Self Help Access in Routine Primary Care - the SHARP project

NICE guidance recommends guided self-help approaches for anxiety and depression, provided in a stepped care service model. These interventions are provided within IAPT services and to compliment this, the SHARP (Self-help Access in Routine Primary Care) project was designed to enable primary care practitioners to support patients with mild to moderate anxiety and/or depression to access CBT based self-help information. The project consists of a training course, website and brief self-help leaflets. The SHARP training course enables practitioners to: understand the 5 areas CBT model and how it is used in the self-help leaflets; identify patients who are suitable; engage patients in the guided self-help approach; identify appropriate self-help leaflets; support patients to make use of the leaflets. The leaflets are based on the 5 areas model and provide information on understanding problems, the 5 Areas model and using it to manage problems. Some of the leaflets have been adapted from Chris Williams' books Overcoming Depression and Overcoming Anxiety. All leaflets are one or two pages long and more accessible 'lite' versions are available. The website (www.primarycare-selfhelp.co.uk) is being used to support the training, enable the provision of guided self-help in routine primary care and to allow public access to the leaflets. It also includes links to other self help resources. Training resources and an online forum are also available for practitioners who register. The progress of the project will be described, most recently a 'train the trainers' phase, and examples given of its implementation in practice in the Yorkshire and the Humber Region

Familial Hypercholesterolemia::New Horizons for Diagnosis and Effective Management

Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) is a common genetic cause of premature cardiovascular disease (CVD). The reported prevalence rates for both heterozygous FH (HeFH) and homozygous FH (HoFH) vary significantly, and this can be attributed, at least in part, to the variable diagnostic criteria used across different populations. Due to lack of consistent data, new global registries and unified guidelines are being formed, which are expected to advance current knowledge and improve the care of FH patients. This review presents a comprehensive overview of the pathophysiology, epidemiology, manifestations, and pharmacological treatment of FH, whilst summarizing the up-to-date relevant recommendations and guidelines. Ongoing research in FH seems promising and novel therapies are expected to be introduced in clinical practice in order to compliment or even substitute current treatment options, aiming for better lipid-lowering effects, fewer side effects, and improved clinical outcomes

Constraints in models of production and cost via slack-based measures

In this paper, we propose the use of stochastic frontier models to impose theoretical regularity constraints (like monotonicity and concavity) on flexible functional forms. These constraints take the form of inequalities involving the data and the parameters of the model. We address a major concern when statistically endogenous variables are present in these inequalities. We present results with and without endogeneity in the inequality constraints. In the system case (e.g., cost-share equations) or more generally, in production function-first-order conditions case, we detect an econometric problem which we solve successfully. We provide an empirical application to US electric power generation plants during 1986–1997, previously used by several authors

An education intervention to improve decision making and health literacy among older Australians: A randomised controlled trial

Background: National policies seek to involve older Australian’s in decisions regarding their care; however, research has found varying levels of decision self-efficacy and health literacy skills. An increasing number of older Australians use complementary medicine (CM). We examined the effectiveness of a CM educational intervention delivered using a web or DVD plus booklet format to increase older adults’ decision self-efficacy and health literacy. Methods: A randomised controlled trial was conducted. We recruited individuals aged over 65years living in retirement villages or participating in community groups, in Sydney Australia. Participants were randomly allocated to receive a CM education intervention delivered using a website or DVD plus booklet versus booklet only. The primary outcome was decision self-efficacy. A secondary outcome included the Preparation for Decision-Making scale and health literacy. Outcomes were collected at 3 weeks, and 2 months from baseline, and analysed using an adjusted ANOVA, or repeated measures ANOVA. Result: We randomised 153 participants. Follow up at 3 weeks and 2 months was completed by 131 participants. There was a 14% (n =22) attrition rate. At the end of the intervention, we found no significant differences between groups for decision self-efficacy (mean difference (MD) 3.8, 95% confidence interval (CI) -2.0 to 9.6 p =0.20), there were no differences between groups on nine health literacy domains, and the Preparation for Decision-Making scale. Over 80% of participants in both groups rated the content as excellent or good. Conclusion: Decision self-efficacy improved for participants, but did not differ between groups. Decision self-efficacy and health literacy outcomes were not influenced by the delivery of education using a website, DVD or booklet. Participants found the resources useful, and rated the content as good or excellent. CM Web or DVD and booklet resources have the potential for wider application. Trial registration: The trial was registered with the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry: ACTRN (ACTRN12616000135415). The trial was registered on 5 February 2016

Measuring the impact of biodiversity datasets: data reuse, citations and altmetrics

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Springer in Scientometrics, available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-03890-6 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Despite growing evidence of open biodiversity data reuse by scientists, information about how data is reused and cited is rarely openly accessible from research data repositories. This study explores data citation and reuse practices in biodiversity by using openly available metadata for 43,802 datasets indexed in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and content analyses of articles citing GBIF data. Results from quantitative and content analyses suggest that even though the number of studies making use of openly available biodiversity data has been increasing steadily, best practice for data citation is not yet common. It is encouraging, however, that an increasing number of recent articles (16 out of 23 in 2019) in biodiversity cite datasets in a standard way. A content analysis of a random sample of unique citing articles (n=100) found various types of background (n=18) and foreground (n=81) reuse cases for GBIF data, ranging from combining with other data sources to create species distribution modelling to software testing. This demonstrates some unique research opportunities created by open data. Among the citing articles, 27% mentioned the dataset in references and 13% in data access statements in addition to the methods section. Citation practice was inconsistent especially when a large number of subsets (12~50) were used. Even though many GBIF dataset records had altmetric scores, most posts only mentioned the articles linked to those datasets. Among the altmetric mentions of datasets, blogs can be the most informative, even though rare, and most tweets and Facebook posts were for promotional purposes

Are data repositories fettered? A survey of current practices, challenges, and future technologies

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Emerald in Online Information Review on 24/08/2021, available online at: https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-04-2021-0204 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore current practices, challenges, and technological needs of different data repositories. Design An online survey was designed for data repository managers and contact information from the re3data data repository registry was collected to disseminate the survey. Findings In total 189 responses were received, including 47% discipline specific and 34% institutional data repositories. 71% of the repositories reporting their software used bespoke technical frameworks, with DSpace, EPrint, and Dataverse being commonly used by institutional repositories. 32% of repository managers reported tracking secondary data reuse while 50% would like to. Among data reuse metrics, citation counts were considered extremely important by the majority, followed by links to the data from other websites and download counts. Despite their perceived usefulness, repository managers struggle to track dataset citations.Most repository managers support dataset and metadata quality checks via librarians, subject specialists or information professionals. A lack of engagement from users and a lack of human resources are the top two challenges, and outreach is the most common motivator mentioned by repositories across all groups. Ensuring FAIR data (49%), providing user support for research (36%) and developing best practices (29%) are the top three priorities for repository managers. The main recommendations for future repository systems are - integration and interoperability between data and systems (30%), better research data management tools (19%), tools that allow computation without downloading datasets (16%) and automated systems (16%). Originality This study identifies the current challenges and needs for improving data repository functionalities and user experiences

Profiling dehydrin gene sequence and physiological parameters in drought tolerant and susceptible spring wheat cultivars.

Physiological and yield traits such as stomatal conductance (mmol m-2s-1), Leaf relative water content (RWC %) and grain yield per plant were studied in a separate experiment. Results revealed that five out of sixteen cultivars viz. Anmol, Moomal, Sarsabz, Bhitai and Pavan, appeared to be relatively more drought tolerant. Based on morphophysiological results, studies were continued to look at these cultivars for drought tolerance at molecular level. Initially, four well recognized primers for dehydrin genes (DHNs) responsible for drought induction in T. durum L., T. aestivum L. and O. sativa L. were used for profiling gene sequence of sixteen wheat cultivars. The primers amplified the DHN genes variably like Primer WDHN13 (T. aestivum L.) amplified the DHN gene in only seven cultivars whereas primer TdDHN15 (T. durum L.) amplified all the sixteen cultivars with even different DNA banding patterns some showing second weaker DNA bands. Third primer TdDHN16 (T. durum L.) has shown entirely different PCR amplification prototype, specially showing two strong DNA bands while fourth primer RAB16C (O. sativa L.) failed to amplify DHN gene in any of the cultivars. Examination of DNA sequences revealed several interesting features. First, it identified the two exon/one intron structure of this gene (complete sequences were not shown), a feature not previously described in the two database cDNA sequences available from T. aestivum L. (gi|21850). Secondly, the analysis identified several single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), positions in gene sequence. Although complete gene sequence was not obtained for all the cultivars, yet there were a total of 38 variable positions in exonic (coding region) sequence, from a total gene length of 453 nucleotides. Matrix of SNP shows these 37 positions with individual sequence at positions given for each of the 14 cultivars (sequence of two cultivars was not obtained) included in this analysis. It demonstrated a considerable diversity for this gene with only three cultivars i.e. TJ-83, Marvi and TD-1 being similar to the consensus sequence. All other cultivars showed a unique combination of SNPs. In order to prove a functional link between these polymorphisms and drought tolerance in wheat, it would be necessary to conduct a more detailed study involving directed mutation of this gene and DHN gene expression

Criminalising Black Trauma: Grime and Drill Lyrics as a Form of Ethnographic Data to Understand “Gangs” and Serious Youth Violence

Background: The criminalisation of drill music, a rap-based genre, is a recent chapter in a long history of policing “Black” music. The association of drill and other rap music with “gang” violence has a direct impact on the treatment of Black boys and men in the criminal justice system. However, critics argue that, rather than causing violence, violent lyrics reflect the lived experiences of marginalised communities. Method: Using a qualitative approach, this study analysed the lyrical content of 90 drill, grime, and other rap-based songs by UK artists, using thematic analysis. Findings: The following themes were found: social issues in the local area and community, involvement in crime, social status, coping with adversity, social support network, police, and escaping. Collectively, the themes highlight a narrative of Black boys and men who have experienced a range of adversities such as poverty, racism, child criminal exploitation, and community violence. Conclusions: Artists who make reference to drugs and violence in their lyrics also discuss adverse experiences and the impact of these, supporting the view that violent lyrics are a reflection of lived experience. Thus, focusing on criminalising rap music may be deflecting attention from risk factors for serious youth violence that are evidence-based

Identifying data sharing and reuse with Scholix: potentials and limitations

© 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2020.100007The Scholexplorer API, based on the Scholix (Scholarly Link eXchange) framework, aims to identify links between articles and supporting data. This quantitative case study demonstrates that the API vastly expanded the number of datasets previously known to be affiliated with University of Bath outputs, allowing improved monitoring of compliance with funder mandates by identifying peer-reviewed articles linked to at least one unique dataset. Availability of author names for research outputs increased from 2.4% to 89.2%, which enabled identification of ten articles reusing non-Bath-affiliated datasets published in external repositories in the first phase, giving valuable evidence of data reuse and impact for data producers. Of these, only three were formally cited in the references. Further enhancement of the Scholix schema and enrichment of Scholexplorer metadata using controlled vocabularies would be beneficial. The adoption of standardized data citations by journals will be critical to creating links in a more systematic manner.University of Bath Librar

County Lines & Criminal Exploitation of UK University Students

This report details findings from FOI requests and questionnaire responses from UK university students, investigating the prevalence of county lines and criminal exploitation within UK university students. All data was collected in March 2022 and April 2022. The project was funded by University of Central Lancashire’s (UCLan) Centre for Criminal Justice Research & Partnerships pump prime funding