\u3ci\u3eAcross the Bridge: The Merrimack Undergraduate Research Journal\u3c/i\u3e Submission Guidelines

Manuscript submissions are always welcome! Detailed submission guidelines, including dates for the inaugural issue to be published in Spring 2019, for manuscript submissions to Across the Bridge.https://scholarworks.merrimack.edu/mc_pubs/1002/thumbnail.jp

The potential of smart glazing for occupant well-being and reduced energy load in a Central-Mediterranean climate

The ever-increasing aesthetically driven demand for fully glazed façades poses a design challenge; not least in controlling the cooling demand and occupant well-being of such buildings, especially in a central Mediterranean climate. This paper outlines the ever-important need to design for occupants and for designers to keep in mind, first and foremost, occupant well-being rather than aim solely to create energyefficient buildings. The original objective of buildings was to provide shelter. Today however, the need for occupant comfort and its direct effect on productivity cannot be ignored. This need, therefore, ought to feature a central role in any building design. Studies show that occupant well-being is directly related to a range of environmental factors, particularly daylight distribution, glare and indoor air temperature. The use of external shading devices and more commonly, indoor blinds are often the adopted approaches to attempt to achieve indoor occupant comfort, often to the detriment of views. Adaptive facades seek to address the need to somehow strike a balance between occupant comfort and energy efficiency. These facades range from exterior and interior shading devices with varying control strategies, to the different forms of adaptive/switchable glazing technologies intended to control the visual light transmittance and solar radiation transmitted into a building's interior. In the opinion of the authors, electrochromic glazing has a great potential in a cooling-dominated central Mediterranean climate, to achieve a compromise between occupant visual and thermal comfort whilst retaining unobstructed outdoor views at all times. Research shows that the potential benefits of electrochromic glazing have not yet been studied enough in real-life scenarios, and this paper further introduces the objectives for a field study within two identical offices, having a South-South-East orientation, located in a central Mediterranean climate.peer-reviewe

An evaluation of a short course in mindfulness for Health Visitor Practice Teachers

Practice Teachers (PTs) participated in an 8 week course, Mindfulness Based Cognitive for well-being and resilience. The evaluation was undertaken using three (3) evidenced based questionnaires: Perceived stress(PSS) (Cohen et al 1983), Self-Compassion Score SCS (Neff 2003) and Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) (Baer et al 2006) to identify outcomes for the mindfulness training. Findings indicate the impact on personal wellbeing and professional practice with recommendations for retention of students & Health Visitor (HV) workforce. Summary Mindfulness skills to support top performance and good mental health were offered in eight two-hour sessions to 18 Practice Teachers from September- December 2014 and was evaluated. The course drew on the approach of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, where participants learn to focus their attention and develop the possibility of creating the space for reflection and response rather than reacting to life’s difficulties. Participants had the opportunity to develop self–care and self-compassion in the sessions as well as in between sessions and which research has shown can have a positive effect on others. Compassion is a contemporary theme in the CNO’s strategy to return to the fundamentals of nursing; mindfulness enables the foundation of practising compassion on self and ultimately to practice compassion with others we work and care for. The attendees were encouraged to review and refresh their practice through with the ultimate planned outcome, to reduce student attrition and prevent breakdown of the practice placement. However, this is a the complex area of adult learning and the nature of student attrition from courses as well as from the workforce cannot necessarily be reduced to one factor. The practice of mindfulness can have an influential effect on health, well-being and resilience, as shown by scientific and medical evidence. This experiential course was neither therapy nor religious instruction but an effective means of helping to alleviate stress and promoting well-being, resilience and flourishing. The course was delivered at a time when practitioners, including PTs were experiencing an increase of student numbers and service delivery changes with associated imperative data collection. The perception of practitioners about the declared increase in the HV workforce (DH 2011) to support and implement these changes was not evident and the evaluation indicates the need for self-care and resilience in the workforce which includes students and practitioners. The project outcomes make recommendations based on the impact of this mindfulness training with PTs to inform future developments within the programme and practice education as well as the HV workforce where a number of interventions call for 'mindfulness' with infants, children and families

Our Way Across the Sea

Home, fare thee well! The oceans storm is o\u27er;The weary pen non woos the seaward wind;Fast speeds the bark, And now the less\u27ning shore Sinks in the wave, with those we leave behind.Fare, fare thee well! Land of the free;No tongue can tell, the love I bear to thee.Fare, fare thee well! Land of the free;No tongue can tell the love I bear to thee. 2We wreath no bowl to drink a gay good bye,For tears would fall unbidden in the wine;And while reflected was the mournful eye,The sparkling surface e\u27en would cease to shine.Then fare, fare well; Once more, once more,The oceans swell Now hides my native shore. 3See where yon star its Diamond light displays,Now seen, now hid behind the swelling sail,Hope rides in gladness on its streaming rays,And bids us on, and bribes the fav\u27ring gale.Then hope, we bend in joy to thee;And careless wend our way across the sea

A UK consensus on optimising CVD secondary prevention care: perspectives from multidisciplinary team members

Although overall cardiovascular (CV) mortality has declined in recent years, patients with clinically manifest cardiovascular disease (CVD) remain at increased risk of recurrent CV events. To minimise the likelihood of future CV events following an acute myocardial infarction (MI), changes in diet and lifestyle, alongside pharmaceutical interventions, such as dual antiplatelet therapy, a β-blocker, an ACE inhibitor, and a statin, are recommended within current clinical guidelines. The use of cardiac rehabilitation (CR) programmes has been shown to be highly effective in reducing mortality and morbidity following MI, and a cost-benefit analysis suggests that increasing the uptake of CR to 65% among eligible patient would result in potential cost savings of over £30 million annually for the NHS. The involvement of a multidisciplinary team (MDT) of healthcare professionals is central to delivering post-MI care, with initial and/or ongoing input from cardiologists, hospital-based specialist pharmacists, specialist nurses, GPs, dietitians, smoking cessation specialists and practice-based and community pharmacists, among others. This consensus statement was developed based on a meeting of HCPs actively involved in delivering CV secondary prevention care at primary and secondary care centres across the UK. Recognising that HCP team configuration and availability of resources/services vary by location, the authors have focused on three common themes which have broad relevance in CVD secondary prevention, specifically: integration of care, medicines optimisation, and encouraging patient activation. Opportunities for MDT members to improve outcomes in post-MI patients are suggested and examples of best practice models which have been implemented successfully are described

European study confirms the combination of fever and petechial rash as an important warning sign for childhood sepsis and meningitis

Funding Information: This project received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 668303. The research was supported by the National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centres at Imperial College London, Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Newcastle University. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Authors. Acta Paediatrica published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation Acta Paediatrica.AIM: This study investigated febrile children with petechial rashes who presented to European emergency departments (EDs) and investigated the role that mechanical causes played in diagnoses. METHODS: Consecutive patients with fever presenting to EDs in 11 European emergency departments in 2017-2018 were enrolled. The cause and focus of infection were identified and a detailed analysis was performed on children with petechial rashes. The results are presented as odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI). RESULTS: We found that 453/34,010 (1.3%) febrile children had petechial rashes. The focus of the infection included sepsis (10/453, 2.2%) and meningitis (14/453, 3.1%). Children with a petechial rash were more likely than other febrile children to have sepsis or meningitis (OR 8.5, 95% CI 5.3-13.1) and bacterial infections (OR 1.4, 95% CI 1.0-1.8) as well as need for immediate life-saving interventions (OR 6.6, 95% CI 4.4-9.5) and intensive care unit admissions (OR 6.5, 95% CI 3.0-12.5). CONCLUSION: The combination of fever and petechial rash is still an important warning sign for childhood sepsis and meningitis. Ruling out coughing and/or vomiting was insufficient to safely identify low-risk patients.publishersversionPeer reviewe

A study on video game review summarization

Game reviews have constituted a unique means of interaction between players and companies for many years. The dynamics appearing through online publishing have significantly grown the number of comments per game, giving rise to very interesting communities. The growth has, in turn, led to a difficulty in dealing with the volume and varying quality of the comments as a source of information. This work studies whether and how game reviews can be summarized, based on the notions pre-existing in aspect-based summarization and sentiment analysis. The work provides suggested pipeline of analysis, also offering preliminary findings on whether aspects detected in a set of comments can be consistently evaluated by human users.peer-reviewe