1,300 research outputs found
Improving young peopleâs health and wellbeing through a school health research network: reflections on school-researcher engagement at the national level
The School Health Research Network is a policy-practice-research partnership established in Wales in 2013. The Network aims to: provide health and wellbeing data for national, regional and local stakeholders, including schools; co-produce school-based health improvement research for Wales; and build capacity for evidence-informed practice in the school health community. School-focused engagement activities include providing member schools with bespoke Student Health and Wellbeing Reports, hosting school health webinars, producing school-friendly research briefings, and holding annual events for schools. The Networkâs model for co-producing research with schools is described and its impacts on schools is explored. These include more efficient recruitment of schools to research projects, school involvement in intervention development, schools beginning to embed evidence-informed practice by using their Reports and other Network resources, and securing funding to evaluate innovative health and wellbeing practices identified by schools. Drawing on the Trans-disciplinary Action Research (TDAR) literature, the article reflects on how TDAR principles have underpinned Network progress. The concept of reciprocity in the co-production literature and its relevance to engagement with schools is also explored, along with the Networkâs contribution to our understanding of how we can build sustainable co-production at large scale in order to generate national level action and benefit
Resolving Shelf Break Exchange Around the European Northwest Shelf
Shelf seas act as a significant sink of carbon within the global ocean. This occurs as carbon is exported beneath the permanent oceanic thermocline through the downwelling circulation across the shelf break. This downwelling circulation is quantified here using two regional ocean model configurations of the European northwest shelf, with differing resolution (7â and 1.5âkm grid spacing). The dominant mechanisms and impact of model resolution are assessed along the length of the shelf break. The total downwelling circulation is stronger at higher resolution, due to an increased onâshelf transport at internal depths (20â150 m) and increased offâshelf transport at the base of the water column. At internal depths, these differences increase seasonally, influenced by stratification. Key processes in crossâshelf exchange only begin to be resolved at O(1 km), implying that global models currently used to assess the carbon cycles will be missing these processes
Perfectionism and achievement goal orientations in adolescent school students
Perfectionism has been shown to predict individual differences in achievement goal orientations in university students, but research on perfectionism and goal orientations in school students is still very limited. Investigating 584 adolescent school students in a cross-sectional correlational design, the present study examined how self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism predicted studentsâ goal orientations. Multiple regression analyses showed that, when the overlap between the different goal orientations was controlled for, self-oriented perfectionism positively predicted mastery-approach and mastery-avoidance goal orientations whereas socially prescribed perfectionism positively predicted performance-approach orientation. The present findings indicate that perfectionism predicts individual differences in adolescent school studentsâ achievement goal orientations, but different forms of perfectionism are associated with different patterns of goal orientations
XNMT: The eXtensible Neural Machine Translation Toolkit
This paper describes XNMT, the eXtensible Neural Machine Translation toolkit.
XNMT distin- guishes itself from other open-source NMT toolkits by its focus on
modular code design, with the purpose of enabling fast iteration in research
and replicable, reliable results. In this paper we describe the design of XNMT
and its experiment configuration system, and demonstrate its utility on the
tasks of machine translation, speech recognition, and multi-tasked machine
translation/parsing. XNMT is available open-source at
https://github.com/neulab/xnmtComment: To be presented at AMTA 2018 Open Source Software Showcas
Prey encounters and spatial memory influence use of foraging patches in a marine central place forager
This study was carried out as part of the Moray Firth Marine Mammal Monitoring Programme, a joint industry, academic and government strategic research project with funding from Beatrice Offshore Wind Ltd and Moray Offshore Renewables Ltd (MORL).Given the patchiness and long-term predictability of marine resources, memory of high-quality foraging grounds is expected to provide fitness advantages for central place foragers. However, it remains challenging to characterize how marine predators integrate memory with recent prey encounters to adjust fine-scale movement and use of foraging patches. Here, we used two months of movement data from harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) to quantify the repeatability in foraging patches as a proxy for memory. We then integrated these data into analyses of fine-scale movement and underwater behaviour to test how both spatial memory and prey encounter rates influenced the seals' area-restricted search (ARS) behaviour. Specifically, we used one month's GPS data from 29 individuals to build spatial memory maps of searched areas and archived accelerometery data from a subset of five individuals to detect prey catch attempts, a proxy for prey encounters. Individuals were highly consistent in the areas they visited over two consecutive months. Hidden Markov models showed that both spatial memory and prey encounters increased the probability of seals initiating ARS. These results provide evidence that predators use memory to adjust their fine-scale movement, and this ability should be accounted for in movement models.PostprintPeer reviewe
Health improvement and educational attainment in secondary schools: complementary or competing priorities? Exploratory analyses from the School Health Research Network in Wales
Background. Implementing health improvement is often perceived as diverting resource away from schoolsâ core business, reflecting an assumption of a âzero-sum gameâ between health and education. There is some evidence that health behaviors may affect young peopleâs educational outcomes. However, associations between implementation of school health improvement and educational outcomes remains underinvestigated. Methods. The study linked school-level data on free school meal (FSM) entitlement, educational outcomes, and school attendance, obtained from government websites, with data from the School Environment Questionnaire (SEQ) on health improvement activity collected in Wales (2015/2016). Spearmanâs rank correlation coefficients and linear regression models tested the extent of association between health improvement activity and attendance and educational outcomes. Results. SEQ data were provided by 100/115 network schools (87%), of whom data on educational performance were obtained from 97. The percentage of pupils entitled to FSM predicted most of the between-school variance in achievement and attendance. Linear regression models demonstrated significant positive associations of all measures of health improvement activity with attainment at Key Stage (KS) 3, apart from mental health education in the curriculum and organizational commitment to health. Student and parent involvement in planning health activities were associated with improved school attendance. There were no significant associations between health improvement and KS4 attainment. Conclusion. Implementing health improvement activity does not have a detrimental effect on schoolsâ educational performance. There is tentative evidence of the reverse, with better educational outcomes in schools with more extensive health improvement policies and practices. Further research should investigate processes by which this occurs and variations by socioeconomic status
Socioeconomic status, mental wellbeing and transition to secondary school: analysis of the School Health Research Network/Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey in Wales
Young peopleâs wellbeing is often lowest where they assume a relatively low position within their schoolâs socioeconomic hierarchy, for example, among poorer children attending more affluent schools. Transition to secondary school is a period during which young people typically enter an environment which is more socio-economically diverse than their primary school. Young people joining a school with a higher socioeconomic status intake relative to their primary school may assume a relatively lowered position within their schoolsâ socioeconomic hierarchy, experiencing a detriment to their wellbeing as a consequence. This paper draws on data from 45,055 pupils in Years 7 and 8, from 193 secondary schools in Wales, who completed the 2017 Student Health Research Network (SHRN) Student Health and Wellbeing (SHW) Survey. Pupils reported which primary school they previously attended, and survey data on wellbeing were linked to publicly available data on the Free School Meal entitlement of schools attended. In cross-classified linear mixed-effects models, with primary and secondary school as levels, mental wellbeing varied significantly according to both primary and secondary school attended. A higher school-level deprivation was associated with worse mental wellbeing in both cases. Mental wellbeing was significantly predicted by the relative affluence of a childâs primary and secondary school, with movement to a secondary school of higher overall socioeconomic status associated with lowered wellbeing. These findings highlight transition to secondary school as a key point in which socioeconomic inequality in wellbeing ma
Testing the âzero-sum gameâ hypothesis: An examination of school health policies and practices and inequalities in educational outcomes
Background
There is recognition that health and education are intrinsically linked through, for example, WHO's Health Promoting Schools (HPS) framework. Nevertheless, promoting health via schools is seen by some as a zero-sum gameâie, schools have nothing to gain, and may experience detriments to the core business of academic attainment because of focusing resources on health. Crucially, there is a paucity of evidence around the impacts of health and wellbeing policy and practice on attainment, with recent Cochrane reviews highlighting this gap. This study explored the zero-sum game hypothesis among schools with varying levels of deprivationâie, the role of health and wellbeing interventions in schools in reducing or widening socioeconomic inequality in educational attainment.
Methods
Wales-wide, school-level survey data on health policies and practices, reflective of the HPS framework, were captured in 2016 using the School Environment Questionnaire. Questionnaire data were linked with routinely collected data on academic attainment. Primary outcomes included attendance and attainment at Key stages 3 (children aged 12â14 years) and 4 (15â16). Interaction terms were fitted to test whether there was an interaction between free school meals, overall HPS activity, and outcomes. Linear regression models were constructed separately for schools with high uptake of free school meals (>15% of pupils) and low uptake (<15%), adjusting for confounders.
Findings
The final analyses included 48 schools with low uptake of free school meals and 49 with high uptake. Significant interactions were observed between free school meals and overall HPS activity for Key stage 3 attainment (ÎČ=0·28, 95% CI 0·09â0·47) and attendance (0·05, 0·02â0·09), reflecting an association between health improvement activities and education outcomes among high, but not low, free school meal schools. There was no significant interaction for Key stage 4 attainment (0·18, â0·22 to 0·57).
Interpretation
Our findings did not support the zero-sum game hypothesis; in fact, among more deprived schools, there was a tendency for better attendance and attainment at Key stage 3. Schools must equip students with the skills required for good physical and mental health and wellbeing in addition to academic and cognitive skills. The study included a large, nationally representative sample of secondary schools; however, the cross-sectional nature has implications for causality
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