SODAS: Surveillance of Drugs of Abuse Study

Objective: Novel Psychoactive Substance (NPS) as a form of recreational drug use has become increasingly popular. There is a paucity of information with regards the prevalence and clinical sequalae of these drugs. The aim of this study was to detect NPS in patients presenting to the Emergency Department (ED) with suspected toxicological ingestion. Methods: The prospective study was performed in a large Emergency Department (ED) in the UK. During a three month period eighty patients were identified by clinicians as having potentially ingested a toxicological agent. Urine sample were analysed using liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry and basic clinical data was gathered. Results: 80 patients with a history of illicit or recreational drug consumption had urine screenings performed. 49% (39) of patients undergoing a screen had more than one illicit substance detected. 20% (16) of patients tested positive for at least one NPS. Conclusions: Almost half of patients presenting had ingestion of multiple substances which correlated poorly with self reporting of patients. Developing enhanced strategies to monitor evolving drug trends is crucial to the ability of clinicians to deliver care to this challenging group of patients

Purpose built student accommodation: changing face of student accommodation in Sheffield

The supply of Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) both nationally and within Sheffield, has increased considerably over the last decade and has played an important role in meeting the demands of both students and the Universities. This paper examines the current dynamics of the PBSA market in Sheffield, the effect that such accommodation has had upon the remainder of the city’s student accommodation, and the extent which the supply and demand may fluctuate in the future, especially in the face of recent changes made to the higher education sector. These questions were explored through interviews with PBSA providers, student landlords/agents, along with representatives from both Sheffield Universities as well as Sheffield City Council. The paper concludes that PBSA has had a substantial impact upon the student accommodation market in Sheffield. Whilst facilitating University growth it has also benefited both the student and landlord. However, much uncertainty hangs over the future of student demand in light of increasing University fees, which could have major implications for both PBSA providers and private landlords

Imitation a compromise

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit

Towards a middleware for generalised context management

It is widely accepted in the Pervasive Computing community that contextual interactions are the key to the delivery of truly calm technology. However, there is currently no easy way to incorporate contextual data into an application. If contextual data is used, it is generally in an ad hoc manner, which means that developers have to spend time on low-level details. There have been many projects investigating this area, however as yet none of them provide support for all of the key issues of dynamic composition and flexible representation of contextual information as well as the problems of scalability and adaptability to environmental changes. In this paper we present the Strathclyde Context Infrastructure (SCI), a middleware infrastructure for discovery, aggregation, and delivery of context information