The challenges and issues of undergraduate student retention and attainment in UK veterinary medical education

Student retention and attainment has recently been identified as a key area for development in veterinary medical education enquiry. Woodfield's research on retention and attainment across the UK disciplines has yielded some unique information about the challenges and issues of students who study veterinary medicine and related subjects. The present literature review aims to expand on Woodfield's findings and explain important issues about retention and attainment across veterinary medicine. Overall, the subject of retention and attainment in undergraduate veterinary medical education needs a great deal more empirical attention, such as data on the retention and attainment of mature and widening access students, and the effects of students being placed at remote locations during their studies. Our findings also cover some unsurprising issues: the dominance of women in a profession that is principally lead by men, the underrepresentation of black and minority ethnic (BME) students in veterinary medicine, and the effects of content overload in the veterinary medical curriculum. Based on data gathered by Woodfield and our investigation of the scholarly and gray literatures, we offer an overview of gaps in current knowledge and recommendations for further research

The diagnosis and treatment of elderly patients with acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and chronic bronchitis.

The syndrome of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) consists of chronic bronchitis (CB), bronchiectasis, emphysema, and reversible airway disease that combine uniquely in an individual patient. Older patients are at risk for COPD and its components--emphysema, CB, and bronchiectasis. Bacterial and viral infections play a role in acute exacerbations of COPD (AECOPD) and in acute exacerbations of CB (AECB) without features of COPD. Older patients are at risk for resistant bacterial organisms during their episodes of AECOPD and AECB. Organisms include the more-common bacteria implicated in AECOPD/AECB such as Haemophilus influenzae, Moraxella catarrhalis, and Streptococcus pneumoniae. Less-common nonenteric, gram-negative organisms including Pseudomonas aeruginosa, gram-positive organisms including Staphylococcus aureus, and strains of nontuberculosis Mycobacteria are more often seen in AECOPD/AECB episodes involving elderly patients with frequent episodes of CB or those with bronchiectasis. Risk-stratified antibiotic treatment guidelines appear useful for purulent episodes of AECOPD and episodes of AECB. These guidelines have not been prospectively validated for the general population and especially not for the elderly population. Using a risk-stratification approach for elderly patients, first-line antibiotics (e.g., amoxicillin, ampicillin, pivampicillin, trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole, and doxycycline), with a more-limited spectrum of antibacterial coverage, are used in patients who are likely to have a low probability of resistant organisms during AECOPD/AECB. Second-line antibiotics (e.g., amoxicillin/clavulanic acid, second- or third-generation cephalosporins, and respiratory fluoroquinolones) with a broader spectrum of coverage are reserved for patients with significant risk factors for resistant organisms and those who have failed initial antibiotic treatment

Archetypal analysis of galaxy spectra

Archetypal analysis represents each individual member of a set of data vectors as a mixture (a constrained linear combination) of the pure types or archetypes of the data set. The archetypes are themselves required to be mixtures of the data vectors. Archetypal analysis may be particularly useful in analysing data sets comprising galaxy spectra, since each spectrum is, presumably, a superposition of the emission from the various stellar populations, nebular emissions and nuclear activity making up that galaxy, and each of these emission sources corresponds to a potential archetype of the entire data set. We demonstrate archetypal analysis using sets of composite synthetic galaxy spectra, showing that the method promises to be an effective and efficient way to classify spectra. We show that archetypal analysis is robust in the presence of various types of noise.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, 1 style-file. Accepted for publication by MNRA

A mini-array for large air showers

A mini-array that utilizes the Linsley effect is proposed for the measurement of large air showers. An estimate of the detectable shower rates for various shower sizes is made. Details of the detection and data collection systems are also described

Pricing volatility derivatives under the modified constant elasticity of variance model

© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. This paper studies volatility derivatives such as variance and volatility swaps, options on variance in the modified constant elasticity of variance model using the benchmark approach. The analytical expressions of pricing formulas for variance swaps are presented. In addition, the numerical solutions for variance swaps, volatility swaps and options on variance are demonstrated

Depleted pyrochlore antiferromagnets

I consider the class of "depleted pyrochlore" lattices of corner-sharing triangles, made by removing spins from a pyrochlore lattice such that every tetrahedron loses exactly one. Previously known examples are the "hyperkagome" and "kagome staircase". I give criteria in terms of loops for whether a given depleted lattice can order analogous to the kagome \sqrt{3} \times \sqrt{three} state, and also show how the pseudo-dipolar correlations (due to local constraints) generalize to even the random depleted case.Comment: 6pp IOP latex, 1 figure; Proc. "Highly Frustrated Magnetism 2008", Sept 2008, Braunschwei

Studies related to primitive chemistry. A proton and nitrogen-14 nuclear magnetic resonance amino acid and nucleic acid constituents and a and their possible relation to prebiotic

Preliminary proton nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) studies were made to determine the applicability of this technique for the study of interactions between monomeric and polymeric amino acids with monomeric nucleic acid bases and nucleotides. Proton NMR results for aqueous solutions (D2O) demonstrated interactions between the bases cytosine and adenine and acidic and aromatic amino acids. Solutions of 5'-AMP admixed with amino acids exhibited more complex behavior but stacking between aromatic rings and destacking at high amino acids concentration was evident. The multisite nature of 5'-AMP was pointed out. Chemical shift changes for adenine and 5'-AMP with three water soluble polypeptides demonstrated that significant interactions exist. It was found that the linewidth-pH profile of each amino acid is unique. It is concluded that NMR techniques can give significant and quantitative data on the association of amino acid and nucleic acid constituents

Influence of aerosol acidity on the chemical composition of secondary organic aerosol from β-caryophyllene

The secondary organic aerosol (SOA) yield of β-caryophyllene photooxidation is enhanced by aerosol acidity. In the present study, the influence of aerosol acidity on the chemical composition of β-caryophyllene SOA is investigated using ultra performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization-time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC/ESI-TOFMS). A number of first-, second- and higher-generation gas-phase products having carbonyl and carboxylic acid functional groups are detected in the particle phase. Particle-phase reaction products formed via hydration and organosulfate formation processes are also detected. Increased acidity leads to different effects on the abundance of individual products; significantly, abundances of organosulfates are correlated with aerosol acidity. To our knowledge, this is the first detection of organosulfates and nitrated organosulfates derived from a sesquiterpene. The increase of certain particle-phase reaction products with increased acidity provides chemical evidence to support the acid-enhanced SOA yields. Based on the agreement between the chromatographic retention times and accurate mass measurements of chamber and field samples, three β-caryophyllene products (i.e., β-nocaryophyllon aldehyde, β-hydroxynocaryophyllon aldehyde, and β-dihydroxynocaryophyllon aldehyde) are suggested as chemical tracers for β-caryophyllene SOA. These compounds are detected in both day and night ambient samples collected in downtown Atlanta, GA and rural Yorkville, GA during the 2008 August Mini-Intensive Gas and Aerosol Study (AMIGAS)

Transport coefficients from the Boson Uehling-Uhlenbeck Equation

We derive microscopic expressions for the bulk viscosity, shear viscosity and thermal conductivity of a quantum degenerate Bose gas above $T_C$, the critical temperature for Bose-Einstein condensation. The gas interacts via a contact potential and is described by the Uehling-Uhlenbeck equation. To derive the transport coefficients, we use Rayleigh-Schrodinger perturbation theory rather than the Chapman-Enskog approach. This approach illuminates the link between transport coefficients and eigenvalues of the collision operator. We find that a method of summing the second order contributions using the fact that the relaxation rates have a known limit improves the accuracy of the computations. We numerically compute the shear viscosity and thermal conductivity for any boson gas that interacts via a contact potential. We find that the bulk viscosity remains identically zero as it is for the classical case.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.