Experiences of service users involved in recruitment for nursing courses: a phenomenological research study

The aim of this study was to gain insight into service users’ experiences of participating in recruitment for Adult, Mental Health and Child nursing studies at the authors’ university; to establish potential motivations behind such participation; and to make suggestions for improved future practice. The involvement of service users in nurse education and recruitment has for some years been required by the Nursing and Midwifery Council, but there is a dearth of publications on the meaning of that involvement to participating service users. It is hoped that this study will contribute to this body of knowledge. A phenomenological approach was selected, field-specific focus groups of service users being facilitated using a semi-structured interview format; these were audio recorded and transcribed. The data was analysed using thematic analysis. Participation was subject to the service users having been involved in recruitment to nursing studies at the authors’ university and the focus groups took place either at the university or at the child participants’ school. Themes identified demonstrated largely positive experiences and a sense of meaningful involvement for all concerned. Findings indicated a close link between the values of the participants and those of the wider NHS, benefits to a sense of wellbeing and achievement, as well as the need for greater ownership of the recruitment process by service users. Potential lessons for academics wishing to promote greater service user involvement in student recruitment are articulated

First year nursing students use of social media within education: results of a survey

Introduction – Social media rapidly disseminates information but is a controversial learning platform in nurse education. This study aimed to explore how students viewed the use of Twitter, and other social media, in their first year of a nursing degree. Aim - The aim of this study was to evaluate first year student nurses’ use of social media, before and after commencing a pre-registration programme, where Twitter was used in a module Methodology – A cross-sectional approach using a descriptive survey was completed. Methods – An online survey, that included Likert scale and open questions, was open for one month in 2016 Sample – All students on Nursing Undergraduate Degrees, in Adult, Child and Mental Health, who were in the first year of their programme were eligible to participate. 121 students took part with a response rate of 32%. Results –Most students were positive about using social media as they found it an engaging way to promote discussion and share information. Students use of Twitter changed in the first year with 19.8% using it once or more per week on commencement of the programme which increased to 45.5%; other social media platforms remained static. Most students (57.8%) understood the purpose of using Twitter although 14% reported that it was not used within their module; thus, not all students gained experience of using the social media. 81% of students said that using Twitter had been beneficial to increase awareness of nursing issues within their course. However, there were areas that students found difficult such as time, and not knowing what to say. Conclusion –The study suggests that teaching about social media, and incorporating it into learning activities, may be beneficial for students. However, more research into the subject using an experimental design to assess changes over time would be useful

Metabolic and Functional Profile of Premenopausal Women With Metabolic Syndrome After Training With Elastics as Compared to Free Weights

The aim of this study was to compare the effects of a strength training program (STP) using free weights (FW) versus elastic tubing (ET) in 62 premenopausal, sedentary women diagnosed with metabolic syndrome (MS). Participants were randomly assigned to the FW or ET experimental group (EG) or a control group whose members remained sedentary. Members of each EG followed their assigned STP for 12 weeks, and biomarkers (BMs) related to MS and motor function (MF) parameters were evaluated. Both EGs showed a significant reduction in C-reactive protein level and a positive trend in the other BMs. Almost all MF parameters increased significantly in both EGs. No positive changes were found in the CG. These results indicate that the implementation of an STP, with either FW or ET, improves both metabolic health and MF and should be considered part of the basic approach to health care in women

Massive scalar field near a cosmic string

The $\zeta$ function of a massive scalar field near a cosmic string is computed and then employed to find the vacuum fluctuation of the field. The vacuum expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor is also computed using a point-splitting approach. The obtained results could be useful also for the case of self-interacting scalar fields and for the finite-temperature Rindler space theory.Comment: 15 pages, standard LaTeX, no figures. Reference [14] correcte

Role of causality in ensuring unconditional security of relativistic quantum cryptography

The problem of unconditional security of quantum cryptography (i.e. the security which is guaranteed by the fundamental laws of nature rather than by technical limitations) is one of the central points in quantum information theory. We propose a relativistic quantum cryptosystem and prove its unconditional security against any eavesdropping attempts. Relativistic causality arguments allow to demonstrate the security of the system in a simple way. Since the proposed protocol does not employ collective measurements and quantum codes, the cryptosystem can be experimentally realized with the present state-of-art in fiber optics technologies. The proposed cryptosystem employs only the individual measurements and classical codes and, in addition, the key distribution problem allows to postpone the choice of the state encoding scheme until after the states are already received instead of choosing it before sending the states into the communication channel (i.e. to employ a sort of ``antedate'' coding).Comment: 9 page

Comparing migration in Britain and Australia: Harmonisation through use of age-time plans

Differences in the way migration is measured impede cross-national comparisons of internal migration. In this paper we utilise age-time diagrams to elucidate these problems for Australia and the United Kingdom and present solutions which generate time series of interregional migration for the two countries, harmonised with respect to age-time plans. We achieve this through estimation of the numbers of migration transitions (Australia) or migration events (Britain) for common age-period-cohort (APC) spaces. We derive appropriate population stocks for computation of transition probabilities or occurrence-exposure rates. In the final section of the paper we present a series of migration-intensity calculations based on varying combinations of period-cohort, period-age, and age-period-cohort perspectives, to demonstrate the significance of the variations, and the errors that can arise without harmonisation

Gene Constellation of Influenza A Virus Reassortants with High Growth Phenotype Prepared as Seed Candidates for Vaccine Production

BACKGROUND: Influenza A virus vaccines undergo yearly reformulations due to the antigenic variability of the virus caused by antigenic drift and shift. It is critical to the vaccine manufacturing process to obtain influenza A seed virus that is antigenically identical to circulating wild type (wt) virus and grows to high titers in embryonated chicken eggs. Inactivated influenza A seasonal vaccines are generated by classical reassortment. The classical method takes advantage of the ability of the influenza virus to reassort based on the segmented nature of its genome. In ovo co-inoculation of a high growth or yield (hy) donor virus and a low yield wt virus with antibody selection against the donor surface antigens results in progeny viruses that grow to high titers in ovo with wt origin hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA) glycoproteins. In this report we determined the parental origin of the remaining six genes encoding the internal proteins that contribute to the hy phenotype in ovo. METHODOLOGY: The genetic analysis was conducted using reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP). The characterization was conducted to determine the parental origin of the gene segments (hy donor virus or wt virus), gene segment ratios and constellations. Fold increase in growth of reassortant viruses compared to respective parent wt viruses was determined by hemagglutination assay titers. SIGNIFICANCE: In this study fifty-seven influenza A vaccine candidate reassortants were analyzed for the presence or absence of correlations between specific gene segment ratios, gene constellations and hy reassortant phenotype. We found two gene ratios, 6:2 and 5:3, to be the most prevalent among the hy reassortants analyzed, although other gene ratios also conferred hy in certain reassortants

Anisotropic diffusion of water molecules in hydroxyapatite nanopores

Funded by EPSRC Grant EP/K000128/1