Digital storytelling for interprofessional collaborative practice to develop quality and service improvements

Service Development and Quality Improvement’ is a professional development module within an interprofessional leadership program accessed by health and social care professionals. It focuses on acquiring skills and knowledge in quality enhancement, quality improvement and service user and patient involvement essential to transforming services. Emphasis is on the co-production of service improvement and enhancing skills in using information technology and different media supported by a virtual and blended learning environment. This Ideas in Action digital storytelling case study useda virtual learning activity supported by a combination of multimedia, discussion boards, group work and structured activities to engage students in peer support. Aspects of the digital storytelling process provide a useful distance learning tool for engaging different professionals in identifying common issues in improving services. Our reflective account of the process by drawing on both tutor and students own commentary on the potential of digital storytelling. Learning digital storytelling within a collaborative virtual learning environment gave rise to three key observable outcomes: a leveling effect in interprofessional collaboration; enhancing curiosity as a vehicle for enriching interprofessional exchange; and emphasizing service users and patient perspective in service improvements

Drawdown prepreg coating method using epoxy terminated butadiene nitrile rubber to improve fracture toughness of glass epoxy composites

Laminates of fibre-reinforced prepreg have excellent in-plane mechanical properties, but have inadequate performance in the through thickness direction. Here, we address this issue by application of epoxy-terminated butadiene nitrile (ETBN) liquid rubber between the prepreg laminae using an automatic draw bar coating technique. Test results reveal that by adding ETBN in small quantities in the range of 9.33–61.33 g/m2, the interlaminar critical energy release rates (GIc and GIIc) are improved by up to 122% in mode-I and 49% in mode-II. Moreover, this finding is further supported by the dynamic mechanical analysis thermograms that clearly indicate that coating has not altered the Tg of ETBN-coated samples. Scanning electron microscopic analysis of fracture surfaces showed that rubber particles formed micro cavitations in the epoxy, causing localised rubber rich regions. These resin-rich regions require more energy to fracture, resulting in increased toughness of the glass epoxy prepreg systems. </jats:p

Cost benefit analysis of village tank rehabilitation programme in Hambantota district, Sri Lanka

Village tanks provide multiple benefits to the local people living in their periphery and also to communitiesoutside the area. Non recognition of the true values of this resource has led to their degradation. Forexample, tank rehabilitation is usually not economically justifiable when the paddy benefits alone areconsidered. The main objective of this research was therefore to compare costs of village tankrehabilitation programme with the multiple benefits of village tanks.Villagers use tank water for agriculture, fish, domestic purposes, livestock rearing, and also for industrysuch as brick production. There are in addition, recreational benefits enjoyed by the households. Suchmultiple benefits have been evaluated by a survey conducted in 10 village tanks (7 isolated and 3cascade tanks) in Hambantota district of Sri Lanka. 175 households who live adjacent to the selectedtanks were interviewed using a pre-tested questionnaire with embedded contingent valuation surveyduring the maha season of2005/2006. Information on the use of tank system for purposes other thanpaddy cultivation was collected and contingent valuation method, market price approach and opportunitycost method were used in order to derive the economic value.The benefits and costs were analyzed in a cost benefit framework using a 20 year time period and10% discount rate. Results indicate that the rehabilitation project is only justifiable when multiplebenefits are included. When paddy benefits alone are compared with tank rehabilitation costs, itresults in negative net present value.The implications of the results in reversing the attitudes of the government towards small tanks andtheir role in enhancing rural economies are also discussed.

The Distribution, Natural History and the Conservation Status of Batrachostomus Moniliger (Aves: Podargidae) in Last Two Decades from Sri Lanka

The Sri Lanka frogmouth (Batrachostomus moniliger) is a small-sized nocturnal bird largely restricted to tropical lowland forests with thick undergrowth. The motionless roosting posture as well as their plumage coloration and color patterns (which resemble that of tree stems and branches) enable them to camouflage and thereby avoid predation. Through opportunistic field surveys over a 20-year period (January 1998-February 2018), we surveyed different bioclimatic regions of Sri Lanka covering 500 sites, and documented presence of Sri Lankan frogmouth in 83 of sites. In these 83 sites, we recorded 136 birds including seven nesting pairs and chicks. Our survey confirmed frogmouth presence in four floristic regions of Sri Lanka, particularly from lower elevations (11-767 m). Most sightings were made in lowland rainforests while savannah woodlands had the least number of records; no frogmouths were recorded inside anthropocentric land-cover types such as commercial-scale farmlands or plantations. According to the habitat suitability model we constructed (MaxEnt-based), much of the lowland wet zone, particularly the southwestern corner, was predicted as the most suitable areas for Sri Lankan Frogmouth while the northeastern coastal plains, and the mid-western and northwestern parts of Sri Lanka seemed least suitable. According to The Maxent model’s internal jackknife test of variable importance, temperature seasonality is the most important predictor of frogmouth’s distribution. Sri Lanka frogmouths have a high fidelity for their roosting sites as they remained in the same tree at least for a week; preferred roosting trees were medium-sized Dicot species with a dense canopy cover and variable canopy heights. These roosting sites are relatively cool, humid with little exposure to direct sunlight. Both roosting and nesting trees were relatively isolated from neighboring canopy trees, thus, the understory surrounding the roosting tree was dense. Six of the nesting sites observed were located in the lowland wet zone rainforests while the other was in savannah woodlands of the intermediate zone. These nests were positioned approximately 66% of maximum canopy height of the host tree. Nests were constructed on relatively thin branches that formed an acute angle against the main stem. These nests are shallow, circular-shaped pads. The nest interior was cushioned with cotton, parts of fishtail palm, and down feathers while the nest exterior contained pieces of lichens and tree bark. Sri Lanka Frogmouth’s home ranges appeared to be very small in nesting season, a maximum of 60 m radius area around the roosting site. Both male and female birds alternate nest-guarding duties through most of the night-time. The major threat for the frogmouth in Sri Lanka includes habitat loss due to expansion of commercial-scale agriculture and monoculture plantations, illicit forest encroachments, and clear-cutting.Keywords: Ecology, Frogmouth, Habitat modeling, Nesting, Threat

Generation, annotation, and analysis of ESTs from midgut tissue of adult female Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Malaria is a tropical disease caused by protozoan parasite, <it>Plasmodium</it>, which is transmitted to humans by various species of female anopheline mosquitoes. <it>Anopheles stephensi </it>is one such major malaria vector in urban parts of the Indian subcontinent. Unlike <it>Anopheles gambiae</it>, an African malaria vector, transcriptome of <it>A. stephensi </it>midgut tissue is less explored. We have therefore carried out generation, annotation, and analysis of expressed sequence tags from sugar-fed and <it>Plasmodium yoelii </it>infected blood-fed (post 24 h) adult female <it>A. stephensi </it>midgut tissue.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We obtained 7061 and 8306 ESTs from the sugar-fed and <it>P. yoelii </it>infected mosquito midgut tissue libraries, respectively. ESTs from the combined dataset formed 1319 contigs and 2627 singlets, totaling to 3946 unique transcripts. Putative functions were assigned to 1615 (40.9%) transcripts using BLASTX against UniProtKB database. Amongst unannotated transcripts, we identified 1513 putative novel transcripts and 818 potential untranslated regions (UTRs). Statistical comparison of annotated and unannotated ESTs from the two libraries identified 119 differentially regulated genes. Out of 3946 unique transcripts, only 1387 transcripts were mapped on the <it>A. gambiae </it>genome. These also included 189 novel transcripts, which were mapped to the unannotated regions of the genome. The EST data is available as ESTDB at <url>http://mycompdb.bioinfo-portal.cdac.in/cgi-bin/est/index.cgi</url>.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>3946 unique transcripts were successfully identified from the adult female <it>A. stephensi </it>midgut tissue. These data can be used for microarray development for better understanding of vector-parasite relationship and to study differences or similarities with other malaria vectors. Mapping of putative novel transcripts from <it>A. stephensi </it>on the <it>A. gambiae </it>genome proved fruitful in identification and annotation of several genes. Failure of some novel transcripts to map on the <it>A. gambiae </it>genome indicates existence of substantial genomic dissimilarities between these two potent malaria vectors.</p

Quadrupole Anisotropy in Dihadron Azimuthal Correlations in Central dd++Au Collisions at sNN\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=200 GeV

The PHENIX collaboration at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) reports measurements of azimuthal dihadron correlations near midrapidity in $d$$+$Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}$=200 GeV. These measurements complement recent analyses by experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) involving central $p$$+$Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}$=5.02 TeV, which have indicated strong anisotropic long-range correlations in angular distributions of hadron pairs. The origin of these anisotropies is currently unknown. Various competing explanations include parton saturation and hydrodynamic flow. We observe qualitatively similar, but larger, anisotropies in $d$$+$Au collisions compared to those seen in $p$$+$Pb collisions at the LHC. The larger extracted $v_2$ values in $d$$+$Au collisions at RHIC are consistent with expectations from hydrodynamic calculations owing to the larger expected initial-state eccentricity compared with that from $p$$+$Pb collisions. When both are divided by an estimate of the initial-state eccentricity the scaled anisotropies follow a common trend with multiplicity that may extend to heavy ion data at RHIC and the LHC, where the anisotropies are widely thought to arise from hydrodynamic flow.Comment: 375 authors, 7 pages, 5 figures. Published in Phys. Rev. Lett. v2 has minor changes to text and figures in response to PRL referee suggestions. Plain text data tables for the points plotted in figures for this and previous PHENIX publications are (or will be) publicly available at http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/papers.htm

Centrality categorization for R_{p(d)+A} in high-energy collisions

High-energy proton- and deuteron-nucleus collisions provide an excellent tool for studying a wide array of physics effects, including modifications of parton distribution functions in nuclei, gluon saturation, and color neutralization and hadronization in a nuclear environment, among others. All of these effects are expected to have a significant dependence on the size of the nuclear target and the impact parameter of the collision, also known as the collision centrality. In this article, we detail a method for determining centrality classes in p(d)+A collisions via cuts on the multiplicity at backward rapidity (i.e., the nucleus-going direction) and for determining systematic uncertainties in this procedure. For d+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV we find that the connection to geometry is confirmed by measuring the fraction of events in which a neutron from the deuteron does not interact with the nucleus. As an application, we consider the nuclear modification factors R_{p(d)+A}, for which there is a potential bias in the measured centrality dependent yields due to auto-correlations between the process of interest and the backward rapidity multiplicity. We determine the bias correction factor within this framework. This method is further tested using the HIJING Monte Carlo generator. We find that for d+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=200 GeV, these bias corrections are small and vary by less than 5% (10%) up to p_T = 10 (20) GeV. In contrast, for p+Pb collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 5.02 TeV we find these bias factors are an order of magnitude larger and strongly p_T dependent, likely due to the larger effect of multi-parton interactions.Comment: 375 authors, 18 pages, 16 figures, 4 tables. Submitted to Phys. Rev. C. Plain text data tables for the points plotted in figures for this and previous PHENIX publications are (or will be) publicly available at http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/papers.htm

Cross Section and Transverse Single-Spin Asymmetry of η\eta Mesons in p↑+pp^{\uparrow}+p Collisions at s=200\sqrt{s}=200 GeV at Forward Rapidity

We present a measurement of the cross section and transverse single-spin asymmetry ($A_N$) for $\eta$ mesons at large pseudorapidity from $\sqrt{s}=200$~GeV $p^{\uparrow}+p$ collisions. The measured cross section for $0.5<p_T<5.0$~GeV/$c$ and $3.0<|\eta|<3.8$ is well described by a next-to-leading-order perturbative-quantum-chromodynamics calculation. The asymmetries $A_N$ have been measured as a function of Feynman-$x$ ($x_F$) from $0.2<|x_{F}|<0.7$, as well as transverse momentum ($p_T$) from $1.0<p_T<4.5$~GeV/$c$. The asymmetry averaged over positive $x_F$ is $\langle{A_{N}}\rangle=0.061{\pm}0.014$. The results are consistent with prior transverse single-spin measurements of forward $\eta$ and $\pi^{0}$ mesons at various energies in overlapping $x_F$ ranges. Comparison of different particle species can help to determine the origin of the large observed asymmetries in $p^{\uparrow}+p$ collisions.Comment: 484 authors, 13 pages, 11 figures, 4 tables, 2008 data. v2 is version accepted by Phys. Rev. D. Plain text data tables for the points plotted in figures for this and previous PHENIX publications are (or will be)publicly available at http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/papers.htm