Developing personal relationships in care homes: realising the contributions of staff, residents and family members

Personal relationships are all integral part of living, working and visiting in care homes, but little research has made relationships the main focus of enquiry, and there have been few studies of the perspectives of residents, staff and family members. The study reported here sought to redress this neglect. Using a constructivist approach, the nature and types of relationships between residents, staff and family members were explored in three care homes in England using combined methods including participant observation, interviews and focus groups. The data collection and analysis Occurred iteratively Over 21 months and three types of relationships were identified: 'pragmatic relationships' that primarily focus oil the instrumental aspects of care; 'personal and responsive relationships' that engage more fully with the particular needs of individual residents; and 'reciprocal relationships' that recognise the roles of residents, staff and family members in creating a sense of community within the home. This paper explores the contributions made by staff; residents and family members in the development of these relationships. The findings enhance our understanding of the role of inter-personal relationships in care home settings and of the factors that condition them. The implications for developing improved practice in care ponies are also considered

Does foraging efficiency vary with colony size in the fairy martin Petrochelidon ariel?

Colonial breeding occurs in a wide range of taxa, however the advantages promoting its evolution and maintenance remain poorly understood. In many avian species, breeding colonies vary by several orders of magnitude and one approach to investigating the evolution of coloniality has been to examine how potential costs and benefits vary with colony size. Several hypotheses predict that foraging efficiency may improve with colony size, through benefits associated with social foraging and information exchange. However, it is argued that competition for limited food resources will also increase with colony size, potentially reducing foraging success. Here we use a number of measures (brood feeding rates, chick condition and survival, and adult condition) to estimate foraging efficiency in the fairy martin Petrochelidon ariel, across a range of colony sizes in a single season (17 colonies, size range 28-139 pairs). Brood provisioning rates were collected from multiple colonies simultaneously using an electronic monitoring system, controlling for temporal variation in environmental conditions. Provisioning rate was correlated with nestling condition, though we found no clear relationship between provisioning rate and colony size for either male or female parents. However, chicks were generally in worse condition and broods more likely to fail or experience partial loss in larger colonies. Moreover, the average condition of adults declined with colony size. Overall, these findings suggest that foraging efficiency declines with colony size in fairy martins, supporting the increased competition hypothesis. However, other factors, such as an increased ectoparasitise load in large colonies or change in the composition of phenotypes with colony size may have also contributed to these patterns.

Protecting the Individual: The Origins and Development of Saskatchewan Conservatism, 1905-1944

It is commonly accepted that a political divide exists between Saskatchewan and Alberta. Both provinces share similar settlement patterns, histories, and economies, but there exists a perceived division in their political cultures between a “conservative” Alberta and “socially democratic” Saskatchewan. Whereas Alberta emerged from the Great Depression as the champion of “free enterprise” and limited government control, Saskatchewan experimented with state ownership and sought to dramatically expand Canada’s social welfare system. There is a willingness to accept that modern Saskatchewan’s conservatism has moved it closer to its western neighbour, but historians remain wedded to the idea that this conservatism is a departure from the past. Saskatchewan’s political history remains almost entirely dedicated to explaining the rise of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the roots of the province’s social democratic legacy. This study challenges these narratives by detailing the development of a conservative ideology in Saskatchewan between the province’s creation in 1905 and the election of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation in 1944. Rather than the preservation of a tory-touched hierarchy, Saskatchewan conservatives defended individual rights and freedoms. This individualist conservatism manifested itself in the major economic and social discussions of the period, including conservative farmers’ adherence to the capitalist grain trade, nativist campaigns for limited immigration and increased assimilation of “foreigners,” and the growth of conservative Christian schools in response to the Great Depression. This conservative ideology was also influential. Both the provincial Liberal and Conservative parties owed their successes to conservative support. Whereas the Liberal Party appealed to an economic conservatism that sought to limit the government’s involvement in the capitalist system, the Conservative Party built its support from a racial conservatism that argued for increased assimilation. Neither party, however, was able to withstand the rise of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. The 1944 election was a clear victory for the new party’s collectivist ethos, but the scale of the victory iii overshadowed the large segments of the population that championed an individualistic worldview

LARGE-SCALE LIBRARY GENERATION OF UNNATURAL AMINO ACID BIOSYNTHETIC ENZYMES

Unnatural amino acid (UAA) technology offers powerful and flexible tools for addressing many issues in human health, scientific research, and industry. However, UAA technology is currently limited by prohibitive costs and poor availability. Evolution of UAA biosynthetic enzymes can make UAAs much cheaper and more available, but previous efforts to evolve or design UAA biosynthetic enzymes have only used low-throughput methods which are limiting for general use. This thesis presents a framework by which large libraries of mutant UAA biosynthetic enzymes can be generated for truly high-throughput selections. This thesis also describes the generation of chloramphenicol resistance and GFP selection marker genetic constructs optimized for performing selections on large libraries of UAA biosynthetic enzymes. The combination of this library generation framework and selection markers optimized for finding UAA biosynthetic enzymes should greatly facilitate the evolution of UAA biosynthetic enzymes and drastically improve the cost and availability of UAA technology.Doctor of Philosoph

Lived Clinical Education Experiences of Professional Master’s Athletic Training Program Graduates

Purpose: Clinical education has been identified as a key aspect in the professional preparation of athletic trainers. The literature, however, has focused on clinical education at the undergraduate level rather than the graduate level, which is the future population of all CAATE-accredited athletic training programs. This study sought to describe the experiences of those who have completed athletic training clinical education at the master’s level, specifically focusing on the type of learning experiences they were granted and what influence the preceptor and the setting played in the overall experience. Method: This was a phenomenology study. Twelve graduates of CAATE-accredited professional master’s athletic training programs served as participants. All participants graduated after Spring 2014 and completed clinical education as a degree requirement. Three methods of data collection were utilized, including semi-structured interviews, prompted journaling and asynchronous online focus group discussion boards. Data was analyzed using a phenomenological reduction approach. Credibility of the data was confirmed with member checking, peer review and data triangulation. Results: Clinical education was determined to be a significant contributor to professional preparation of professional master’s athletic training students. Hands on-experiences, active preceptors and variety in clinical setting and opportunity were all cited as contributors to the success of clinical education. Participants described their experience as a significant commitment but valuable. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that clinical education should continue to be a requirement at the graduate level and that the clinical education curriculum should be designed to encourage hands-on learning and variety

Orbits, masses, and evolution of main belt triple (87) Sylvia

Sylvia is a triple asteroid system located in the main belt. We report new adaptive optics observations of this system that extend the baseline of existing astrometric observations to a decade. We present the first fully dynamical 3-body model for this system by fitting to all available astrometric measurements. This model simultaneously fits for individual masses, orbits, and primary oblateness. We find that Sylvia is composed of a dominant central mass surrounded by two satellites orbiting at 706.5 +/- 2.5 km and 1357 +/- 4.0 km, i.e., about 5 and nearly 10 primary radii. We derive individual masses of 1.484 -0.014/+0.016 x 10^19 kg for the primary (corresponding to a density of 1.29 +/- 0.39 g cm^-3), 7.33 -2.3/+4.7 x 10^14 kg for the inner satellite, and 9.32 -8.3/+20.7 x 10^14 kg for the outer satellite. The oblateness of the primary induces substantial precession and the J_2 value can be constrained to the range of 0.0985-0.1. The orbits of the satellites are relatively circular with eccentricities less than 0.04. The spin axis of the primary body and the orbital poles of both satellites are all aligned within about two degrees of each other, indicating a nearly coplanar configuration and suggestive of satellite formation in or near the equatorial plane of the primary. We also investigate the past orbital evolution of the system by simulating the effects of a recent passage through 3:1 mean-motion eccentricity-type resonances. In some scenarios this allow us to place constraints on interior structure and past eccentricities.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, accepted to A

The detection of Fermi AGN above 100 GeV using clustering analysis

The density-based clustering algorithm DBSCAN has been applied to the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) data set of Eγ ≥ 100 GeV events with |b| > 10°, in order to search for new very high energy (VHE) γ-ray sources. The clustering analysis returned 49 clusters, of which 21 correspond to already known VHE-emitting active galactic nuclei (AGN) within the TeVCat catalogue and a further 11 were found to be significant in a full Fermi analysis. Of these, two are previously detected Fermi VHE AGN, and nine represent new VHE sources consisting of six BL Lac objects, one blazar of unknown type and two unassociated sources. Comparing these, along with the VHE AGN RBS 0679 and RBS 0970 previously detected with Fermi-LAT, to the current populations of AGN detected with ground-based instruments and Fermi suggests that the VHE-emitting AGN discovered in this study are very similar to the TeVCat AGN and therefore further observations with ground-based imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes are recommended