Young people's participation in the development of a self-care intervention--a multi-site formative research study.

The poor outcomes of young people with chronic health conditions indicate that current services and self-care programmes are not meeting the needs of young people. How young people self-manage their condition impacts on long-term health outcomes, but there is little published evidence that details the development of self-care programmes and their most effective components. This article reports on an innovative formative research study, the purpose of which was to develop a self-care intervention prototype. Participants were 87 young people, aged 12-17, and seven young adult facilitators, aged 18-25, with type 1 diabetes or asthma. Each contributed to talking groups exploring themes that young people wanted to be addressed within a self-care programme. Instead of being focused on 'illness', young people's main concerns were directed toward 'life as an adolescent', while at the same time building sustainable daily routines of self-care. Overall, this article illustrates the process of initiating and implementing a developmental approach focused on young people, while also demonstrating the tailored self-care intervention that the process developed. This approach can be used to involve young people in the design and development of other conditions that rely on self-care interventions

The Effect of Physical Therapy Intervention on Fatigue, Balance, Depression and Quality of Life in Clients Following Medical Treatment for Cancer: A Pilot Study

People who are diagnosed with cancer and undergo radiation or chemotherapy treatment are at great risk for developing long-term side effects such as fatigue, balance deficits, depression, and decreased quality of life months and even years following treatment. With approximately 16.9 million people in the United States with a history of invasive cancer, and an expected steady increase in this number in the coming years, a better understanding of these side effects and how they can be treated would be instrumental for health care professionals. The purpose of this study was to test the effect of exercise intervention on fatigue, balance, depression, and quality of life in individuals that had radiation or chemotherapy for cancer treatment. To test the effects of exercise intervention and the progress of the participants, the 6- Minute Walk Test, grip strength, Semmes Weinstein Filament Testing, FACT-G, Fullerton Advanced Balance Scale, proprioceptive testing, Dynamic Gait Index, FACIT-Fatigue Scale, Mini-BESTest, and DASS 21 were utilized. The participants were tested initially using those functional assessments, and the following week they were given personalized home exercise programs developed by the physical therapy students. The participants were then tested at 3 weeks and again at 6 weeks of completing the home exercise programs. Four participants that had undergone medical treatment for cancer were initially selected and tested, and three participants were tested at weeks three and six and completed the study. The study found that in individuals post-cancer treatment, performing an individualized exercise plan may play a role in increasing endurance, balance, and quality of life, while also decreasing fatigue and depression. However, the results across the three participants were variable and some improvements were not large enough to be considered clinically significan

The Technologizing of inhumane practices

Australia's aggressive foreign policy stance, particularly on the refugee / illegal immigrant issue has been politically successful. This paper attributes this success to a two-part strategy. The first, using the theories of Said and Barthes, is to create a "ubiquitous semiotic" that plugs into Australia’s invasion myth. Founded on fear and ignorance it demonizes a recognisable "other", the "oriental" refugee demonised as a queue jumper. The second part of the strategy responds to the daily news and public affairs programs, which scrutinize government actions, but also provide the locus of contesting political discourses. The paper deals cursorily with the first part, the ubiquitous semiotic. The tactic of technologizing the inhumane is examined using sociolinguistic analysis of a television interview involving the Australian Immigration Minister. From this, it becomes evident how the process of classification into "other" allow the logic of technocratic processes to treat people inhumanely

ICT in the classroom – Gaps between policy and practice? TIC en el aula inglesa – ¿Huecos entre la política y la práctica?

In foreign language learning, required by the government's National Curriculum for children in England aged 8 to 14, the integration of technology into teaching methodologies has been explicit: “schools should use a range of resources, including ICT, (Information and Communication Technology) for accessing and communicating information in the target language" (Department for Education, 2007). This research investigates the role of ICT in language learning inside two English classrooms - a primary and a secondary – in order to explore the nature of motivation in educational technology from both the student and teacher perspective. The study elicits teachers' reasons for deploying the technology along with their emphases on the motivational advantages of ICT. It finds a marked tendency to use ICT for presentational, rather than autonomous or personalised learning. Children express subjective satisfaction with technology deployed in language learning and a desire to operate the technology more independently. The technology is, from this small scale study, teacher-led and teacher-driven, with few instances of the more autonomous communication possibilities outlined above (Department for Education, 2007). Field research findings derive from questionnaires of 60 pupils and (their) 2 teachers, as well as semi-structured interviews with teachers in two mainstream English school settings

Co-education and Collaboration: Women at Gettysburg from 1945-1955

Women studying at Gettysburg College in the years following World War II (from 1945 to 1955) were given many freedoms and opportunities not previously experienced by female students of the college. The inclusion of sororities and co-educational social clubs open to both men and women expanded the social lives of female students at Gettysburg. Meanwhile, the dormitory environment and intramural sports teams helped women at Gettysburg create a sense of community through healthy competition. With all of these new social, academic, and extracurricular opportunities, there were still setbacks for women. Rules dictated how a woman could dress in certain settings or wear her hair, a concept that now seems ridiculous. Expectations surrounding a woman’s place in society led many women to not continue their studies after getting engaged or married during their college years. All that considered, women at Gettysburg had rich academic and social lives, complete with opportunities to expand their horizons inside and outside of the class, even if they were not always considered equal to their male classmates

Soil mineral nitrogen availability predicted by herbage yield and disease resistance in red clover (Trifolium pratense) cropping

Nitrogen (N) is the most limiting nutrient in crop production. Legumes such as red clover can provide N through biofixation, but securing nitrogen in soil for subsequent crop production must also be considered. Variety selection and management in red clover cropping can influence soil mineral nitrogen (SMN) availability. A field trial to investigate this was conducted with six varieties, under one and two cut management, over 2 years. Dry matter (DM) and N yield, Sclerotinia resistance and SMN availability were assessed. Low DM and N yields (1.6–2.4 t DM ha−1 and 54–83 kg N ha−1) in the first year of cultivation allowed ~ 40 kg N ha−1 to become available, but high DM and N yields (10.2–14.6 t DM ha−1 and 405–544 kg N ha−1) allowed ~ 20 kg N ha−1 to become available. Wetter weather in 2015 caused significantly more SMN losses than 2016 (20 kg N ha−1 in 2015 and 5 kg N ha−1 in 2016). The varieties Amos, Maro and Milvus lost significantly more SMN in the winter period, which may have been caused by more severe infection of Sclerotinia (these varieties were 50–80% more severely infected other varieties). Varietal effect was non-significant for winter losses in 2016, where no significant varietal differences in Sclerotinia infection were observed. 1 cut made ~ 41 kg N ha−1 available in the growing season of 2015, whilst 2 cut made significantly less (37 kg N ha−1). Cutting was non-significant in 2016 but 1 cut was less susceptible to losses in the winter period. Cutting in 2015 did not significantly affect herbage DM and N yields in the first or second cut of 2016

Initial red clover (Trifolium pratense, L.) variety evaluation for soil fertility-building

Nitrogen fixation by legume crops within arable rotations can build soil-fertility, produce a home-grown, highprotein fodder and provide a suite of ecosystem services. Although red clover (Trifolium pratense, L.) is primarly associated with grassland livestock production in the UK, it can also improve the performance of subsequent crops when grown alone or in monoculture (Doel 2013, Moyo 2015). Appropriate variety and foliage management selection could optimize this improvement. The goal of this project is to evaluate six red clover varieties, under treatments of one and two cuts, for fertility-building capacity. The yield and quality of subsequent bioassay crops will be used to assess this capacity

Inversion of the Laplace Transform of Point Masses

Motivated by applications in magnetic resonance relaxometry, we consider the following problem: Given samples of a function $t\mapsto \sum_{k=1}^K A_k\exp(-t\lambda_k)$, where $K\ge 2$ is an integer, $A_k\in\mathbb{R}$, $\lambda_k>0$ for $k=1,\cdots, K$, determine $K$, $A_k$'s and $\lambda_k$'s. Our approach is to transform this function into another function of the same form where $\lambda_k$'s are replaced by $i\lambda_k$. For this purpose, we study the least square approximation using polynomials weighted by the Gaussian weight, and use the fact that Hermite functions are eigenfunctions of the Fourier transform. We provide a detailed analysis of the effect of noise in the data.Comment: 21 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables. Submitted to Inverse Problem