231 research outputs found
Placements and degree performance:do placements lead to better marks, or do better students choose placements?
There has been a strong move recently to make degrees more applicable to employment; including work placements as part of the programme is one way of achieving this. Such placements are advocated to increase employability, but also for improving academic performance. This paper examines the relationship between undertaking a work placement and the class of degree achieved. It challenges earlier findings that undertaking a placement increases degree results. Studying seven cohorts of students, a well tested approach was employed that allows for sample selection – i.e. whether better students do placements rather than whether placements produce better students. The paper concludes that the sample selection is much stronger, i.e. placement students do better because they are better students. The results highlight that it is not merely doing a placement that matters, but a successful placement adds significantly to subsequent performance. The paper concludes with advice to students and policy makers
Developmentally appropriate transitional care during the Covid-19 pandemic for young people with juvenile-onset rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases : the rationale for a position statement
Background
The importance of developmentally appropriate transitional care in young people with juvenile-onset rheumatic and musculoskeletal disease is well recognised. The Paediatric Rheumatology European Society (PReS) / European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) Taskforce has developed international recommendations and standards for transitional care and a growing evidence base supports the positive benefits of such care. However, there is also evidence that universal implementation has yet to be realised. In 2020, against this background the COVID-19 pandemic arrived with significant impact on all our lives, young and old, patient, public and professional alike. The unfortunate reality of the pandemic with potential for unfavourable outcomes on healthcare provision during transition was acknowledged by the PReS working groups in a position statement to support healthcare professionals, young people and their caregivers.
Aim
The aim of this review is to present the literature which provides the rationale for the recommendations in the PReS Position Statement.
Summary
The following areas are specifically addressed: the prime importance of care coordination; the impact of the pandemic on the various aspects of the transition process; the importance of ensuring continuity of medication supply; the pros and cons of telemedicine with young people; ensuring meaningful involvement of young people in service development and the importance of core adolescent health practices such as routine developmental assessment psychosocial screening and appropriate parental involvement during transitional care
SRAO CO Observation of 11 Supernova Remnants in l = 70 to 190 deg
We present the results of 12CO J = 1-0 line observations of eleven Galactic
supernova remnants (SNRs) obtained using the Seoul Radio Astronomy Observatory
(SRAO) 6-m radio telescope. The observation was made as a part of the SRAO CO
survey of SNRs between l = 70 and 190 deg, which is intended to identify SNRs
interacting with molecular clouds. The mapping areas for the individual SNRs
are determined to cover their full extent in the radio continuum. We used
halfbeam grid spacing (60") for 9 SNRs and full-beam grid spacing (120") for
the rest. We detected CO emission towards most of the remnants. In six SNRs,
molecular clouds showed a good spatial relation with their radio morphology,
although no direct evidence for the interaction was detected. Two SNRs are
particularly interesting: G85.4+0.7, where there is a filamentary molecular
cloud along the radio shell, and 3C434.1, where a large molecular cloud appears
to block the western half of the remnant. We briefly summarize the results
obtained for individual SNRs.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astrophysics & Space Science. 12 pages,
12 figures, and 3 table
Counting function fluctuations and extreme value threshold in multifractal patterns: the case study of an ideal noise
To understand the sample-to-sample fluctuations in disorder-generated
multifractal patterns we investigate analytically as well as numerically the
statistics of high values of the simplest model - the ideal periodic
Gaussian noise. By employing the thermodynamic formalism we predict the
characteristic scale and the precise scaling form of the distribution of number
of points above a given level. We demonstrate that the powerlaw forward tail of
the probability density, with exponent controlled by the level, results in an
important difference between the mean and the typical values of the counting
function. This can be further used to determine the typical threshold of
extreme values in the pattern which turns out to be given by
with . Such observation provides a
rather compelling explanation of the mechanism behind universality of .
Revealed mechanisms are conjectured to retain their qualitative validity for a
broad class of disorder-generated multifractal fields. In particular, we
predict that the typical value of the maximum of intensity is to be
given by , where is the
corresponding singularity spectrum vanishing at . For the
noise we also derive exact as well as well-controlled approximate
formulas for the mean and the variance of the counting function without
recourse to the thermodynamic formalism.Comment: 28 pages; 7 figures, published version with a few misprints
corrected, editing done and references adde
Selective elimination of a chemoresistant side population of B-CLL cells by cytotoxic T lymphocytes in subjects receiving an autologous hCD40L/IL-2 tumor vaccine
Side-population (SP) analysis identifies precursor cells in normal and malignant tissues. Cells with this phenotype have increased resistance to many cytotoxic agents, and may represent a primary drug-resistant population in malignant diseases. To discover whether drug-resistant malignant SP cells are nonetheless sensitive to immune-mediated killing, we first established the presence of a malignant CD5+ CD19+ SP subset in the blood of 18/21 subjects with B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL). We examined the fate of these cells in six of these individuals who received autologous human CD40 ligand and interleukin-2 (hCD40L/IL-2) gene-modified tumor cells as part of a tumor vaccine study. Vaccinated patients showed an increase in B-CLL-reactive T cells followed by a corresponding decline in circulating CD5+ CD19+ SP cells. T-cell lines and clones generated from vaccinated patients specifically recognized B-CLL SP tumor cells. Elimination of SP cells is likely triggered by their increased expression of target antigens, such as receptor for hyaluronan-mediated motility (RHAMM), after stimulation of the malignant cells by hCD40L, as CD8+ RHAMM-specific T cells could be detected in the peripheral blood of immunized patients and were associated with the decline in B-CLL SP cells. Hence, malignant B cells with a primary drug-resistant phenotype can be targeted by T-cell-mediated effector activity after immunization of human subjects
Selective depletion of a minor subpopulation of B-chronic lymphocytic leukemia cells is followed by a delayed but progressive loss of bulk tumor cells and disease regression
Cancer precursor/progenitor cells may initiate and sustain the growth of tumors, but evidence for their existence in human disease is indirect, relying on their it in vitro it properties and animal models. More directly, specific elimination of these rare cells from cancer patients should produce a delayed but progressive disappearance of differentiated malignant progeny. Here, we describe selective eradication of a putative precursor population in a patient with B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia, followed 6 months later by a progressive loss of mature tumor cells without further treatment. This outcome supports the presence of a rare population of precursor/progenitor cells in human malignancies, and suggests benefit from their removal
Describing complex interactions of social-ecological systems for tipping point assessments: an analytical framework
Humans play an interconnecting role in social-ecological systems (SES), they are part of these systems and act as agents of their destruction and regulation. This study aims to provide an analytical framework, which combines the concept of SES with the concept of tipping dynamics. As a result, we propose an analytical framework describing relevant dynamics and feedbacks within SES based on two matrixes: the “tipping matrix” and the “cross-impact matrix.” We take the Southwestern Amazon as an example for tropical regions at large and apply the proposed analytical framework to identify key underlying sub-systems within the study region: the soil ecosystem, the household livelihood system, the regional social system, and the regional climate system, which are interconnected through a network of feedbacks. We consider these sub-systems as tipping elements (TE), which when put under stress, can cross a tipping point (TP), resulting in a qualitative and potentially irreversible change of the respective TE. By systematically assessing linkages and feedbacks within and between TEs, our proposed analytical framework can provide an entry point for empirically assessing tipping point dynamics such as “tipping cascades,” which means that the crossing of a TP in one TE may force the tipping of another TE. Policy implications: The proposed joint description of the structure and dynamics within and across SES in respect to characteristics of tipping point dynamics promotes a better understanding of human-nature interactions and critical linkages within regional SES that may be used for effectively informing and directing empirical tipping point assessments, monitoring or intervention purposes. Thereby, the framework can inform policy-making for enhancing the resilience of regional SES
Observation of Scaling Violations in Scaled Momentum Distributions at HERA
Charged particle production has been measured in deep inelastic scattering
(DIS) events over a large range of and using the ZEUS detector. The
evolution of the scaled momentum, , with in the range 10 to 1280
, has been investigated in the current fragmentation region of the Breit
frame. The results show clear evidence, in a single experiment, for scaling
violations in scaled momenta as a function of .Comment: 21 pages including 4 figures, to be published in Physics Letters B.
Two references adde
D* Production in Deep Inelastic Scattering at HERA
This paper presents measurements of D^{*\pm} production in deep inelastic
scattering from collisions between 27.5 GeV positrons and 820 GeV protons. The
data have been taken with the ZEUS detector at HERA. The decay channel
(+ c.c.) has been used in the study. The
cross section for inclusive D^{*\pm} production with
and is 5.3 \pms 1.0 \pms 0.8 nb in the kinematic region
{ GeV and }. Differential cross
sections as functions of p_T(D^{*\pm}), and are
compared with next-to-leading order QCD calculations based on the photon-gluon
fusion production mechanism. After an extrapolation of the cross section to the
full kinematic region in p_T(D^{*\pm}) and (D^{*\pm}), the charm
contribution to the proton structure function is
determined for Bjorken between 2 10 and 5 10.Comment: 17 pages including 4 figure
Energy Flow in the Hadronic Final State of Diffractive and Non-Diffractive Deep-Inelastic Scattering at HERA
An investigation of the hadronic final state in diffractive and
non--diffractive deep--inelastic electron--proton scattering at HERA is
presented, where diffractive data are selected experimentally by demanding a
large gap in pseudo --rapidity around the proton remnant direction. The
transverse energy flow in the hadronic final state is evaluated using a set of
estimators which quantify topological properties. Using available Monte Carlo
QCD calculations, it is demonstrated that the final state in diffractive DIS
exhibits the features expected if the interaction is interpreted as the
scattering of an electron off a current quark with associated effects of
perturbative QCD. A model in which deep--inelastic diffraction is taken to be
the exchange of a pomeron with partonic structure is found to reproduce the
measurements well. Models for deep--inelastic scattering, in which a
sizeable diffractive contribution is present because of non--perturbative
effects in the production of the hadronic final state, reproduce the general
tendencies of the data but in all give a worse description.Comment: 22 pages, latex, 6 Figures appended as uuencoded fil
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