The impact of General Dental Council registration and continuing professional development on UK dental care professionals:(1) dental nurses.

Objective To investigate the impact of GDC registration and mandatory CPD on dental nurses’ views, job satisfaction and intention to leave. Design Postal/online survey, conducted in parallel with a survey of dental technicians. Setting UK private and NHS practices, community services, dental hospitals. Subjects and methods Representative sample of General Dental Council registrants. Main outcome measures Job satisfaction; intention to leave profession (dependent variable in regression analysis). Results Eleven were ineligible (left profession, moved abroad); 267 (44% of those eligible) responded, all female. Respondents’ mean age was 38.2 years (sd 10.74). The general principle of registration was endorsed by 67%, and compulsory registration by 51%, but the fee level by only 6%. Most nurses did not feel that registration had affected their view of dental nursing as a career (56%), their role (74%) or status (86%) within the dental team, or that CPD helped them to do their job better (76%). Fiftly-six percent were not satisfied with their job, and 22% intended to leave the profession. Intention to leave was predicted by younger age and greater dissatisfaction with physical working conditions and opportunities to progress. Conclusions Widely held criticisms regarding the costs and relevance of registration and CPD coupled with a potentially high level of attrition from the profession suggest a review of the fee and salary structure and greater financial support for CPD is warranted

Global Ocean Tide Models: Assessment and Use within a Surface Model of Lowest Astronomical Tide

The UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO)-sponsored Vertical Offshore Reference Frames (VORF) project aims to develop tidal level transformation models that are referenced to the GRS80 ellipsoid and thus compatible with GNSS positioning; in particular, heighting. Benefits include increasing the efficiency of hydrographic surveying, providing a stable consistent reference frame and enabling integration with land data in the coastal zone. Seven contemporary global ocean tide models are used to derive Lowest Astronomical Tide (LAT) surfaces which are each assessed by comparison with LAT values from the 7,389-strong UKHO tide gauge database, with the results correlated with distance from land. The proportion of truly offshore and pelagic gauges is relatively limited; however, the transition zone whereby the global ocean tide models commence to deteriorate in accuracy is evident at approximately 30km from the coast. The DTU10 model was selected as the strongest candidate overall. Subsequently, a thin plate spline method is used with the tide gauge dataset to enhance the DTU10 LAT surface in the coastal zone, creating a high resolution global LAT surface with respect to mean sea level. It is seen by cross-validation that the method may be used to predict LAT in near-shore locations with a standard error of 0.23 m

Combinatorial RNA Design: Designability and Structure-Approximating Algorithm

In this work, we consider the Combinatorial RNA Design problem, a minimal instance of the RNA design problem which aims at finding a sequence that admits a given target as its unique base pair maximizing structure. We provide complete characterizations for the structures that can be designed using restricted alphabets. Under a classic four-letter alphabet, we provide a complete characterization of designable structures without unpaired bases. When unpaired bases are allowed, we provide partial characterizations for classes of designable/undesignable structures, and show that the class of designable structures is closed under the stutter operation. Membership of a given structure to any of the classes can be tested in linear time and, for positive instances, a solution can be found in linear time. Finally, we consider a structure-approximating version of the problem that allows to extend bands (helices) and, assuming that the input structure avoids two motifs, we provide a linear-time algorithm that produces a designable structure with at most twice more base pairs than the input structure.Comment: CPM - 26th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching, Jun 2015, Ischia Island, Italy. LNCS, 201

Persistent topology for natural data analysis - A survey

Natural data offer a hard challenge to data analysis. One set of tools is being developed by several teams to face this difficult task: Persistent topology. After a brief introduction to this theory, some applications to the analysis and classification of cells, lesions, music pieces, gait, oil and gas reservoirs, cyclones, galaxies, bones, brain connections, languages, handwritten and gestured letters are shown

A feasibility trial to examine the social norms approach for the prevention and reduction of licit and illicit drug use in European University and college students.

Background: Incorrect perceptions of high rates of peer alcohol and tobacco use are predictive of increased personal use in student populations. Correcting misperceptions by providing feedback has been shown to be an effective intervention for reducing licit drug use. It is currently unknown if social norms interventions are effective in preventing and reducing illicit drug use in European students. The purpose of this paper is to describe the design of a multi-site cluster controlled trial of a web-based social norms intervention aimed at reducing licit and preventing illicit drug use in European university students. Methods/Design: An online questionnaire to assess rates of drug use will be developed and translated based on existing social norms surveys. Students from sixteen universities in seven participating European countries will be invited to complete the questionnaire. Both intervention and control sites will be chosen by convenience. In each country, the intervention site will be the university that the local principal investigator is affiliated with. We aim to recruit 1000 students per site (baseline assessment). All participants will complete the online questionnaire at baseline. Baseline data will be used to develop social norms messages that will be included in a web-based intervention. The intervention group will receive individualized social norms feedback. The website will remain online during the following 5 months. After five months, a second survey will be conducted and effects of the intervention on social norms and drug use will be measured in comparison to the control site. Discussion: This project is the first cross-national European collaboration to investigate the feasibility of a social norms intervention to reduce licit and prevent illicit drug use among European university students. Final trial registration number DRKS00004375 on the ‘German Clinical Trials Register’.This study is funded by the European Commission, Directorate General Justice, Freedom and Security (JLS/2009-2010/DPIP/AG

Self-management of chronic pain in Malaysian patients: effectiveness trial with 1-year follow-up

Self-management of chronic illnesses has been widely recognised as an important goal on quality of life, health service utilisation and cost grounds. This study describes the first published account on the application of this approach to people suffering from chronic pain conditions in a Southeast Asian country, Malaysia. A heterogeneous sample of chronic pain patients in Malaysia attended a 2-week cognitive–behavioural pain management programme (PMP) aimed at improving daily functional activities and general psychological well-being. Complete datasets from 70 patients out of 102 patients who attended 11 programmes conducted from 2002 to 2007, as well as the 1-month and 1-year follow-up sessions at the hospital clinic, are reported. The pre- to post-treatment results on self-report measures indicate that significant gains were achieved on the dimensions of pain, disability and psychological well-being. These gains were maintained at both 1-month and 1-year follow-ups. The results mirror those reported from similar interventions in Europe and North America and indicate the concept of self-management of a chronic illness is acceptable and meaningful to Asian patients. Importantly, the achieved outcomes were independent of gender and ethnic group status