28,445 research outputs found
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Amy's story: a research agenda for smoking cessation in pregnancy
The purpose of this paper is to report on a case from Nottinghamshire County Primary Care Trust (PCT) as an exploratory study examining the role of social marketingâs contribution to smoking cessation during pregnancy. Insights from the case will be used to inform and stimulate debate around future inquiry regarding the effectiveness of such campaigns, specifically with respect to smoking cessation in pregnancy, the role of low-budget highly-localised programmes and, in response to a recent Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) paper (Thorp, 2009), the extent to which social marketers lead the way in producing behavioural change in populations. Whilst well discussed in the health literature, smoking cessation during pregnancy remains under-researched in the marketing literature offering opportunities for research and practice. Also, this study is of contemporary interest in light of the proposed public sector cuts which will restrict social marketing budgets, the move of Public Health to local authority control placing it as central to the Governmentâs public health plans, and the Governmentâs reported interest in behavioural change techniques such as nudge theory (Stamp, 2010). The paper is structured by presenting the case using The National Social Marketing Centreâs (NSMC, 2010) benchmark criteria for effective social marketing, whilst identifying findings and themes from the literature
Allison Singley, Director of Parent Relations
In our new Next Page column, Allison Singley, Director of Parent Relations, shares with us the three books she is currently reading and why it might take her a while to finish them, her two desert island books (one of which inspired her doctoral dissertation), how she maintains a habit of reading poetry daily, and why she doesnât write in books anymore â or feel the need to finish one
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What do stroke survivors think about evidence based care they receive? Learning from insights at the periphery
Permission to archive the publisher pdf of this article was granted by the publisher in February 2012Rationale and aim of study: While exploring the experience of stroke survivors of secondary stroke prevention as part of a wider patient and public involvement service initiative, study participants willingly shared insights on other aspects of care that mattered to them. This is important as little is known about patientsâ preferences for care. Methods: Data was generated from focus groups and semi-structured interviews that were held with 38 stroke survivors or their proxy respondents as part of an action research study. A framework analysis was used to examine data. Results: Our findings largely support current knowledge about the benefits of receiving evidence based stroke care. Although patients broadly appreciated being on a specialist unit, unexpectedly and contrary to best practice some expressed the wish to be treated elsewhere as they found the experience of being on a stroke unit difficult. Other findings included the need for more local peer support and difficulties surrounding transfer from hospital to home. Resultant actions included awareness training for staff about sensitively managing peopleâs perceptions about being on the stroke unit; development of shared computer based (IT) resources, and the establishment of a volunteer peer support system. Conclusion: The evidence base for the benefits of stroke unit care is unequivocal; however this model of care presents challenges for some. Involving patients in service development can inform small but key changes in practice that can help address inherent tensions in delivering evidence based services that are sensitive to patient preference.This project was funded by a grant from the Peninsula Primary Care Research Networ
Spatial curvature endgame: Reaching the limit of curvature determination
Current constraints on spatial curvature show that it is dynamically
negligible: (95% CL). Neglecting
it as a cosmological parameter would be premature however, as more stringent
constraints on at around the level would offer
valuable tests of eternal inflation models and probe novel large-scale
structure phenomena. This precision also represents the "curvature floor",
beyond which constraints cannot be meaningfully improved due to the cosmic
variance of horizon-scale perturbations. In this paper, we discuss what future
experiments will need to do in order to measure spatial curvature to this
maximum accuracy. Our conservative forecasts show that the curvature floor is
unreachable - by an order of magnitude - even with Stage IV experiments, unless
strong assumptions are made about dark energy evolution and the CDM
parameter values. We also discuss some of the novel problems that arise when
attempting to constrain a global cosmological parameter like
with such high precision. Measuring curvature down to this level would be an
important validation of systematics characterisation in high-precision
cosmological analyses.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure. Updated to match version published in Phys. Rev.
High-Speed Rail Projects in the United States: Identifying the Elements of Success-Part 2, MTI 06-03
In August 2005, the Mineta Transportation Institute issued the report, High-Speed Rail Projects in the United States: Identifying the Elements for Success. The report noted that since the 1960s, highspeed ground transportation (HSGT) has âheld the promise of fast, convenient, and environmentally sound travel for distances between 40 and 600 miles.â After briefly discussing the different experiences with HSGT between the United States and its Asian and European counterparts, the report proceeded to review three U.S. casesâFlorida, California, and the Pacific Northwestâas a means for identifying lessons learned for successfully implementing high-speed rail (HSR) in the United States. This report is, in essence, volume 2 of the previous study. Also using a comparative case study approach, this effort adds to the earlier work with three additional casesâthe Chicago Hub, the Keystone Corridor, and the Northeast Corridor (NEC). As with the earlier report, the goal of this study is to identify lessons learned for successfully implementing HSR in the United States. Given the early stages of most of these projects, âsuccessâ is defined by whether a given HSR project is still actively pursuing development or funding. However, in the case of the Northeast Corridor, a fuller discussion of success is provided since HSR has been implemented on that corridor for some time now
Automatically assembling a full census of an academic field
The composition of the scientific workforce shapes the direction of
scientific research, directly through the selection of questions to
investigate, and indirectly through its influence on the training of future
scientists. In most fields, however, complete census information is difficult
to obtain, complicating efforts to study workforce dynamics and the effects of
policy. This is particularly true in computer science, which lacks a single,
all-encompassing directory or professional organization. A full census of
computer science would serve many purposes, not the least of which is a better
understanding of the trends and causes of unequal representation in computing.
Previous academic census efforts have relied on narrow or biased samples, or on
professional society membership rolls. A full census can be constructed
directly from online departmental faculty directories, but doing so by hand is
prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. Here, we introduce a topical web
crawler for automating the collection of faculty information from web-based
department rosters, and demonstrate the resulting system on the 205
PhD-granting computer science departments in the U.S. and Canada. This method
constructs a complete census of the field within a few minutes, and achieves
over 99% precision and recall. We conclude by comparing the resulting 2017
census to a hand-curated 2011 census to quantify turnover and retention in
computer science, in general and for female faculty in particular,
demonstrating the types of analysis made possible by automated census
construction.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, 2 table
Investigation of critical burning of fuel droplets
Fuel droplets were simulated by porous spheres having diameters in the range 0.63 to 1.9 cm and combustion tests were conducted at pressures up to 78 atm in a quiescent cold air environment. Measurements were made of the burning rate and liquid surface temperature during steady combustion. A high pressure flat flame burner apparatus is under development in order to allow testing of high pressure droplet burning in a combustion gas environment. Work was continued on the high pressure strand combustion characteristics of liquid fuels, with the major emphasis on hydrazine. Data was obtained on the burning rate and liquid surface temperatures at pressures in the range 7 to 500 psia. The response of a burning liquid monopropellant to imposed pressure oscillations is being investigated
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