Families and Communities Against Child Sexual Exploitation (FCASE) : final evaluation report

This is the final evaluation report for the Barnardo’s Families and Communities Against Sexual Exploitation project (FCASE), produced by the International Centre, researching Child Sexual Exploitation, Violence and Trafficking at the University of Bedfordshire. The programme was launched in April 2013, funded by the Department for Education (DfE) and concluded in March 2015. The evaluation was undertaken during the same period. The FCASE model has been piloted in three sites, which for the purposes of this report have been anonymised and will be referred to using pseudonyms. It consists of the following elements: a structured programme of six to eight weeks direct work with young people and families where a risk of child sexual exploitation (CSE) has been identified; delivery of CSE training with professionals; and undertaking community awareness raising. The evaluation has been informed by a range of qualitative data. The report identifies the elements that work well and some of the challenges in its implementation. This had been done in order to determine good practice in supporting families and communities and embed more effective practice on protecting children and young people, including those in foster care, from sexual exploitation, harnessing the protective factors within a child’s family and/or foster home. The learning from the project is intended to help other agencies to implement the FCASE model. An on-line learning resource is to be produced in order to facilitate this process

PROGRESS IN GUAVA SELECTION IN PUERTO RICO

PROGRESS IN GUAVA SELECTION IN PUERTO RIC

The Finnish Team Academy model: implications for management education

This article explores an innovative model of management education, the Team Academy based in Finland, in which teams of learners create and operate real enterprises, supported by coaches. The contributions of the article are to provide insights into how the Team Academy works, and to review its implications for theories of management learning and educational design. Based on a case study of the Team Academy model we argue that management education programmes need to be construed as artificially-created learning environments, and specifically as `micro-cultures’ - local contexts in which pedagogical and cultural practices coalesce. The concept of a micro-culture can bring together four main attributes of learning environments (social embeddedness, real-worldness, identity formation and normative). Construing learning environments in this way has likely important implications for the theory and practice of management learning and education, since a micro-culture is a complex, emergent phenomenon that is not necessarily controllable or transferable

Mapping solar irradiance within Schrödinger Basin for future robotic sample return missions

The US National Research Council (NRC) identified eight scientific concepts and thirty-five prioritized investigations to be addressed with continued lunar exploration. These objectives are broadly consistent with those identified throughout the international community. the majority of these objectives require sample return from the Moon. Schrödinger basin has been highlighted as a particularly attractive location to find suitable samples

Space efficient algorithms for string processing

The suffix array (SA), which is an array containing the suffixes of a string sorted into lexicographical order, was introduced in the late eighties as a space efficient alternative to the suffix tree. It has since emerged as a useful data structure in string processing problems such as pattern matching, pattern discovery, and data compression. The SA is often coupled with the longest-common-prefix (LCP) array that contains the length of the longest common prefixes between consecutive suffixes in the SA. When enhanced with the LCP array, the SA can provide efficient solutions to the above applications including a problem called pattern mining. To date, all the mining algorithms lie at either extreme of the efficiency spectrum: they are either fast and use enormous amounts of space, or they are compact and orders of magnitude slower. We present a mining algorithm that achieves the best of both these extremes, having runtime comparable to the fastest published algorithms while using less space than the most space efficient. In all these applications, the construction of the SA --- also known as suffix sorting --- is one of the main computational bottlenecks. Most papers describing the SA assume the SA fits in RAM memory, limiting their applications. The fastest algorithms in this large memory suffix sorting category use powerful pointer copying heuristics to expedite suffix sorting. Several space efficient algorithms have emerged in the last five years, where the trend is to use as little RAM as possible. They do so by finding a clever way to trade runtime, or by using slow compressed data structures, or by using external memory (disk), or some combination of these techniques. In this thesis, we focus on improving the runtime of a space efficient algorithm due to Kärkkäinen by adapting the heuristics from large memory suffix sorting to a semi-external setting. Also, pointer copying has been heavily used to speed up the construction of the SA, but not the LCP array. We also discuss our attempts of combining the pointer copying heuristics to an efficient LCP construction algorithm due to Kärkkäinen, Manzini and Puglisi. The Burrows-Wheeler transform (BWT) was discovered independently of the SA, but it is now known that the two data structures are deeply linked. The BWT is central to practical compression tools such as szip and bzip2. Many papers have been published on constructing the BWT either in RAM or in external memory but few on inverting the BWT to obtain the original string --- in fact none in external memory. For larger datasets, the existing traditional approaches cannot be used to invert the BWT. In such cases, we have to use disk. We close the gap between theory and practice by examining the problem of inverting the BWT efficiently on disk. We provide a practical implementation of the only theoretical proposal for the problem by Ferragina, Gagie and Manzini. We also provide new, faster solutions to the problem based on simple scanning and compression techniques

Canine and feline pregnancy loss due to viral and non-infectious causes : a review.

Among the causes for pregnancy loss, viruses and non-infectious factors are among the most important. In both dogs and cats, research and clinical evidence provide proof that there is an increasing incidence of pregnancy loss associated with infectious diseases like herpesvirus, as well as the presence of toxicants or chemicals in the animal's diet and environment. Endocrine causes must be taken into consideration when dealing with pregnancy loss. This review will cover the most recent knowledge regarding viral and non-infectious of pregnancy losses in the dog and cat

The tip of the iceberg

No abstract.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/63050/1/471_ftp.pd

Sarcopenia in Liver Transplantation: an Update

Purpose of Review: Patients undergoing liver transplantation (LT) are at high risk of sarcopenia and associated physical frailty. This review summarises advances in our knowledge of the definition, assessment, clinical implications and management of sarcopenia in LT. Recent Findings: Sarcopenia is associated with increased mortality, morbidity, physical disability and poor quality of life both before and after LT. Assessment tools have evolved from solely relying on imaging (i.e. muscle area only) to reproducible measures of function and physical performance status (i.e. liver frailty index). The multi-faceted management of sarcopenia is heavily reliant on nutrition (protein &gt; 1.5 g/kg/day) and exercise (combined aerobic and resistance) advice. Summary: There is an increased awareness of the clinical implications, assessment tools and management for patients with sarcopenia awaiting LT. Future studies need to investigate the role of specific nutritional supplements, pharmaco-/behavioural therapy and the long-term outcomes (e.g. survival) of reversing sarcopenia in this patient population.</p

The take up of business support by minority ethnic enterprises: the experience of South Asian businesses in England

This research contributes to a greater understanding of minority ethnic business (MEB) needs and practices and helps identify the support needs of minority ethnic firms in relation to existing support provision. The aims are, therefore, to examine the take-up of support by minority ethnic enterprises focusing mainly on the South Asian community with some representation from the African-Caribbean and Korean communities. Fifty minority ethnic businesses across South West London were contacted and semi-structured interviews took place with the owner/owner managers. The findings suggest that policy makers need to appreciate the diversity of MEBs and policies aimed at these businesses should reflect that diversity