English Proficiency Assessments of Primary and Secondary Students Participating in English in Action: Third Cohort (2014) Large-Scale Quantitative Study

The purpose of the study was to assess the student learning outcomes of English in Action’s (EIA’s) school-based teacher development programme, in terms of improved English language competence (ELC), against recognised international frameworks (specifically, the Graded Examinations in Spoken English [GESE)]; Trinity College London 2013), which map onto the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). Measurably improved student learning outcomes are the ultimate test of success of a teacher development programme. English Proficiency Assessments 2014 is a repeat of the study on the pilot EIA programme (Cohort 14) (EIA 2012), but focusing only on student ELC. The teachers and hence the students of Cohort 3 are substantially greater in number than in the pilot phase (347,000 primary students and almost 1.7 million secondary students compared with around 700 teachers, 35,000 primary students and over 83,000 secondary students in 2011). To enable this increase in scale, the programme has been delivered through a more decentralised model, with much less direct contact with English language teaching (ELT) experts, a greater embedding of expertise within teacher development materials (especially video), and a greater dependence upon localised peer support. This report addresses the following research question: To what extent do the students of Cohort 3 show improved post-intervention EL proficiencies, in speaking and listening, compared with the Cohort 1 2010 preintervention baseline

Comparison of multiple typing methods for Aspergillus fumigatus

As part of studies on the spread of infections, risk factors and prevention, several typing methods were developed to investigate the epidemiology of Aspergillus fumigatus. In the present study, 52 clinical isolates of A. fumigatus from 12 airway specimens from patients with invasive aspergillosis (hospitalized in three different centres) were characterized by short tandem repeat (STR) typing and multilocus sequence typing (MLST). These isolates were previously typed by random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), sequence-specific DNA polymorphism (SSDP), microsatellite polymorphism (MSP) and multilocus enzyme electrophoresis (MLEE). STR typing identified 30 genotypes and, for most patients, all isolates were grouped in one cluster of the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean dendrogram. Using MLST, 16 genotypes were identified among 50 isolates, while two isolates appeared untypeable. RAPD, MSP, SSDP and MLEE allowed identification of eight, 14, nine and eight genotypes, respectively. Combining the results of these methods led to the delineation of 25 genotypes and a similar clustering pattern as with STR typing. In general, STR typing led to similar results to the previous combination of RAPD, SSDP, MSP and MLEE, but had a higher resolution, whereas MLST was less discriminatory and resulted in a totally different clustering pattern. Therefore, this study suggests the use of STR typing for research concerning the local epidemiology of A. fumigatus, which requires a high discriminatory power

Optimising outcomes in the treatment of superficial venous insufficiency

The traditional “gold-standard” treatment for symptomatic SVI affecting the GSV is conventional open surgery and stripping under general anaesthesia. Despite improved QoL and cost-effectiveness when compared to conservative management, conventional surgery is not without drawbacks. Endovenous ablative treatments have been developed, which seek to address some of these limitations. Randomised clinical trial (RCT) data has demonstrated the superiority of endovenous laser ablation (EVLA) over surgery in the short term. Attention is now focused on evaluating its mid- and long-term outcomes, and to further evolve the technique to improve patient outcomes.In this thesis, five studies were conceived to address two main objectives. Firstly, two-year follow-up of the HELP-1 RCT of EVLA versus conventional surgery was performed to assess clinical, QoL and duplex ultrasound (DUS) outcomes and identify potential for EVLA technique evolution. Four further studies were performed, aimed at improvement of patient outcomes by modification of the EVLA technique via i) pH buffering of tumescent anaesthesia, ii) concomitant treatment of varicosities, and iii) endovenous energy delivery via longer wavelength laser.Two-year outcomes from the HELP-1 RCT demonstrated continued superiority of EVLA over conventional surgery in terms of lower clinical recurrence rates, with maintained improvements in clinical and QoL outcomes. DUS outcomes identified patterns of clinical recurrence that can be addressed by simple modifications of the EVLA technique.Buffering of tumescent anaesthesia resulted in significantly reduced patient-reported periprocedural pain. Concomitant treatment of varicosities with ambulatory phlebectomy under tumescent anaesthesia demonstrated significant benefits in clinical severity and disease-specific QoL over foam sclerotherapy. Use of longer laser wavelength (1470nm) resulted in significantly reduced postprocedural pain in comparison to shorter (810nm) wavelength.EVLA is demonstrated to have significant short- and medium-term benefits over conventional surgery. Further evolution of the technique, including the modifications described, should provide additional benefit in terms of patient outcomes

Observer’s Galvanic Skin Response for Discriminating Real from Fake Smiles

This paper demonstrates a system to discriminate real from fake smiles with high accuracy by sensing observers’ galvanic skin response (GSR). GSR signals are recorded from 10 observers, while they are watching 5 real and 5 posed or acted smile video stimuli. We investigate the effect of various feature selection methods on processed GSR signals (recorded features) and computed features (extracted features) from the processed GSR signals, by measuring classification performance using three different classifiers. A leave-one-observer-out process is implemented to reliably measure classification accuracy. It is found that simple neural network (NN) using random subset feature selection (RSFS) based on extracted features outperforms all other cases, with 96.5% classification accuracy on our two classes of smiles (real vs. fake). The high accuracy highlights the potential of this system for use in the future for discriminating observers’ reactions to authentic emotional stimuli in settings such as advertising and tutoring systems

Empathy Detection Using Machine Learning on Text, Audiovisual, Audio or Physiological Signals

Empathy is a social skill that indicates an individual's ability to understand others. Over the past few years, empathy has drawn attention from various disciplines, including but not limited to Affective Computing, Cognitive Science and Psychology. Empathy is a context-dependent term; thus, detecting or recognising empathy has potential applications in society, healthcare and education. Despite being a broad and overlapping topic, the avenue of empathy detection studies leveraging Machine Learning remains underexplored from a holistic literature perspective. To this end, we systematically collect and screen 801 papers from 10 well-known databases and analyse the selected 54 papers. We group the papers based on input modalities of empathy detection systems, i.e., text, audiovisual, audio and physiological signals. We examine modality-specific pre-processing and network architecture design protocols, popular dataset descriptions and availability details, and evaluation protocols. We further discuss the potential applications, deployment challenges and research gaps in the Affective Computing-based empathy domain, which can facilitate new avenues of exploration. We believe that our work is a stepping stone to developing a privacy-preserving and unbiased empathic system inclusive of culture, diversity and multilingualism that can be deployed in practice to enhance the overall well-being of human life

Observers’ Pupillary Responses in Recognising Real and Posed Smiles: A Preliminary Study

Pupillary responses (PR) change differently for different types of stimuli. This study aims to check whether observers’ PR can recognise real and posed smiles from a set of smile images and videos. We showed the smile images and smile videos stimuli to observers, and recorded their pupillary responses considering four different situations, namely paired videos, paired images, single videos, and single images. When the same smiler was viewed by observers in both real and posed smile forms, we refer them as “paired”; otherwise we use the term “single”. The primary analysis on pupil data revealed that the differences of pupillary response between real and posed smiles are more significant in case of paired videos compared to others. This result is found from timeline analysis, KS-test, and ANOVA test. Overall, our model can recognise real and posed smiles from observers’ pupillary responses instead of smilers’ responses. Our research will be applicable in affective computing and computerhuman interaction for measuring emotional authenticity

Primary Medication Adherence in the Rural South: The Role of the Physician-Patient Relationship and Satisfaction with Care

Background: Medication non adherence leads to increased morbidity and mortality and undermines the ability of clinicians to provide effective care. While the relationship between medication adherence and demographic, socioeconomic and clinical factors has been well studied, it is unclear whether a strong physician-patient relationship and satisfaction with care may improve medication adherence. Furthermore, medication adherence has not been specifically evaluated in the rural South. Design and Participants: This is a cross sectional study using data from the Southern Rural Access Program evaluation, which surveyed adults in 9 rural states via random digit dialing from November 2002 until July 2003. Respondents that had seen a health care provider in the past year were included in the analysis. Measurements: Respondents were asked whether they had delayed or not gotten a prescription filled in the last year. Elsewhere on the questionnaire, they were also asked about their satisfaction with, confidence in, and their length of relationship with their regular provider. Bivariate and multivariable analyses were used to identifY factors associated with individuals filling their prescriptions. Results: The mean age of our sample was 46 years, 68% were white, 19% had less than a high school education, and 22.7% were uninsured. Of the 3,926 respondents that had visited a provider in the past year, 793 (20%) reported that they delayed or did not fill a prescription. After multivariable modeling, individuals less than 65 years old (OR 2.9, CI[95%] 2.00, 4.24), male (OR 1.3, CI[95%] 1.05, 1.66), income less than $25,000 (OR 1.8, CI[95%] 1.16, 2.69), more educated (OR 1.4, CI[95%] 1.06, 1.92), uninsured (OR 1.4, CI[95%] 1.09, 1.89), insured under Medicare (OR 1.81, CI[95%] 1.25, 2.63), and in fair or poor health (OR 1.4, CI[95%] 1.13, 1.81) were less likely to have filled a prescription, after controlling for all other variables. Respondents that had a regular source of care (OR 0.4, CI[95%] 0.22, 0.88), a longer relationship with their doctor (OR 0.8, CI[95%] 0.64, 1.01), and were satisfied with the concern shown by their doctor (OR 0.60, CI[95%] 0.38, 0.94) were more likely to have filled their prescriptions. Those that were concerned about the cost of health care (OR 2.6, CI[95%] 2.05, 3.18) or had problems with transportation (OR 1.7, CI[95%] 1.25, 2.31) were less likely to have filled their prescriptions. Individuals who believed in going to the doctor early in the course of illness and for regular check ups (OR 0.7, CI[95%] 0.49, 0.93) were more likely to have filled their prescriptions. Conclusions: Primary medication non adherence is common in the rural South. Satisfaction with concern shown by the physician, having a regular source of care, and having a longer relationship with a physician are associated with better medication adherence.Master of Public Healt