The case for new academic workspaces

Executive summary: This report draws upon the combined efforts of a number of estates professionals, architects, academics, designers, and senior managers involved in the planning of new university buildings for the 21st century. Across these perspectives, all would agree – although perhaps for different reasons - that this planning is difficult and that a number of particular considerations apply in the design of academic workspaces. Despite these difficulties, they will also agree that when this planning goes well, ‘good’ buildings are truly transformational – for both the university as a whole and the people who work and study in them. The value of well-designed buildings goes far beyond their material costs, and endures long after those costs have been forgotten ..

Size and emotion or depth and emotion? Evidence, using Matryoshka (Russian) dolls, of children using physical depth as a proxy for emotional charge

Background: The size and emotion effect is the tendency for children to draw people and other objects with a positive emotional charge larger than those with a negative or neutral charge. Here we explored the novel idea that drawing size might be acting as a proxy for depth (proximity).Methods: Forty-two children (aged 3-11 years) chose, from 2 sets of Matryoshka (Russian) dolls, a doll to represent a person with positive, negative or neutral charge, which they placed in front of themselves on a sheet of A3 paper. Results: We found that the children used proximity and doll size, to indicate emotional charge. Conclusions: These findings are consistent with the notion that in drawings, children are using size as a proxy for physical closeness (proximity), as they attempt with varying success to put positive charged items closer to, or negative and neutral charge items further away from, themselves

Developing a competency-based education training programme for university tutors

Recently, there has been an increase in the adoption of competency-based approaches (CBA) in higher education and, for some practitioners, this involves modifying existing provision. This case study describes the development, delivery, and evaluation of a transnational training programme that was developed for Chinese university tutors who planned to implement CBA in to their teaching. The 25-hour training programme was designed to be experiential in nature, so practitioners learnt about and experienced CBA simultaneously. Although the participants rated the programme favourably, we identified two main challenges associated with the training course: anxiety around the CBA and the need to be aware of the learners' cultural climate. Recommendations for others who are developing similar training programmes that model a CBA are discussed

Children's Medicines in Tanzania: A National Survey of Administration Practices and Preferences.

The dearth of age-appropriate formulations of many medicines for children poses a major challenge to pediatric therapeutic practice, adherence, and health care delivery worldwide. We provide information on current administration practices of pediatric medicines and describe key stakeholder preferences for new formulation characteristics. We surveyed children aged 6-12 years, parents/caregivers over age 18 with children under age 12, and healthcare workers in 10 regions of Tanzania to determine current pediatric medicine prescription and administration practices as well as preferences for new formulations. Analyses were stratified by setting, pediatric age group, parent/caregiver education, and healthcare worker cadre. Complete data were available for 206 children, 202 parents/caregivers, and 202 healthcare workers. Swallowing oral solid dosage forms whole or crushing/dissolving them and mixing with water were the two most frequently reported methods of administration. Children frequently reported disliking medication taste, and many had vomited doses. Healthcare workers reported medicine availability most significantly influences prescribing practices. Most parents/caregivers and children prefer sweet-tasting medicine. Parents/caregivers and healthcare workers prefer oral liquid dosage forms for young children, and had similar thresholds for the maximum number of oral solid dosage forms children at different ages can take. There are many impediments to acceptable and accurate administration of medicines to children. Current practices are associated with poor tolerability and the potential for under- or over-dosing. Children, parents/caregivers, and healthcare workers in Tanzania have clear preferences for tastes and formulations, which should inform the development, manufacturing, and marketing of pediatric medications for resource-limited settings

Performance of typical and superior face recognisers on a novel interactive face matching procedure

Unfamiliar simultaneous face matching is error prone. Reducing incorrect identification decisions will positively benefit forensic and security contexts. The absence of view-independent information in static images likely contributes to the difficulty of unfamiliar face matching. We tested whether a novel interactive viewing procedure that provides the user with 3D structural information as they rotate a facial image to different orientations would improve face matching accuracy. We tested the performance of ‘typical’ (Experiment 1) and ‘superior’ (Experiment 2) face recognisers, comparing their performance using high quality (Experiment 3) and pixelated (Experiment 4) Facebook profile images. In each trial, participants responded whether two images featured the same person with one of these images being either a static face, a video providing orientation information, or an interactive image. Taken together, the results show that fluid orientation information and interactivity prompt shifts in criterion and support matching performance. Because typical and superior face recognisers both benefited from the structural information provided by the novel viewing procedures, our results point to qualitatively similar reliance on pictorial encoding in these groups. This also suggests that interactive viewing tools can be valuable in assisting face matching in high performing practitioner groups

Emergence of Anti-Cancer Drug Resistance: Exploring the Importance of the Microenvironmental Niche via a Spatial Model

Practically, all chemotherapeutic agents lead to drug resistance. Clinically, it is a challenge to determine whether resistance arises prior to, or as a result of, cancer therapy. Further, a number of different intracellular and microenvironmental factors have been correlated with the emergence of drug resistance. With the goal of better understanding drug resistance and its connection with the tumor microenvironment, we have developed a hybrid discrete-continuous mathematical model. In this model, cancer cells described through a particle-spring approach respond to dynamically changing oxygen and DNA damaging drug concentrations described through partial differential equations. We thoroughly explored the behavior of our self-calibrated model under the following common conditions: a fixed layout of the vasculature, an identical initial configuration of cancer cells, the same mechanism of drug action, and one mechanism of cellular response to the drug. We considered one set of simulations in which drug resistance existed prior to the start of treatment, and another set in which drug resistance is acquired in response to treatment. This allows us to compare how both kinds of resistance influence the spatial and temporal dynamics of the developing tumor, and its clonal diversity. We show that both pre-existing and acquired resistance can give rise to three biologically distinct parameter regimes: successful tumor eradication, reduced effectiveness of drug during the course of treatment (resistance), and complete treatment failure

Population-based incidence and 5-year survival for hospital-admitted traumatic brain and spinal cord injury, Western Australia, 2003-2008

This study aimed at analysing first-time hospitalisations for traumatic brain injury (TBI) and spinal cord injury (SCI) in Western Australia (WA), in terms of socio-demographic profile, cause of injury, relative risks and survival, using tabular and regression analyses of linked hospital discharge and mortality census files and comparing results with published standardised mortality rates (SMRs) for TBI. Participants were all 9,114 first hospital admissions for TBI or SCI from 7/2003 to 6/2008, linked to mortality census data through 12/2008, and the main outcome measures were number of cases by cause, SMRs in hospital and post-discharge by year through year 5. Road crashes accounted for 34 % of hospitalised TBI and 52 % of hospitalised SCI. 8,460 live TBI discharges experienced 580 deaths during 24,494 person-years of follow-up. The life-table expectation of deaths in the cohort was 164. Post-discharge SMRs were 7.66 in year 1, 3.86 in year 2 and averaged 2.31 in years 3 through 5. 317 live SCI discharges experienced 18 deaths during 929 years of follow-up. Post-discharge SMRs were 7.36 in year 1 and a fluctuating average of 2.13 in years 2 through 5. Use of data from model systems does not appear to yield biased SMRs. Similarly no systematic variation was observed between all-age studies and the more numerous studies that focused on those aged 14 to 16 and older. Based on two studies, SMRs for TBI, however, may be higher in year 2 post-discharge in Australia than elsewhere. That possibility and its cause warrant exploration. Expanding public TBI/SCI compensation in WA from road crash to all causes might triple TBI compensation and double SCI compensation

Intrasexual competition as a predictor of women's judgments of revenge pornography offending

Recent legislative developments have led to a marked increase in the empirical investigation of motivations and judgments of so-called acts of "revenge pornography" offending. In two independently sampled studies, we used moderation analyses to investigate whether higher levels of intrasexual competition predicted more lenient judgments of revenge pornography offenses as a function of sex (Study 1, N = 241), and whether such relationships would be further moderated by physical attractiveness (Study 2, N = 402). Potential covariates of callous-unemotional traits, empathy, and victimization history were controlled for. Opposing our hypotheses, we consistently observed a trend for higher levels of intrasexual competition being associated with more lenient judgments of revenge pornography offenses involving male victims by female participants. The results are discussed in terms of intrasexual competition potentially sharing variance with unobserved constructs in the wider sexological literature, and of the key relevance of these findings for future empirical investigation into judgments of nonconsensual image–based offending