138 research outputs found
An investigation into community travel patterns, navigational strategies and virtual reality route learning after an acquired brain injury
Making a simple journey may appear to require very little planning on behalf of the navigator but it, in fact, utilises multiple cognitive processes, modalities and skills, many of which may be impaired in acquired brain injury. The aim of this thesis was to explore community travel and route learning in this population through a series of studies. The first study explored changes in community travel patterns and showed a reduction in all types of journeys, particularly unaccompanied and leisure trips. Disability and anxiety played some role in the reduction in travel but not as large a role as expected. The results of this study indicated that the reduction in community travel also impacted on quality of life. A virtual environment was developed and tested for use in the final two studies. This was followed by an investigation into the use of proximal and distal landmark strategies in route learning using the virtual environment. Findings suggested that people with traumatic brain injury have more difficulty using distal landmarks than proximal landmarks when learning a route. The final study built upon these results to develop a set of procedures to test whether it was possible to improve route learning in people with traumatic brain injury. Route learning skills were assessed using the virtual environment and then their naturally chosen strategy was supplemented with an additional one in order to improve performance
Place and memory in the poetry of Michael Longley and Seamus Heaney
EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo
The role of relationship reciprocity and self-efficacy on well-being and burnout in clinical psychology trainees
The role of relationship reciprocity and self-efficacy on well-being and burnout in clinical psychology trainees
The contribution of physician assistants/associates to secondary care : a systematic review
OBJECTIVE: To appraise and synthesise research on the impact of physician assistants/associates (PA) in secondary care, specifically acute internal medicine, care of the elderly, emergency medicine, trauma and orthopaedics, and mental health. DESIGN: Systematic review. SETTING: Electronic databases (Medline, Embase, ASSIA, CINAHL, SCOPUS, PsycINFO, Social Policy and Practice, EconLit and Cochrane), reference lists and related articles. INCLUDED ARTICLES: Peer-reviewed articles of any study design, published in English, 1995-2017. INTERVENTIONS: Blinded parallel processes were used to screen abstracts and full text, data extractions and quality assessments against published guidelines. A narrative synthesis was undertaken. OUTCOME MEASURES: Impact on: patients' experiences and outcomes, service organisation, working practices, other professional groups and costs. RESULTS: 5472 references were identified and 161 read in full; 16 were included-emergency medicine (7), trauma and orthopaedics (6), acute internal medicine (2), mental health (1) and care of the elderly (0). All studies were observational, with variable methodological quality. In emergency medicine and in trauma and orthopaedics, when PAs are added to teams, reduced waiting and process times, lower charges, equivalent readmission rate and good acceptability to staff and patients are reported. Analgesia prescribing, operative complications and mortality outcomes were variable. In internal medicine outcomes of care provided by PAs and doctors were equivalent. CONCLUSIONS: PAs have been deployed to increase the capacity of a team, enabling gains in waiting time, throughput, continuity and medical cover. When PAs were compared with medical staff, reassuringly there was little or no negative effect on health outcomes or cost. The difficulty of attributing cause and effect in complex systems where work is organised in teams is highlighted. Further rigorous evaluation is required to address the complexity of the PA role, reporting on more than one setting, and including comparison between PAs and roles for which they are substituting. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: CRD42016032895
Football and dementia: A qualitative investigation of a community based sports group for men with early onset dementia
This study investigates the impact of a weekly group providing sport and physical activities for men with early onset dementia established by Notts County Football in the Community (NCFC). There were three aims: investigate the effect of early onset dementia on individuals with the condition and their carers; examine perceptions of current levels of service provision for people with early onset dementia; and analyse the impact of the group. Men with dementia (n=5) attending the sessions, their carers (n=5), NCFC coaching staff (n=5) and people organising/facilitating the sessions (n=5), were interviewed. Semi-structured interviews explored the participantsâ experiences of dementia, their opinions on current service provisions and on the sessions. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. Four main themes were found: loss related to the condition of dementia and its impact on relationships (âLossâ); lack of age-appropriate services for people with early onset dementia (âLack of Resourcesâ); enjoyment and positive anticipation related to the group for all involved (âEnjoyment and Anticipationâ); and âthe Notts County Effectâ which attributed the success of the sessions to the strong brand of the football club, and to personalised service in a âdementia-freeâ environment. The NCFC sessions provided a safe low-cost intervention with positive effects upon quality of life for both people with early onset dementia, their carers and the staff involved. This suggests that the service may be valuable to a wider range of people living in different area
The Cost-Effectiveness of Population Health Checks: : have the NHS Health Checks been unfairly maligned?
Enabling Mixed Autonomy Traffic Control
We demonstrate a new capability of automated vehicles: mixed autonomy traffic
control. With this new capability, automated vehicles can shape the traffic
flows composed of other non-automated vehicles, which has the promise to
improve safety, efficiency, and energy outcomes in transportation systems at a
societal scale. Investigating mixed autonomy mobile traffic control must be
done in situ given that the complex dynamics of other drivers and their
response to a team of automated vehicles cannot be effectively modeled. This
capability has been blocked because there is no existing scalable and
affordable platform for experimental control. This paper introduces an
extensible open-source hardware and software platform, enabling a team of 100
vehicles to execute several different vehicular control algorithms as a
collaborative fleet, composed of three different makes and models, which drove
22752 miles in a combined 1022 hours, over 5 days in Nashville, TN in November
2022
So you think you can track?
This work introduces a multi-camera tracking dataset consisting of 234 hours
of video data recorded concurrently from 234 overlapping HD cameras covering a
4.2 mile stretch of 8-10 lane interstate highway near Nashville, TN. The video
is recorded during a period of high traffic density with 500+ objects typically
visible within the scene and typical object longevities of 3-15 minutes. GPS
trajectories from 270 vehicle passes through the scene are manually corrected
in the video data to provide a set of ground-truth trajectories for
recall-oriented tracking metrics, and object detections are provided for each
camera in the scene (159 million total before cross-camera fusion). Initial
benchmarking of tracking-by-detection algorithms is performed against the GPS
trajectories, and a best HOTA of only 9.5% is obtained (best recall 75.9% at
IOU 0.1, 47.9 average IDs per ground truth object), indicating the benchmarked
trackers do not perform sufficiently well at the long temporal and spatial
durations required for traffic scene understanding
âBecause It Kind of Falls in Between, Doesnât It? Like an Acute Thing and a Chronicâ: the Psychological Experience of Anaphylaxis in Adulthood
Anaphylaxis is a serious, rare condition increasing in prevalence. This study explored the psychological experience of adult-onset anaphylaxis from patient, family and staff perspectives. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve participants. Two global themes emerged from thematic analysis: âcontrollabilityâ (âan unknown and distressing experienceâ, âthe importance of control over triggersâ and âresponsibility but no control: the impact on othersâ) and âconflictâ (ârejecting illness identityâ, âminimisation of riskâ, âaccessing specialist care: running in slow motionâ and âpatient-centred versus service-centred careâ). Findings highlight the importance of perceived control and emphasise the presence of conflict in the experience of this complex, episodic condition
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