The application of games in higher education

Non

NHS research ethics committees : still need more common sense and less bureaucracy

National Health Service research ethics committees exist to ensure that research performed within the NHS complies with recognised ethical standards and to protect the rights, safety, and dignity of all actual or potential participants. In the past decade the operation of research ethics committees has come under, and continues to come under, close scrutiny. Researchers now consider the process of acquiring ethical approval to be so onerous that it is compromising clinical research. Medical educators also think that the process is too unwieldy to allow undergraduate students to acquire research experience, an essential learning outcome required by the General Medical Council

Evaluating multiagency interventions for children living with intimate partner violence in Birmingham

This research endeavour was born out of the need for a systematic evaluation of the efficacy of the multiagency Domestic Abuse Risk Assessment tool, which necessitates that all incidents of ‘domestic abuse’ (any incident within the family domain) reported to West Midlands Police, where a child or unborn child resides within that home, are scrutinised by Police and Social Care (and partners from Health, Education and the voluntary sector where possible) using a joint protocol. The primary purpose of the protocol is to promote safeguarding and provide a timely and appropriate response to children at risk following domestic abuse. The protocol incorporates the Banardos’ Multiagency Domestic Violence Risk Identification Threshold Scales (MDVRITS), which aids decision making about appropriate interventions based on predicted risk to children using a four level scale

An exploratory study of health patterns among older adults attending two types of adult day programs

The quality of life for an elderly person may greatly diminish if social support systems aren\u27t intact. The purpose of this study was to examine patterns of relationships between social support, self-reported health status, functional level as measured by activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activites of daily living (IADL), demographic variables, and depression among the elderly by the type of older adult program subjects attended. These two programs are a senior recreation center and an adult day health care center (ADHC). Sixty non-demented members from an Adult Day Health Care Center and Norco Senior Recreation Center located in the Inland Empire region participated in the study

Using Incidental Teaching to Teach Mands to Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Children with autism display deficits in three core areas; communication, social interaction, and restrictive and repetitive behaviors. Deficits in communication often manifest in the form of maladaptive behaviors that serve to have the individuals needs and wants met. Additionally, children with autism may have difficulty generalizing learned skills to novel environments and with novel items. Naturalistic teaching procedures, such as incidental teaching, can promote generalization through the use of naturally occurring learning opportunities and reinforcers. The purpose of this study is to evaluate an incidental teaching procedure on the acquisition of both rate of manding behavior as well as a generalized mand repertoire. The results of this study indicate that educators can increase language production of students with ASD by creating an environment rich in motivating stimuli, contriving the environment to create situations where the learner initiates toward the instructor and using prompting strategies to expand language production. Rather than anticipating the learners wants/needs and meeting them, using the strategies described in this study will help teachers increase language production and the learner\u27s ability to create novel language, rather than having to teach each concept in isolation as with more analog teaching procedures such as discrete trial training

The regulation of human fetal gonadal development in the second trimester

Fetal gonadal development is a complex process dependent on maturation and differentiation of several cell types with different functions. Adequate development is important for normal sexual development and fertility potential. However, to date the factors that are involved in the regulation of gonadal growth and differentiation are not well understood. The aim ofthis thesis was to investigate the role of survival and proliferative factors, namely the c-kit proto-oncogene receptor and ligand and the family of neurotrophins in human gonadal development during mid-trimester. The involvement of metalloproteinases (MMPs) and their inhibitors (TIMPs) in tissue remodelling in both human fetal testes and ovaries was also considered. C-kit and its ligand have been demonstrated to be essential to the processes of germ cell migration, proliferation and survival in the rodent and their expression was investigated in human fetal gonads. Expression of c-kit mRNA and the protein was demonstrated in both ovary and testis throughout mid-trimester. Testicular germ cellspecific expression of c-kit mRNA was confirmed using laser capture microscopy and c-kit protein was localised to the germ cells in both ovaries and testes. These data demonstrate that the expression of c-kit mRNA and protein is germ cell specific in human fetal gonads and are consistent with an important role for the c-kit/kit ligand signalling system in germ cell proliferation and survival in the developing human gonad.Neurotrophins are survival and differentiation factors in the nervous system. The presence of neurotrophins and their receptors and their role in germ cell survival was investigated in the human fetal gonads. Expression and localisation of neurotrophins 7 and their receptors was detected throughout mid-trimester in both ovaries and testes. The effects of the tyrosine kinase receptor inhibitor K252a were studied in organ cultures. In the ovary, treatment with K252a resulted in a significant fall in germ cell number and proliferation. In the testis, cell-specific marked decrease in both gonocyte and peritubular cell number and proliferation was seen after treatment with K252a, with little effect on Sertoli cells. These findings therefore demonstrate the expression of neurotrophins and their receptors in human fetal gonads during the second trimester and indicate possible roles in the regulation of proliferation/survival of germ cells and peritubular cellsMMPs and TIMPs are major regulators of tissue remodelling of the extracellular matrix (ECM) and may also be involved in the control of growth factor availability. Their production and localisation was investigated in the human fetal gonad. Tissue was collected and analysed for the presence of MMP-2 and -9 and for TIMP activities using zymographic techniques. These MMPs and in addition, MMP-I and TIMPs were localised using immunohistochemistry. The secretion of MMP-2, -9 and all four TIMPs was demonstrated from both testis and ovary, the predominant gelatinase produced being MMP-2. In both gonads, MMP-I, -2, -9 and all TIMP family members were localised to specific cell types. This therefore indicates that MMPs and TIMPs are likely to play a role in ECM remodelling during fetal gonadal development and also in the cell and matrix interactions that control a range of cellular function

Growing phonological and morphological knowledge and improving spelling outcomes in Year 2 primary school children through Explicit Instruction and contextualised dictation

Using Explicit Instruction (EI) to teach spelling is controversial because teaching approaches vary considerably in the contemporary classroom. Teachers may privilege visual over linguistic strategies and include target words based around themes, rather than the phono-morphological structures of words. There is also little current research about the benefits of using sentence dictation to practise taught spelling skills and thus to increase the likelihood of developing spelling automaticity. Spelling automaticity is important because it complements crucial reading and writing skills. Developing fluent spelling through EI, followed by sentence dictation, was a specific focus of this study. Two primary schools in rural NSW and a total of 30 teachers were involved in this mixed methods research. One of the schools was used as a comparison school and the other was the intervention school. All 30 teachers involved in the study completed a knowledge survey about the components of the English spelling system considered essential to teach spelling explicitly. From this data, the specific knowledge of the teachers involved in the Year 2 intervention, the Learning Support Teacher and the Acting Principal, was extracted. The two Year 2 teachers in the comparison school received professional development on meaning-based approaches to spelling, whereas the five teachers at the intervention school received professional development on EI techniques and word level components of the English spelling system. Mid-intervention teacher interviews gathered data about their feelings on implementing EI techniques in practice. Post-intervention quantitative tests and interviews allowed in-depth and rich understandings of aspects that either enabled or hindered implementation of the intervention. The spelling competence of 60 students at the two schools was also assessed before any intervention took place. The 35 Year 2 students in the two classes at the intervention school received EI in the phonological and morphological aspects of words, editing, and contextualised sentence dictation during Term 3. The 25 students in the Year 2 class at the comparison school continued their established literacy routine. Interviews with randomly selected students from both schools facilitated an exploration of their feelings about spelling approaches used during the term. The findings showed that spelling results in both schools improved as expected. However, overall the intervention school had superior results to the comparison school; one class in the intervention school consistently outperformed all other classes in word spelling and dictation assessments with moderate to large effects. Many of the teachers demonstrated an increase in morpheme knowledge, but not in word structure. In this study the EI spelling Lesson elements were reinforced by teaching strategies that included contextualised editing tasks and daily sentence dictations. These tasks were embedded in the term science theme of Insects, which was chosen in collaboration with the intervention teachers. The dictation component, a previously underutilised tool, involved students writing two lines from a contextualised poem, each day. In Australia, current methods of teaching spelling remain varied and contentious. Teachers who are engaged in improving spelling knowledge may find that using EI strategies reinforced by contextualised dictation can improve outcomes for all students

End-of-life care and dementia

In the UK, research continues to confirm that people with certain chronic illnesses, such as chronic lung disease and cardiac failure, represent the ‘disadvantaged dying’ compared to those with terminal cancer. But what is the situation for people dying with advanced dementia and what is the experience of their carers? Practical guidance for clinicians is scarce. In Standard 7 of the National Service Framework for Older People, which covers mental health, there is mention neither of how care should be provided nor of how patient choice should be ensured for people with dementia at the end of life. In the UK, 5% of the population aged 65 and over and 20% of those aged 80 and over have dementia similar prevalence figures are found in the USA. Current predictions suggest that the number of people with dementia will increase by 40% by 2026 and will double by 2050. The increased demand for end-of-life care for people with dementia will be associated with major social and economic costs, but what is the current standard of such care? How can the quality be improved? And how should future services be configured to cope with this increasing need? In this paper, we review current knowledge around end-of-life care in dementia, discuss the clinical challenges and ethical dilemmas presented to carers, consider the difficulties in delivering such care and suggest practical approaches to improve the quality of such care

How overconfident are current projections of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions?

Analyzing the risks of anthropogenic climate change requires sound probabilistic projections of CO2 emissions. Previous projections have broken important new ground, but many rely on out-of-range projections, are limited to the 21st century, or provide only implicit probabilistic information. Here we take a step towards resolving these problems by assimilating globally aggregated observations of population size, economic output, and CO2 emissions over the last three centuries into a simple economic model. We use this model to derive probabilistic projections of business-as-usual CO2 emissions to the year 2150. We demonstrate how the common practice to limit the calibration timescale to decades can result in biased and overconfident projections. The range of several CO2 emission scenarios (e.g., from the Special Report on Emission Scenarios) misses potentially important tails of our projected probability density function. Studies that have interpreted the range of CO2 emission scenarios as an approximation for the full forcing uncertainty may well be biased towards overconfident climate change projections.economics of climate change, scenarios, data assimilation