Who Needs Guidance?

A key issue in guidance provision is how to make services flexible and responsive to client need. A model is presented which distinguishes between individuals with high, medium and low levels of readiness for career decisionmaking. It is suggested that those with high levels can be referred to self-help services; those with moderate readiness to brief staff-assisted services; and those with low readiness to individual case-managed services. The theoretical basis for the model, the use of diagnostic instruments within the model, its implications for career resource rooms and Internet websites, and its staffing implications, are discussed. Elements of the model are currently being applied in a careers service setting in Coventry. The main principles of this work are described, and the more general relevance to the model to current policy issues in the UK is examined. The Centre for Guidance Studies was created in 1998 by the University of Derby and five careers service companies (the Careers Consortium (East Midlands Ltd.). The centre aims to bridge the gap between guidance theory and practice. It supports and connects guidance practitioners, policy-makers and researchers through research activities and learning opportunities; and by providing access to resources related to guidance and lifelong learning

Cholesterol and coronary heart disease: screening and treatment

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the United Kingdom, accounting for just under one quarter of all deaths in 1995: 27% among men and 21% among women.1 Although many CHD deaths occur among elderly people, CHD accounts for 31% of male and 13% of female deaths within the 45–64 age group

Precautionary labelling of foods for allergen content: are we ready for a global framework?

© 2014 Allen et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.Food allergy appears to be on the rise with the current mainstay of treatment centred on allergen avoidance. Mandatory allergen labelling has improved the safety of food for allergic consumers. However an additional form of voluntary labelling (termed precautionary allergen labelling) has evolved on a wide range of packaged goods, in a bid by manufacturers to minimise risk to customers, and the negative impact on business that might result from exposure to trace amounts of food allergen present during cross-contamination during production. This has resulted in near ubiquitous utilisation of a multitude of different precautionary allergen labels with subsequent confusion amongst many consumers as to their significance. The global nature of food production and manufacturing makes harmonisation of allergen labelling regulations across the world a matter of increasing importance. Addressing inconsistencies across countries with regards to labelling legislation, as well as improvement or even banning of precautionary allergy labelling are both likely to be significant steps forward in improved food safety for allergic families. This article outlines the current status of allergen labelling legislation around the world and reviews the value of current existing precautionary allergen labelling for the allergic consumer. We strongly urge for an international framework to be considered to help roadmap a solution to the weaknesses of the current systems, and discuss the role of legislation in facilitating this

Generic bounds on dipolar gravitational radiation from inspiralling compact binaries

Various alternative theories of gravity predict dipolar gravitational radiation in addition to quadrupolar radiation. We show that gravitational wave (GW) observations of inspiralling compact binaries can put interesting constraints on the strengths of the dipole modes of GW polarizations. We put forward a physically motivated gravitational waveform for dipole modes, in the Fourier domain, in terms of two parameters: one which captures the relative amplitude of the dipole mode with respect to the quadrupole mode ($\alpha$) and the other a dipole term in the phase ($\beta$). We then use this two parameter representation to discuss typical bounds on their values using GW measurements. We obtain the expected bounds on the amplitude parameter $\alpha$ and the phase parameter $\beta$ for Advanced LIGO (AdvLIGO) and Einstein Telescope (ET) noise power spectral densities using Fisher information matrix. AdvLIGO and ET may at best bound $\alpha$ to an accuracy of $\sim10^{-2}$ and $\sim10^{-3}$ and $\beta$ to an accuracy of $\sim10^{-5}$ and $\sim10^{-6}$ respectively.Comment: Matches with the published versio

Living with an Older Person Dying from Cancer, Lung Disease or Dementia: Health Outcomes from a General Practice Cohort Study

CONTEXT: Increasing numbers of people will die from chronic disease. Families contribute significantly to end-of-life care but their role may not be recognized. OBJECTIVES: To 1) establish the proportion of older cohabitees identified in primary care as "carers;" 2) describe demographic and lifestyle characteristics of cohabitees of people terminally ill with cancer, dementia, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD); 3) describe their health a year before and after bereavement; and 5) compare health outcomes between cohabitees of people dying with cancer, COPD, or dementia. METHODS: Retrospective cohort study using a U.K. primary care database (The Health Improvement Network) of 13,693 bereaved cohabitees (a proxy marker for being a carer), aged 60 years or older of people dying from cancer, COPD, or dementia. Characteristics were described one year before and after bereavement. We compared cancer, COPD, and dementia cohabitee outcomes using incidence rate ratios one year before and after bereavement and calculated mortality risk post-bereavement. RESULTS: A total of 6.9% of cohabitees were recorded as carers. Health outcomes differed little between the three groups of cohabitees in the year prior to or after bereavement. The proportion of cohabitees with six or more consultations increased the year after bereavement (cancer cohabitees 16.0% to 18.8%, COPD cohabitees 17.8% to 20.4% and dementia cohabitees 15.5% to 17.5%). At post-bereavement (follow-up median 3 years, IQR 1.3-5.4), we found no mortality differences between the three groups. CONCLUSION: Recording of carers of terminally ill people was suboptimal. Cause of bereavement produced few differential effects on health outcomes or mortality

The ROTSE-III Robotic Telescope System

The observation of a prompt optical flash from GRB990123 convincingly demonstrated the value of autonomous robotic telescope systems. Pursuing a program of rapid follow-up observations of gamma-ray bursts, the Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE) has developed a next-generation instrument, ROTSE-III, that will continue the search for fast optical transients. The entire system was designed as an economical robotic facility to be installed at remote sites throughout the world. There are seven major system components: optics, optical tube assembly, CCD camera, telescope mount, enclosure, environmental sensing & protection and data acquisition. Each is described in turn in the hope that the techniques developed here will be useful in similar contexts elsewhere.Comment: 19 pages, including 4 figures. To be published in PASP in January, 2003. PASP Number IP02-11

de Sitter geodesics: reappraising the notion of motion

The de Sitter spacetime is transitive under a combination of translations and proper conformal transformations. Its usual family of geodesics, however, does not take into account this property. As a consequence, there are points in de Sitter spacetime which cannot be joined to each other by any one of these geodesics. By taking into account the appropriate transitivity properties in the variational principle, a new family of maximizing trajectories is obtained, whose members are able to connect any two points of the de Sitter spacetime. These geodesics introduce a new notion of motion, given by a combination of translations and proper conformal transformations, which may possibly become important at very-high energies, where conformal symmetry plays a significant role.Comment: 9 pages. V2: Presentation changes aiming at clarifying the text; version accepted for publication in Gen. Rel. Gra

Atomic data from the IRON Project. I. Electron-impact scattering of Fe17+ using <I>R</I>-matrix theory with intermediate coupling

We present results for electron-impact excitation of F-like Fe calculated using R-matrix theory where an intermediate-coupling frame transformation (ICFT) is used to obtain level-resolved collision strengths. Two such calculations are performed, the first expands the target using 2s2 2p5, 2s 2p6, 2s2 2p4 3l, 2s 2p5 3l, and 2p6 3l configurations while the second calculation includes the 2s2 2p4 4l, 2s 2p5 4l, and 2p6 4l configurations as well. The effect of the additional structure in the latter calculation on the n=3 resonances is explored and compared with previous calculations. We find strong resonant enhancement of the effective collision strengths to the 2s2 2p4 3s levels. A comparison with a Chandra X-ray observation of Capella shows that the n=4 R-matrix calculation leads to good agreement with observation</p