Nutrient budgeting for trace elements: Examples from Scottish organic farms

This report was presented at the UK Organic Research 2002 Conference. Farmgate nutrient budgets have been calculated for Cu, Co and Mo for six farms in NE Scotland. All five livestock farms studied had a positive balance for Co, one showed a negative balance for Cu and two showed negative balances for Mo. The stockless farm studied showed a positive balance for Cu but negative balances for Co and Mo. These balances were calculated for a one-year period only and may thus have been strongly influenced by one-off purchases e.g. calcified seaweed. Future work will calculate budgets over whole rotations to provide a clearer picture of the long-term sustainability of trace element use on organic farms

Journeys to Everest and Vanishing Glaciers

Take a journey into the Everest region of Nepal. This book tells the story of a dynamic landscape shaped by glaciers, inhabited by people and wildlife, and visited by tens of thousands of tourists each year. The landscape, flora, and fauna, are illustrated using photographs taken throughout Sagarmatha National Park and we present the current state of scientific understanding on the park’s thinning glaciers

Pharmaceuticals in the water: histological effects and intersex wildlife and sexual disruption

Pharmaceuticals can cause serious hazardous effects on the aquatic environment. Humans that are being treated with the drugs often excrete the hazardous pharmaceuticals that are of interest in this paper. Wastewater treatment plants are unable to completely remove the pharmaceuticals from the water and thus the fish downstream of the sewage effluents are the most likely to be affected. The following steroid estrogens and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) have serious effects on wild fish: 17β-estradiol, estrone, and 17α-ethinylestradiol, and diclofenac. The steroid estrogen pharmaceuticals have been proven to cause sexual disruption in a variety of wild fish including: roach fish, white suckers, and zebra fish. The NSAIDs have been proven to cause major histological effects that lead to organ failure in other wild fish species, including the rainbow trout. The public health importance of studying these hazardous pharmaceutical and their effects on the ecosystem is necessary to determine long-term effects and potential hazardous effects to humans

Designing Effective Legal Research Rubrics: The Foundation for Successful Assessment

Increasingly librarians are teaching many, if not all, of the legal research courses at their law schools. Most librarians are not experts in education assessment design. Assessment with rubrics creates a learner centric environments in which instructors objectively evaluate student progress and assures that students receive consistent and meaningful feedback. Rubrics provide both students and instructors with a clear understanding of whether learning outcomes have been achieved. Guided by the instructors\u27 experience and an in-depth review of the literature law librarians will be exposed to the best practices when creating rubrics including alignment with the course goals and instructor expectations

Novel, comic-based approach to smartphone permission requests

This doctoral thesis investigates comics as a medium for presenting permission requests to users of smartphones and assessing how they can be used to support the users in making more informed decisions. Through three empirical studies, this thesis has generated insights into the creation of comic-based permission requests, the impact they have and what users would expect from them. In the first study, three co-design workshops were run where participants created their own comic requests, generating a series of design considerations for comic-based permission requests to better inform users. These considerations were used to design and develop the comic requests used in the subsequent studies to investigate if they supported users in making informed decisions in a balanced way. The comic-based permissions were evaluated by users in an online survey (Study 2) and in a WebApp (Study 3), to affirm the viability and the reliability of the considerations. The results of the evaluations suggest that comics are a viable medium to display more informative permission requests which help inform users and promote more informed decisions.James Watt Scholarshi

Gynecological trials frequently exclude people based on their symptoms rather than their condition: a systematic review of Cochrane reviews and their component trials

ObjectivesTo identify strategies used in recent randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and their associated Cochrane Reviews where patients with the same gynecological condition present with different symptoms but would plausibly benefit from a common intervention.Study design and settingWe searched the Cochrane library (February 2022) for reviews in polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and endometriosis. Reviews were included if the intervention was intended to treat all condition-specific symptoms. For each trial we recorded the strategy used and the number of potentially eligible participants excluded as a direct result of the chosen strategy. For each review we recorded the numbers of RCTs and participants excluded on the basis of symptoms experienced.ResultsThere were 89 distinct PCOS trials in 13 reviews, and 13 Endometriosis trials in 11 reviews. Most trials restricted their eligibility to participants with specific symptoms (55% PCOS, 46% endometriosis). The second most common strategy was to measure and analyze clinical outcomes that were not relevant to all participants (38% PCOS, 31% endometriosis). Reviews excluded 27% of trials in participants evaluating the same intervention in participants experiencing the same condition based on the outcomes measured in the trials.ConclusionMost gynecological trials exclude patients who could benefit from treatment or measure outcomes not relevant to all participants. We introduce a taxonomy to describe trial design strategies for conditions with heterogeneous symptoms