring approach, and the suitability of this pH detection technique for unmanned observational platforms

Epistemic and social scripts in computer-supported collaborative learning

Collaborative learning in computer-supported learning environments typically means that learners work on tasks together, discussing their individual perspectives via text-based media or videoconferencing, and consequently acquire knowledge. Collaborative learning, however, is often sub-optimal with respect to how learners work on the concepts that are supposed to be learned and how learners interact with each other. One possibility to improve collaborative learning environments is to conceptualize epistemic scripts, which specify how learners work on a given task, and social scripts, which structure how learners interact with each other. In this contribution, two studies will be reported that investigated the effects of epistemic and social scripts in a text-based computer-supported learning environment and in a videoconferencing learning environment in order to foster the individual acquisition of knowledge. In each study the factors ‘epistemic script’ and ‘social script’ have been independently varied in a 2×2-factorial design. 182 university students of Educational Science participated in these two studies. Results of both studies show that social scripts can be substantially beneficial with respect to the individual acquisition of knowledge, whereas epistemic scripts apparently do not to lead to the expected effects

Interference of guiding polariton mode in "traffic" circle waveguides composed of dielectric spherical particles

The interference of polariton guiding modes propagating through "traffic circle" waveguides composed of dielectric spherical particles is investigated. The dependence of intensity of the wave on the position of the particle was studied using the multisphere the Mie scattering formalism. We show that if the frequency of light belongs to the passband of the waveguide, electromagnetic waves may be considered as two optical beams running along a circle in opposite directions and interfering with each other. Indeed, the obtained intensity behavior can be represented as a simple superposition of two waves propagating around a circle in opposite directions. The applications of this interference are discussed.Comment: 21 page, 8 figures, submitted to Physical Review

Measuring Black Hole Spin using X-ray Reflection Spectroscopy

I review the current status of X-ray reflection (a.k.a. broad iron line) based black hole spin measurements. This is a powerful technique that allows us to measure robust black hole spins across the mass range, from the stellar-mass black holes in X-ray binaries to the supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei. After describing the basic assumptions of this approach, I lay out the detailed methodology focusing on "best practices" that have been found necessary to obtain robust results. Reflecting my own biases, this review is slanted towards a discussion of supermassive black hole (SMBH) spin in active galactic nuclei (AGN). Pulling together all of the available XMM-Newton and Suzaku results from the literature that satisfy objective quality control criteria, it is clear that a large fraction of SMBHs are rapidly-spinning, although there are tentative hints of a more slowly spinning population at high (M>5*10^7Msun) and low (M<2*10^6Msun) mass. I also engage in a brief review of the spins of stellar-mass black holes in X-ray binaries. In general, reflection-based and continuum-fitting based spin measures are in agreement, although there remain two objects (GROJ1655-40 and 4U1543-475) for which that is not true. I end this review by discussing the exciting frontier of relativistic reverberation, particularly the discovery of broad iron line reverberation in XMM-Newton data for the Seyfert galaxies NGC4151, NGC7314 and MCG-5-23-16. As well as confirming the basic paradigm of relativistic disk reflection, this detection of reverberation demonstrates that future large-area X-ray observatories such as LOFT will make tremendous progress in studies of strong gravity using relativistic reverberation in AGN.Comment: 19 pages. To appear in proceedings of the ISSI-Bern workshop on "The Physics of Accretion onto Black Holes" (8-12 Oct 2012). Revised version adds a missing source to Table 1 and Fig.6 (IRAS13224-3809) and corrects the referencing of the discovery of soft lags in 1H0707-495 (which were in fact first reported in Fabian et al. 2009