More than a job: An exploration of student employee and professional staff perceptions of the relationship between on-campus employment and student development

The purpose of this sequential exploratory mixed methods study is to explore the relationship between on-campus employment and student development through examining student employees\u27 and professional staffs\u27 perceptions. While certain impacts (i.e., retention and grade point average) of on-campus employment have been researched, the impact this experience has on student development is understudied. Furthermore, the formation of a dueling narrative (the inclusion of both student and professional perceptions) is even less present in research. By analyzing the perceptions held by both populations, these findings compare what student employees are truly gaining from their employment experience versus what professional staff believe student employees are gaining. Findings from the quantitative and qualitative data suggest student employees and professional staff share similar perceptions in many domains, such as transferable skill acquisition and the role professionals play in student development. However, findings also imply there are domains student employees and professional staff do not hold similar perceptions, such as leadership development and the inclusion of student voices in the planning and facilitation of student development opportunities

Diffusing wild type and sterile mosquitoes in an optimal control setting

This paper develops an optimal control framework to investigate the introduction of sterile type mosquitoes to reduce the overal moquito population. As is well known, mosquitoes are vectors of disease. For instance the WHO lists, among other diseases, Malaria, Dengue Fever, Rift Valley Fever, Yellow Fever, Chikungunya Fever and Zika. [http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs387/en/ ] The goal is to establish the existence of a solution given an optimal sterilization protocol as well as to develop the corresponding optimal control representation to minimize the infiltrating mosquito population while minimizing fecundity and the number of sterile type mosquitoes introduced into the environment per unit time. This paper incorporates the diffusion of the mosquitoes into the controlled model and presents a number of numerical simulations

Trends and risk factors for death and excess all-cause mortality among notified tuberculosis patients in the UK: an analysis of surveillance data.

INTRODUCTION: In the UK, several hundred patients notified with tuberculosis (TB) die every year. The aim of this article is to describe trends in deaths among notified TB patients, explore risk factors associated with death and compare all-cause mortality in TB patients with age-specific mortality rates in the general UK population. METHODS: We used 2001-2014 data from UK national TB surveillance to explore trends and risk factors for death, and population mortality data to compare age-specific death rates among notified TB patients with annual death rates in the UK general population. RESULTS: The proportion of TB patients in the UK who died each year declined steadily from 7.1% in 2002 to 5.5% in 2014. One in five patients (21.3%) was diagnosed with TB post-mortem. Where information was available, almost half of the deaths occurred within 2 months of starting treatment. Risk factors for death included demographic, disease-specific and social risk factors. Age had by far the largest effect, with patients aged ≥80 years having a 70 times increased risk of death compared with those aged <15 years. In contrast, excess mortality determined by incidence ratios comparing all-cause mortality among TB patients with that of the general population was highest among children and the working-age population (15-64 years old). CONCLUSIONS: Efforts to control TB and improve diagnosis and treatment outcomes in the UK need to be sustained. Control efforts need to focus on socially deprived and vulnerable groups. There is a need for further in-depth analysis of deaths of TB patients in the UK to identify potentially preventable factors

Evaluation of beef eating quality by Irish consumers

Funding was received from the Irish Department of Agriculture Food and the Marine, through the Food Institutional Research Measure (FIRM), grant number 04/R&D/TN/256.peer-reviewedA consumer's decision to purchase beef is strongly linked to its sensory properties and consistent eating quality is one of the most important attributes. Consumer taste panels were held according to the Meat Standards Australia guidelines and consumers scored beef according to its palatability attributes and completed a socio-demographic questionnaire. Consumers were able to distinguish between beef quality on a scale from unsatisfactory to premium with high accuracy. Premium cuts of beef scored significantly higher on all of the scales compared to poorer quality cuts. Men rated grilled beef higher on juiciness and flavour scales compared to women. Being the main purchaser of beef had no impact on rating scores. Overall the results show that consumers can judge eating quality with high accuracy. Further research is needed to determine how best to communicate inherent benefits that are not visible into extrinsic eating quality indicators, to provide the consumer with consistent indications of quality at the point of purchase.Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marin

Future Protein Supply and Demand: Strategies and Factors Influencing a Sustainable Equilibrium

peer-reviewedA growing global population, combined with factors such as changing socio-demographics, will place increased pressure on the world’s resources to provide not only more but also different types of food. Increased demand for animal-based protein in particular is expected to have a negative environmental impact, generating greenhouse gas emissions, requiring more water and more land. Addressing this “perfect storm” will necessitate more sustainable production of existing sources of protein as well as alternative sources for direct human consumption. This paper outlines some potential demand scenarios and provides an overview of selected existing and novel protein sources in terms of their potential to sustainably deliver protein for the future, considering drivers and challenges relating to nutritional, environmental, and technological and market/consumer domains. It concludes that different factors influence the potential of existing and novel sources. Existing protein sources are primarily hindered by their negative environmental impacts with some concerns around health. However, they offer social and economic benefits, and have a high level of consumer acceptance. Furthermore, recent research emphasizes the role of livestock as part of the solution to greenhouse gas emissions, and indicates that animal-based protein has an important role as part of a sustainable diet and as a contributor to food security. Novel proteins require the development of new value chains, and attention to issues such as production costs, food safety, scalability and consumer acceptance. Furthermore, positive environmental impacts cannot be assumed with novel protein sources and care must be taken to ensure that comparisons between novel and existing protein sources are valid. Greater alignment of political forces, and the involvement of wider stakeholders in a governance role, as well as development/commercialization role, is required to address both sources of protein and ensure food security.This work forms part of the ReValueProtein Research Project (Exploration of Irish Meat Processing Streams for Recovery of High Value Protein Based Ingredients for Food and Non-food Uses, Grant Award No. 11/F/043) supported by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) under the National Development Plan 2007–2013 funded by the Irish Governmen

"A Sort of Rathmines Version of a Dior Design": Maeve Brennan, Self-Fashioning, and the Uses of Style

This article explores the politics of style in the writing of Maeve Brennan. Brennan's concern with style, subjectivity and power is strikingly visible in her short stories and ‘Talk of the Town’ essays for the New Yorker. While in some of her short stories published in the New Yorker in the 1950s, Brennan seems to offer an extended critique of dandyism, elsewhere in her writing self-fashioning takes on an altogether more positive value and is steeped in the political as well as literary commitments of her work. The article argues that Brennan's interest in the politics of style, both personally and in her writing, is informed by the different strategies she deployed as an Irish woman writer establishing her place amongst a New York literary elite in the mid twentieth century.This work began as a conversation with Neil Sammells about Irish women's writing and self-fashioning, and his encouragement and insightful responses to ideas in development were invaluable to the progress of the research. I am also very grateful to Maureen O'Connor and Caitríona Clear, whose work on the Irish woman writer and dandyism, and women and magazine culture, lays an all-important foundation for the arguments developed here. Archival research for the article was made possible by a Fulbright Scholarship in the Humanities (September 2012—January 2013), and I am most grateful to my host institution, Fordham University in New York. I would like to thank the literary estate of Maeve Brennan for kind permission to cite from Maeve Brennan's letters and unpublished material held in the Special Collections at the University of Delaware and the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library. The work was completed with the assistance of a Moore Institute Visiting Fellowship to the National University of Ireland, Galway in 2015, which provided a valuable opportunity to present work in progress as part of the seminar series hosted by the Centre for Irish Studies. Finally, I am grateful to the anonymous peer reviewers and editors at Women: A Cultural Review for their thorough and expert responses to the article

Diagnostic accuracy of pooling urine, anorectal, and oropharyngeal specimens for the detection of Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: Screening for Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) and Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG) at genital and extragenital sites is needed for most key populations, but molecular diagnostic tests for CT/NG are costly. We aimed to determine the accuracy of pooled samples from multiple anatomic sites from one individual to detect CT/NG using the testing of a single sample from one anatomic site as the reference. Methods: In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched five databases for articles published from January 1, 2000, to February 4, 2021. Studies were included if they contained original data describing the diagnostic accuracy of pooled testing compared with single samples, resource use, benefits and harms of pooling, acceptability, and impact on health equity. We present the pooled sensitivities and specificities for CT and NG using a bivariate mixed-effects logistic regression model. The study protocol is registered in PROSPERO, an international database of prospectively registered systematic reviews (CRD42021240793). We used GRADE to evaluate the quality of evidence. Results: Our search yielded 7814 studies, with 17 eligible studies included in our review. Most studies were conducted in high-income countries (82.6%, 14/17) and focused on men who have sex with men (70.6%, 12/17). Fourteen studies provided 15 estimates for the meta-analysis for CT with data from 5891 individuals. The pooled sensitivity for multisite pooling for CT was 93.1% [95% confidence intervals (CI) 90.5-95.0], I-2=43.3, and pooled specificity was 99.4% [99.0-99.6], I-2=52.9. Thirteen studies provided 14 estimates for the meta-analysis for NG with data from 6565 individuals. The pooled sensitivity for multisite pooling for NG was 94.1% [95% CI 90.9-96.3], I-2=68.4, and pooled specificity was 99.6% [99.1-99.8], I-2=83.6. Studies report significant cost savings (by two thirds to a third). Conclusion: Multisite pooled testing is a promising approach to improve testing coverage for CT/NG in resource-constrained settings with a small compromise in sensitivity but with a potential for significant cost savings

Pulmonary Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare is the main driver of the rise in non-tuberculous mycobacteria incidence in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 2007–2012

BACKGROUND: The incidence of non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) isolation from humans is increasing worldwide. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland (EW&NI) the reported rate of NTM more than doubled between 1996 and 2006. Although NTM infection has traditionally been associated with immunosuppressed individuals or those with severe underlying lung damage, pulmonary NTM infection and disease may occur in people with no overt immune deficiency. Here we report the incidence of NTM isolation in EW&NI between 2007 and 2012 from both pulmonary and extra-pulmonary samples obtained at a population level. METHODS: All individuals with culture positive NTM isolates between 2007 and 2012 reported to Public Health England by the five mycobacterial reference laboratories serving EW&NI were included. RESULTS: Between 2007 and 2012, 21,118 individuals had NTM culture positive isolates. Over the study period the incidence rose from 5.6/100,000 in 2007 to 7.6/100,000 in 2012 (p < 0.001). Of those with a known specimen type, 90 % were pulmonary, in whom incidence increased from 4.0/100,000 to 6.1/100,000 (p < 0.001). In extra-pulmonary specimens this fell from 0.6/100,000 to 0.4/100,000 (p < 0.001). The most frequently cultured organisms from individuals with pulmonary isolates were within the M. avium-intracellulare complex family (MAC). The incidence of pulmonary MAC increased from 1.3/100,000 to 2.2/100,000 (p < 0.001). The majority of these individuals were over 60 years old. CONCLUSION: Using a population-based approach, we find that the incidence of NTM has continued to rise since the last national analysis. Overall, this represents an almost ten-fold increase since 1995. Pulmonary MAC in older individuals is responsible for the majority of this change. We are limited to reporting NTM isolates and not clinical disease caused by these organisms. To determine whether the burden of NTM disease is genuinely increasing, a standardised approach to the collection of linked national microbiological and clinical data is required