The influence of great toe valgus on pronation and frontal plane knee motion during running

Injury rates in running range from 19.4‐79.3%, with injuries at the knee comprising 42.1%. Pronation and altered frontal plane knee joint range of motion have been linked to such injuries. The influence of foot structure on pronation and knee kinematics has not been examined in running. This study examined associations between great toe valgus angle, peak pronation angle and frontal plane range of movement at the knee joint during overground running while barefoot. Great toe valgus angle while standing, and peak pronation angle and frontal plane range of motion of the dominant leg during stance while running barefoot on an indoor track were recorded in fifteen recreational runners. There was a large, negative association between great toe valgus angle and peak pronation angle (r = -0.52, p = 0.04), and a strong positive association between great toe valgus angle and frontal plane range of motion at the knee joint (r = 0.67, p = 0.006). The results suggest that great toe position plays an important role in foot stability and upstream knee-joint motion. The role of forefoot structure as a factor for knee-joint injury has received little attention and could be a fruitful line of enquiry in the exploration of factors underpinning running-related knee injuries

Chaotic Lives: A Profile of Women in the Criminal Justice System in Lothian and Borders

This research, conducted on behalf of Lothian and Borders Community Justice Authority, aimed to profile the characteristics and needs of women offenders in the Lothian and Borders CJA through quantitative and qualitative data collection. The research made 20 recommendations, the key recommendations are outlined below: There is a need for more gender-specific interventions for women offenders within both the statutory and voluntary sector, including groupwork programmes, education and employment opportunities, health and counselling services and throughcare/aftercare provision. A one-stop shop approach should be investigated based on good practice in other areas of the UK. The development of legislation and funding would allow a greater use of structured deferred sentences and diversion schemes, possibly both of which could be available at the pre-sentence stage, with earlier social work assessment of risks and needs being provided to procurators fiscal to supplement their marking decisions. Greater consistency and coordination is required to ensure that all relevant agencies receive the necessary information at the referral stage, including the offence type and circumstances, in order to inform their assessment and subsequent intervention; There needs to be a greater focus on care/welfare rather than on control/surveillance and should be reflected in policy guidelines, additional practitioner training, and more flexible breach procedures

Group‐Focused Counseling: Classifying the Essential Skills

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/89577/1/j.2164-4918.1982.tb00669.x.pd

Evaluation of the Scottish Prison Service Transitional Care Initiative: Interim Findings - Four Month & Seven Month Client Interviews

This is the third in a series of reports on the evaluation of the Scottish Prison Service Transitional Care arrangements. The first report provided information about the Transitional Care service and described the views of staff providing the service. The second report presented early results of 4 month post-release interviews with ex-prisoners who had initially agreed to take up the offer of Transitional Care. This third report presents the results from a larger sample of ex-prisoners interviewed 4 months post-release and the early results from ex-prisoners surveyed 7 months post-release. It is important to point out, however, that these findings are based on small numbers. Further, the data has not yet been linked to other contextual data and so does not differentiate between sub-categories of respondent (e.g. in terms of previous level of substance use, age, sex, length of sentence etc). The final report will be published in the Autumn of 2005

Student perceptions on a collaborative engineering design course

To adequately prepare engineering students for their professional career, educational institutions offer projects in which students collaboratively solve engineering design problems. It is known from research these projects can lead to a variety of learning outcomes and student experiences. However, studies that provide insights in the influence of different features of an educational design are rare. In the current study we use Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as analytical framework to understand how different elements of an educational design affect students’ experience. Additionally, we use the notion of contradictions to identify opportunities for structural course improvement. Focus groups were conducted with 12 Master students in Aerospace Engineering, that participated in a collaborative engineering design course. During the course, students applied Systems Engineering (SE) and Concurrent Engineering (CE) and worked in the Collaborative Design Laboratory (CDL), which is a state-of-the-art facility that holds a variety of industry relevant tools. It was found that students valued the guidance of their coach and experts, co-located collaboration and the freedom to structure their own process. However, they perceived challenges with regard to adoption of tools in the CDL, sharing their progress with their supervisor, coordination of collaborative efforts and scheduling issues. An analysis using CHAT revealed what contradictions caused these challenges. Finally, recommendations are given on how course structure can be structurally improved

Professional decision making and women offenders : containing the chaos?

This article draws on the findings from research undertaken in south-east Scotland in 2008 which sought to identify the characteristics of female offenders and to document the views of policy makers and practitioners regarding the experiences of women involved in the Scottish criminal justice system. Despite Scotland having retained a stronger 'welfare' focus than elsewhere in the UK (e.g. McAra, 2008), this is not reflected in the treatment of women who offend, with the rate of female imprisonment having almost doubled in the last ten years and community based disposals falling short of a welfare-oriented system. This article explores why the treatment that women offenders receive in the criminal justice system may be harsh and disproportionate both in relation to their offending and in relation to the treatment of men. It is argued that interventions with women need to be initiated earlier in their cycle of offending and at an earlier stage in the criminal justice process but also that the wide-ranging health, welfare, financial and behavioural needs of women who offend cannot be met solely within an increasingly risk-averse and punitive criminal justice environment

An Embodied Cognition Approach To Collaborative Engineering Design Activities

Higher educational institutions have broadly adopted Collaborative Engineering Design (CED) activities to prepare students for complex problem-solving in multidisciplinary settings. These activities are non-linear and mediated by various social practices and tools. Therefore educators might struggle in facilitating the achievement of specific learning goals. Embodied cognition is an approach that explains non-linear behaviour through orgamism-environment interactions and might therefore provide educators with insights on how to prompt students towards desired actions in CED activities. According to embodied cognition, we learn through actions that emerge as a response to a problem (task) and environmental constraints. Educators can guide students’ behaviour by proposing tasks and adapting the environmental constraints of a learning situation, thus creating a field of promoted action. In this paper, we outline the progress of a design-based research in which insights from embodied cognition are implemented to promote desired student behaviour in CED activities. We report on the results of our problem-exploration phase. A systematic literature review and focus groups with students revealed that students are often hesitant to adopt new practices and tools that could potentially improve their collaborative design process. Next, we propose three theory-based design principles in which the task and environmental constraints are leveraged to foster the adoption of practices and tools and apply them to CED activities. Finally, we will share preliminary observations of the learning processes triggered by the designed activities and outline the directions for future research