Policy-driven evidence: Evaluating the UK government’s approach to immigration policy making

This critique conducts a technical analysis of a UK Home Office report which was a key justification for passing the Immigration Act 2014. The law seeks to reduce non-EU immigration to the UK. The report is based on a 2012 report by the Migration Advisory Committee which used firmly established methods in the field of immigration studies. Despite this, it is concluded that the Home Office report not only excludes several important aspects of analysis, the entrepreneurialism of migrants and student immigration, but also has severe statistical problems. The report’s choice of operationalisations, lack of information regarding confidence intervals, and lack of sufficient model testing and repetition all combine to make it a weak piece of research and substantially undermine its suitability to inform policy. In the final analysis, this critique posits that the Home Office report reflects the Conservative government’s utilisation of 'policy driven evidence'

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

Prospectus, January 24, 1979

LETTERS TO EDITOR: STUDENT APOLOGIZES, PRESIDENT RESIGNS; PC parking tips; PC uses radio to inform; Ice Capade tickets available; Get or validate Student I.D.\u27s; PC elections Feb. 7 and 8; Famous filmmaker joins Focus; SIU host transfer day Feb. 10; Campus Paperback Bestsellers; Blood drive to start; WPCD\u27s Top 20 for the Week of Jan. 22; Wright accepts membership; Visitation day to be Feb. 16; Rock and roll hits auditorium; New courses at PC; Beauty pageant contestants sought; Prospectus... It\u27s a start; Extra precautions required; Students can earn credit in Spain; State publishes directory; Kelly Buhn wins Fast Freddy; Are you a spurchaser?; Good variety of movies at PC this semester; Parkland College students can enter Poetry Review; Men come home for victory, women lose eleventh last Sat; Parkland College track team proves itself a contender after individual wins; Lambdin named to All-Illinois Team; Sports happenings during breakhttps://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_1979/1028/thumbnail.jp

Liquefaction Mitigation of Three Projects in California

Ground displacements resulting from earthquake-induced soil liquefaction and dynamic densification can cause moderate to severe structural damage during and after an earthquake. Geotechnical construction methods of mitigating these potential ground displacements include mass excavation and replacement with engineered fill, ground improvement such as soil mixing, jet grouting, compaction piers, vibro compaction, vibro stone columns, and deep dynamic compaction, or deep foundations such as driven piles. The ground improvement methods rely on altering the soil properties to resist the seismically-induced shear stresses and soil grain redistribution while deep foundation methods bypass liquefiable soil deposits to found in deeper competent soil or rock. This paper presents an advancement in displacement ground improvement methods used to control soil liquefaction potential by driving highly compacted aggregate into the soil deposit. The ground improvement is accomplished by driving a pipe mandrel to displace the soil mass, backfilling the cavity with select aggregate, and compacting the aggregate in controlled lifts utilizing vertical, vibratory driven methods to further displace and densify the soil deposit while creating a dense Rammed Aggregate Pier®. Specifically the ground improvement method 1) reinforces the soil deposit to resist and re-distribute seismic shear stresses, 2) increases the density and horizontal stress of the surrounding soil, and 3) provides a gravel drain to enhance dissipation of seismicallyinduced excess pore water pressure in the soil. Several projects performed in California, in areas of high seismic activity, have been tested for the resulting shear reinforcement effects and increased density effects manifested by this advanced method of construction. These projects and their resulting field test results are presented and discussed

Building Evidence the Federal Aviation Administration\u27s UAS Safety Strategy Needs Improvement

The growth of unmanned aircraft operations within the National Airspace System (NAS) reveal an uptick of alarming safety indicators that suggest unmanned aircraft system (UAS) regulatory policy may require adjustment. Recent reports of aircraft collisions with UAS, an increase in pilot-reported near-misses, and research findings that indicate UAS platforms are capable of causing structural damage to aircraft suggest safe and effective UAS integration may not be proceeding as planned. The authors examine several safety indicators within the context of Heinrich’s Triangle to reveal the UAS industry’s susceptibility to evolving safety-related problems

Trust in the data: External data use by the Scottish third sector

This thesis investigates how the Scottish third sector engages with external data resources. The research is broken into two main strands. The first strand determines factors which affect the level of data use by charities. The second concerns the role of trust in third sector data use, in particular, what effect third sector use of data has on other users of data and the role data plays in society more generally. While the first of these strands is more pertinent to charities themselves, the second is particularly important in the wake of ‘Fake news’ and a general decline in trust for experts driven by misinformation online. Findings from this research show that there is a relatively low ability to use data among Scottish charities and many are resorting to pre-analysed, aggregate findings. Factors related to a low ability to use data include being a small charity, an old charity and a charity with a narrow focus. Analysis of a series of barriers and enablers found that barriers tend to inhibit data use altogether, where enablers tend to determine level of use. Support to help facilitate data use was then considered, finding that Twitter acts as a forum where support relationships develop between charities and infrastructure bodies, who share widely aimed, one-to-many tweets to support data use. The importance of infrastructure organisation became even more apparent when issues of trust were considered and found that, while charities trust data, they are less trusting of the interpretation which is laid over data and therefore they invest their trust in infrastructure organisations. Infrastructure organisations were found to have a healthy distrust of government data and are invested in feedback mechanisms where they correct mistakes in data and help increase the quality of, and trust in, Scottish Government data more generally