Access courses as a site of engagement: a research project

This research project was funded by the Greater Manchester Strategic Alliance and Aimhigher Research Network North West. A database of Access students was held at the University of Salford that included students from 1998-2006. The names of the students were gathered by the Access Unit from their Enrichment Programme over the period. Ethical approval for the research was sought from the IRIS Director and advice on the Data Protection Act sought from the manager responsible within the university. The database contained information on name, age, address, telephone contact, gender, ethnicity, college and Access course attended. There were approximately 6000 entries on the database. “Access to higher education courses offer a route into higher education (HE) for those who do not have the educational qualifications which are usually required for entry. These courses provide the underpinning knowledge and skills needed for university-level study, and lead to the award of the Access to HE qualification, which is of an equivalent standard to Level 3 qualifications, such as A levels.” UCAS website. Individuals can study a range of courses in different subject areas such as health, science or humanities. Access courses can be studied over one year as a full time course or over two-three years as a part time course. The starting point for the study is the view that to enrol on an Access to HE course means that a major decision or turning point in an adult’s life has taken place and that the individual wants to change direction. This change of direction is important and suggests that individuals may have missed an opportunity earlier in their lives or do not wish to continue in the same employment situation or in the case of many women who are carers their circumstances have changed. The engagement in learning is an agentic act on the part of the individual that may be prompted by others in the immediate family or friends. However, a necessary aspect of this engagement is the provision of Access courses as a means to enter higher education or change employment

'If I cannot access services then there is no reason for me to test': the impact of health service charges on HIV testing and treatment amongst migrants in England

Policy governing entitlement to access government health care for foreign nationals in England is a subject of debate, controversy and confusion. Of particular concern to health providers has been the impact of National Health Service charges on delaying HIV testing and anti-retroviral treatment uptake and adherence amongst certain migrant groups. Data obtained through focus groups with 70 migrants from southern Africa, suggest that confusion over health care entitlements exists amongst those seeking health care and is reported amongst health service providers. This confusion, as well as financial difficulties and fears over deportation facing some migrants, can in turn be a factor influencing their decisions to avoid formal health services, resort to alternative and often ineffective or potentially adverse forms of therapy, and delay HIV testing and treatment uptake

Can we out-walk the type 2 diabetes mellitus epidemic?

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a chronic and debilitating disease whose prevalence continues to rise inexorably. Type 2 diabetes is usually preceded by a condition called prediabetes, which is characterised by impaired glucose regulation. Those with prediabetes have a significantly increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared to those with normal glucose control and therefore represent a key population in the prevention of type 2 diabetes. Physical inactivity is thought to be one of the key factors driving the increasing prevalence of prediabetes and type 2 diabetes and consequently forms a pivotal focus of initiatives aimed at their prevention. The principal aims of this thesis were to: 1) conduct a systematic review investigating the effectiveness of lifestyle and physical activity interventions at promoting physical activity in individuals with prediabetes and the effect of physical activity change on the risk of developing diabetes; 2) investigate the effect of walking activity on markers of chronic low grade inflammation; and 3) design and evaluate with objectively measured endpoints a physical activity intervention for adults at risk of developing type 2 diabetes that is suitable for implementation in a health care or community setting if found to be effective. The main findings are listed in the order of the stated aims. 1) Due to the dearth of controlled exercise training studies in those with prediabetes and the absence of evidence that previous diabetes prevention programmes have been successful at initiating clinically significant increases in physical activity, the evidence for the efficacy of physical activity behaviour change at prevention or delaying the progression to type 2 diabetes in those with prediabetes is equivocal. 2) Walking at levels that are consistent with the current physical activity recommendations is associated with reduced chronic low-grade inflammation, independent of other forms of physical activity. 3) The PREPARE programme, developed after a review of health behaviour theory and the current health care climate, is a theorydriven, group-based structured education programme designed to promote increased walking activity in individuals with prediabetes in a health care setting. A randomized controlled trial was conducted to test two versions of the PREPARE programme, a standard version and a pedometer version, against control conditions (advice leaflet). The standard version encouraged participants to set time-based goals based on generic exercise recommendations, whereas the pedometer version enabled participants to set personalized steps-per-day goals and to objectively self-monitor their daily physical activity levels using a pedometer. One hundred and three individuals were recruited to the study and follow-up was conducted at 3,6 and 12 months. At 12 months both intervention conditions were successful at achieving significant increases in objectively measured ambulatory activity; compared to the control group, those who received the pedometer version of the PREPARE programme increased their ambulatory activity by 1952 steps per day (95% CI 953 to 2951) and those who received the standard version by 1480 steps per day (95% CI 436 to 2522). However, significant improvements in glucose tolerance were only seen in the pedometer group, where 2-h glucose levels decreased by -0.94 mmol/l (95% Cl -1.79 to - 0.10) compared to control conditions, despite no significant change in body weight or waist circumference. This thesis has identified important limitations in the current evidence linking physical activity to the prevention of type 2 diabetes in those with prediabetes and has addressed several of these limitations by developing a theory-driven structured education programme which was shown to be successful at promoting physical activity and improving glucose tolerance in those with prediabetes to levels that are equal to or greater than previous multifactor diabetes prevention programmes. This is likely to have important implications for future diabetes prevention trials and clinical practice in the United Kingdom

Spatial and temporal patterns of nitrous oxide and their relationship to soil water and soil properties

Soil N2O flux is sensitive to soil moisture content and soil temperature, which are in turn sensitive to changes in climate and topography. Thus, N2O flux measurements exhibit a high degree of spatial and temporal variability. Knowing how the spatial distribution of soil N2O flux changes over time in a hummocky, agricultural landscape will identify measurement scales appropriate for estimates of N2O emissions from these types of terrains. As well, little is known about N2O emissions from uncultivated, ephemeral wetlands in agricultural landscapes, but this information is needed for accurate inventories of N2O emissions. The objectives of this study were to describe the spatial and temporal distribution of soil N2O flux in a hummocky agricultural landscape, and to understand how soil water and soil temperature control the spatial and temporal patterns of N2O flux. For a hummocky, agricultural landscape in the Dark Brown soil zone of Saskatchewan, N2O flux and related soil variables were measured along a 128-point transect multiple times over two years and concurrently from a 50 point, stratified design over three years. The spatial and temporal variation in N2O flux followed an event-based / background emission pattern. High flux events were triggered by precipitation events and recession of water from wetlands following spring snowmelt. Days with high mean flux were characterized by highly skewed (reverse J-shaped) distributions. High variance and coherency was observed at cultivated wetland elements during emission events. Strong location-dependent positive relationships were found between soil N2O flux and water-filled pore space or soil temperature, related to specific landscape elements. Background emissions were characterized by random variation or cyclic behavior that ranged in scale from 20 to 60 m. Cumulative emissions were highest from cultivated wetlands and basin centers of uncultivated wetlands, although emissions from cultivated wetlands were much more important to total cumulative emissions on an area basis. The results indicate that models intended to estimate N2O flux from these landscapes cannot rely on a single predictive relationship, but will have to incorporate predictive relationships localized at specific landscape elements depending on the time of year. At certain times predictive relationships cannot be used and up-scaled estimates will have to rely on direct measurement of emissions

The Effects of Team Leader Coaching on Team Members: An Action Research Project at DHL Thailand

All organizations have their individual strengths and weaknesses.  Keeping up with technology and finding an appropriate strategic focus is important, but the driving force to success lies with the engagement of employees. This study aimed to determine the impact of team leaders who used coaching skills with their team members, at DHL Thailand’s Supply Chain Division.  The challenge for DHL Thailand is to develop its team leaders and members to meet the corporate vision and mission through opportunities for enhanced relations between team members and leaders, and engagement in work.  The research examined how development of team leaders’ coaching skills, and subsequent coaching of team members, affected the dimensions of the team leader/team member relationship as measured through the dimensions of the Perceived Quality of the Coaching Relationship (PQCR), a tool which measures a team member’s perceptions on dimensions of the relationship that team members create and share with their team leader.  Additionally, the Gallup Q12 survey was given to team members to measure changes in team member engagement before and after the intervention.  While the PQCR measures the dimensions of the coaching relationship, the Gallup Q12 provides data regarding changes in team member engagement.   The research findings indicated that the ODI had an impact on the team leader and team member relations and on employee engagement. This conclusion was supported by both quantitative and qualitative evidence. It is proposed that team leaders coaching of team members may enhance the team leader/team member relationship and the level of engagement of team members. Recommendations for further study include investigating aspects of the development of the coaching skills of team leaders, the frequency of  use of  these skills with  their team  members, and  exploration of  other types of interventions which could affect employee engagement, as well as reinforcing the quantitative results of this study by conducting interviews with participants regarding topics related to attitudes of employee engagement

Reusing Data and Metadata to Create New Metadata Through Machine-Learning & Other Programmatic Methods

Recent improvements in natural language processing (NLP) enable metadata to be created programmatically from reused original metadata or even the dataset itself. Transfer-learning applied to NLP has greatly improved performance and reduced training data requirements. In this talk, well compare machine-generated metadata to human-generated metadata and discuss characteristics of metadata and data archives that affect suitability for machine-learning reuse of metadata. Where as human-generated metadata is often populated once, populated from the perspective of data supplier, populated by many individuals with different words for the same thing, and limited in length, machine-generated metadata can be updated any number of times, generated from the perspective of any user, constrained to a standardized set of terms that can be evolved over time, and be any length required. Machine-learning generated metadata offers benefits but also additional needs in terms of version control, process transparency, human-computer interaction, and IT requirements. As a successful example, well discuss how a dataset of abstracts and associated human-tagged keywords from a standardized list of several thousand keywords were used to create a machine-learning model that predicted keyword metadata for open-source code projects on code.nasa.gov. Well also discuss a less successful example from data.nasa.gov to show how data archive architecture and characteristics of initial metadata can be strong controls on how easy it is to leverage programmatic methods to reuse metadata to create additional metadata

Beyond peer observation of teaching

OBJECTIVE To summarize the evidence on effectiveness of translational diabetes prevention programs, based on promoting lifestyle change to prevent type 2 diabetes in real-world settings and to examine whether adherence to international guideline recommendations is associated with effectiveness. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Bibliographic databases were searched up to July 2012. Included studies had a follow-up of ≥12 months and outcomes comparing change in body composition, glycemic control, or progression to diabetes. Lifestyle interventions aimed to translate evidence from previous efficacy trials of diabetes prevention into real-world intervention programs. Data were combined using random-effects meta-analysis and meta-regression considering the relationship between intervention effectiveness and adherence to guidelines. RESULTS Twenty-five studies met the inclusion criteria. The primary meta-analysis included 22 studies (24 study groups) with outcome data for weight loss at 12 months. The pooled result of the direct pairwise meta-analysis shows that lifestyle interventions resulted in a mean weight loss of 2.12 kg (95% CI -2.61 to -1.63; I(2) = 91.4%). Adherence to guidelines was significantly associated with a greater weight loss (an increase of 0.3 kg per point increase on a 12-point guideline-adherence scale). CONCLUSIONS Evidence suggests that pragmatic diabetes prevention programs are effective. Effectiveness varies substantially between programs but can be improved by maximizing guideline adherence. However, more research is needed to establish optimal strategies for maximizing both cost-effectiveness and longer-term maintenance of weight loss and diabetes prevention effects

ELECTRONIC MARKETS AND ELECTRONIC HIERARCHIES: EFFECTS OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ON MARKET STRUCTUR CORPORATE STRATEGIES

This paper analyzes the fundamental changes in market structures that may result from the increasing use of information teChnology. First, an analytic framework is presented and its usefulness is demonstrated in explaining several major historical changes in American business structures. Then, the framework is used to help explain how electronic markets and electronic hierarchies will allow closer integration of adjacent steps in the value-added chains of our economy. The most surprising prediction is that information technology will lead to an overall shift toward proportionately more coordination by markets rather than by internal decisions within firms. Finally, several examples of companies where these changes are already occurring are used to illustrate the likely paths by which new market structures will evolve and the ways in which individual companies can take advantage of these changes