The flora and vegetation of walls in County Durham

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Use of a CPD Plan Template with SMART Goals as Part of a Diabetes Pharmacotherapy Module

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) plan template used in Fall of 2017 on quality of SMART goal development and student quiz scores. Innovation: The gap in time from when pharmacology is taught and when it is applied has contributed to poor student retention and performance in the diabetes pharmacotherapy course. To address this gap, the diabetes pharmacotherapy learning sequence was redesigned and included a self-assessment (pre-test), and the completion of a “CPD plan template”, which involved writing 1-3 SMART goals for each question missed on the pre-test. Following sequence completion, students took an identical post-quiz. Pre- and post- quiz scores were compared. Quality of CPD plan SMART goals was evaluated. Key Findings: The CPD plan template was completed by 98% of students.  The majority, 62.5% of students, wrote SMART goals at the intermediate or good level, while 37.5% were evaluated as needs improvement. The average pre-quiz score was 7.4 points and average post-quiz score was 17.1 points with an average improvement of 9.8 points (p<0.0001). There was a statistically significant improvement for top 25% post-quiz scoring students who wrote “good” SMART goals compared to those who wrote goals needing improvement (p= 0.002). For students scoring in the lowest 25%, students with goals needing improvement scored higher than those with intermediate quality goals (p< 0.04). Next Steps: It may be beneficial to introduce CPD to students sooner, as well as teach students more intentionally how to create and use SMART goals to improve learning. Finally, instructor follow up with students regarding use of their plan during a learning sequence may have additional benefit.   Article Type: Not

Spawning grounds of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) in the North Sea

The protection of spawning fish from anthropogenic impacts requires information on the location, timing, and interannual persistence of spawning aggregations. In this study, generalized additive models were used to predict the spawning habitat of North Sea cod, based on the abundance of spawning fish within three population subareas and nine environmental layers. The length of spawning cod differed among population subareas, consistent with published evidence of maturation differences. In the northeast North Sea (Viking), the peak in the spawning season was estimated to occur after the survey which made the prediction of spawning grounds for this area less certain. Cod were found to prefer areas with temperatures around 5–7°C for spawning and there was a general preference for high salinity waters. Persistence of cod spawning grounds over the study period was related to interannual stability in temperature, with high variability in the use of Southern Bight spawning grounds. As such, cod appear to minimize interannual variability in the initial environmental conditions affecting offspring survival by selecting suitable cold spawning grounds. Seabed conditions also affected spawning distribution with cod selecting coarse sand and avoiding areas of very high tidal flow. The model prediction was compared with the distribution of cod aggregations during the spawning season reported by fishing boats. Seventy per cent of the aggregations was located in areas classified as occasional or recurrent spawning grounds. The predicted distribution confirmed the widespread occurrence of spawning in the North Sea and showed good agreement with recent and past studies of cod egg distribution, suggesting that nearly all major historical areas of spawning still appear in use today. However, the study also found that the recent recovery of spawning-stock biomass was not uniform across the stock, being centred in the northwest subarea

Galactic Plane Hα\alpha Surveys: IPHAS & VPHAS+

The optical Galactic Plane H$\alpha$ surveys IPHAS and VPHAS+ are dramatically improving our understanding of Galactic stellar populations and stellar evolution by providing large samples of stars in short lived, but important, evolutionary phases, and high quality homogeneous photometry and images over the entire Galactic Plane. Here I summarise some of the contributions these surveys have already made to our understanding of a number of key areas of stellar and Galactic astronomy.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, refereed proceeding of the "The Universe of Digital Sky Surveys" conference, November 2014, to be published in the Astrophysics and Space Science Proceeding

Effects of bovine somatotrophin (bST) on ovarian function in post-partum beef cows

Full text not available. Only the abstract. DOI: 10.1071/RD9960951The effects of bovine somatotrophin (bST) on ovarian follicle development and function and associated gonadotrophin profiles during the first nine weeks post partum were investigated in beef cows. Thirty-two cows (Shorthorn x Galloway) in moderately low body condition (BC) at calving were fed to maintain BC thereafter. At Weeks 2, 4, 6 and 8 post partum, animals were injected with 320 mg bovine somatotrophin (bST) (T, treated; n = 17) or with the carrier oil only (C, control; n = 15). Ovulation occurred in 4 of 17 T cows and 0 of 15 C cows (P = 0.10) by nine week post partum. Treatment with bST did not affect the numbers of small (3-8 mm in diameter) or large (> 8 mm in diameter) follicles or the granulosa cell populations but enhanced the oestradiol (P < 0.05) and insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) content (P < 0.01) of large follicles by nine weeks post partum. It did not significantly affect the testosterone concentrations of large follicles. Circulating concentrations of growth hormone (GH) and IGF-I were higher in T cows than in C cows (P < 0.001) but were unrelated to gonadotrophin profiles or gonadotrophin receptor concentrations in the follicles. At Week 8, plasma insulin concentrations were higher in T cows than in C cows both before (P < 0.05) and after (P < 0.05) glucose injection. It is concluded that GH may play an important role in mediating the effects of nutritional state on ovarian function during the post-partum period, possibly through alteration of intrafollicular IGF-I concentrations

An application of multisurface plasticity theory: Yield surfaces of textured materials

Directionally dependent descriptions of the yield behavior of metals as determined by polycrystal plasticity computations are discrete in nature and, in principle, are available for use in large-scale application calculations employing multi-dimensional continuum mechanics codes. However, the practical side of using such detailed yield surfaces in application calculations contains some challenges in terms of algorithm development and computational efficiency. Discrete representations of yield as determined from Taylor-Bishop-Hill polycrystal calculations can be fitted or tessellated into a multi-dimensional piece-wise linear yield surface for subsequent use in constitutive algorithms for codes. Such an algorithm that utilizes an associated flow based multisurface plasticity theory has been implemented in the three dimensional EPIC code and is described in this effort