A brief guide to carrying out research about adult social care services for visually impaired people

Carrying out research about adult social care services for visually impaired people presents challenges that are not necessarily found in other fields. The purpose of this review is to draw attention to these challenges and to guide the researcher through them. It does so by drawing on the academic and grey literature. The review covers the ideological context of research in this field; definitions of visual impairment and their appropriate and inappropriate uses in research; misleading claims and reliable evidence about the size and characteristics of the visually impaired people and the reasons that these are important issues for research in the field. Challenges also cover the main topic areas of research and the methodological approaches, both quantitative and qualitative, that researchers have taken to deal with them. Issues common to both types of method cover sampling; the instruments used to collect data; the means of obtaining informed consent from visually impaired people, and organisations that can potentially assist researchers in this field

Counterexamples to a conjecture of Lemmermeyer

We produce infinitely many finite 2-groups that do not embed with index 2 in any group generated by involutions. This disproves a conjecture of Lemmermeyer and restricts the possible Galois groups of unramified 2-extensions, Galois over the rationals, of quadratic number fields

Interleaved Factorial Non-Homogeneous Hidden Markov Models for Energy Disaggregation

To reduce energy demand in households it is useful to know which electrical appliances are in use at what times. Monitoring individual appliances is costly and intrusive, whereas data on overall household electricity use is more easily obtained. In this paper, we consider the energy disaggregation problem where a household's electricity consumption is disaggregated into the component appliances. The factorial hidden Markov model (FHMM) is a natural model to fit this data. We enhance this generic model by introducing two constraints on the state sequence of the FHMM. The first is to use a non-homogeneous Markov chain, modelling how appliance usage varies over the day, and the other is to enforce that at most one chain changes state at each time step. This yields a new model which we call the interleaved factorial non-homogeneous hidden Markov model (IFNHMM). We evaluated the ability of this model to perform disaggregation in an ultra-low frequency setting, over a data set of 251 English households. In this new setting, the IFNHMM outperforms the FHMM in terms of recovering the energy used by the component appliances, due to that stronger constraints have been imposed on the states of the hidden Markov chains. Interestingly, we find that the variability in model performance across households is significant, underscoring the importance of using larger scale data in the disaggregation problem.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, conference, The NIPS workshop on Machine Learning for Sustainability, Lake Tahoe, NV, USA, 201

The controlled corrosion of refractories by oil-ash components with high sodium sulphate contents

Imperial Users onl

Family Foundation Giving Trends 2012

Family Foundation Giving Trends 2012 is the fifth in a series of reports that annually updates the giving of the largest 100 family foundations in the UK, tracking trends and comparing them with their US counterparts. Giving through family foundations represents around 8% of all private giving in the UK.This year's report is a special edition aimed at providing a more rounded picture of family foundation philanthropy. The regular updating of the annual league tables of giving is complemented by new research on the causes supported, the influences on decision-making in an uncertain environment, and family foundations' outlook for the future.The research was carried out through extracting financial data from annual reports and websites on annual spending and the distribution of grants by cause, and an online survey of decision-making amongst the largest family foundations (40 responses, 45% response rate).For this research, UK and US family foundations are defined as independent registered charitable trusts funded originally by family wealth, whether or not the founding family is still represented on the governing board.Key financial results 2010/11The total giving of the largest 100 UK family foundations was £1.33 billion in 2010/11.The results presented a mixed picture of growth: while there was an overall real fall of 1.8% in giving, there was a substantial 6.2% real rise if the results of the giant Wellcome Trust are excluded from the group.The rise in giving bucked the trend for the value of family foundations' assets: these were worth £29.7 billion in 2010/11, representing a real annual fall of 3.5%.Although there were some signs of growth this year, the giving of the largest family foundations has not yet returned to pre-recession levels.Asset value in 2010/11 was still a real 14% lower than in 2006/07

The biology of marine myxosporida and an investigation into the effects of these parasites on teleosts

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/585 on 20.03.2017 by CS (TIS)A survey of Myxosporidia in teleosts from the South-Western. coast of England demonstrated the widespread occurrence of these parasites. Infection in selected fish species was related to age, sex and seasonal migration of the host. Structural studies of Myxobolus exiguus and Myxidium incurvatum were undertaken in order to investigate sporogenesis, parasite development and the host-parasite interface. Of particular note was the intimate association between parasite and host cells, the structure of the surface layers in Myxobolus exiguus and Myxidium incurvatum, and the occurrence of epithelioid cells in developmental stages of Myxobolus exiguus. Myxobolus exiguus was transmitted experimentally in mullet, and aspects of the mode of infection, including exsporulation, were studied in this and other species, including those with coelozoic development. patterns. Experiments designed to simulate the gut biotope identified the action of trypsin and mechanical fracture as important exsporulation factors in Myxobolus exiguus. The release of spores and their dispersal and survival outside the host were investigated, and the possible existence of intermediate transport hosts discussed. Pathological effects of histozoic and coelozoic myxosporidian infection were examined in selected hosts. Fibroblastic encapsulation of plasmodia, and hyperplasia, characterised intestinal and branchial infections of Myxobolus exiguus in mullet, and cystic replacement of renal tissue was associated with Myxidium giardi infection in eels. Biliary myxosporidiosis caused chronic irritation and fibrosis of the gall bladder wall, increased bile viscosity and discolouration. Incidence, periodicity and severity of various Myxosporidian infections are discussed with regard to their disease potential and possible impact on commercially-important teleost species