The story of an educational innovation: the MA in Catholic School Leadership at St Mary's University College, Twickenham, 1997–2013. Principles, pedagogy and research studies

Within the context of a national shortage of high quality applicants for senior leadership posts, there is a need to nurture future leaders in Catholic primary and secondary schools and to promote their professional development and formation. If they are to be fully effective, teachers in Catholic schools need continually to develop their leadership skills and, crucially, they need to understand how they can best support the educational mission of the Catholic Church. This paper tells the story of the establishment and continuing development of a unique M-level programme, which sets out to combine a Catholic philosophy of education with the principles and practice of effective school leadership

Community-based health efforts for the prevention of falls in the elderly

Falls are a major public health problem in the elderly population. The associated health care cost is great. It has therefore become an important public health matter to evaluate those interventions that might be effective in reducing the risk of falls. Risk factors that predict an increased risk of falling are described. We discuss interventions that can be employed in the community to reduce the risk of falls and associated injuries by discipline, including physiotherapy, occupational therapy, and physician-led interventions. We also discuss the cost-effectiveness of such interventions

Elements of maintenance system and tools for implementation within framework of Reliability Centred Maintenance- A review

For plant systems to remain reliable and safe they must be effectively maintained through a sound maintenance management system. The three major elements of maintenance management systems are; risk assessment, maintenance strategy selection and maintenance task interval determination. The implementation of these elements will generally determine the level of plant system safety and reliability. Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) is one method that can be used to optimise maintenance management systems. This paper discusses the three major elements of a maintenance system, tools utilised within the framework of RCM for performing these tasks and some of the limitations of the various tools. Each of the three elements of the maintenance management system has been considered in turn. The information will equip maintenance practitioners with basic knowledge of tools for maintenance optimisation and stimulate researchers with respect to developing alternative tools for application to plant systems for improved safety and reliability. The research findings revealed that there is a need for researchers to develop alternative tools within the framework of RCM which are efficient in terms of processing and avoid the limitations of existing methodologies in order to have a safer and more reliable plant system.

C-C bond-forming reactions of ground-state aryl halides under reductive activation

Under basic conditions aryl halides can undergo SRN1 reactions, BHAS reactions and benzyne formations. Appropriate complex substrates afford an opportunity to study inherent selectivities. SRN1 reactions are usually favoured under photoactivated conditions, but this paper reports their success using ground-state and transition metal-free conditions. In benzene, the enolate salt 12, derived by deprotonation of diketopiperazine 11, behaves as an electron donor, and assists the initiation of the reactions, but in DMSO, it is not required. The outcomes are compared and contrasted with a recent photochemical study on similar substrates. A particular difference is the prevalence of hydride shuttle reactions under relatively mild thermal conditions

Got Sugar? Pharmacist Intervention to Improve A1c

AIM: Within 6 months, we aim to decrease by 10% the number of our diabetic patients with an A1c \u3e8 through Clinical Pharmacist referrals.https://jdc.jefferson.edu/patientsafetyposters/1033/thumbnail.jp

A Multicenter Examination and Strategic Revisions of the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale

Objective To examine the internal consistency and distribution of the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale (YGTSS) scores to inform modification of the measure. Methods This cross-sectional study included 617 participants with a tic disorder (516 children and 101 adults), who completed an age-appropriate diagnostic interview and the YGTSS to evaluate tic symptom severity. The distributions of scores on YGTSS dimensions were evaluated for normality and skewness. For dimensions that were skewed across motor and phonic tics, a modified Delphi consensus process was used to revise selected anchor points. Results Children and adults had similar clinical characteristics, including tic symptom severity. All participants were examined together. Strong internal consistency was identified for the YGTSS Motor Tic score (α = 0.80), YGTSS Phonic Tic score (α = 0.87), and YGTSS Total Tic score (α = 0.82). The YGTSS Total Tic and Impairment scores exhibited relatively normal distributions. Several subscales and individual item scales departed from a normal distribution. Higher scores were more often used on the Motor Tic Number, Frequency, and Intensity dimensions and the Phonic Tic Frequency dimension. By contrast, lower scores were more often used on Motor Tic Complexity and Interference, and Phonic Tic Number, Intensity, Complexity, and Interference. Conclusions The YGTSS exhibits good internal consistency across children and adults. The parallel findings across Motor and Phonic Frequency, Complexity, and Interference dimensions prompted minor revisions to the anchor point description to promote use of the full range of scores in each dimension. Specific minor revisions to the YGTSS Phonic Tic Symptom Checklist were also proposed

Interpreting magnitude of change in strength and conditioning: effect size selection, threshold values and Bayesian updating.

The magnitude of change following strength and conditioning (S&C) training can be evaluated comparing effect sizes to threshold values. This study conducted a series of meta-analyses and compiled results to identify thresholds specific to S&C, and create prior distributions for Bayesian updating. Pre- and post-training data from S&C interventions were translated into standardised mean difference (SMDpre) and percentage improvement (%Improve) effect sizes. Four-level Bayesian hierarchical meta-analysis models were conducted to compare effect sizes, develop prior distributions, and estimate 0.25-, 0.5-, and 0.75-quantiles to determine small, medium, and large thresholds respectively. Data from 643 studies comprising 6574 effect sizes were included in the analyses. Large differences in distributions for both SMDpre and %Improve were identified across outcome domains (strength, power, jump and sprint performance), with analyses of the tails of the distributions indicating potential large overestimations of SMDpre values. Future evaluations of S&C training will be improved using Bayesian approaches featuring the information and priors developed in this study. To facilitate an uptake of Bayesian methods within S&C, an easily accessible tool employing intuitive Bayesian updating was created. It is recommended that the tool and specific thresholds be used instead of isolated effect size calculations and Cohen's generic values when evaluating S&C training

Understanding Schools and Schooling. (Book Review)

A review of a book written by Clive Chitty (2002 with a useful focus on issues of equity and social justice, including prejudice, discrimination and bullying in secondary schools. Education policy makers need to explore the extent to which it is important to produce interested, motivated and socially balanced young adults. It is well researched and documented

Effect of the COVID‐19 pandemic on the mental health of carers of people with intellectual disabilities

Introduction: The measures implemented to manage the COVID‐19 pandemic have been shown to impair mental health. This problem is likely to be exacerbated for carers. Method: Informal carers (mainly parents) of children and adults with intellectual disabilities, and a comparison group of parents of children without disabilities, completed an online questionnaire. Almost all the data were collected while strict lockdown conditions were in place. Results: Relative to carers of children without intellectual disability, carers of both children and adults with intellectual disability had significantly greater levels of a wish fulfilment coping style, defeat/entrapment, anxiety, and depression. Differences were 2–3 times greater than reported in earlier pre‐pandemic studies. Positive correlations were found between objective stress scores and all mental health outcomes. Despite their greater mental health needs, carers of those with intellectual disability received less social support from a variety of sources. Conclusions: The greater mental health needs of carers in the context of lesser social support raises serious concerns. We consider the policy implications of these findings

Non-Poisson variations in photomultipliers and implications for luminescence dating

Previous studies have suggested that excess variations from single-photon counting systems used in luminescence dating may result in underestimation of errors and profoundly influence age models. In this study ten different photon counting systems have been investigated to explore this effect with a greater number of photomultiplier types and instrumental architectures. It is shown that radiation induced phosphorescence from F1 feldspar produces a controllable low-level light source whose local variance approximates Poisson expectations. However excess variation in dark counts was observed to varying extents from all systems. The excess variance is slightly anti-correlated with the age of the system, with older devices conforming more closely to Poisson behaviour. This observation does not seem to fit the hypothesis that enhanced levels of helium diffused into older tubes increase non-Poisson components. It was noted that a significant part of the non-Poisson behaviour was associated with multi-event pulse streams within time series. Work was also undertaken to develop mitigation methods for data analysis and to examine the implications for dating uncertainties in a test case. A Poisson-filtering algorithm was developed to identify and remove improbable multi-event streams. Application to data from signal-limited single grains of sediments from a Neolithic chambered tomb in Corsica has shown that, for this case, removing non-Poisson components improves the robustness of retained data, but has less influence on overall dating precision or accuracy. In signal limited applications use of this algorithm to remove one source of excess variation is beneficial. The algorithm and test data are appended to facilitate this.PostprintPeer reviewe