An Advanced Study and Discussion Guide to Kurt Vonnegut\u27s Slaughterhouse- Five, with Exercises in Grammar, Vocabulary Development, Idiomatic Expressions, and Creative Thinking.

This project was written for advanced learners of English with experience in reading and talking about literature. The introduction provides a brief overview of the story, explains why this book was chosen, and contains suggestions for the teacher in dealing with the unorthodox structure of Slaughterhouse-Five. There follow preparation questions for the students, to be gone over before starting the book. Each following section, numbered after a corresponding chapter in Slaughterhouse­ Five, is made up of prereading questions, explanation of difficult words and phrases, exercises for idiomatic expressions, work with either grammar points or vocabulary, and questions for discussion and interpretation. In addition, most of the study sections contain creative thinking activities related to the themes in each chapter. Following the sections for all ten chapters of Slaughterhouse-Five are relevant details of Kurt Vonnegut\u27s life and notes on other works of related themes by Kurt Vonnegut

Prevention of ventilator-associated pneumonia in adults

Ventilator-associated pneumonia, broadly defined as pneumonia that develops after 48 hours of intubation, is a common mechanical ventilation complication that causes significant morbidity and mortality in critically ill patients. Prevention strategies are continually evolving to decrease the impact of this serious and costly disease

Enhancing the implementation of injury prevention exercise programs in professional soccer

Recently, injury prevention exercise programs (IPEPs) for soccer have received considerable attention and their efficacy has been demonstrated in large-scale trials. However, the ultimate impact of IPEPs will depend not only on their efficacy under controlled conditions, but also on the extent to which they are successfully implemented under real-world conditions. Despite increasing recognition of the challenges involved in successfully implementing IPEPs, there is a paucity of research addressing these challenges. The first aim of this thesis was to systematically review published IPEP trial reports, from an implementation perspective, in both soccer and other team ball sports. To achieve this, an established health-promotion framework, called the Reach Effectiveness Adoption Implementation Maintenance (RE-AIM) framework, was employed. The subsequent phases of the thesis aimed to identify IPEP implementation barriers and facilitators in the specific context of professional soccer. Two cross-sectional surveys explored the perceptions of IPEP users in professional teams and a prospective observational study assessed IPEP use, over one playing season, in a professional youth soccer academy. Evaluation of the published literature against the RE-AIM framework revealed major gaps in the reporting of specific IPEP implementation aspects, particularly relating to program adoption and maintenance. In professional soccer teams, multiple IPEP implementation barriers and facilitators were identified. These factors related either to the content and nature of the IPEPs themselves (e.g. variation, progression and soccer-specificity), or the delivery and support of programs (e.g. communication and team work) at different levels of the professional soccer ecology. In summary, there are major gaps in the reporting of implementation aspects in team ball sport trials. To enhance the implementation of IPEPs in professional soccer settings, the content and delivery of programs require significant tailoring to the specific implementation context.Doctor of Philosoph

From Data to Narratives: Scrutinising the Spatial Dimensions of Social and Cultural Phenomena Through Lenses of Interactive Web Mapping

Modern web mapping techniques have enhanced the storytelling capability of cartography. In this paper, we present our recent development of a web mapping facility that can be used to extract interesting stories and unique insights from a diverse range of socio-economic and demographic variables and indicators, derived from a variety of datasets. We then use three curated narratives to show that online maps are effective ways of interactive storytelling and visualisation, which allow users to tailor their own story maps. We discuss the reasons for the revival of the recent attention to narrative mapping and conclude that our interactive web mapping facility powered by data assets can be employed as an accessible and powerful toolkit, to identify geographic patterns of various social and economic phenomena by social scientists, journalists, policymakers, and the public

We can’t afford to turn a blind eye to myopia

Background Myopia is becoming increasingly prevalent throughout the world. It is an overlooked but leading cause of blindness, particularly among the working aged population. Myopia is often considered benign because it is easily corrected with glasses, contact lenses, or refractive surgery. Traditionally myopia has been classified into physiological and pathological subtypes based on the degree of myopia present. Higher levels of myopia are associated with increased risk of pathological complications but it is important to note that there is no safe level of myopia. Even low levels of myopia increase the risk of retinal detachment and other ocular comorbidities which will be discussed in detail later. The most serious complication, myopic maculopathy, is the only leading cause of blindness without an established treatment and therefore leads to inevitable loss of vision in some myopes, even at a young age. Aim: To highlight the current myopia epidemic and the sight threatening complications associated with it Design: This is a comissioned review article. Data was gathered by performing a literature review, searching the PubMed database for recent articles regarding myopia. Conclusions: Myopia is a potentially blinding disease. By identifying at risk individuals and intervening before they become myopic, eye care practitioners can prevent or delay spectacle use, reduce the risk of the myriad of myopic complications and thereby improve the patient’s quality of life and positively impact its socio-economic effects

Limitations of the Standard Gravitational Perfect Fluid Paradigm

We show that the standard perfect fluid paradigm is not necessarily a valid description of a curved space steady state gravitational source. Simply by virtue of not being flat, curved space geometries have to possess intrinsic length scales, and such length scales can affect the fluid structure. For modes of wavelength of order or greater than such scales eikonalized geometrical optics cannot apply and rays are not geodesic. Covariantizing thus entails not only the replacing of flat space functions by covariant ones, but also the introduction of intrinsic scales that were absent in flat space. In principle it is thus unreliable to construct the curved space energy-momentum tensor as the covariant generalization of a geodesic-based flat spacetime energy-momentum tensor. By constructing the partition function as an incoherent average over a complete set of modes of a scalar field propagating in a curved space background, we show that for the specific case of a static, spherically symmetric geometry, the steady state energy-momentum tensor that ensues will in general be of the form $T_{\mu\nu}=(\rho+p)U_{\mu}U_{\nu}+pg_{\mu\nu}+\pi_{\mu\nu}$ where the anisotropic $\pi_{\mu\nu}$ is a symmetric, traceless rank two tensor which obeys $U^{\mu}\pi_{\mu\nu}=0$. Such a $\pi_{\mu\nu}$ type term is absent for an incoherently averaged steady state fluid in a spacetime where there are no intrinsic length scales, and in principle would thus be missed in a covariantizing of a flat spacetime $T_{\mu\nu}$. While the significance of such $\pi_{\mu\nu}$ type terms would need to be evaluated on a case by case basis, through the use of kinetic theory we reassuringly find that the effect of such $\pi_{\mu\nu}$ type terms is small for weak gravity stars where perfect fluid sources are commonly used.Comment: Final version to appear in General Relativity and Gravitation (the final publication is available at http://www.springerlink.com). 29 pages, 1 figur

Reply to “Comments on ‘Monitoring and Understanding Trends in Extreme Storms: State of Knowledge’”

We welcome the comments of Landsea (2015, hereafter L15) and we1 applaud his efforts toward reanalyzing past tropical cyclone data in the Atlantic (Landsea et al. 2008, 2012, 2014; Hagen et al. 2012). However, L15 does not substantially change the conclusions stated in Kunkel et al. (2013, hereafter K13). L15 voices two main concerns: 1. The U.S. landfalling hurricane time series considered by K13 is dated. 2. The U.S. landfall record exhibits multidecadal variability that places the changes since 1970 into a larger perspective than K13 provided. Related to this concern, L15 introduces assertions about the relationship between U.S. landfall variability and basinwide North Atlantic variability

Drug-recidivism nexus in Nigeria: A sociological criminology perspective

The vast majority of studies that examine the drug-recidivism nexus are generally found in the Western literature, while the scholarship has received comparatvely far less atenton in Nigeria, despite its pervasiveness. This gap in knowledge calls for frst, a theoretcal discourse, and later, data-based studies on the interplay between substance use and recidivism. Guided by sociological criminology perspectve, we applied multdisciplinary approach (i.e. an integraton of economic, psychosocial, sociological, medical/physiological and criminological thoughts, concepts, variables, constructs, models, and theories) to examine the problem. From the review, it was found that illicit substance use inhibits the pathways to criminal desistance (aging out of crime) and heightens the trajectories to criminal persistence (recidivism). That is, it amplifes the tendency for individuals to take a long career in crime and at the same tme causes them to persist in crime to get money to sustain their drug culture. This shows that the outcome of drug-recidivism interactons is mixed or perhaps unclear in terms of a partcular variable that signifcantly infuence the occurrence of the other. It is therefore, suggested that further studies in Nigeria be focused on developing a more robust methodologies and survey instruments for generatng quanttatve or qualitatve data, or a combinaton of both methods. The aim is bidirectonal: frstly, is to establish a more scientfc basis for a clearer understanding of the two variables for accurate predictons and generalisaton. Secondly, it stands to direct the paths to formulatng treatmentbased (against the widespread punishment-oriented) policy and practce on drugs and recidivism, with primary focus on legal, social, economic, medical/physiological and psychological harm reducton as well as prison decongeston.Keywords: Drugs, Nexus, Recidivism, Nigeria, Sociological Criminology Perspectv