Participatory concepts of multidisciplinary/professional working on an Early Childhood Studies degree course in the UK

This paper aims to explore democratic values in higher education pedagogies, as related to an Early Childhood Studies (ECS) degree course in an English university. It seeks to find out what constitutes a multi-disciplinary course from both student and tutor perspectives. It is contextualised by the concepts of participation embedded in the idea of multi-professional team work, in order to establish how these ideas could contribute a strong ethical focus to the concept of multidisciplinary study. The study was designed within the paradigm of participatory action research and findings suggest that, although students make links between different disciplinary discourses, tutors feel that their professional identity and knowledge can be constrained by the course structure. The paper suggests that more work needs to be done on the validation of early childhood courses to allow opportunities for multi-professional working to be modelled

Conceptualising listening to young children as an ethic of care in early childhood education and care

This paper focuses on recent discourses and practices of listening to young children, in order to highlight listening as an ethical practice in early childhood education and care settings. The paper asks how discourses of listening should be viewed in theoretical terms and explores the work of a diverse range of authors who define autonomy and rights issues as relational. Central to the paper is a consideration of feminist critique of Foucault’s ethics of care argument. To contextualise this, the paper discusses examples of recent research in the field of listening to young children and highlights issues facing the status of the early years workforce. In summary, the paper contends that an ethical view of listening can bring adults and children together in democratic care practices which challenge conceptions of childhood and reconnect ideas of care and education

ABC of arterial and venous disease. Secondary prevention of transient ischaemic attack and stroke

No abstract available

Healthcare services managers: what information do they need and use?

Objectives: To gain insight into the information behaviour of healthcare services managers as they draw on information while engaged in decision making unrelated to individual patient care. Objectives – The purpose of this research project was to gain insight into the information behaviour of healthcare services managers as they use information while engaged in decision-making unrelated to individual patient care. Methods – This small-scale, exploratory, multiple case study used the critical incident technique in nineteen semi-structured interviews. Responses were analyzed using ‘Framework,’ a matrix-based content analysis system. Results – This paper presents findings related to the internal information that healthcare services managers need and use. Their decisions are influenced by a wide variety of factors. They must often make decisions without all of the information they would prefer to have. Internal information and practical experience set the context for new research-based information, so they are generally considered first. Conclusions – Healthcare services managers support decisions with both facts and value-based information. These results may inform both delivery of health library services delivery and strategic health information management planning. They may also support librarians who extend their skills beyond managing library collections and teaching published information retrieval skills, to managing internal and external information, teaching information literacy, and supporting information sharing

A pilot inference study for a beta-Bernoulli spatial scan statistic

The Bernoulli spatial scan statistic is used to detect localised clusters in binary labelled point data, such as that used in spatial or spatio-temporal case/control studies. We test the inferential capability of a recently developed beta-Bernoulli spatial scan statistic, which adds a beta prior to the original statistic. This pilot study, which includes two test scenarios with 6,000 data sets each, suggests a marked increase in power for a given false alert rate. We suggest a more extensive study would be worthwhile to corroborate the findings. We also speculate on an explanation for the observed improvement

Internal parasites and association with diarrhoea in sheep at an abattoir in Western Australia

Diarrhoea (scouring) is an important issue for the sheep meat industry. Scouring is a major risk factor for fleece soiling and consequential carcase contamination with microbes that cause meat spoilage and potential dangers for humans (2). There is little information on the causes of scouring in sheep at slaughter. Strongyle worm infections are commonly implicated in scouring and reduced production, yet there is no published data quantifying strongyle infections in scouring and normal sheep at abattoirs. In addition, Giardia and Cryptosporidium have been associated with scouring in ruminants, but little is known about the prevalence, genotypes present or the effect on production in sheep populations. This study carried out at an abattoir in Western Australia (WA), aimed to investigate the extent of strongyle, Giardia and Cryptosporidium infections and any association with scouring in sheep

A Power-Enhanced Algorithm for Spatial Anomaly Detection in Binary Labelled Point Data Using the Spatial Scan Statistic [postprint]

This paper presents a novel modification to an existing algorithm for spatial anomaly detection in binary labeled point data sets, using the Bernoulli version of the Spatial Scan Statistic. We identify a potential ambiguity in p-values produced by Monte Carlo testing, which (by the selection of the most conservative p-value) can lead to sub-optimal power. When such ambiguity occurs, the modification uses a very inexpensive secondary test to suggest a less conservative p-value. Using benchmark tests, we show that this appears to restore power to the expected level, whilst having similarly retest variance to the original. The modification also appears to produce a small but significant improvement in overall detection performance when multiple anomalies are present

A spatial accuracy assessment of an alternative circular scan method for Kulldorff's spatial scan statistic

This paper concerns the Bernoulli version of Kulldorff’s spatial scan statistic, and how accurately it identifies the exact centre of approximately circular regions of increased spatial density in point data. We present an alternative method of selecting circular regions that appears to give greater accuracy. Performance is tested in an epidemiological context using manifold synthetic case-control datasets. A small, but statistically significant, improvement is reported. The power of the alternative method is yet to be assessed