‘Passionate and professional’: reconciling logics in public service accounting

In order to deliver public value, the UK government sought to build relationships and connect ‘the public’ with public servants (including back-office workers), but with what effect? Drawing on interviews with public service accountants, the authors found that how these accountants conceptualized ‘the public’—as society or people—shaped whether public value was considered as a monetary or moral concept. Accountants who regarded the public as people spoke of an improper level of involvement and struggled to maintain their professionalism

Figuring Disability and Illness: D. H. Lawrence’s Masculine Somatology

This thesis seeks to situate D. H. Lawrence as a disabled writer and to understand his writing of the male body from both a social model of disability and a biographical perspective. In so doing, the thesis contributes a fresh approach to Lawrence studies while at the same time fostering critical and creative reflections on the relatively new field of literary disability studies. Chapter 1 considers the relevant debates and developments within the field. Drawing on Lawrence’s letters, various biographies and the novel Kangaroo, Chapter 2 examines his 1911 health crisis, and the military and border examinations he was forced to undergo. Lawrence’s response to his health, widely portrayed as ‘irrational’ and ‘medicophobic’, is here understood in terms of ‘passing’ and ‘masquerade’ and the need to manage the public relations of his health status for pragmatic reasons. In Chapter 3, a selection of non-fictional texts are considered in order to trace the development of Lawrence’s mind-body philosophy focusing particularly on his assimilation of theosophical interpretations of Tantric Yoga. This exploration prepares the ground for an analysis of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in Chapter 4, in which the novel is read within the context of Lawrence’s personal circumstances at the time and his engagement with Yoga. Both Mellors and Clifford’s bodily topographies are mapped-out and the origins of their psycho-somatic wounds excavated to reveal Lawrence’s masculine somatotypes. This investigation reveals the significance of visible and invisible disabilities in Lawrence’s Tantric body schema while the hostile narration of Clifford acts as a point of ‘aesthetic nervousness’ within the novel. Finally, the tensions inherent in attempting to examine psychological aspects of illness from a critical disability perspective emerge. Lacking a language of personal illness experience, disability theory is forced to draw on psychological concepts that may further stigmatise. Dialogue with other body and psychological theories is required in order to cultivate more nuanced disability readings of texts, in which personal narratives and socio-historical perspectives can correspond

Mentoring in the Mix: Building Mentoring Capacity Intentionally in a New Honors College

The University of Nevada, Reno Honors College’s approach to mentorship capitalizes on guiding students through a variety of directed activities and experiential discussions to promote critical thinking and the adoption of new, transferable knowledge. Enhancing traditional advising activities such as course selection and discovery of co-curricular opportunities, programming around mentorship additionally provides another avenue for keeping students engaged, encouraging full participation in the honors college, and improving student retention and persistence rates. Because oversight of these common metrics for success in higher education very often falls to advising staff, and because formal academic advising is a kind of mentorship, it makes sense for honors advisors to lead mentorship initiatives. At UNR, honors advisors have become so involved in mentorship that they have dubbed themselves the “Student Actualization and Engagement Team.” conclusion Three years after the implementation of the Peer Coaching Program and two semesters into the Career and Community Mentoring Program, honors advisors are witnessing the positive impacts of these two components of Honors Beyond: The Mentorship Network. Practically speaking, a key outcome of the Peer Coaching Program has been a reduction in advisor time spent covering basic information about the honors college and its requirements and an increase in time available to engage deeply with advisees, providing the kind of guidance and value that students, especially honors students, expect from professional advising staff. Although advisors oversee the program, the peer coaches have also demonstrated extraordinary agency in moving the program forward via their work on various committees, in the FYE course, and, of course, with their mentees. As hoped, many of those mentees have already opted to become peer coaches following their first year in the honors college, thus establishing a pipeline from mentee to mentor. That pipeline is extended by way of the career and community mentoring program, which, although it is still new and developing, will afford students who served as peer coaches opportunities to seek out additional mentoring relationships as mentees even as they continue to mentor other honors students. While the college’s mentoring programs have already paid dividends within the college, advisors clearly recognize that their new identity as facilitators of student actualization and engagement has attracted notice from beyond the college. Historically, some friction has existed between various advising units in terms of the role of students’ honors advisors vis-à-vis their major/minor/pre-professional advisors, but as the role of honors advisors at UNR becomes increasingly specialized, other professional advisors understand more clearly what it is that honors advisors do. Students’ expectations, too, are accordingly streamlined. No longer expecting simply to reconfirm their class schedule with their honors advisors, honors students can instead seek out their honors advisors for specific guidance related to honors initiatives. By incorporating peer and community mentors into the honors advising equation the Honors College at the University of Nevada, Reno has taken great strides toward serving its large and growing student body effectively while keeping advisor caseloads manageable and professional advisors accessible

Evaluation of career readiness at an industrial technology program using a fuzzy approach

In this research, a quantitative model to measure the “career readiness” performance level of the current curriculum of the Industrial Technology and Packaging program at California Polytechnic State University is proposed. Career readiness is first defined through performance attributes and these attributes are further classified into specific categories and metrics. Using a fuzzy logic computational approach, “career readiness” measures are developed and a “career readiness” score referred to as (CRS) is calculated. The model is designed to be flexible, dynamic and easy to use. It should enable a systematic measurement of career readiness by producing a final integrated unit-less score. Results from the data collected for the Industrial Technology program’s main employers and graduates provided various insights about the level of career readiness the program currently provides in terms of strengths and weaknesses. In addition, these results, and the developed CRS approach, may serve as a practical tool for decision-making and improvement to various educational components to increase readiness level. Finally, the overall CRS, as well as its constituting scores, can be used to monitor progress along such improvements programs

The management of acne vulgaris in primary care: a cohort study of consulting and prescribing patterns using CPRD

Background Effective management of acne vulgaris in primary care involves support (usually provided over a number of consultations) and prescribing effective treatments. However, consulting and prescribing patterns for acne in primary care are not well described. Objective To describe the rate of primary care consultations and follow-up consultations; prescribing patterns, including overall use of acne related medications (ARM) and initial and follow-up prescribing, for acne vulgaris in the UK. Methods UK primary care acne consultations and prescriptions for ARMs were identified in the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD). Annual consultation rates (between 2004 and 2013) by age and gender, new consultations and consultations in the subsequent year; prescribing trends, prescribing during a new consultation and over the subsequent 90 days and year were calculated, using number of registered patients as the denominator. Results 65.9% of patients who had a new acne consultation had no further acne consultations in the subsequent year. 26.6%, 25.2%, 23.5% and 2.8% of patients were prescribed no ARM, an oral antibiotic, a topical antibiotic, or an oral plus topical antibiotic respectively during a new acne consultation. 59.9% and 38.5% of patients prescribed an ARM received no further ARM prescriptions in the following 90 days and one year respectively, despite most prescriptions being for 2 months or less. Prescribing rates for lymecycline and topical combined clindamycin/benzoyl peroxide increased substantially between 2004 and 2013. There were no important changes in consultation rates between 2004 and 2013. Conclusion These data suggest that patients with acne are receiving sub-optimal initial choice of ARMs, longitudinal care and prescribing

Is the NICE traffic light system fit-for-purpose for children presenting with undifferentiated acute illness in primary care?

Background The National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) traffic light system uses children’s symptoms and signs to categorise acute infections into red, amber and green. To our knowledge, no study has described the proportion of children with acute undifferentiated illness who fall into these categories in primary care, which is important since red and amber children are considered at higher risk of serious illness requiring urgent secondary care assessment. Aim To estimate the proportion of acutely unwell children presenting to primary care classified by the NICE traffic light system as red, amber or green, and to describe their initial management. Design and setting Secondary analysis of the Diagnosis of Urinary Tract infection in Young children prospective cohort study. Method 6797 children under 5 years presenting to 225 general practices with acute undifferentiated illness were retrospectively mapped to the NICE traffic light system by a panel of general practitioners. Results 6406 (94%) children were classified as NICE red (32%) or amber (62%) with 1.6% red and 0.3%, respectively, referred the same day for hospital assessment; and 46% and 31%, respectively, treated with antibiotics. The remaining 385 (6%) were classified green, with none referred and 27% treated with antibiotics. Results were robust to sensitivity analyses. Conclusion The majority of children presenting to UK primary care with acute undifferentiated illness meet red or amber NICE traffic light criteria,with only 6% classified as low risk, making it unfit for use in general practice. Research is urgently needed to establish as triage system suitable for general practice

The Cleavable Carboxyl-Terminus of the Small Coat Protein of Cowpea Mosaic Virus Is Involved in RNA Encapsidation

AbstractThe site of cleavage of the small coat protein of cowpea mosaic virus has been precisely mapped and the proteolysis has been shown to result in the loss of 24 amino acids from the carboxyl-terminus of the protein. A series of premature termination and deletion mutants was constructed to investigate the role or roles of these carboxyl-terminal amino acids in the viral replication cycle. Mutants containing premature termination codons at or downstream of the cleavage site were viable but reverted to wild-type after a single passage through cowpea plants, indicating that the carboxyl-terminal amino acids are important. Mutants with the equivalent deletions were genetically stable and shown to be debilitated with respect to virus accumulation. The specific infectivity of preparations of a deletion mutant (DM4) lacking all 24 amino acids was 6-fold less than that of a wild-type preparation. This was shown to be a result of DM4 preparations containing a much increased percentage (73%) of empty (RNA-free) particles, a finding that implicates the cleavable carboxyl-terminal residues in the packaging of the virion RNAs

A New Planet Around an M Dwarf: Revealing a Correlation Between Exoplanets and Stellar Mass

We report precise Doppler measurements of GJ317 (M3.5V) that reveal the presence of a planet with a minimum mass Msini = 1.2 Mjup in an eccentric, 692.9 day orbit. GJ317 is only the third M dwarf with a Doppler-detected Jovian planet. The residuals to a single-Keplerian fit show evidence of a possible second orbital companion. The inclusion of an additional Jupiter-mass planet (P = 2700 days, Msini = 0.83 Mjup) improves the quality of fit significantly, reducing the rms from 12.5 m/s to 6.32 m/s. A false-alarm test yields a 1.1% probability that the curvature in the residuals of the single-planet fit is due to random fluctuations, lending additional credibility to the two-planet model. However, our data only marginally constrain a two-planet fit and further monitoring is necessary to fully characterize the properties of the second planet. To study the effect of stellar mass on Jovian planet occurrence we combine our samples of M stars, Solar-mass dwarfs and intermediate-mass subgiants. We find a positive correlation between stellar mass and the occurrence rate of Jovian planets within 2.5 AU; the former A-type stars in our sample are nearly 5 times more likely than the M dwarfs to harbor a giant planet. Our analysis shows that the correlation between Jovian planet occurrence and stellar mass remains even after accounting for the effects of stellar metallicity.Comment: ApJ accepted, 27 pages, 6 figures, 3 table

Role of Mentorship, Career Conceptualization, and Leadership in Developing Women's Physics Identity and Belonging

The percentage of women receiving bachelors degrees in physics in the U.S. lags well behind that of men, and women leave the major at higher rates. Achieving equity in physics will mean that women stay in physics at the same rates as men, but this will require changes in the culture and support structures. A strong sense of belonging can lead to higher retention rates so interventions meant to increase dimensions of physics identity (interest, recognition, performance, and competence) may increase persistence overall and increase women's retention differentially. We describe our model in which mentorship, an understanding of career options (career conceptualization), and leadership are inputs into the development of these dimensions of physics identity. This paper includes preliminary results from a qualitative study that aims to better understand how career conceptualization, leadership, and mentorship contribute to the development of physics identity and belonging. We report results from a survey of 15 undergraduate physics students which was followed up by interviews with 5 of those students. The students were from a small private liberal arts college in the midwest region of the U.S. and a large public university in the southeast region of the U.S. classified as a Hispanic-serving institution (HSI). With respect to mentorship, we found that it could provide critical support for students' engagement in the physics community. Leadership experiences have not previously been positioned as an important input into identity, yet we found that they helped women in physics feel more confident, contributing to their recognition of themselves as physics people. While the data on how career conceptualization contributed to the building of identity is limited, there are some connections to recognition and competence, and it will be an interesting avenue of future exploration.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure, Physical Review Physics Education Research, in pres