Accreditation of practice educators: An expectation too far ?

The successful completion of practice placements is essential to the education of occupational therapists; however, ensuring quality placements is challenging for occupational therapy educators. In 2000, Brunel University introduced a revised system of accreditation of practice educators which involved attendance at a course, the supervision of a student and the submission of an essay to be assessed. An audit revealed that a total of 314 therapists attended 15 courses between 2000 and 2003; of these, 243 (77%) subsequently supervised students and 32 (10%) became accredited. The requirement to accredit practice educators, which is a commendable attempt to ensure quality, may paradoxically have been detrimental in achieving quality. The College of Occupational Therapists’ apparent change of emphasis on this topic is welcome

Occupational therapists' perceptions of predischarge home assessments with older adults in acute care

Predischarge occupational therapy home assessments are routinely performed with older adults in Europe, Australia and North America. Their primary aim is to facilitate a timely and safe discharge from hospital. However, there is a lack of published research on this topic, especially studies exploring occupational therapists' perceptions of home assessments. The paper aims to redress this by describing occupational therapists' perceptions of predischarge occupational therapy home assessments with older adults in acute care. All occupational therapists who undertook home assessments in an acute care hospital with older adults during the duration of the study period were invited to complete a reflective diary. In total, 15 reflective diaries were completed by six therapists. The data were analysed using thematic content analysis. The findings suggest that home assessments were carried out because of mobility or environmental concerns. Satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the outcome of the home assessment were related to the incidents that occurred during the assessment. Some of the occupational therapists' anxieties were related to the older adults' level of functioning or ill health, and the older adults' own concerns did have an impact upon the therapists' expectations of the home assessment process

Restoration of eucalypt grassy woodland: effects of experimental interventions on ground-layer vegetation

We report on the effects of broad-scale restoration treatments on the ground layer of eucalypt grassy woodland in south-eastern Australia. The experiment was conducted in two conservation reserves from which livestock grazing had previously been removed. Changes in biomass, species diversity, ground-cover attributes and life-form were analysed over a 4-year period in relation to the following experimental interventions: (1) reduced kangaroo density, (2) addition of coarse woody debris and (3) fire (a single burn). Reducing kangaroo density doubled total biomass in one reserve, but no effects on exotic biomass, species counts or ground cover attributes were observed. Coarse woody debris also promoted biomass, particularly exotic annual forbs, as well as plant diversity in one of the reserves. The single burn reduced biomass, but changed little else. Overall, we found the main driver of change to be the favourable growth seasons that had followed a period of drought. This resulted in biomass increasing by 67%, (mostly owing to the growth of perennial native grasses), whereas overall native species counts increased by 18%, and exotic species declined by 20% over the 4-year observation period. Strategic management of grazing pressure, use of fire where biomass has accumulated and placement of coarse woody debris in areas of persistent erosion will contribute to improvements in soil and vegetation condition, and gains in biodiversity, in the future.Funding and in-kind logistic support for this project was provided by the ACT Government as part of an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant (LP0561817; LP110100126). Drafts of the manuscript were read by Saul Cunningham and Ben Macdonald

Introduction to the special issue of the 3rd international colloquium on design, branding and marketing

Following the inaugural 1st International Colloquium on Global Design and Marketing that took place in 2011, the organisers wrote that ‘Notwithstanding the centrality of design to the practical world of marketing, …empirical studies of design issues are rare in marketing journals’ (Melewar, Dennis and Kent, 2014, p2241 citing (e.g.) Bloch, 2011; and Luchs & Swan, 2011). Since then, iterations of the Colloquium with associated journal special issues and books have been addressing this issue and developing the new sub-discipline of design | branding | marketing. This special issue of the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services contains a set of four articles that were selected after several rounds of evaluations and were presented during the 3rd International Colloquium on Design, Branding and Marketing. The symposium was hosted by Bournemouth University from 5 to 6 April 2017. The articles cover topics that deal with retail design, retail strategy, and adoption of innovation and retail education, while contributing to the theoretical perspectives of design, branding and marketing

Shot Noise Suppression in Avalanche Photodiodes

We identify a new shot noise suppression mechanism in a thin (~100 nm) heterostructure avalanche photodiode. In the low-gain regime the shot noise is suppressed due to temporal correlations within amplified current pulses. We demonstrate in a Monte Carlo simulation that the effective excess noise factors can be <1, and reconcile the apparent conflict between theory and experiments. This shot noise suppression mechanism is independent of known mechanisms such as Coulomb interaction, or reflection at heterojunction interfaces.Comment: Phys. Rev. Lett., accepted for publicatio

Field-Induced Magnetic and Structural Domain Alignment in PrO2

We present a neutron diffraction study of the magnetic structure of single crystal PrO2 under applied fields of 0-6 T. As the field is increased, changes are observed in the magnetic Bragg intensities. These changes are found to be irreversible when the field is reduced, but the original intensities can be recovered by heating to T > 122 K, then re-cooling in zero field. The antiferromagnetic ordering temperature TN = 13.5 K and the magnetic periodicity are unaffected by the applied field. We also report measurements of the magnetic susceptibility of single crystal PrO2 under applied fields of 0-7 T. These show strong anisotropy, as well as an anomaly at T = 122 +/- 2 K which coincides with the temperature TD = 120 +/- 2 K at which a structural distortion occurs. For fields applied along the [100] direction the susceptibility increases irreversibly with field in the temperature range TN < T < TD. However, for fields along [110] the susceptibility is independent of field in this range. We propose structural domain alignment, which strongly influences the formation of magnetic domains below TN, as the mechanism behind these changes.Comment: 11 pages, 13 figures, 5 tables. Minor typographical changes in v

Radio Sources in the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey. I. Radio Source Populations

We present the first results from a study of the radio continuum properties of galaxies in the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey, based on thirty 2dF fields covering a total area of about 100 square degrees. About 1.5% of galaxies with b(J) < 19.4 mag are detected as radio continuum sources in the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS). Of these, roughly 40% are star-forming galaxies and 60% are active galaxies (mostly low-power radio galaxies and a few Seyferts). The combination of 2dFGRS and NVSS will eventually yield a homogeneous set of around 4000 radio-galaxy spectra, which will be a powerful tool for studying the distriibution and evolution of both AGN and starburst galaxies out to redshift z=0.3.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in PAS

The Interaction between the ISM and Star Formation in the Dwarf Starburst Galaxy NGC 4214

We present the first interferometric study of the molecular gas in the metal-poor dwarf starburst galaxy NGC 4214. Our map of the 12CO(1-0) emission, obtained at the OVRO millimeter array, reveals an unexpected structural wealth. We detected three regions of molecular emission in the north-west (NW), south-east (SE) and centre of NGC 4214 which are in very different and distinct evolutionary stages (total molecular mass: 5.1 x 10^6 M_sun). These differences are apparent most dramatically when the CO morphologies are compared to optical ground based and HST imaging: massive star formation has not started yet in the NW region; the well-known starburst in the centre is the most evolved and star formation in the SE complex started more recently. We derive a star formation efficiency of 8% for the SE complex. Using high--resolution VLA observations of neutral hydrogen HI and our CO data we generated a total gas column density map for NGC 4214 (HI + H_2). No clear correlation is seen between the peaks of HI, CO and the sites of ongoing star formation. This emphasizes the irregular nature of dwarf galaxies. The HI and CO velocities agree well, so do the H-alpha velocities. In total, we cataloged 14 molecular clumps in NGC 4214. Our results from a virial mass analysis are compatible with a Galactic CO-to-H_2 conversion factor for NGC 4214 (lower than what is usually found in metal-poor dwarf galaxies).Comment: accepted for publication in the AJ (February 2001), full ps file at: ftp://ftp.astro.caltech.edu/users/fw/ngc4214/walter_prep.p

The Hatch Dairy Experiment Station Farm

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