From potential to reality: the development and use of an e-portfolio in social work education

Students studying for a degree in social work are required to undertake one hundred and seventy days of direct practice with service users in social care settings (TCSW, 2011). Traditionally students on practice placements have produced a hard copy portfolio which compiles evidence to meet a range of educational and professional requirements, as well as demonstrating key attributes such as critical thinking and reflection. Following a scoping exercise which demonstrated that there were significant advantages to using an electronic portfolio, the School of Health and Social Care at the University of Lincoln developed, piloted and introduced an eportfolio on both its’ undergraduate and Master’s social work degree programmes. This paper provides a rationale and contextualisation for the introduction of this type of innovative digital technology and reviews the pedagogical and practical opportunities and limitations presented by the e-portfolio. This presentation will also provide an opportunity for participants to view the e-portfolio in operation

Meat and Milk Production on Irrigated Birdsfoot Trefoil Pastures in the Mountain West USA

Irrigated birdsfoot trefoil (BFT; Lotus corniculatus L.) is a productive, persistent perennial legume in the Mountain West region of the United States of America (USA) (MacAdam and Griggs 2006). It does not cause bloat, even when grazed in pure stands, because it contains a relatively small amount (2-4% of dry matter (DM)) of condensed tannins (Mueller-Harvey 2006; Waghorn 2008). Birdsfoot trefoil tannins bind excess plant proteins at rumen pH (~ pH 6.2) sufficiently to prevent bloat and then release these proteins into the abomasum at gastric pH (~ pH 2.5). This allows plant proteins to be digested to amino acids that can be absorbed in the small intestines (Waghorn et al. 1987). Short-term increases in productivity have been demonstrated in beef cattle (Wen et al. 2002) and dairy cows (Woodward et al. 1999) grazing BFT, but few studies have looked at longer-term effects on commercial farms. This study investigated the rate of season-long average daily liveweight gain and meat quality of cattle (MacAdam et al. 2011) and the intake and milk production of dairy cattle grazing pure stands of BFT on commercial farms during the summer grazing period of 2012

Universal Features in Phonological Neighbor Networks

Human speech perception involves transforming a countinuous acoustic signal into discrete linguistically meaningful units (phonemes) while simultaneously causing a listener to activate words that are similar to the spoken utterance and to each other. The Neighborhood Activation Model posits that phonological neighbors (two forms [words] that differ by one phoneme) compete significantly for recognition as a spoken word is heard. This definition of phonological similarity can be extended to an entire corpus of forms to produce a phonological neighbor network (PNN). We study PNNs for five languages: English, Spanish, French, Dutch, and German. Consistent with previous work, we find that the PNNs share a consistent set of topological features. Using an approach that generates random lexicons with increasing levels of phonological realism, we show that even random forms with minimal relationship to any real language, combined with only the empirical distribution of language-specific phonological form lengths, are sufficient to produce the topological properties observed in the real language PNNs. The resulting pseudo-PNNs are insensitive to the level of lingustic realism in the random lexicons but quite sensitive to the shape of the form length distribution. We therefore conclude that “universal” features seen across multiple languages are really string universals, not language universals, and arise primarily due to limitations in the kinds of networks generated by the one-step neighbor definition. Taken together, our results indicate that caution is warranted when linking the dynamics of human spoken word recognition to the topological properties of PNNs, and that the investigation of alternative similarity metrics for phonological forms should be a priorit

Impact of COVID-19 on 'Living Well' with Mild-to-Moderate Dementia in the Community: Findings from the IDEAL Cohort

Background: Negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on people with dementia have been widely-documented, but most studies have relied on carer reports and few have compared responses to information collected before the pandemic. Objective: We aimed to explore the impact of the pandemic on community-dwelling individuals with mild-to-moderate dementia and compare responses with pre-pandemic data. Methods: During the second wave of the pandemic, we conducted structured telephone interviews with 173 people with dementia and 242 carers acting as informants, all of whom had previously participated in the IDEAL cohort. Where possible, we benchmarked responses against pre-pandemic data. Results: Significant perceived negative impacts were identified in cognitive and functional skills and ability to engage in self-care and manage everyday activities, along with increased levels of loneliness and discontinuity in sense of self and a decline in perceived capability to 'live well'. Compared to pre-pandemic data, there were lower levels of pain, depression, and anxiety, higher levels of optimism, and better satisfaction with family support. There was little impact on physical health, mood, social connections and relationships, or perceptions of neighborhood characteristics. Conclusion: Efforts to mitigate negative impacts of pandemic-related restrictions and restore quality of life could focus on reablement to address the effects on participation in everyday activities, creating opportunities for social contact to reduce loneliness, and personalized planning to reconnect people with their pre-COVID selves. Such efforts may build on the resilience demonstrated by people with dementia and carers in coping with the pandemic

Clinical presentation, biochemical, and haematological parameters and their association with outcome in patients with Ebola virus disease: an observational cohort study.

BACKGROUND: Clinical management of Ebola virus disease remains challenging. Routine laboratory analytics are often unavailable in the outbreak setting, and few data exist for the associated haematological and biochemical abnormalities. We aimed to assess laboratory and clinical data from patients with Ebola virus disease to better inform clinical management algorithms, improve understanding of key variables associated with outcome, and provide insight into the pathophysiology of Ebola virus disease. METHODS: We recruited all patients, alive on arrival, with confirmed Ebola virus disease who were admitted to the Kerry Town Ebola treatment centre in Sierra Leone. At admission, all patients had clinical presentation recorded and blood taken for Ebola confirmation using reverse-transcriptase-PCR (RT-PCR) and for haematological and biochemical analysis. We studied the association between these and clinical outcome. The primary outcome was discharge from the Ebola treatment centre. FINDINGS: 150 patients were admitted to the treatment centre between Dec 8, 2014, and Jan 9, 2015. The mean age of patients was 26 years (SD 14·7). Case fatality rate was 37% (55/150). Most patients presented with stage 2 (gastrointestinal involvement, 72/118 [61%]) and stage 3 (severe or complicated, 12/118 [10%]) disease. Acute kidney injury was common (52/104 [50%]), as were abnormal serum potassium (32/97 [33%]), severe hepatitis (54/92 [59%]), and raised C-reactive protein (21/100 [21%]). Haematological abnormalities were common, including raised haematocrit (15/100 [15%]), thrombocytopenia (47/104 [45%]), and granulocytosis (44/104 [42%]). Severe acute kidney injury, low RT-PCR cycle threshold (<20 cycles), and severe hepatitis were independently associated with mortality. INTERPRETATION: Ebola virus disease is associated with a high prevalence of haematological and biochemical abnormalities, even in mild disease and in the absence of gastrointestinal symptoms. Clinical care that targets hypovolaemia, electrolyte disturbance, and acute kidney injury is likely to reduce historically high case fatality rates. FUNDING: None

Mathematical Modelling of the Impact of Liquid Properties on Droplet Size from Flat Fan Nozzles

Flat fan nozzles atomize crop protection products, breaking them into droplets. Droplet size matters - smaller droplets give better perfor- mance, but very small droplets drift. We want to use mathematical models to better understand how liquid properties affect droplet size. There are three types of breakup: wavy sheet, perforation, and rim. In wavy sheet breakup, increasing viscosity or surface tension increases droplet size. To investigate further, we carry out direct numerical simulations of jet breakup, which show that suface tension has little effect, but increasing viscosity leads to fewer droplets. Decreasing the jet velocity also results in fewer droplets, with a wider size distribution. Each type of breakup involves primary breakup into cylinders of fluid, then secondary breakup into droplets. We thus consider the breakup of a cylinder of fluid. Direct numerical simulations suggest that within the tested parameter range viscosity has little impact on droplet size, however it does influence the timescale on which the instability evolves considerably. Linear stability analysis suggests that increasing viscosity increases the wavelength of the most unstable mode, which we expect leads to larger droplets, and that it reduces the rate of breakup. Perforations - holes in the sheet - also lead to breakup. We find how the length fraction of the sheet that is void changes with time. After breakup, the droplets continue to evolve. We develop a model, based on a transport equation, for this process. A key parameter is the breakup rate constant - larger values lead to more breakup, fewer large droplets, and a narrower size distribution. Together, these mathematical approaches improve our understanding of how droplets form, and can be used to guide experimental work

The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment

The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in operation since July 2014. This paper describes the second data release from this phase, and the fourteenth from SDSS overall (making this, Data Release Fourteen or DR14). This release makes public data taken by SDSS-IV in its first two years of operation (July 2014-2016). Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14 is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14 is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the first data from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2), including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data driven machine learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of the publicly available data from SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS website (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release, and provides links to data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be followed by SDSS-V.Comment: SDSS-IV collaboration alphabetical author data release paper. DR14 happened on 31st July 2017. 19 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJS on 28th Nov 2017 (this is the "post-print" and "post-proofs" version; minor corrections only from v1, and most of errors found in proofs corrected

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

Ontogeny and thermogenic role for sternal fat in female sheep

Brown adipose tissue acting through a unique uncoupling protein (UCP1) has a critical role in preventing hypothermia in new-born sheep but is then considered to rapidly disappear during postnatal life. The extent to which the anatomical location of fat influences postnatal development and thermogenic function, particularly following feeding, in adulthood, are not known and were both examined in our study. Changes in gene expression of functionally important pathways (i.e. thermogenesis, development, adipogenesis and metabolism) were compared between sternal and retroperitoneal fat depots together with a representative skeletal muscle over the first month of postnatal life, coincident with the loss of brown fat and accumulation of white fat. In adult sheep, implanted temperature probes were used to characterise the thermogenic response of fat and muscle to feeding and the effects of reduced or increased adiposity. UCP1 was more abundant within sternal than retroperitoneal fat and was only retained in the sternal depot of adults. Distinct differences in the abundance of gene pathway markers were apparent between tissues, with sternal fat exhibiting some similarities with muscle that were not apparent in the retroperitoneal depot. In adults, the post-prandial rise in temperature was greater and more prolonged in sternal than retroperitoneal fat and muscle, a difference that was maintained with altered adiposity. In conclusion, sternal adipose tissue retains UCP1 into adulthood when it shows a greater thermogenic response to feeding than muscle and retroperitoneal fat. Sternal fat may be more amenable to targeted interventions that promote thermogenesis in large mammals