Developing effective child death review : a study of ‘early starter’ child death overview panels in England

Aim This qualitative study of a small number of child death overview panels aimed to observe and describe their experience in implementing new child death review processes, and making prevention recommendations. Methods Nine sites reflecting a geographic and demographic spread were selected from Local Safeguarding Children Boards across England. Data were collected through a combination of questionnaires, interviews, structured observations, and evaluation of documents. Data were subjected to qualitative analysis. Results Data analysis revealed a number of themes within two overarching domains: the systems and structures in place to support the process; and the process and function of the panels. The data emphasised the importance of child death review being a multidisciplinary process involving senior professionals; that the process was resource and time intensive; that effective review requires both quantitative and qualitative information, and is best achieved through a structured analytic framework; and that the focus should be on learning lessons, not on trying to apportion blame. In 17 of the 24 cases discussed by the panels, issues were raised that may have indicated preventable factors. A number of examples of recommendations relating to injury prevention were observed including public awareness campaigns, community safety initiatives, training of professionals, development of protocols, and lobbying of politicians. Conclusions The results of this study have helped to inform the subsequent establishment of child death overview panels across England. To operate effectively, panels need a clear remit and purpose, robust structures and processes, and committed personnel. A multiagency approach contributes to a broader understanding of and response to children’s deaths

Building a Geochemical View of Microbial Salt Tolerance: Halophilic Adaptation of Marinococcus in a Natural Magnesium Sulfate Brine

Current knowledge of life in hypersaline habitats is mostly limited to sodium and chloride dominated environments. This narrow compositional window does not reflect the diversity of brine environments that exist naturally on Earth and other planetary bodies. Understanding the limits of the microbial biosphere and predicting extraterrestrial habitability demands a systematic effort to characterize ionic specificities of organisms from a representative range of saline habitats. Here, we investigated a strain of Marinococcus isolated from the magnesium and sulfate-dominated Basque Lakes (British Columbia, Canada). This organism was the sole isolate obtained after exposure to exceptionally high levels of Mg2+ and SO42- ions (2.369 and 2.840 M, respectively), and grew at extremes of ionic strength not normally encountered in Na+/Cl- brines (12.141 mol liter-1). Its association at the 16S rDNA level with bacterial halophiles suggests that ancestral halophily has allowed it to adapt to a different saline habitat. Growth was demonstrated in media dominated by NaCl, Na2SO4, MgCl2, and MgSO4, yet despite this plasticity the strain was still restricted; requiring either Na+ or Cl- to maintain short doubling times. Water activity could not explain growth rate differences between media, demonstrating the importance of ionic composition for dictating microbial growth windows. A new framework for understanding growth in brines is required, that accounts for the geochemical history of brines as well as the various stresses that ions impose on microbes. Studies such as this are required to gain a truly universal understanding of the limits of biological ion tolerance

Making gains: the impact of outdoor residential experiences on students’ examination grades and self-efficacy

In this paper we explore the role of outdoor residential experiences on the sense of efficacy and examination attainment of a group of under achieving students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. The paper reports on a three year project which focuses on two groups of year nine (age 14) to year eleven (age 16) students. The results reported here strongly suggest that the impact of these visits has been significant in terms of students’ sense of confidence and efficacy and had a statistically significant impact on formal examination results in school. We conclude by suggesting that outdoor residential experiences have real educational value for those that take part and, given the evidence provided, believe this poses an interesting question as to whether the classroom should remain the primary site of learning because of the ways it develops positive outcomes within school

Environmental influence in animal contests

Contests between individual animals over the possession of particular limited resources have played an important role in shaping the evolution of life history, morphology and ecology of the vast majority of animal taxa. Whilst the phenomenon has been and continues to be extensively scrutinized via theory and experimentation, theses and predictions based on mathematics and optimality are frequently confounded by experimental observation. If successful demonstrations of evolutionarily stable strategies are to occur it is vital that the complex interplay of variables potentially affecting an animal‟s fighting ability are understood and controlled for experimentally. This review addresses the significance of external environmental influence on the decisions that animals make during conflict. With reference to the various game theory models and studies directly investigating the role of physiology in aggressive behaviour, this review calls for a collaboration between physiologists and behavioural ecologists in a hope of further understanding one of the fundamental selective processes in the evolution of motile animal taxa

Ionic strength is a barrier to the habitability of Mars

The thermodynamic availability of water (water activity) strictly limits microbial propagation on Earth, particularly in hypersaline environments. A considerable body of evidence indicates the existence of hypersaline surface waters throughout the history of Mars, therefore it is assumed that, as on Earth, water activity is a major limiting factor for martian habitability. However, the differing geologic histories of the Earth and Mars have driven variations in their respective aqueous geochemistry, with as-yet-unknown implications for habitability. Using a microbial community enrichment approach, we investigated microbial habitability for a suite of simulated martian brines. Whilst the habitability of some martian brines was consistent with predictions made from water activity, others were uninhabitable even when the water activity was biologically permissive. We provide evidence that high ionic strength, driven to extremes on Mars by the ubiquitous occurrence of divalent ions, renders these environments uninhabitable despite the presence of biologically available water. These findings show how the respective geological histories of Earth and Mars, which have produced differences in the planets’ dominant water chemistries, have resulted in different physicochemical extremes which define the boundary space for microbial habitability

Non‐human matter, health disparities and a thousand tiny dis/advantages

The materialist thread within health sociology has observed a clear gradient linking inequalities in health with measures of social class and poverty. More recently, Bourdieu's approach to social class complemented the ‘economic capital’ of Marxist analysis with ‘symbolic’ capitals such as ‘social’ and ‘cultural’. However, efforts to assess how symbolic capital interacts with health disparities reveal complex or contradictory effects. In this paper, we re‐materialise the study of health and social position via a new materialist focus on the interactions between humans and non‐human matter (NHM). We analyse empirical data to disclose the range of human/NHM interactions in daily life, and how these affect people's health status. These interactions establish physical, psychological and social opportunities and constraints on what human bodies can do, contributing to relative advantages and disadvantages. We argue for a revised materialist understanding of sociomaterial position as constituted by a ‘thousand tiny dis/advantages’, and suggest that health and wellbeing are inextricably linked to dis/advantage

Place, health and dis/advantage: a sociomaterial analysis.

The substantial literature on interactions between places/spaces and well-being/health often differentiate between physical and social aspects of geographical location. This paper sidesteps this dualism, instead considering places as sociomaterial assemblages of human and non-human materialities. It uses this posthuman and ‘new materialist’ perspective to explore how place-assemblages affect human capacities, in terms of both health and social dis/advantage. Based on secondary analysis of interview data on human/place interactions, it analyses the physical, sociocultural, psychological and emotional effects of place-assemblages, assessing how these produce opportunities for, and constraints upon human bodies. It than assesses how these emergent capacities affect both social dis/advantage and well-being. This analysis of how place-assemblages contribute positively or negatively to health and dis/advantage offers possibilities for further research and for social and public health policy

Distributed Operations Planning

Maestro software provides a secure and distributed mission planning system for long-term missions in general, and the Mars Exploration Rover Mission (MER) specifically. Maestro, the successor to the Science Activity Planner, has a heavy emphasis on portability and distributed operations, and requires no data replication or expensive hardware, instead relying on a set of services functioning on JPL institutional servers. Maestro works on most current computers with network connections, including laptops. When browsing down-link data from a spacecraft, Maestro functions similarly to being on a Web browser. After authenticating the user, it connects to a database server to query an index of data products. It then contacts a Web server to download and display the actual data products. The software also includes collaboration support based upon a highly reliable messaging system. Modifications made to targets in one instance are quickly and securely transmitted to other instances of Maestro. The back end that has been developed for Maestro could benefit many future missions by reducing the cost of centralized operations system architecture

Extreme Programming: Maestro Style

"Extreme Programming: Maestro Style" is the name of a computer programming methodology that has evolved as a custom version of a methodology, called extreme programming that has been practiced in the software industry since the late 1990s. The name of this version reflects its origin in the work of the Maestro team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that develops software for Mars exploration missions. Extreme programming is oriented toward agile development of software resting on values of simplicity, communication, testing, and aggressiveness. Extreme programming involves use of methods of rapidly building and disseminating institutional knowledge among members of a computer-programming team to give all the members a shared view that matches the view of the customers for whom the software system is to be developed. Extreme programming includes frequent planning by programmers in collaboration with customers, continually examining and rewriting code in striving for the simplest workable software designs, a system metaphor (basically, an abstraction of the system that provides easy-to-remember software-naming conventions and insight into the architecture of the system), programmers working in pairs, adherence to a set of coding standards, collaboration of customers and programmers, frequent verbal communication, frequent releases of software in small increments of development, repeated testing of the developmental software by both programmers and customers, and continuous interaction between the team and the customers. The environment in which the Maestro team works requires the team to quickly adapt to changing needs of its customers. In addition, the team cannot afford to accept unnecessary development risk. Extreme programming enables the Maestro team to remain agile and provide high-quality software and service to its customers. However, several factors in the Maestro environment have made it necessary to modify some of the conventional extreme-programming practices. The single most influential of these factors is that continuous interaction between customers and programmers is not feasible