CamFlores: A FLORES-Type Model for the Humid Forest Margin in Cameroon

A FLORES-type model in the Simile modelling environment is being developed for three villages in the Humid Forest Benchmark area of southern Cameroon. The modelling project seeks to investigate the effects of introduction of new crop varieties and improved farming systems on the long-term maintenance of stable mosaics of forest and agriculture, within the context of the international Alternatives to Slash and Burn programme. Biophysical data have been collated, and socio-economic and tenure data have been acquired in spatially-explicit ways. Maps of land-cover at village and benchmark scale are being prepared from detailed and semi-detailed satellite imagery, using a nested legend system that allows linking of maps at different scales. These data enable the initial construction and parameterisation of the model, and will permit the extrapolation of the results of modelling from the villages to the benchmark, and ultimately to the whole of the Congo Basin humid forests. The prototype version of the model involves 10 households and about 500 land patches, and includes the three agricultural systems dominant in the southern more forested portion of the Benchmark (mixed food-fallow systems, forest melon fields, cocoa plantations) with no rental, sale or other transfer of land. Decision-making at the household level is essentially modelled deterministically, and labour productivity is assumed to be constant between households. This model is now complete, and once it has been adjusted and suitably parameterised, it will be applied to real data from the three test villages. This will require the addition of new farming systems, the introduction of modes of permanent or temporary transfer of land, and modification of the decision model to render it more realistic

Development and implementation of treadmill exercise testing protocols in COPD

Christopher B Cooper1, Marlon Abrazado1, Daniel Legg2, Steven Kesten21David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA; 2Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc., Ingelheim, GermanyBackground: Because treadmill exercise testing is more representative of daily activity than cycle testing, we developed treadmill protocols to be used in various clinical settings as part of a two-year, multicenter, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) trial evaluating the effect of tiotropium on exercise.Methods: We enrolled 519 COPD patients aged 64.6 ± 8.3 years with a postbronchodilator forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) of 1.25 ± 0.42 L, 44.3% ± 11.9% predicted. The patients performed symptom-limited treadmill tests where work rate (W) was increased linearly using speed and grade adjustments every minute. On two subsequent visits, they performed constant W tests to exhaustion at 90% of maximum W from the incremental test.Results: Mean incremental test duration was 522 ± 172 seconds (range 20–890), maximum work rate 66 ± 34 watts. For the first and second constant W tests, both at 61 ± 33 watts, mean endurance times were 317 ± 61 seconds and 341 ± 184 seconds, respectively. The mean of two tests had an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.85 (P < 0.001). During the second constant W test, 88.2% of subjects stopped exercise because of breathing discomfort; 87.1% for Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) Stage II, 88.5% for GOLD Stage III, and 90.2% for GOLD Stage IV.Conclusion: The symptom-limited incremental and constant work treadmill protocol was well tolerated and appeared to be representative of the physiologic limitations of COPD.Keywords: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, exercise testing, endurance, tiotropiu

Clinical Placements: The Perspectives of UK Physiotherapy Students on How Prepared they were by their University for their First Clinical Placements: an example of one HEI

Background. Clinical placements are an integral component of physiotherapy education as they give physiotherapy students the opportunity to apply their academic knowledge and skills and at the same time universities aim to provide an education that responds to the demands of practice settings.Objective. This study aims to investigate the perceptions of second year physiotherapy students on a range of aspects regarding their university’s education as a preparation for their first clinical placement.Method. Second-year physiotherapy students were invited to participate in a survey before and after engaging in their first clinical placement. Domains covered by the survey were: knowledge and skills, professionalism, communication, inter-professional awareness, and stress, coping and support.Results. The findings revealed that although the students felt prepared with regard to their anatomy, physiology, manual handling and treatment strategies they felt unprepared in patient record keeping, clinical reasoning, goal setting and communicating with families and carers.Conclusion. Universities can do much to ease their students’ path into the clinical setting and create a seamless transition from academic life to the world of practice. Possible ways in which this could be achieved are discussed

Internet Safety: Positioning VCU as a National Leader in Internet Safety

While a multitude of information from a host of sources exists on how to keep children safe on the Internet, there is not a unified effort to combine it all and get it to the right people. This is not a plan to teach college students about Internet safety. This is a proposal to begin much earlier, targeting middle-school aged children and their parents, many of whom have no idea of the dangers – and opportunities – that exist in cyberspace

The Association of Participation in a Summer Prelaw Training Program and First-Year Law School Students’ Grades

This study estimates the association of participation in a nine-week online educational program to prepare students for post-graduate (juris doctorate) education and law school grades. We collected registrar data from 17 U.S. law schools for participants and non-participants from the same year and a prior year. We compared first-semester law school grades between participating and non-participating students weighted by propensity scores. Course participation was associated with improved first-semester grades in a keyed course (Contracts Law) and overall grade point average. According to pre- and post-survey responses, a substantial portion of those who completed the program reported feeling more prepared for law school

Polyepitaxial grain matching to study the oxidation of uranium dioxide

Although the principal physical behaviour of a material is inherently connected to its fundamental crystal structure, the behaviours observed in the real-world are often driven by the microstructure, which for many polycrystalline materials, equates to the size and shape of the constituent crystal grains. Here we highlight a cutting edge synthesis route to the controlled engineering of grain structures in thin films and the simplification of associated 3-dimensional problems to less complex 2D ones. This has been applied to the actinide ceramic, uranium dioxide, to replicate structures typical in nuclear fission fuel pellets, in order to investigate the oxidation and subsequent transformation of cubic UO2 to orthorhombic U3O8. This article shows how this synthesis approach could be utilised to investigate a range of phenomena, affected by grain morphology, and highlights some unusual results in the oxidation behaviour of UO2, regarding the phase transition to U3O8

Editors' introduction: neoliberalism and/as terror

The articles in this special issue are drawn from papers presented at a conference entitled “Neoliberalism and/as Terror”, held at the Nottingham Conference Centre at Nottingham Trent University by the Critical Terrorism Studies BISA Working Group (CSTWG) on 15-16 September 2014. The conference was supported by both a BISA workshop grant and supplementary funds from Nottingham Trent University’s Politics and International Relations Department and the Critical Studies on Terrorism journal. Papers presented at the conference aimed to extend research into the diverse linkages between neoliberalism and terrorism, including but extending beyond the contextualisation of pre-emptive counterterrorism technologies and privatised securities within relevant economic and ideological contexts. Thus, the conference sought also to stimulate research into the ways that neoliberalism could itself be understood as terrorism, asking - amongst other questions - whether populations are themselves terrorised by neoliberal policy. The articles presented in this special issue reflect the conference aims in bringing together research on the neoliberalisation of counterterrorism and on the terror of neoliberalism

Expansion of the cassava brown streak pandemic in Uganda revealed by annual field survey data for 2004 to 2017

Funder: Uganda Government Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central AfricaFunder: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)Abstract: Cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) is currently the most devastating cassava disease in eastern, central and southern Africa affecting a staple crop for over 700 million people on the continent. A major outbreak of CBSD in 2004 near Kampala rapidly spread across Uganda. In the following years, similar CBSD outbreaks were noted in countries across eastern and central Africa, and now the disease poses a threat to West Africa including Nigeria - the biggest cassava producer in the world. A comprehensive dataset with 7,627 locations, annually and consistently sampled between 2004 and 2017 was collated from historic paper and electronic records stored in Uganda. The survey comprises multiple variables including data for incidence and symptom severity of CBSD and abundance of the whitefly vector (Bemisia tabaci). This dataset provides a unique basis to characterize the epidemiology and dynamics of CBSD spread in order to inform disease surveillance and management. We also describe methods used to integrate and verify extensive field records for surveys typical of emerging epidemics in subsistence crops

Challenges and Prospects in Ocean Circulation Models

We revisit the challenges and prospects for ocean circulation models following Griffies et al. (2010). Over the past decade, ocean circulation models evolved through improved understanding, numerics, spatial discretization, grid configurations, parameterizations, data assimilation, environmental monitoring, and process-level observations and modeling. Important large scale applications over the last decade are simulations of the Southern Ocean, the Meridional Overturning Circulation and its variability, and regional sea level change. Submesoscale variability is now routinely resolved in process models and permitted in a few global models, and submesoscale effects are parameterized in most global models. The scales where nonhydrostatic effects become important are beginning to be resolved in regional and process models. Coupling to sea ice, ice shelves, and high-resolution atmospheric models has stimulated new ideas and driven improvements in numerics. Observations have provided insight into turbulence and mixing around the globe and its consequences are assessed through perturbed physics models. Relatedly, parameterizations of the mixing and overturning processes in boundary layers and the ocean interior have improved. New diagnostics being used for evaluating models alongside present and novel observations are briefly referenced. The overall goal is summarizing new developments in ocean modeling, including: how new and existing observations can be used, what modeling challenges remain, and how simulations can be used to support observations.Peer reviewe