Liberating the NHS; commissioning, outsourcing and a new politics debate

In the short months following the result of the UK 2010 General election, a new Government White Paper has been released entitled: Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS (Department of Health (DH), 2010a). It strives to distance itself from previous health-care proposals (DH, 2009), yet if the initiatives of this latest paper are combined against previous initiatives, also using high impact declarative terms, such as competition and choice, it is clear that little has changed and more important principles than saving money are at risk

Effective classroom practice: a mixed-method study of influences and outcomes: a research paper

This brief paper reports findings from a two-year research project, funded by the ESRC, which identified, described and analyzed variation in effective primary and secondary school teachers’ classroom practice. The study also explored these practices in relation to different school contexts and teachers’ professional life phases in order to draw out relevant implications for policy and practice

Adverse events following influenza immunization reported by healthcare personnel using active surveillance based on text messages

Studies have demonstrated that healthcare personnel (HCP) have concerns about the potential side effects of trivalent inactivate influenza vaccine (IIV3).1-3 A recent metaanalysis of reasons HCP refuse IIV3 indicates the strongest predictors of vaccine acceptance are belief that the vaccine is safe and belief the vaccine does not cause the disease it is meant to prevent.

Cosmic String Power Spectrum, Bispectrum and Trispectrum

We use analytic calculations of the post-recombination gravitational effects of cosmic strings to estimate the resulting CMB power spectrum, bispectrum and trispectrum. We place a particular emphasis on multipole regimes relevant for forthcoming CMB experiments, notably the Planck satellite. These calculations use a flat sky approximation, generalising previous work by integrating string contributions from last scattering to the present day, finding the dominant contributions to the correlators for multipoles l > 50. We find a well-behaved shape for the string bispectrum (without divergences) which is easily distinguishable from the inflationary bispectra which possess significant acoustic peaks. We estimate that the nonlinearity parameter characterising the bispectrum is approximately f_NL \sim -20 (given present string constraints from the CMB power spectrum. We also apply these unequal time correlator methods to calculate the trispectrum for parrallelogram configurations, again valid over a large range of angular scales relevant for WMAP and Planck, as well as on very small angular scales. We find that, unlike the bispectrum which is suppressed by symmetry considerations, the trispectrum for cosmic strings is large. Our current estimate for the trispectrum parameter is tau_NL \sim 10^5, which may provide one of the strongest constraints on the string model as estimators for the trispectrum are developed

Pharmacological characterization of losartan as a CCR2 antagonist and pre-clinical and pharmacodynamic assessment as a potential anti-metastatic therapy

2017 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.To view the abstract, please see the full text of the document

Neoarchean Arc Magmatism, Subsequent Collisional Orogenesis, and Paleoproterozoic Disruption within the Western Churchill Province: Implications for the Growth and Modification of Lower Continental Crust

The growth and modification of continental lithosphere are fundamental geologic processes that have had a profound effect on Earth’s evolution. The lower continental crust can play a myriad of roles pertaining to these processes depending on the strength, age, temperature, and composition of the rocks present. However, the lower continental crust is impossible to sample in-situ, and thus observations of modern lower continental crust are limited to seismic studies and xenolith studies, which provide mere snap shots of the lower crust. High pressure granulite terranes provide 4 dimensional, and spatially resolvable, analogues of lower continental crust. The Athabasca granulite terrane (AGT), along the eastern margin of the Rae subprovince of the western Churchill Province, is underlain by \u3e20,000 km2 of high pressure granulite, and is arguably to be the largest intact exposure of lower continental crust in the North America. Work presented herein provides a detailed temporal and tectonic framework for interpreting rocks of the AGT, and evaluates rocks ca. 400 km along strike to test for spatial consistency. Results suggest that the Paleoproterozoic involved the juxtaposition of various lithotectonic blocks along major ductile shear zones that vary in metamorphic conditions, timing and kinematics. Sinistral kinematics within the Cora Lake shear zone within the AGT, for instance, are explained by accretion of the Lynn-Lake and La Ronge arcs along the southern periphery of the Churchill Province at ca. 1.88 Ga at the waning phases of granulite-facies conditions. Ca. 1.9 Ga deformation involved upright folding, and the development of a regionally extensive dextral transpressive fabrics, and appears to be spatially related to the Chipman dike swarm. This event may have been driven by accretionary and collisional tectonics between the Slave and western Churchill Province. IN-SIMS micro zircon geochronology suggests a ca. 2.1 Ga emplacement age for the Chipman dikes, and may be indicative of an incipient rift, which was the locust for ca. 1.9 Ga reactivation. Preceding these events was a major crustal thickening event that occurred immediately after widespread arc-like magmatism interpreted to represent early subduction and subsequent collisional orogenisis. Rocks along strike, 400 km to the northeast of the AGT, share a similar Neoarchean history, and dike swarm, but contain little evidence of regionally extensive Paleoproterozoic granulite-facies reactivation. The reasoning for this is unknown at current, but perhaps it is due to an increasing distance from the bounding Paleoproterozoic orogens. These data provide a four dimensional framework to evaluate changes in lower crustal properties and behavior for greater than 600 my

Countdown to 2010: Can we assess Ireland’s insect species diversity and loss?

peer-reviewedThe insects are the most diverse organisms on this planet and play an essential role in ecosystem functioning, yet we know very little about them. In light of the Convention on Biological Diversity, this paper summarises the known insect species numbers for Ireland and questions whether this is a true refl ection of our insect diversity. The total number of known species for Ireland is 11,422. Using species accumulation curves and a comparison with the British fauna, this study shows that the Irish list is incomplete and that the actual species number is much higher. However, even with a reasonable knowledge of the species in Ireland, insects are such speciose, small, and inconspicuous animals that it is diffi cult to assess species loss. It is impossible to know at one point in time the number of insect species in Ireland and, although it is useful to summarise the known number of species, it is essential that biodiversity indicators, such as the Red List Index, are developed