157 research outputs found

    FP6 CEDER Project Deliverable 3.2 "Benefits of a new reporting system"

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    Addressing the uncertainties in fishing activities, the CEDER project examines the use of observer reports, landings, e-logbooks, VMS and GPS tracks, and fishery-specific information. Such information was assessed in order to provide more accurate and timelier data on effort, catches, discards, and/or landings. This document contains CEDER¿s Project Implementation Plan for policy makers, as well as expected benefits for government, industry, and science. The CEDER consortium advocates the use of GPS data at 15 minute intervals for scientific purposes. Among these are improved spatial planning and a new fishing effort measure, the actual effort while fishing, which can be inferred from vessel behaviour. The correlation between catch and effort can be used as an indicator for inspectors, but one cannot reliably guess catches from effort. VMS and logbook data can be matched using rule-bases systems, leading to higher data quality and better use of quota. Furthermore, if fishing mortality were known in near real time, then the integration of current year fishing mortality into management plans would yield benefits for stock recovery. The full realisation of such benefits requires a re-appraisal of the 15% TAC revision rule. The CEDER consortium insists that any roll-out of the ERS e-logbook must be properly enforced, and that the e-logbook cannot by itself replace observer reports. Finally, estimating discards may be feasible in selected fisheries, but additional means such as gear sensors may be required in order to get more reliable data in the general case.JRC.G.4-Maritime affair

    'Getting to Know Me': the development and evaluation of a training programme for enhancing skills in the care of people with dementia in general hospital settings

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    OBJECTIVE: The aims of the study were to report on the development and evaluation of a staff training intervention in dementia care designed for use in the general hospital setting: the 'Getting to Know Me' training programme. The study also aimed to undertake initial psychometric analysis on two new outcome scales designed to measure knowledge and confidence in dementia care. METHODS: The study comprised two phases. The first phase comprised the design of two questionnaires which are shared within this paper: Confidence in Dementia (CODE) Scale and Knowledge in Dementia (KIDE) Scale. In phase two, staff undertook the 'Getting to Know Me' training programme (n=71). The impact of the programme was evaluated using a pre-post design which explored: (1) changes in confidence in dementia; (2) changes in knowledge in dementia; and (3) changes in beliefs about challenging behaviour. RESULTS: The psychometric properties of the CODE and KIDE scales are reported. Statistically significant change was identified pre-post training on all outcome measures. Clinically meaningful change was demonstrated on the CODE scale. CONCLUSIONS: The 'Getting to Know Me' programme was well received and had a significant impact on staff knowledge and confidence. Our findings add to a growing evidence base which will be strengthened by further robust studies, the exploration of the impact of staff training on direct patient outcomes, and further identification of ways in which to transfer principles of care from specialist dementia environments into general hospital settings.This study was funded by, and undertaken as part of, the Health Innovation and Education Cluster (HIEC) programme. The HIEC programme was developed to support the delivery of high quality healthcare, provide education and training, promote innovation in healthcare, and lead to adoption of research. One of the main aims of the HIEC programme was to produce sustainable change in practice within the NHS

    An investigation of factors associated with psychiatric hospital admission despite the presence of crisis resolution teams.

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    RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are.BACKGROUND: Crisis resolution teams (CRTs) provide a community alternative to psychiatric hospital admission for patients presenting in crisis. Little is known about the characteristics of patients admitted despite the availability of such teams. METHODS: Data were drawn from three investigations of the outcomes of CRTs in inner London. A literature review was used to identify candidate explanatory variables that may be associated with admission despite the availability of intensive home treatment. The main outcome variable was admission to hospital within 8 weeks of the initial crisis. Associations between this outcome and the candidate explanatory variables were tested using first univariate and then multivariate analysis. RESULTS: Patients who were uncooperative with initial assessment (OR 10.25 95% CI-4.20-24.97), at risk of self-neglect (OR 2.93 1.42-6.05), had a history of compulsory admission (OR 2.64 1.07-6.55), assessed outside usual office hours (OR 2.34 1.11-4.94) and/or were assessed in hospital casualty departments (OR 3.12 1.55-6.26), were more likely to be admitted. Other than age, no socio-demographic features or diagnostic variables were significantly associated with risk of admission. CONCLUSION: With the introduction of CRTs, inpatient wards face a significant challenge, as patients who cooperate little with treatment, neglect themselves, or have previously been compulsorily detained are especially likely to be admitted. The increased risk of admission associated with casualty department assessment may be remediable

    FP6 CEDER Project Deliverable 1.1.2 "Data Quality Report"

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    Addressing the uncertainties in fishing activities, the CEDER project harnessed fishery observer reports, landings, logbooks, and VMS records information. The project collected data from these sources for six selected fisheries. This document explores the quality of aforementioned data.JRC.G.4-Maritime affair

    No ‘silver bullet’:Multiple factors control population dynamics of european purple sea urchins in Lough Hyne marine reserve, Ireland

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    Two-decade-long monitoring studies at Europe\u27s first statutory marine reserve—Lough Hyne in SW Ireland—indicate that benthic communities are rapidly changing. Populations of the ecologically important purple urchin (Paracentrotus lividus) have fluctuated widely, most recently with a population boom in the late 1990s, followed by a mass mortality that persists to the present day. Eight general hypotheses have been proposed to account for the urchin decline including cold temperature limiting reproduction, ephemeral algal exudates disrupting urchin fertilization, low larval availability (due to over-harvesting and/or episodic recruitment), high mortality of settlers and juveniles due to hypoxia, hyperoxia, or predation (a trophic cascade hypothesis), and increased mortality due to pathogens (stress hypothesis). The cold-temperature and the trophic cascade hypotheses appear unlikely. The remaining hypotheses, however, all seem to play a role, to some degree, in driving the urchin decline. Ulvoid exudates, for example, significantly reduced urchin fertilization and few larvae were found in plankton tows (2012–2015), indicating low larval availability in summer. Whilst settling urchins regularly recruited under shallow-subtidal rocks until 2011, no settlers were found in these habitats from 2011 to 2014 or in field experiments (2012–2018) using various settlement substrata. Seawater quality was poor in shallow areas of the lough with extreme oxygen fluctuations (diel-cycling hypoxia), and 1-day experimental exposures to DO values < 1 mg L−1 were lethal to most juvenile urchins. Multiple increases of the predatory spiny starfish (Marthasterias glacialis) population in recent decades may also have contributed to the demise of the coexisting juvenile urchins. Finally, urchins of all sizes were seen suffering from dropped spines, tissue necrosis, or white-coloured infection, suggestive of stress-related pathogen mortality. There was a paucity of broken tests, indicating limited predation by large crustaceans; the large number of adult urchins ‘missing’ and few P. lividus tests on the north shore points to possible urchin removal by poachers and/or starfish predation. While these ecological, environmental, and anthropogenic processes occur on open coast rocky shores, many are exacerbated by the semi-enclosed nature of this fully marine sea lough due to its limited flushing. Multiple factors, including low larval availability and rapidly expanding starfish populations, coupled with degraded habitat quality (ephemeral algal mats and extreme oxygen fluctuations), indicate that the purple urchin populations will not recover without an improvement in the water quality of Lough Hyne Marine Reserve, the restocking of urchins, and protection from poaching

    Limiting inter-annual variation in total allowable catch strategies. An application to ICES roundfish stocks

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    This study evaluated through simulation management strategy that stabilise catch levels by setting bounds on the inter-annual variability in Total Allowable Catches (TACs). An integrated modelling approach was used, which modelled both the ‘real’ and observed systems and the interactions between all system components. The modelling framework therefore allowed evaluation of the robustness of candidate management strategies to both the intrinsic properties of the systems, and the ability to observe, monitor, assess and control them. Strategies were evaluated in terms of level of risk (measured as the probability of spawning stock biomass falling below the biomass limit reference level for the stock) and cumulative yield. The simulation approach used provides a powerful tool for the examination of the performance of candidate management strategies. It has shown that better management is not necessarily going to be achieved by improving the assessement, since even with a perfect assessment (where the simulated working group knew stock status perfectly) stocks may crash at fishing levels that standard stochastic projections would suggest were safe. Also explicitly modelling the assessment process can result in quite different outcomes than those predicted by the simple projection traditionally used by stock assessment working groups. This is because the simple projection assumes that the status of the stock in the current year is known without error and that the target fishing mortality can be achieved without error. However, in practice the assessment is based on last years data and the effect of any management measure on SSB is only manifest, following the implementation of the quota, at the end of the following year. The choice of target and fishing mortality levels and minimum stock levels results from ICES interpretation of the precautionary approach. This lead to the definition of fishing mortality and biomass reference points that are intended to prevent over-fishing and to trigger recovery plans when a stock is overfished respectively. Although, fishing mortality and biomass reference points were originally intended to be independent, a fishing mortality level implies a corresponding biomass level. In the case of saithe a fishing mortality of 0.40 (i.e. the FPA level) would drive the stock to Blim, suggesting that the choice of biomass and target reference points are not consistent for this stock

    Limiting inter-annual variation in total allowable catch strategies. An application to ICES roundfish stocks

    Get PDF
    This study evaluated through simulation management strategy that stabilise catch levels by setting bounds on the inter-annual variability in Total Allowable Catches (TACs). An integrated modelling approach was used, which modelled both the ‘real’ and observed systems and the interactions between all system components. The modelling framework therefore allowed evaluation of the robustness of candidate management strategies to both the intrinsic properties of the systems, and the ability to observe, monitor, assess and control them. Strategies were evaluated in terms of level of risk (measured as the probability of spawning stock biomass falling below the biomass limit reference level for the stock) and cumulative yield. The simulation approach used provides a powerful tool for the examination of the performance of candidate management strategies. It has shown that better management is not necessarily going to be achieved by improving the assessement, since even with a perfect assessment (where the simulated working group knew stock status perfectly) stocks may crash at fishing levels that standard stochastic projections would suggest were safe. Also explicitly modelling the assessment process can result in quite different outcomes than those predicted by the simple projection traditionally used by stock assessment working groups. This is because the simple projection assumes that the status of the stock in the current year is known without error and that the target fishing mortality can be achieved without error. However, in practice the assessment is based on last years data and the effect of any management measure on SSB is only manifest, following the implementation of the quota, at the end of the following year. The choice of target and fishing mortality levels and minimum stock levels results from ICES interpretation of the precautionary approach. This lead to the definition of fishing mortality and biomass reference points that are intended to prevent over-fishing and to trigger recovery plans when a stock is overfished respectively. Although, fishing mortality and biomass reference points were originally intended to be independent, a fishing mortality level implies a corresponding biomass level. In the case of saithe a fishing mortality of 0.40 (i.e. the FPA level) would drive the stock to Blim, suggesting that the choice of biomass and target reference points are not consistent for this stock
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