Assessing quality of life in older horses

The equine population is ageing and equine geriatric medicine is a growing field. With increasing horse age, both the frequency of veterinary attention and the provision of several preventive health care measures are reduced. Moreover, owners appear to under-recognise several prevalent age-associated diseases, often considering clinical signs as normal signs of ageing. There is a high burden of chronic disease within the geriatric equine population, which may have a detrimental effect on quality of life. In the absence of a validated equine quality of life measurement scale, this review highlights factors and domains that should be evaluated in a comprehensive assessment of the quality of life in older horses. The potential benefits of assessing quality of life as a routine component of veterinary care for older horses are also summarised. </jats:p

A measurement of the 4He(g,n) reaction from 23 < Eg < 70 MeV

A comprehensive set of 4He(g,n) absolute cross-section measurements has been performed at MAX-lab in Lund, Sweden. Tagged photons from 23 < Eg < 70 MeV were directed toward a liquid 4He target, and neutrons were identified using pulse-shape discrimination and the Time-of-flight Technique in two liquid-scintillator detector arrays. Seven-point angular distributions have been measured for fourteen photon energies. The results have been subjected to complementary Transition-coefficient and Legendre-coefficient analyses. The results are also compared to experimental data measured at comparable photon energies as well as Recoil-Corrected Continuum Shell Model, Resonating Group Method, and Effective Interaction Hyperspherical-Harmonic Expansion calculations. For photon energies below 29 MeV, the angle-integrated data are significantly larger than the values recommended by Calarco, Berman, and Donnelly in 1983.Comment: 16 pages, 14 figures, some more revisions, submitted to Physical Review

Protecting Adolescents from Harm: Findings from the National Longitudinal Study on Adolescent Health.

Some children who are at highrisk for health-compromising behaviors successfully negotiate adolescence, avoiding the behaviors that predispose them to negative health outcomes; while others, relatively advantaged socially and economically, sustain significant morbidity as a consequence of their behaviors. These issues of vulnerability and resilience have stimulated an interest in the identification of protective factors in the lives of young people—factors that,if present, diminish the likelihood of negative health and social outcomes.20"26 Of the constellation of forces that influence adolescent health-risk behavior, the most fundamental are the social contexts in which adolescents are embed¬ded20;the family and school contexts are among the most critical. Yet, how adolescents' connections to these contexts shape their health-risk behaviors is poorly understood

Finding Inspiration: Sharing Practice and Developing Authentic Multimedia Artifacts for Supervision of Undergraduate Research in Irish higher education

Supervision is a specialist academic practice that can be learnt through the experience of the practice of supervision itself. However, increasingly, supervisors can find inspiration from each other in structured, supported, collaborative professional development. This Chapter evaluates the perceived impact on faculty and student learning of sharing inspirational practices and creating multimedia artifacts which formed the assessment of an accredited postgraduate module entitled ‘Supervising Undergraduate Dissertations and Projects’ at a Technological University in Ireland. A range of themes are explored in the Chapter including the increasing demand for this form of professional development for academics; the importance of a peer learning approach for providing inspiration and sharing of practice; the design and development of multimedia artifacts for undergraduate supervision practice and the national context within which this work is situated

Trade unions and the challenge of fostering solidarities in an era of financialisation

This articles re-examines evidence that trade unions in the UK have struggled to renew themselves despite considerable investment of time and effort. It argues that financialisation in the realms of capital accumulation, organisational decision making and everyday life has introduced new barriers to building the solidarities within and between groups of workers that would be necessary to develop a stronger response to the catastrophic effects on labour of financialisation in general, and the financial crisis specifically. The crisis highlighted the weaknesses of trade unions as institutions of economic and industrial democracy, but has also given some opportunities to establish narratives of solidarity in spaces and platforms created within a financialised context

Comment on the narrow structure reported by Amaryan et al

The CLAS Collaboration provides a comment on the physics interpretation of the results presented in a paper published by M. Amaryan et al. regarding the possible observation of a narrow structure in the mass spectrum of a photoproduction experiment.Comment: to be published in Physical Review

Differential cross section and recoil polarization measurements for the gamma p to K+ Lambda reaction using CLAS at Jefferson Lab

We present measurements of the differential cross section and Lambda recoil polarization for the gamma p to K+ Lambda reaction made using the CLAS detector at Jefferson Lab. These measurements cover the center-of-mass energy range from 1.62 to 2.84 GeV and a wide range of center-of-mass K+ production angles. Independent analyses were performed using the K+ p pi- and K+ p (missing pi -) final-state topologies; results from these analyses were found to exhibit good agreement. These differential cross section measurements show excellent agreement with previous CLAS and LEPS results and offer increased precision and a 300 MeV increase in energy coverage. The recoil polarization data agree well with previous results and offer a large increase in precision and a 500 MeV extension in energy range. The increased center-of-mass energy range that these data represent will allow for independent study of non-resonant K+ Lambda photoproduction mechanisms at all production angles.Comment: 22 pages, 16 figure

Promoting Evidence-based Veterinary Medicine through the online resource ‘EBVM Learning’: User feedback

‘EBVM Learning’ is a freely available resource created in 2015 by an international team with the support of RCVS Knowledge. The resource comprises a series of online modules teaching the fundamental concepts of evidence-based veterinary medicine (EBVM) (Ask, Acquire, Appraise, Apply & Assess) supported by case studies, exercises, worked examples and quizzes. The aim of the current study (undertaken in 2019) was to review ‘EBVM Learning’ to ensure its ongoing relevance and usefulness to the range of learners engaged in EBVM. Feedback was gathered from stakeholder groups using website statistics and feedback forms, a survey and semi-structured interviews to provide a combination of quantitative and qualitative data.Website statistics revealed an international audience and a steady increase in visitors exceeding 1,000 per month in August 2020. Feedback via the online form (n=35) and survey (n=71) indicated that the resource was well structured, with an appropriate level and amount of content, useful examples and quizzes and the majority of respondents would use it again. Semi-structured interviews of educators (n=5) and veterinarians (n=8) identified three themes: features of the ‘EBVM Learning’ resource (strengths, suggestions for improvement), embedding the resource in education (undergraduate, postgraduate) and promoting EBVM (challenges, motivation for engagement). At a project team workshop the results were used to plan updates to the existing content and to identify new ways to promote learning and engagement. An updated version of ‘EBVM Learning’ was developed.‘EBVM Learning’ is helping to produce the next generation of evidence-based practitioners and enabling to engage in the concepts of EBVM as part of their clinical practice

A comparison of forward and backward pp pair knockout in 3He(e,e'pp)n

Measuring nucleon-nucleon Short Range Correlations (SRC) has been a goal of the nuclear physics community for many years. They are an important part of the nuclear wavefunction, accounting for almost all of the high-momentum strength. They are closely related to the EMC effect. While their overall probability has been measured, measuring their momentum distributions is more difficult. In order to determine the best configuration for studying SRC momentum distributions, we measured the $^3$He$(e,e'pp)n$ reaction, looking at events with high momentum protons ($p_p > 0.35$ GeV/c) and a low momentum neutron ($p_n< 0.2$ GeV/c). We examined two angular configurations: either both protons emitted forward or one proton emitted forward and one backward (with respect to the momentum transfer, $\vec q$). The measured relative momentum distribution of the events with one forward and one backward proton was much closer to the calculated initial-state $pp$ relative momentum distribution, indicating that this is the preferred configuration for measuring SRC.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Phys Rev C. Version 2 incorporates minor corrections in response to referee comment

Measurement of the nuclear multiplicity ratio for Ks0K^0_s hadronization at CLAS

The influence of cold nuclear matter on lepto-production of hadrons in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering is measured using the CLAS detector in Hall B at Jefferson Lab and a 5.014 GeV electron beam. We report the $K_s^0$ multiplicity ratios for targets of C, Fe, and Pb relative to deuterium as a function of the fractional virtual photon energy $z$ transferred to the $K_s^0$ and the transverse momentum squared $p_{T}^2$ of the $K_s^0$. We find that the multiplicity ratios for $K^0_s$ are reduced in the nuclear medium at high $z$ and low $p_{T}^2$, with a trend for the $K^0_s$ transverse momentum to be broadened in the nucleus for large $p_{T}^2$.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Lett.