Service User and Carer Involvement in Mental Health Education, Training and Research – A Literature Review

As part of an evaluation of service users’ and carers’ experience of involvement in mental health education, training and research, an extended literature review was undertaken. The purpose of this was to review policy underpinning service user and carer involvement in those areas, identify the extent and range of involvement, the processes involved, and the extent to which the effectiveness and impact of involvement had been evaluated. The review found that there was a range of different ways in which people were involved. It identified different types and levels of involvement and different motivations for taking part in involvement activities. Government policy and guidance on public and patient involvement (PPI) in health services has clearly been a driver and has resulted in widespread involvement activity but this has developed on an ad hoc and inconsistent basis. There are benefits for service users and carers, the NHS, and educational establishments arising out of involvement activity. These include improvements in the health and well-being of service users, enhancing the student experience, and improvements to service delivery. However, there are still barriers to involvement including organisational factors and unintentional discrimination. Payment for involvement activity remains an under researched area. Service users value payments but welfare benefits rules, and inconsistent interpretation of good practice guidance, mean this can be a further barrier to involvement. Currently, the evidence base evaluating the effectiveness of service user involvement in a range of activities including service planning, delivery, education and research is limited

Encouraging the scholarship of learning and teaching in an institutional context

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Techno-economic evaluation of cognitive radio in a factory scenario

Wireless applications gradually enter every aspect of our life. Unfortunately, these applications must reuse the same scarce spectrum, resulting in increased interference and limited usability. Cognitive Radio proposes to mitigate this problem by adapting the operational parameters of wireless devices to varying interference conditions. However, it involves an increase in cost. In this paper we examine the economic balance between the added cost and the increased usability in one particular real-life scenario. We focus on the production floor of an industrial installation where wireless sensors monitor production machinery, and a wireless LAN is used as the data backbone. We examine the effects of implementing dynamic spectrum access by means of ideal RE sensing, and model the benefit in terms of increased reliability and battery lifetime. We estimate the financial cost of interference and the potential gain, and conclude that cognitive radio can bring business gains in real-life applications

C1q-targeted inhibition of the classical complement pathway prevents injury in a novel mouse model of acute motor axonal neuropathy

Introduction Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is an autoimmune disease that results in acute paralysis through inflammatory attack on peripheral nerves, and currently has limited, non-specific treatment options. The pathogenesis of the acute motor axonal neuropathy (AMAN) variant is mediated by complement-fixing anti-ganglioside antibodies that directly bind and injure the axon at sites of vulnerability such as nodes of Ranvier and nerve terminals. Consequently, the complement cascade is an attractive target to reduce disease severity. Recently, C5 complement component inhibitors that block the formation of the membrane attack complex and subsequent downstream injury have been shown to be efficacious in an in vivo anti-GQ1b antibody-mediated mouse model of the GBS variant Miller Fisher syndrome (MFS). However, since gangliosides are widely expressed in neurons and glial cells, injury in this model was not targeted exclusively to the axon and there are currently no pure mouse models for AMAN. Additionally, C5 inhibition does not prevent the production of early complement fragments such as C3a and C3b that can be deleterious via their known role in immune cell and macrophage recruitment to sites of neuronal damage. Results and Conclusions In this study, we first developed a new in vivo transgenic mouse model of AMAN using mice that express complex gangliosides exclusively in neurons, thereby enabling specific targeting of axons with anti-ganglioside antibodies. Secondly, we have evaluated the efficacy of a novel anti-C1q antibody (M1) that blocks initiation of the classical complement cascade, in both the newly developed anti-GM1 antibody-mediated AMAN model and our established MFS model in vivo. Anti-C1q monoclonal antibody treatment attenuated complement cascade activation and deposition, reduced immune cell recruitment and axonal injury, in both mouse models of GBS, along with improvement in respiratory function. These results demonstrate that neutralising C1q function attenuates injury with a consequent neuroprotective effect in acute GBS models and promises to be a useful new target for human therapy

Advancing science by enhancing learning in the laboratory (ASELL)

Final report of the the&nbsp;Advancing Science by Enhancing Learning in the Laboratory (ASELL) project.&nbsp;Most researchers agree that the laboratory experience ranks as a significant factor that influences students&rsquo; attitudes to their science courses. Consequently, good laboratory programs should play a major role in influencing student learning and performance. The laboratory program can be pivotal in defining a student\u27s experience in the sciences, and if done poorly, can be a major contributing factor in causing disengagement from the subject area. The challenge remains to provide students with laboratory activities that are relevant, engaging and offer effective learning opportunities.The Advancing Science by Enhancing Learning in the Laboratory (ASELL) project has developed over the last 10 years with the aim of improving the quality of learning in undergraduate laboratories, providing a validated means of evaluating and improving the laboratory experience of students, and effective professional development for academic staff. After successful development in chemistry and trials using the developed principles in physics and biology, the project, with ALTC funding, has now expanded to include those disciplines.The launching pad for ASELL was a multidisciplinary workshop held in Adelaide in April, 2010. This workshop involved 100 academics and students, plus 13 Deans of Science (or delegates), covering the three enabling sciences of biology, chemistry and physics. Thirty-nine undergraduate experiments were trialled over the three days of the workshop. More importantly, professional development in laboratory education was developed in the 42 academic staff that attended the workshop.Following the workshop, delegates continued to evaluate, develop and improve both individual experiments and whole laboratory programs in their home institutions, mentored by the ASELL Team. Some highlights include: - more than 15,000 student surveys carried out by delegates during 2010/11- 10 whole lab programs were surveyed by delegates- 4 new ASELL-style workshops, conducted by ASELL-trained delegates were run in 2010/11- more than 100 ASELL-tested experiments available on the website (www.asell.org)- ASELL workshops conducted in Philippines, Ireland in 2010, and planned in the USA and Thailand for 2011- significant improvement in student evaluation of whole laboratory programs and individual experiments measured in universities using the ASELL approach- high profile of ASELL activities in the Australian Council of Deans of Science (ACDS)- research project on the misconceptions of academic staff about laboratory learning completed- significant research on student learning in the laboratory, and staff perceptions of student learning have been carried out during 2010/11- research results have been benchmarked against staff and students in the USA.The biggest unresolved issue for ASELL is one of sustainability in the post-ALTC funding era. ASELL will make a series of recommendations to the ACDS, but the future of the program depends, to a large part, on how the ACDS responds. <br /

ASELL : the advancing science by enhancing learning in the laboratory project

Most science educators and researchers will agree that the laboratory experience ranks as a major factor that influences students&rsquo; attitudes to their science courses. Consequently, good laboratory programs should play a major role in influencing student learning and performance. The laboratory program can be pivotal in defining a student\u27s experience in the sciences, and if done poorly, can be a major contributing factor in causing disengagement from the subject area. The challenge remains to provide students with laboratory activities that are relevant, engaging and offer effective learning opportunities

Geological interpretation of current subsidence and uplift in the London area, UK, as shown by high precision satellite-based surveying

Long term planning for flood risk management in coastal areas requires timely and reliable information on changes in land and sea levels. A high resolution map of current changes in land levels in the London and Thames estuary area has been generated by satellite-based persistent scatterer interferometry (PSI), aligned to absolute gravity (AG) and global positioning system (GPS) measurements. This map has been qualitatively validated by geological interpretation, which demonstrates a variety of controlling influences on the rates of land level change, ranging from near-surface to deep-seated mechanisms and from less than a decade to more than 100,000 years’ duration. During the period 1997–2005, most of the region around the Thames estuary subsided between 0.9 and 1.5 mm a−1 on average, with subsidence of thick Holocene deposits being as fast as 2.1 mm a−1. By contrast, parts of west and north London on the Midlands Microcraton subsided by less than 0.7 mm a−1, and in places appear to have risen by about 0.3 mm a−1. These rates of subsidence are close to values determined previously by studies of Quaternary sequences, but the combined GPS, AG and PSI land level change data demonstrate a new level of local geological control that was not previously resolvabl

Pre-control relationship of onchocercal skin disease with onchocercal infection in Guinea Savanna, Northern Nigeria.

BACKGROUND: Onchocerca volvulus infection can result in blindness, itching and skin lesions. Previous research concentrated on blindness. METHODS: A clinical classification system of the cutaneous changes in onchocerciasis was used for the first time in this study within the context of an early ivermectin drug trial in the savanna region of Kaduna State, northern Nigeria. Skin examinations were performed in 6,790 individuals aged 5+ years in endemic communities and 1,343 individuals in nonendemic communities. RESULTS / DISCUSSION: There was increased risk for all forms of onchocercal skin disease in endemic communities with the most common finding being the presence of nodules (1,438 individuals, 21.2%), followed by atrophy (367, 6.1% of those < 50 years), acute papular onchodermatitis, APOD (233, 3.4%), depigmentation (216, 3.2%) and chronic papular onchodermatitis, CPOD (155, 2.3%). A further 645 individuals (9.5%) complained of pruritus but had completely normal skin. APOD was more common in males whereas atrophy, hanging groin and nodules were more common in females. After controlling for age and sex, microfilarial positivity was a risk factor for CPOD, depigmentation, hanging groin and nodules (OR 1.54, p = 0.046; OR 2.29, p = 0.002; OR 2.18, p = 0.002 and OR 3.80, p <0.001 respectively). Comparable results were found using presence of nodules as the marker for infection. Microfilarial load showed similar, though weaker, results. A total of 2621(38.6%) endemic residents had itching with normal skin, or had one or more types of onchocercal skin disease including nodules, which may be considered as a composite index of the overall prevalence of onchocercal skin disease. CONCLUSION: Significant levels of onchocercal skin disease were documented in this savanna area, which subsequently resulted in a reassessment of the true burden of skin disease in onchocerciasis. This paper represents the first detailed report of the association of onchocercal skin disease with markers for onchocercal infection