Characteristics of students who enter occupational therapy education through the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) Clearing System

Since the 1960s, there has been substantial research outside the United Kingdom (UK) on recruitment to occupational therapy education. Recent UK studies have explored the characteristics of mature students (Craik and Alderman 1998), first-year students (Craik et al 2001) and students with a first degree (Craik and Napthine 2001). Based on these studies, a semi-structured, self-report, postal questionnaire gathered data from 50 students who entered the BSc(Hons) Occupational Therapy course at Brunel University, London, via the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service for the UK (UCAS) clearing system. The students tended to be younger and were more likely to be female and Caucasian and to have similar or higher academic qualifications than standardentry students at the same university. The majority first became aware of occupational therapy through previous work in a health care setting, although some did so while researching allied health professions. Although one-third originally had physiotherapy as their first career choice, 92% now considered that occupational therapy was what they wanted to do. The principal reason for applying through the clearing system was timing, with some applicants deciding late in the academic year to study occupational therapy. These findings add further weight to the need to promote the profession

Multi-color carrier-envelope-phase stabilization for high-repetition-rate multi-pulse coherent synthesis

Using a zero-offset carrier-envelope locking technique, we have synthesized an octave-spanning composite frequency comb exhibiting 132-attosecond timing jitter between the constituent pulses over a one-second observation window. In the frequency domain, this composite comb has a modal structure and coherence which are indistinguishable from those of a comb that might be produced by a hypothetical single mode locked oscillator of equivalent bandwidth. The associated phase stability enables the participating multi-color pulse sequences to be coherently combined, representing an example of multi-pulse synthesis using a femtosecond oscillator

Phytoplankton models and life history strategies

Phytoplankton models generally do not consider the initial phases of seed stocks and deal only with the vegetative growth phase, ignoring life history strategies. Some quantitatively important diatoms, such as species ofChaetoceros and Skeletonema, have special strategies with respect to the timing of the planktonic phase that cannot be explained purely on the basis of environmental clues. In Norwegian waters and elsewhere, the firstChaetoceros bloom of the growth season usually starts in mid March, initiated by C. socialis. Other Chaetoceros species appear in the water column later. Species of dinoflagellates like Alexandrium also bloom atcertain times of the year. In many cases, phytoplankton inocula originate from resuspension of bottom-dwelling spores or cysts rather than from residual planktonic vegetative cells, and it is probable that, in some species, inoculation events are controlled by endogenous biological clocks. The sequential appearance of different Chaetoceros species may be related to day-length-regulated germination of spores. Most Chaetoceros species have few generations, but they appear at opportunistic times in the plankton. In contrast, Skelelonema costatum and Scrippsiella trochoidea appear at any time of the year. Some modelling results can be improved by including the dynamics of phytoplankton seed stocks in the sediments

Search for long lived charged massive particles in pp collisions at s-hat = 1.8TeV

We report a search for the production of long-lived charged massive particles in a data sample of 90   pb-1 of √s=1.8   TeV pp̅ collisions recorded by the Collider Detector at Fermilab. The search uses the muonlike penetration and anomalously high ionization energy loss signature expected for such a particle to discriminate it from backgrounds. The data are found to agree with background expectations, and cross section limits of O(1) pb are derived using two reference models, a stable quark and a stable scalar lepton

Differentiating criminal networks in the illegal wildlife trade: organized, corporate and disorganized crime

Historically, the poaching of wildlife was portrayed as a small-scale local activity in which only small numbers of wildlife would be smuggled illegally by collectors or opportunists. Nowadays, this image has changed: criminal networks are believed to be highly involved in wildlife trafficking, which has become a significant area of illicit activity. Even though wildlife trafficking has become accepted as a major area of crime and an important topic and criminologists have examined a variety of illegal wildlife markets, research that specifically focusses on the involvement of different criminal networks and their specific nature is lacking. The concept of a ‘criminal network’ or ‘serious organized crime’ is amorphous – getting used interchangeably and describes all crime that is structured rather than solely reflecting crime that fits within normative definitions of ‘organized’ crime. In reality, criminal networks are diverse. As such, we propose categories of criminal networks that are evidenced in the literature and within our own fieldwork: (1) organized crime groups (2) corporate crime groups and (3) disorganized criminal networks. Whereas there are instances when these groups act alone, this article will (also) discuss the overlap and interaction that occurs between our proposed categories and discuss the complicated nature of the involved criminal networks as well as predictions as to the future of these networks

Research returns redux: a meta-analysis of the returns to agricultural R&D

A total of 294 studies of returns to agricultural R&D (including extension) were compiled and these studies provide 1,858 separate estimates of rates of return. This includes some extreme values, which are implausible. When the highest and lowest 2.5 percent of the rates of return were set aside, the estimated annual rates of return averaged 73 percent overall–88 percent for research only, 45 percent for research and extension, and 79 percent for extension only. But these averages reveal little meaningful information from a large and diverse body of literature, which provides rate-of-return estimates that are often not directly comparable. The purpose of this study was to go behind the averages, and try to account for the sources of differences, in a meta-analysis of the studies of returns to agricultural R&D. The results conform with the theory and prior beliefs in many ways. Several features of the methods used by research evaluators matter, in particular assumptions about lag lengths and the nature of the research-induced supply shift.Rate of return., Agricultural research.,

A question of time: tissue adaptation to mechanical forces.

While much attention has been focused on the force-generating mechanisms responsible for shaping developing embryos, less is known about the ways in which cells in animal tissues respond to mechanical stimuli. Forces will arise within a tissue as the result of processes such as local cell death, growth and division, but they can also be an indirect consequence of morphogenetic movements in neighbouring tissues or be imposed from the outside, for example, by gravity. If not dealt with, the accumulation of stress and the resulting tissue deformation can pose a threat to tissue integrity and structure. Here we follow the time-course of events by which cells and tissues return to their preferred state following a mechanical perturbation. In doing so, we discuss the spectrum of biological and physical mechanisms known to underlie mechanical homeostasis in animal tissues