It all just clicked: a longitudinal perspective on transitions within University

This paper explores the transitions that a group of students, admitted from further education colleges as part of broader widening access initiative at a Scottish research–intensive university, made across the lifetime of their degrees. It investigates how they negotiate their learning careers beyond the first year, and how they (re)define their approaches to independent learning as they progress to the later years of their courses. Evidence is drawn from 20 students who were interviewed during each of their three or four years of study to provide a longitudinal account of their experiences of engagement and participation at the university. We draw attention to three ways in which the students made transitions across the course of their degrees: to increased knowledge of the conventions of academic writing; to enhanced critical skills; and to practical strategies to prioritise learning

Electromagnetic sensors for underwater scour monitoring

Scour jeopardises the safety of many civil engineering structures with foundations in riverbeds and it is the leading cause for the collapse of bridges worldwide. Current approaches for bridge scour risk management rely mainly on visual inspections, which provide unreliable estimates of scour and of its effects, also considering the difficulties in visually monitoring the riverbed erosion around submerged foundations. Thus, there is a need to introduce systems capable of continuously monitoring the evolution of scour at bridge foundations, even during extreme flood events. This paper illustrates the development and deployment of a scour monitoring system consisting of smart probes equipped with electromagnetic sensors. This is the first application of this type of sensing probes to a real case-study for continuous scour monitoring. Designed to observe changes in the permittivity of the medium around bridge foundations, the sensors allow for detection of scour depths and the assessment of whether the scour hole has been refilled. The monitoring system was installed on the A76 200 Bridge in New Cumnock (S-W Scotland) and has provided a continuous recording of the scour for nearly two years. The scour data registered after a peak flood event (validated against actual measurements of scour during a bridge inspection) show the potential of the technology in providing continuous scour measures, even during extreme flood events, thus avoiding the deployment of divers for underwater examination

Critical thinking and diagnostic reasoning when advanced practitioners assess and treat skin conditions

Advanced clinical practitioner (ACP) roles require a broad range of knowledge of both medical and surgical medicine and the ability to work autonomously in a variety of settings. Despite around half of the UK adult population presenting with a skin condition requiring attention, this is something many ACPs feel unprepared to consult on. However, due to the complexity and large number of potential diagnoses, it is imperative that ACPs develop their confidence and knowledge to diagnosis, request investigations and initiate treatment for a patient with a skin complaint. In the first part of this clinical review the authors presented the key elements of history taking, consultation and assessment of the skin. This second clinical review discusses the main differential diagnoses, mimickers, common investigations and treatments. This article is designed to support novice ACPs from acute hospital settings to primary care to develop a foundation of understanding in the main diagnosis and treatment options that should be considered following a clinical assessment of patients’ skin out with the dermatology setting

Conducting a consultation and clinical assessment of the skin for advanced clinical practitioners

Advanced clinical practitioner (ACP) roles require a broad range of knowledge of both medical and surgical areas and the ability to work autonomously in a variety of settings. Despite around half of the UK adult population presenting with a skin condition requiring attention at some point, this is an area many ACPs feel unprepared to manage. However, due to the complexity and large number of potential diagnoses, it is imperative that ACPs develop their knowledge of skin conditions so that they can confidently conduct consultations with patients. This clinical review presents the key elements of patient consultation, history taking and assessment of the skin. This is designed to support novice ACPs, whether working in acute hospital settings or primary care, to develop an understanding of the key points that should be included when consulting with and assessing the skin of patients outwith the dermatology setting

Monitoring-based adaptive water level thresholds for bridge scour risk management

Riverbed scour is the leading cause of bridge failure worldwide. Recent developments in sensor technology for structures have resulted in more bridges being instrumented and monitored. However, alongside scour monitoring systems, there is a need of techniques to handle the data obtained and exploit them to inform the management of the bridge scour risk. This paper illustrates the development of a decision support system (DSS) for bridge scour risk management, which is based on a probabilistic framework for scour risk estimation, enhanced by real-time information from scour monitoring systems and in line with current risk procedures used by transport agencies. The proposed DSS provides bridge operators with adaptive measurement-informed water level thresholds triggering bridge closure to traffic under heavy floods. The application of the DSS is illustrated by considering a case study of three bridges at risk of scour managed by Transport Scotland. It is shown that information from scour sensors within the proposed DSS allows reducing the uncertainty in the scour estimates and yields adaptive water level thresholds triggering bridge closure to traffic that can differ significantly from those currently considered by transport agencies. This can ultimately result in a reduction of false alarms and unnecessary bridge closures

Improving coherence of ecosystem service provision between scales

© 2014 Elsevier B.V. High-level consensus about safeguarding ecosystem services for optimal benefits to society is not yet matched by transposition to field scale. Various 'societal levers' - markets, statutory legislation, common/civil law, market-based instruments and protocols - have evolved as a fragmented policy environment of incentives and constraints, influencing the freedoms of resource owners. This has produced mosaic landscapes reflecting both natural conditions and landowner aspirations. The Principles of the Ecosystem Approach serve as a framework to consider three case study sites: an English lowland estuary and two in Scotland. Societal levers today safeguard some socially valuable services, but the present policy environment is neither sufficient nor sufficiently integrated to achieve coherence between the choices of resource owners and wider societal aspirations for ecosystem service provision. The heterogeneity of societal levers protects freedom of choice, enables adaptive decision-making related to the properties of the natural resource, and makes allowance for changes in societal preferences. Resultant mosaic landscapes provide flexibility and resilience in ecosystem service production. However, further evolution of societal levers is required to bring about greater coherence of ecosystem service production from local to national/international scales. This paper explores how issues of scale, regulation and variability manifest in the ecosystem service framework

Using Bayesian networks for the assessment of underwater scour for road and railway bridges

Flood-induced scour is by far the leading cause of bridge failures, resulting in loss of lives, traffic disruption and significant economic losses. In Scotland, there are around 2,000 structures, considering both road and railway bridges, susceptible to scour. Scour assessments are currently based on visual inspections, which are expensive, time-consuming, and often the information collected is qualitative and subjective. The two main transport agencies in Scotland, Transport Scotland and Network Rail, spend £2m and £0.4m per annum, respectively, in routine inspections. Nowadays sensor and communication technologies offer the possibility to assess in real time the scour depth at critical bridge locations; yet monitoring an entire infrastructure network is not economically sustainable. A way to overcome this limitation is to install monitoring systems on a limited number of critical locations and use a probabilistic approach to extend this information to the entire population of assets. The state of the bridge stock is represented through a set of random variables and ad-hoc Bayesian networks (BNs) are used to describe their conditional dependencies. The aim of this paper is to develop a probabilistic scour hazard model by building a BN able to estimate the depth of scour in the surrounding of bridge foundations. The BN can estimate, and continuously update, the present and future scour depth using real-time information from monitoring of scour depth and river flow characteristics. In the occurrence of a flood, monitoring observations are used to infer the posterior distribution of the state variables probabilistically, and therefore to give in real-time the best estimate of total scour depth. Bias, systematic and model uncertainties are modelled as nodes of the BN in such a way as the accuracy of predictions can be updated when information from the scour monitoring system is incorporated into the BN. In order to demonstrate the functioning of the BN, bridges managed by TS in South-West Scotland were used to build a small bridge network. They cross the same river (River Nith) and only one of them is instrumented with a scour monitoring system

A Bayesian network approach to assess underwater scour around bridge foundations

Flood-induced scour is by far the leading cause of bridge failures, resulting in fatalities, traffic disruption and significant economic losses. In Scotland, there are around 2,000 structures, considering both road and railway bridges, susceptible to scour. Scour assessments are currently based on visual inspections, which are expensive and time-consuming. The two main transport agencies in Scotland, Transport Scotland (TS) and Network Rail (NR), spend £2m and £0.4m per annum, respectively, in routine inspections. Nowadays, sensor and communication technologies offer the possibility to assess in real-time the scour depth at critical bridge locations; yet monitoring an entire infrastructure network is not economically sustainable. This paper proposes a methodology overcoming this limitation, based on the installation of monitoring systems at critical locations, and the use a probabilistic approach to extend this information to the entire population of assets. The state of the bridge stock is represented through a set of random variables, and ad-hoc Bayesian networks (BNs) are used to describe their conditional dependencies. The BN can estimate, and continuously update, the present and future scour depth at bridge foundations using real-time information provided by the monitored scour depth and river flow characteristics. In the occurrence of a flood, monitoring observations are used to infer probabilistically the posterior distribution of the state variables, giving the real-time best estimate of the total scour depth. Bias, systematic and model uncertainties are modelled as nodes of the BN in such a way that the accuracy of predictions can be updated when information from scour monitoring systems is incorporated into the BN. The functioning and capabilities of the BN is illustrated by considering a small network of bridges managed by TS in south-west Scotland. They cross the same river (River Nith) and only one of them is instrumented with a scour monitoring system