Quality Services, Better Outcomes: A Quality Framework for Achieving Outcomes.

The Childhood Development Initiative (CDI) is an innovative, community based response to a comprehensive consultation process undertaken in Tallaght West. Working with a wide range of locally established service providers, CDI is delivering services to children and families which meet identified needs. Etch of these is being rigorously evaluated, and considerable attention is being given to quality assurance, promotion of reflective practice, and professional training and support. The insights gained, and techniques developed during this process are central to delivering high quality services with the view to improving our understanding of what enables children to meet their potential, gain their developmental milestones within appropriate timeframes and become healthy and active citizens. This Workbook describes key processes relating to practice, organisational culture and systems change which support the implementation of evidence-based and evidence-informed programmes and practices. From CDI's experience, implementing evidence-based programmes not only requires specific structures and processes in place to support programme implementation and fidelity (e.g. training, coaching, and supervision) but also necessities a focus on the more generic aspects of delivering quality services (e.g. engaging in reflective practice in order to promote and maintain fidelity to a programme). The Workbook also addresses some fundamental areas in relation to monitoring and evaluation as a way of determining whether an intervention was effective or not. In effect, this Workbook hopes to explain the 'what', 'why', 'how' and 'did we?' of evidence-based practice. The Workbook is intended to provide readers with a comprehensive introduction to both the shared language and concepts underpinning the science and practice of implementation. It complements the 'What Works Process' guide published by the Centre for Effective Services (CES, 2011) which supports services in assessing how effective they are in improving outcomes for children and helps them to think about what works

Concept talk cannot be avoided

Distinct systems for representing concepts as prototypes, exemplars, and theories are closely integrated in the mind, and the notion of concept is required as a framework for exploring this integration. Eliminating the term “concept” from our theories will hinder rather than promote scientific progress

Constructing exact Lagrangian immersions with few double points

We establish an $h$-principle for exact Lagrangian immersions with transverse self-intersections and the minimal, or near-minimal number of double points. One corollary of our result is that any orientable closed 3-manifold admits an exact Lagrangian immersion into standard symplectic 6-space \R^6_\st with exactly one transverse double point. Our construction also yields a Lagrangian embedding S^1\times S^2\to\R^6_\st with vanishing Maslov class.Comment: In the new version corrected some misprints, added clarifications and filled a small gap in the proof of Lemma 3.

Detection of high levels of congenital transmission of toxoplasma gondii in natural urban populations of mus domesticus

The relative importance of different transmission routes of Toxoplasma gondii has been a matter for debate. This ubiquitous parasite is generally thought to be transmitted by infective oocysts excreted by the definitive host, the cat. Ingestion of undercooked meat has also been considered an important route of transmission in many mammals while congenital transmission has generally been considered relatively rare. Experimental studies demonstrate the ability of T. gondii to be transmitted congenitally, but few studies have investigated the frequency of this transmission route in natural populations. We use PCR amplification of the SAG1 gene to investigate the frequency of congenital transmission in a wild population of mice (Mus domesticus) and show that congenital transmission is occurring in 75% of pregnancies in this population. Furthermore, for infected pregnant mice, transmission occurs to at least one foetus in 100% of cases while variable penetrance of congenital infection is observed. These high levels of congenital transmission in this wild population of mice, taken together with other recent data on congenital transmission in sheep, suggests that this phenomenon might be more widespread than previously thought

Semantic memory redux: an experimental test of hierarchical category representation

Four experiments investigated the classic issue in semantic memory of whether people organize categorical information in hierarchies and use inference to retrieve information from them, as proposed by Collins & Quillian (1969). Past evidence has focused on RT to confirm sentences such as “All birds are animals” or “Canaries breathe.” However, confounding variables such as familiarity and associations between the terms have led to contradictory results. Our experiments avoided such problems by teaching subjects novel materials. Experiment 1 tested an implicit hierarchical structure in the features of a set of studied objects (e.g., all brown objects were large). Experiment 2 taught subjects nested categories of artificial bugs. In Experiment 3, subjects learned a tree structure of novel category hierarchies. In all three, the results differed from the predictions of the hierarchical inference model. In Experiment 4, subjects learned a hierarchy by means of paired associates of novel category names. Here we finally found the RT signature of hierarchical inference. We conclude that it is possible to store information in a hierarchy and retrieve it via inference, but it is difficult and avoided whenever possible. The results are more consistent with feature comparison models than hierarchical models of semantic memory

Why will rat's go where rats will not

Experimental evidence indicates that regular plurals are nearly always omitted from English compounds (e.g., rats-eater) while irregular plurals may be included within these structures (e.g., mice-chaser). This phenomenon is considered to be good evidence to support the dual mechanism model of morphological processing (Pinker & Prince, 1992). However, evidence from neural net modelling has shown that a single route associative memory based account might provide an equally, if not more, valid explanation of the compounding phenomenon

Plural morphology in compounding is not good evidence to support the dual mechanism model

The compounding phenomena is considered to be good evidence to support the dual mechanism model of morphological processing (Pinker & Prince, 1992). However evidence from initial neural net modeling has shown that a single route associative memory based account might provide an equally, if not more valid explanation of the treatment of plurals in compounds. Further neural net modeling and empirical work is proposed to test this single route accoun

Designing mobile augmented reality art applications:addressing the views of the galleries and the artists

The utilization of mobile augmented reality to display gallery artworks or museum content in novel ways is a well-established concept in the augmented reality research community. However, the focus of these systems is generally technologically driven or only addresses the end user and not the views of the gallery or the original artist. In this paper we discuss the design and development of the mobile application ?Taking the Artwork Home?, which allows people to digitally curate their own augmented reality art exhibitions in their own homes by digitally ?replacing? the pictures they have on their walls with content from the Peter Scott Gallery in Lancaster. In particular, we present the insights gained from a research through design methodology that allowed us to consider how the views of the gallery and artists impacted on the system design and therefore the user experience. Thus the final artifact is the result of an iterative evaluation process with over 100 users representing a broad range of demographics and continues to be evaluated/enhanced by observing its operation ?in the wild?. Further, we consider the effect the project has had on gallery practices to enable both augmented reality designers, and galleries and museums to maximize the potential application of the technology when working together on such project

Viral Reservoirs in Lymph Nodes of FIV-Infected Progressor and Long-Term Non-Progressor Cats during the Asymptomatic Phase.

BackgroundExamination of a cohort of cats experimentally infected with feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) for 5.75 years revealed detectable proviral DNA in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) harvested during the asymptomatic phase, undetectable plasma viral RNA (FIV gag), and rarely detectable cell-associated viral RNA. Despite apparent viral latency in peripheral CD4+ T cells, circulating CD4+ T cell numbers progressively declined in progressor animals. The aim of this study was to explore this dichotomy of peripheral blood viral latency in the face of progressive immunopathology. The viral replication status, cellular immunophenotypes, and histopathologic features were compared between popliteal lymph nodes (PLNs) and peripheral blood. Also, we identified and further characterized one of the FIV-infected cats identified as a long-term non-progressor (LTNP).ResultsPLN-derived leukocytes from FIV-infected cats during the chronic asymptomatic phase demonstrated active viral gag transcription and FIV protein translation as determined by real-time RT-PCR, Western blot and in situ immunohistochemistry, whereas viral RNA in blood leukocytes was either undetectable or intermittently detectable and viral protein was not detected. Active transcription of viral RNA was detectable in PLN-derived CD4+ and CD21+ leukocytes. Replication competent provirus was reactivated ex vivo from PLN-derived leukocytes from three of four FIV-infected cats. Progressor cats showed a persistent and dramatically decreased proportion and absolute count of CD4+ T cells in blood, and a decreased proportion of CD4+ T cells in PLNs. A single long-term non-progressor (LTNP) cat persistently demonstrated an absolute peripheral blood CD4+ T cell count indistinguishable from uninfected animals, a lower proviral load in unfractionated blood and PLN leukocytes, and very low amounts of viral RNA in the PLN.ConclusionCollectively our data indicates that PLNs harbor important reservoirs of ongoing viral replication during the asymptomatic phase of infection, in spite of undetectable viral activity in peripheral blood. A thorough understanding of tissue-based lentiviral reservoirs is fundamental to medical interventions to eliminate virus or prolong the asymptomatic phase of FIV infection