A Framework for delivering legal research skills training online via a Virtual Learning Environment to be implemented at the School of Oriental and African Studies

This research project aimed generally to investigate the use of a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to deliver legal research skills training at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). Legal research skills are an increasingly important part of students’ studies. It is vital that law graduates are equipped with the necessary skills to research a legal problem adequately to become a competent legal practitioner. As SOAS law students study not only English and EU law, but also the laws of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, they need to be able to develop research skills that enable them to find relevant regional material effectively, accurately and successfully. However, a number of problems have come to light at SOAS which have initiated a change in the way legal research skills training is currently delivered – including the issue of student retention, high numbers of international students, diversity of students’ backgrounds and skills, and their different information needs. Thus, an investigation was undertaken into how SOAS can use the capabilities of a VLE to help change the current approach to legal research skills training. A questionnaire was delivered to all law students currently studying at SOAS to discover their specific information needs relating to legal research skills. Additionally, an evaluation policy was constructed using previous research and the experience of other institutions, to evaluate two existing legal research skills programmes available in the UK and Australia. The results of this evaluation and questionnaire help to inform the construction of the framework. The results provided a general framework for the delivery of legal research skills training to undergraduate students at SOAS. By including the more generic skills as well as specific legal research skills, this framework has a wider application and can, therefore, be used, compared and adapted for further research by other institutions

Researching Islamic Law: an introduction

This article by Sarah Spells from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, focuses on the sources of Islamic law and provides a simple introduction to finding and researching this area, with suggestions of useful and notable resources

Correction of diffraction effects in confocal raman microspectroscopy

A mathematical approach developed to correct depth profiles of wet-chemically modified polymer films obtained by confocal Raman microscopy is presented which takes into account scattered contributions originated from a diffraction-limited laser focal volume. It is demonstrated that the problem can be described using a linear Fredholm integral equation of the first kind which correlates apparent and true Raman intensities with the depth resolution curve of the instrument. The calculations of the corrected depth profiles show that considerable differences between apparent and corrected depth profiles exist at the surface, especially when profiles with strong concentration gradients are dealt with or an instrument with poor depth resolution is used. Degrees of modification at the surface obtained by calculation of the corrected depth profiles are compared with those measured by FTIR-ATR and show an excellent concordance.</p

Risks and health consequences of forgoing, delaying, or having trouble accessing needed health care among Medicare beneficiaries

Medicare provides health care coverage for approximately 93% of non-institutionalized older adults. Compared to uninsured adults, Medicare beneficiaries have greater access to needed healthcare including preventative care. However, disparities in accessing needed health care still exist among Medicare beneficiaries. Prior research has described barriers to accessing needed health care among older Medicare beneficiaries, such as transportation and health system characteristics, but little is known about prevalence, risks, or health consequences of older Medicare beneficiaries delaying, forgoing, or having trouble accessing needed health care. The three studies included in this dissertation followed a nationally representative sample of older Medicare beneficiaries to describe the phenomenon of older adults delaying, forgoing, or having trouble getting needed care. Study 1 described the prevalence and risks of Medicare beneficiaries forgoing, delaying, or having trouble getting needed medical care. Estimates of the prevalence and risks for forgoing, delaying, or having trouble accessing needed care were estimated separately for five years beginning with 2006 and ending in 2010 using the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS). A meta-analysis was conducted to determine overall effect sizes for the five years of data. Study results revealed that about one in every nine older Medicare beneficiaries reported forgoing, delaying, or having trouble accessing needed health care. Beneficiaries most likely to report going without or having trouble getting needed care were more likely to be of minority status, younger, female, more educated, live in a non-metropolitan area, have a lower annual income, have no supplementary insurance, be in poorer health, and have multiple chronic conditions or disabilities. This study confirmed that disparities in accessing needed care exist among Medicare beneficiaries. The study findings also revealed that those most likely to delay, forgo, or have trouble accessing needed care are among the most vulnerable Medicare beneficiaries due to their multiple chronic conditions or disabilities. The second study examined whether reports of forgoing, delaying, or having trouble accessing needed health care was prognostic of receiving an influenza vaccination in the following year. This study followed the 2006-cohort and 2007-cohort from the 2007 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey to determine if receipt of the influenza vaccination in 2008 was associated with forgoing, delaying, or having trouble accessing needed health care. Nearly one in every four older Medicare beneficiaries reported not receiving an influenza vaccination. Those who reported forgoing, delaying, or having trouble accessing needed health care were significantly less likely (OR = 0.749; 95% CI = 0.609, 0.922) to receive an influenza vaccination the following year. Findings suggest that forgoing, delaying, or having trouble accessing needed healthcare increases risk for vaccination non-compliance; which in turn can increase risk for experiencing adverse health outcomes associated with influenza. The results of this study suggest that more proactive measures may be needed to increase vaccination rates among older adults who forgo, delay, or have trouble accessing needed health care. Study 3 examined whether reports of forgoing, delaying, or having trouble accessing needed care were prognostic of hospital admissions among older Medicare beneficiaries. Number and length of hospital admissions in 2010 were determined for respondents to the 2009 MCBS survey. Results revealed that forgoing, delaying, or having trouble accessing needed care was not prognostic (Hazards Ratio = 0.905; 95% CI = 0.722, 1.134) of future hospital admissions after adjusting for other risk factors associated with hospitalizations. Findings suggest that there may be potential confounding between forgoing, delaying, or having trouble accessing needed health care and hospital admissions. Further work should be considered to examine potential confounders and/or other health outcomes. The three studies in this dissertation improve our understanding of the prevalence, risks, and consequences of older Medicare beneficiaries forgoing, delaying, or having trouble accessing needed health care. The findings will inform the importance of developing interventions or policies aimed at improving older Medicare beneficiaries’ access to needed health care

Health Educator Perspectives on Seeking Medicaid Reimbursement in Indiana

Health education is a growing field. However, there is confusion about the role delineation of health education specialists (HES) and other health education (HE) providers. Additionally, recent reimbursement opportunities allow employers to bill for HE services but offer confusing language regarding eligible service-providing professionals. This study surveyed health educators in Indiana to assess knowledge, attitudes, and perceived abilities to bill Medicaid and other insurers for HE services. Using a cross-sectional research design, an original 22-item Web-based questionnaire was developed and distributed to all Certified Health Education Specialist/Master Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES/MCHES) practitioners residing in Indiana. Additional respondents were recruited using a snowball technique, as original respondents asked to share the survey with colleagues. A final data set of 61 respondents was analyzed. All respondents’ organizations provided HE services, with the majority indicating they do not charge and do not bill for HE services. Additionally, 60% of the respondents agreed that HES should be reimbursed for services, and the vast majority believed reimbursement to be important for the field. With recent reimbursement opportunities for HE and preventative health services, it is important that HES advocate for the profession and for potential reimbursement opportunities, such as Medicaid, to enhance the field and support HES jobs

The phonon theory of liquid thermodynamics

Heat capacity of matter is considered to be its most important property because it holds information about system's degrees of freedom as well as the regime in which the system operates, classical or quantum. Heat capacity is well understood in gases and solids but not in the third state of matter, liquids, and is not discussed in physics textbooks as a result. The perceived difficulty is that interactions in a liquid are both strong and system-specific, implying that the energy strongly depends on the liquid type and that, therefore, liquid energy can not be calculated in general form. Here, we develop a phonon theory of liquids where this problem is avoided. The theory covers both classical and quantum regimes. We demonstrate good agreement of calculated and experimental heat capacity of 21 liquids, including noble, metallic, molecular and hydrogen-bonded network liquids in a wide range of temperature and pressure.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

CYP2C19 pharmacogenetics in advanced cancer: compromised function independent of genotype

CYP2C19 is a drug-metabolising enzyme involved in the metabolism of a number of chemotherapeutic agents including cyclophosphamide. Variants of the CYP2C19 gene result in a loss of function polymorphism, which affects approximately 3% of the Caucasian population. These individuals are poor metabolisers (PM) of a wide range of medications including omeprazole (OMP). In healthy subjects PM can be identified through homozygous variant genotype. However, a discordance between CYP2C19 genotype and phenotype has been reported previously in a small study of cancer patients. To investigate whether CYP2C19 activity was decreased in patients with advanced cancer, CYP2C19 genotype was determined in 33 advanced cancer patients using PCR-RFLP analysis for the two important allelic variants (*2,681G>A and *3,636G>A) and the activity of the enzyme was evaluated using the CYP2C19 probe drug OMP. The activity of the drug-metabolising enzyme CYP2C19 was severely compromised in advanced cancer patients, resulting in a PM status in 37% of the patients who had normal genotype. This is significantly (P<0.0005) higher than that would be predicted from the genotypic status of these patients. There was no evidence of a correlation between compromised CYP2C19 activity and any of the proinflammatory cytokines or acute phase response proteins studied. However, there was preliminary evidence of an association between PM status and low body mass (P=0.03). There is increasing interest in using pharmacogenetics to ‘individualise medicine', however, the results of this study indicate that in a cancer population genotyping for CYP2C19 would significantly underestimate the number of phenotypic PM of drugs, such as cyclophosphamide, which may be metabolised by this enzyme