Is it the placement that counts? A small scale phenomenological study of ‘gap year’ accounting and finance students

This research came about through my interest in students’ learning whilst on periods of work experience as part of their four year accountancy and finance undergraduate degree programme. Approximately half of students studying the degree at my own institution opt to undertake a period of formal university approved work experience between the second and final year of the degree (sandwich placement). A small proportion of students who have opted to take the placement route are unsuccessful in securing a university approved placement and return to their final year having engaged in various activities (previously largely unknown to university staff) during this ‘gap year’. As far as I have been able to establish, no previous research has been undertaken on this particular group of students. Importantly, given that a growing body of literature points to the “good news story” of placement (Auburn, 2007:119), are we in danger of attributing an impact to the placement year that may have come about irrespectively of the experience? My research investigates the extent to which the experiences of gap year students compare to those reported in previous research concerned with placement students. Much previous work exploring the impact of the placement has sought to establish quantitative relationships between students who undertake a placement and their subsequent academic performance. This small-scale research project is an anti-positivist, qualitative research inquiry employing elements of the transcendental phenomenological approach originating from Husserl (1859-1938) to uncover the essences of student experiences during their gap year. Rather than seeking to interpret the experiences of the students involved, the research aims to provide a description which accurately portrays how students experience their gap year from their point of view (Denscombe, 2007). Four semi-structured one-to-one interviews were conducted with gap year students, transcribed and analysed in order to understand what these students were engaged in during their gap year and the implications of this for their approach to the final year of their degree. A phenomenological analysis following Moustakas (1994) was adopted and eight themes emerged: an inability to articulate ‘skills’; a sense of growing up/maturing; increased motivation; greater focus and discipline; difficulty associated with the working environment; wanting to get a ‘good’ degree; and development of thinking. Overall the findings indicate that similar improvements to academic practices are found by students who have had a gap year to those previously reported from students who have undertaken a placement

Experimental Search for Determinants of Ligament Health

The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is one of the four ligaments which stabilize the knee during movement. Today, ACL injury is on the rise, occurring more than 200,000 times per yearmost often in agility sports. With so many people affected by ACL injury, the medical community stands to benefit from an understanding of the observable attributes which characterize ligament health. Such an understanding would allow standard MRI screenings to be utilized in determining a patients susceptibility to ligament damage and detecting damage which has occurred prior to tearing. This study aims to relate ligament composition and microstructure observed in MRI with ligament health characterized by mechanical testing. For this, a porcine knee was used and T2 and T1 MRI data was obtained prior to mechanical testing. The specimen was then dissected to leave only the femur-ACL-tibia complex intact. The femur and tibia were potted into fixtures which mount to the base and crosshead of a load frame. An auxiliary load cell was used to record force data, while a motion capture system tracked the ACLs length during testing. Elastic tensile testing was used to measure stiffness. Current work includes sensitivity analysis of the transformation from the stiffness data to the elastic modulusa material property of ligaments. This will be compared to the samples MRI data, which characterizes composition and microstructure. Repeating this procedure for many samples will reveal underlying correlations between ACL health and composition.Ope

Reduced insular γ‐aminobutyric acid in fibromyalgia

Objective Recent scientific findings have reinvigorated interest in examining the role of γ‐aminobutyric acid (GABA), the major inhibitory central nervous system neurotransmitter, in chronic pain conditions. Decreased inhibitory neurotransmission is a proposed mechanism in the pathophysiology of chronic pain syndromes such as fibromyalgia (FM). The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that decreased levels of insular and anterior cingulate GABA would be present in FM patients, and that the concentration of this neurotransmitter would be correlated with pressure–pain thresholds. Methods Sixteen FM patients and 17 age‐ and sex‐matched healthy controls underwent pressure–pain testing and a 3T proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy session in which the right anterior insula, right posterior insula, anterior cingulate, and occipital cortex were examined in subjects at rest. Results GABA levels in the right anterior insula were significantly lower in FM patients compared with healthy controls (mean ± SD 1.17 ± 0.24 arbitrary institutional units versus 1.42 ± 0.32 arbitrary institutional units; P = 0.016). There was a trend toward increased GABA levels in the anterior cingulate of FM patients compared with healthy controls ( P = 0.06). No significant differences between groups were detected in the posterior insula or occipital cortex ( P > 0.05 for all comparisons). Within the right posterior insula, higher levels of GABA were positively correlated with pressure–pain thresholds in the FM patients (Spearman's rho = 0.63; P = 0.02). Conclusion Diminished inhibitory neurotransmission resulting from lower concentrations of GABA within the right anterior insula may play a role in the pathophysiology of FM and other central pain syndromes.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90292/1/33339_ftp.pd

Workplace practice in undergraduate accounting education: a small scale exploration of year-long work experience at a post-1992 UK university.

Undertaking a year-long placement between the second and final year of an undergraduate degree is an established practice within Business Schools for helping to develop students’ transferable and employability skills (Sheridon and Linehan, 2011). Literature also points to the better academic performance of placement students over full-time students in their final year (for example Crawford and Wang, 2016). However, little is known about how these perceived benefits come about (Little and Harvey, 2006), or indeed, how students themselves experience the workplace environment. This research explores periods of year-long work experience for BA (Hons) Accountancy and Finance (BAAF) students at a post-1992 university. It adopts a dialogic approach commensurate with constructivism (Lincoln, Lynham and Guba, 2011), which places students’ constructed descriptions of their experiences at the heart of the research. In-depth interviews were carried out with four BAAF students who had undertaken a gap year, rather than a university-approved placement experience, and found that similar benefits were expressed by these students to those previously ascribed to placement students in literature. In-depth interviews were conducted with six further BAAF placement students, at three points in time during their year-long placement. Interviews revealed that students experienced their placement in terms of actions and behaviour, and it was through active engagement with workplace practices, and through social interactions with a community of practitioners, that they came to learn their roles (Lave and Wenger, 1991). A focus group was conducted with eight further BAAF students on return from placement, which revealed that BAAF students could be better supported with crossing the boundary between university and the workplace (Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner, 2015), and for navigating the workplace practices they were likely to be immersed in. A framework that provides a lens through which student learning and development on campus, as well as during placement, was established from the findings. This framework centres around the notion of ‘becoming’ supported by ‘self’, ‘action’, and ‘possibilities’, set within the context of ‘personalisation’. The realisation and operationalisation of this framework, drawing upon the BAAF programme for illustrative purposes, is outlined. The findings have implications for accounting education within the academy, as well as for professional accountancy training and practice. However, in line with much work-based learning literature, there are also transdisciplinary applications of these findings beyond the immediate accounting context. A series of recommendations, for practice, as well as avenues for future research, are made

Quantification of y-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in 1 H MRS volumes composed heterogeneously of grey and white matter

Quantification of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) concentration using localized MRS suffers from partial volume effects related to differences in the intrinsic concentration of GABA in grey matter (GM) and white matter (WM). These differences can be represented as a ratio between intrinsic GABA in GM and WM, rM. Individual differences in GM tissue volume can therefore potentially drive apparent concentration differences. Here, a quantification method that corrects for these effects is formulated and empirically validated. Quantification using tissue water as an internal concentration reference has previously been described. Partial volume effects attributed to rM can be accounted for by incorporating into this established method an additional multiplicative correction factor based on measured or literature values of rM weighted by the proportion of GM and WM within tissue-segmented MRS volumes. Simulations were performed to test the sensitivity of this correction using different assumptions of rM taken from previous studies. The tissue correction method was then validated by applying it to an independent dataset of in vivo GABA measurements using an empirically measured value of rM. It is shown that incorrect assumptions of rM can lead to overcorrection and inflation of GABA concentration measurements quantified in volumes composed predominantly of WM. For the independent dataset, GABA concentration was linearly related to GM tissue volume when only the water signal was corrected for partial volume effects. Performing a full correction that additionally accounts for partial volume effects ascribed to rM successfully removed this dependency. With appropriate assumption of the ratio of intrinsic GABA concentration in GM and WM, GABA measurements can be corrected for partial volume effects, potentially leading to a reduction in between-participant variance, increased power in statistical tests and better discriminability of true effects

Multimodal MRI as a diagnostic biomarker for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Objective Reliable biomarkers for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ( ALS ) are needed, given the clinical heterogeneity of the disease. Here, we provide proof‐of‐concept for using multimodal magnetic resonance imaging ( MRI ) as a diagnostic biomarker for ALS . Specifically, we evaluated the added diagnostic utility of proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy ( MRS ) to diffusion tensor imaging ( DTI ). Methods Twenty‐nine patients with ALS and 30 age‐ and gender‐matched healthy controls underwent brain MRI which used proton MRS including spectral editing techniques to measure γ‐aminobutyric acid ( GABA ) and DTI to measure fractional anisotropy of the corticospinal tract. Data were analyzed using logistic regression, t ‐tests, and generalized linear models with leave‐one‐out analysis to generate and compare the resulting receiver operating characteristic ( ROC ) curves. Results The diagnostic accuracy is significantly improved when the MRS data were combined with the DTI data as compared to the DTI data only (area under the ROC curves ( AUC ) = 0.93 vs. AUC  = 0.81; P  = 0.05). The combined MRS and DTI data resulted in sensitivity of 0.93, specificity of 0.85, positive likelihood ratio of 6.20, and negative likelihood ratio of 0.08 whereas the DTI data only resulted in sensitivity of 0.86, specificity of 0.70, positive likelihood ratio of 2.87, and negative likelihood ratio of 0.20. Interpretation Combining multiple advanced neuroimaging modalities significantly improves disease discrimination between ALS patients and healthy controls. These results provide an important step toward advancing a multimodal MRI approach along the diagnostic test development pathway for ALS.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106065/1/acn330.pd

A Neural “Tuning Curve” for Multisensory Experience and Cognitive-Perceptual Schizotypy

Our coherent perception of external events is enabled by the integration of inputs from different senses occurring within a range of temporal offsets known as the temporal binding window (TBW), which varies from person to person. A relatively wide TBW may increase the likelihood that stimuli originating from different environmental events are erroneously integrated and abnormally large TBW has been found in psychiatric disorders characterized by unusual perceptual experiences. Despite strong evidence of interindividual differences in TBW, both within clinical and nonclinical populations, the neurobiological underpinnings of this variability remain unclear. We adopted an integrated strategy linking TBW to temporal dynamics in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)-resting-state activity and cortical excitation/inhibition (E/I) balance, indexed by glutamate/Gamma-AminoButyric Acid (GABA) concentrations and common variation in glutamate and GABA genes in a healthy sample. Stronger resting-state longrange temporal correlations, indicated by larger power law exponent (PLE), in the auditory cortex, robustly predicted narrower audio-tactile TBW, which was in turn associated with lower cognitive-perceptual schizotypy. Furthermore, PLE was highest and TBW narrowest for individuals with intermediate levels of E/I balance, with shifts towards either extreme resulting in reduced multisensory temporal precision and increased schizotypy, effectively forming a neural ?tuning curve? for multisensory experience and schizophrenia risk. Our findings shed light on the neurobiological underpinnings of multisensory integration and its potentially clinically relevant inter-individual variability

Reading the Miller's Tale

Modern narrative theory has provided new ways of analysing stories and a new critical vocabulary for discussing narratives. Some such theories emphasise the way in which the reader is involved in the act of reading a narrative, bringing skills and assumptions to the text which enable him to interpret the words which make up the story. Traditionally we have tended to confine literary analysis to the words on the page; narratologists and structuralists invite us to examine also what the reader brings to the text. Such an analysis not only interprets the texts under discussion but also helsps to lay bare the assumptions of the reader. This paper will provide an analysis of Chaucer's Miller's Tale using a heory of narrative analogous with transformation! grammar.Modern narrative theory has provided new ways of analysing stories and a new critical vocabulary for discussing narratives. Some such theories emphasise the way in which the reader is involved in the act of reading a narrative, bringing skills and assumptions to the text which enable him to interpret the words which make up the story. Traditionally we have tended to confine literary analysis to the words on the page; narratologists and structuralists invite us to examine also what the reader brings to the text. Such an analysis not only interprets the texts under discussion but also helsps to lay bare the assumptions of the reader. This paper will provide an analysis of Chaucer's Miller's Tale using a heory of narrative analogous with transformation! grammar

An investigation of a genomewide supported psychosis variant in ZNF804A and white matter integrity in the human brain

ZNF804A, a genomewide supported susceptibility gene for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, has been associated with task-independent functional connectivity between the left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortices. Several lines of evidence have converged on the hypothesis that this effect may be mediated by structural connectivity. We tested this hypothesis using diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging in three samples: one German sample of 50 healthy individuals, one Scottish sample of 83 healthy individuals and one Scottish sample of 84 unaffected relatives of bipolar patients. Voxel-based analysis and tract-based spatial statistics did not detect any fractional anisotropy (FA) differences between minor allele carriers and individuals homozygous for the major allele at rs1344706. Similarly, region-of-interest analyses and quantitative tractography of the genu of the corpus callosum revealed no significant FA differences between the genotype groups. Examination of effect sizes and confidence intervals indicated that this negative finding is very unlikely to be due to a lack of statistical power. In summary, despite using various analysis techniques in three different samples, our results were strikingly and consistently negative. These data therefore suggest that it is unlikely that the effects of genetic variation at rs1344706 on functional connectivity are mediated by structural integrity differences in large, long-range white matter fiber connections