The effectiveness of an acceptance and commitment therapy self-help intervention for chronic pain

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of an Acceptance Commitment Therapy based self-help book for people with chronic pain. Method: This was a randomized 2 group study design. Over a 6-week period, 6 participants read the self-help book and completed exercises from it with weekly telephone support whereas 8 others formed a wait-list control group. Subsequently, 5 of the wait-list participants completed the intervention. Participants completed preintervention and postintervention questionnaires for acceptance, values illness, quality of life, satisfaction with life, depression, anxiety, and pain. Initial outcome data were collected for 8 control participants and 6 intervention participants. Including the wait-list controls, a total of 11 participants completed preintervention and postintervention measures. Whilst completing the self-help intervention, each week participants' rated the content of the book according to reading level and usefulness, and their comprehension of the content was also assessed. Results: Compared with controls, participants who completed the book showed improved quality of life and decreased anxiety. When data from all the treatment participants were pooled, those who completed the intervention showed statistically significant improvements (with large effect sizes) for acceptance, quality of life, satisfaction with life, and values illness. Medium effect sizes were found for improvements in pain ratings. Conclusions: These findings support the hypothesis that using the self-help book, with minimal therapist contact adds value to the lives of people who experience chronic pain

Application of a semianalytical strain assessment and multiaxial fatigue analysis to compare rolling contact fatigue in twin-disk and full-scale wheel/rail contact conditions

A semianalytical model is introduced to assess rolling contact fatigue problems in railway applications. The constitutive law is based on the nonlinear kinematic and isotropic hardening model of Chaboche–Lemaitre, which allows the cyclic elastoplastic strain under the contact surface to be evaluated. The much higher computational effectiveness in comparison with finite element (FE) analyses is quantified. The Dang Van multiaxial fatigue criterion is implemented to evaluate the rolling contact fatigue in the subsurface elastic region where cracking is relatively rare but more dangerous than surface cracks. The influence of the presence of sulfides in the wheel matrix in decreasing fatigue strength is also assessed by means of Murakami\u27s approach. The model is used to compare conditions under small-scale twin-disk experiments to full-scale wheel/rail contact conditions. It is found that, for the same Hertzian pressure, the small-scale contact is more conservative in that it causes a deeper plasticized layer as compared with the elliptical full-scale contact. In the investigated cases, crack initiation is also not expected according to Dang Van criterion in neither of the studied contact conditions

SMART Spaces: Spaced Learning Revision Programme - Evaluation Report

SMART Spaces: Spaced Learning Revision Programme (SMART Spaces Revision) aims to raise attainment in GCSE chemistry by improving revision using ‘spaced learning’. Spaced learning involves teachers repeatedly delivering the same content, across multiple sessions, with breaks in between. The programme, developed and delivered by Hallam Teaching School Alliance (HTSA) and Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), trains teachers to deliver six highly structured and manualised chemistry revision lessons for the AQA Combined Science GCSE. Lessons are provided to Year 11 pupils (age 15 to 16) in the three-week period prior to GCSE examinations. Each lesson consists of three 12-minute episodes delivering content separated by two ten-minute spacing activities such as juggling. Lessons are delivered on three separate days, which allows additional spaces of around 24 hours between content repetition. The first three lessons repeatedly cover one half of the curriculum and the second three lessons repeatedly cover the other half. SMART Spaces Revision training involves a lead teacher who supports implementation and chemistry teachers who receive a day of instruction (in twilight sessions). In-school follow-up support and teaching resources are also provided. Resources include PowerPoint slides covering the entire chemistry curriculum content for the AQA Combined Science award together with a manual, an activity pack, and spacing materials. This project was a two-armed, cluster-randomised controlled efficacy trial (c-RCT) with 125 schools from across England: 54 schools were randomly allocated to receive the intervention and 71 acted at the ‘business as usual’ control group; 14,098 pupils from Year 11 taking the AQA Combined Science GCSE took part in the trial. The evaluation tested the impact of the intervention on GCSE chemistry attainment with surveys and interviews with teachers and pupils and observations of training informing the process evaluation. The evaluation was conducted by the IOE at UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society and delivery occurred between April and May 2019

Using the BirdTree.org website to obtain robust phylogenies for avian comparative studies: A primer

Comparative studies of trait evolution require accounting for the shared evolutionary history. This is done by including phylogenetic hypotheses into statistical analyses of species’ traits, for which birds often serve as excellent models. The online publication of the most complete molecular phylogeny of extant bird species (www.birdtree.org, BirdTree hereafter) now allows evolutionary biologists to rapidly obtain sets of equally plausible phylogenetic trees for any set of species to be incorporated as a phylogenetic hypothesis in comparative analyses. We discuss methods to use BirdTree tree sets for comparative studies, either by building a consensus tree that can be incorporated into standard comparative analyses, or by using tree sets to account for the effect of phylogenetic uncertainty. Methods accounting for phylogenetic uncertainty should be preferred whenever possible because they should provide more reliable parameter estimates and realistic confidence intervals around them. Based on a real comparative dataset, we ran simulations to investigate the effect of variation in the size of the random tree sets downloaded from BirdTree on the variability of parameter estimates from a bivariate relationship between mass-specific productivity and body mass. Irrespective of the method of analysis, using at least 1,000 trees allows obtaining parameter estimates with very small (< 0.15%) coefficients of variation. We argue that BirdTree, due to the ease of use and the major advantages over previous ‘traditional’ methods to obtain phylogenetic hypotheses of bird species (e.g. supertrees or manual coding of published phylogenies), will become the standard reference in avian comparative studies for years to comePeer reviewe

Optimal-Time Dictionary-Compressed Indexes

We describe the first self-indexes able to count and locate pattern occurrences in optimal time within a space bounded by the size of the most popular dictionary compressors. To achieve this result we combine several recent findings, including \emph{string attractors} --- new combinatorial objects encompassing most known compressibility measures for highly repetitive texts ---, and grammars based on \emph{locally-consistent parsing}. More in detail, let $\gamma$ be the size of the smallest attractor for a text $T$ of length $n$. The measure $\gamma$ is an (asymptotic) lower bound to the size of dictionary compressors based on Lempel--Ziv, context-free grammars, and many others. The smallest known text representations in terms of attractors use space $O(\gamma\log(n/\gamma))$, and our lightest indexes work within the same asymptotic space. Let $\epsilon>0$ be a suitably small constant fixed at construction time, $m$ be the pattern length, and $occ$ be the number of its text occurrences. Our index counts pattern occurrences in $O(m+\log^{2+\epsilon}n)$ time, and locates them in $O(m+(occ+1)\log^\epsilon n)$ time. These times already outperform those of most dictionary-compressed indexes, while obtaining the least asymptotic space for any index searching within $O((m+occ)\,\textrm{polylog}\,n)$ time. Further, by increasing the space to $O(\gamma\log(n/\gamma)\log^\epsilon n)$, we reduce the locating time to the optimal $O(m+occ)$, and within $O(\gamma\log(n/\gamma)\log n)$ space we can also count in optimal $O(m)$ time. No dictionary-compressed index had obtained this time before. All our indexes can be constructed in $O(n)$ space and $O(n\log n)$ expected time. As a byproduct of independent interest..

SMART Spaces: Chemistry Teaching - Pilot report

The SMART Spaces Chemistry Teaching programme (SMART Spaces Chemistry Teaching) aims to improve the factual recall of pupils in order to free up lesson time so that teachers can spend more time on pedagogies that embed and extend knowledge—such as practical work and discussion—to improve pupils’ abilities to analyse and evaluate science. This project aimed to see if the programme leads to teachers being able to change the content and practice of their teaching so as to increase time allocated to application and evaluation in chemistry teaching. The programme is a whole-class programme delivered by GCSE science teachers to all pupils undertaking AQA combined award science in Year 10. It is an adapted version of SMART Spaces: Spaced Learning Revision programme (SMART Spaces Revision). SMART Spaces Revision is conducted in the weeks before GCSE examinations whereas the teaching version is conducted during science lessons throughout the year. Delivery is timed to prime pupils in new content and reinforce recall of taught content through ‘spaced learning’. This involves using a scripted presentation to deliver three lots of condensed chemistry content, each lasting 12 minutes, with ten minutes of spacing activity in between. This is repeated in three consecutive lessons, a day apart, termed ‘blocks’, three times across the year. Professional development training is delivered to heads of department and teachers of chemistry by a trainer experienced in the delivery of SMART Spaces. It involves a half-day workshop followed by an in-school coaching visit. Teaching resources are provided, including scripted slides covering the entire GCSE combined science chemistry curriculum, a SMART Spaces manual, and guidelines to develop teaching to maximise the benefit of the additional time created by improved pupil recall. This evaluation was a pilot, which commenced in September 2018 and finished in December 2019. Due to initial delays at start up, during the pilot the project was extended from one academic year to four terms: three in Year 10 and one in Year 11. Some schools were not able to continue with the pilot and new schools were recruited to replace them. This meant that some schools were unable to deliver a fourth block of sessions in the fourth term and some could not complete delivery of three blocks as they started the project later. In total, 12 schools were recruited and undertook training of which nine delivered the intervention. Within these nine, 26 teachers and 714 pupils were involved in the project. The evaluation followed pupils as they moved from Year 10 into Year 11 (ages 14 to16). The evaluation aimed to assess the promise of the intervention according to the theory of change, feasibility, and readiness of the programme for trial. UCL’s Institute of Education undertook the evaluation, which involved a mixed-methods implementation and process evaluation (IPE) using surveys, interviews, and observations with teachers and pupils. The intervention was developed by a team from Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) and Hallam Teaching School Alliance (HTSA). The project was co-funded by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and Wellcome

Hydra Europe

Poster at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014Posters, Demos and Developer "How-To's"This poster will demonstrate the breadth of usage of the Hydra open repository solution within Europe, and highlight how the institutions using it have engaged with the Hydra community to establish their own repositories and fed into ongoing development. Readers will become aware of the use of Hydra within Europe, and how this relates to the Hydra project overall.Awre, Christopher Louis (University of Hull, United Kingdom)Conrad, Anders Sparre (Royal Library of Denmark)Frost, Dermot (Trinity College Dublin)Guasch i Arambudo, Roger (Theatre Institute of Barcelona)Wright, Nicola (London School of Economics

Challenging claims in the study of migratory birds and climate change

Recent shifts in phenology in response to climate change are well established but often poorly understood. Many animals integrate climate change across a spatially and temporally dispersed annual life cycle, and effects are modulated by ecological interactions, evolutionary change and endogenous control mechanisms. Here we assess and discuss key statements emerging from the rapidly developing study of changing spring phenology in migratory birds. These well-studied organisms have been instrumental for understanding climate-change effects, but research is developing rapidly and there is a need to attack the big issues rather than risking affirmative science. Although we agree poorly on the support for most claims, agreement regarding the knowledge basis enables consensus regarding broad patterns and likely causes. Empirical data needed for disentangling mechanisms are still scarce, and consequences at a population level and on community composition remain unclear. With increasing knowledge, the overall support (‘consensus view’) for a claim increased and between-researcher variability in support (‘expert opinions') decreased, indicating the importance of assessing and communicating the knowledge basis. A proper integration across biological disciplines seems essential for the field's transition from affirming patterns to understanding mechanisms and making robust predictions regarding future consequences of shifting phenologies