Workshop in Moodle: a tool for peer critiquing

This paper will begin with a brief discussion of the benefits of peer assessment and peer critiquing. In particular, it will examine how both can be beneficial in helping to introduce, and reinforce, valuable graduate attributes in students throughout their university careers. It will then examine the tools available at the University of Glasgow and evaluate them in terms of their strengths and weaknesses. In order to explain this in detail, a real life case study from a third year class in Nursing will be presented. The paper will conclude that, while there are obvious benefits to peer critiquing tools being used with a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), some modifications are necessary in order to make them more easily usable by staff and students

Outcomes and costs of blunt trauma in England and Wales

Background Trauma represents an important public health concern in the United Kingdom, yet the acute costs of blunt trauma injury have not been documented and analysed in detail. Knowledge of the overall costs of trauma care, and the drivers of these costs, is a prerequisite for a cost-conscious approach to improvement in standards of trauma care, including evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of new healthcare technologies. Methods Using the Trauma Audit Research Network database, we examined patient records for persons aged 18 years and older hospitalised for blunt trauma between January 2000 and December 2005. Patients were stratified by the Injury Severity Score (ISS). Results A total of 35,564 patients were identified; 60% with an ISS of 0 to 9, 17% with an ISS of 10 to 16, 12% with an ISS of 17 to 25, and 11% with an ISS of 26 to 75. The median age was 46 years and 63% of patients were men. Falls were the most common cause of injury (50%), followed by road traffic collisions (33%). Twenty-nine percent of patients were admitted to critical care for a median length of stay of 4 days. The median total hospital length of stay was 9 days, and 69% of patients underwent at least one surgical procedure. Seven percent of the patients died before discharge, with the highest proportion of deaths among those in the ISS 26–75 group (32%). The mean hospital cost per person was £9,530 (± 11,872). Costs varied significantly by Glasgow Coma Score, ISS, age, cause of injury, type of injury, hospital mortality, grade and specialty of doctor seen in the accident and emergency department, and year of admission. Conclusion The acute treatment costs of blunt trauma in England and Wales vary significantly by injury severity and survival, and public health initiatives that aim to reduce both the incidence and severity of blunt trauma are likely to produce significant savings in acute trauma care. The largest component of acute hospital cost is determined by the length of stay, and measures designed to reduce length of admissions are likely to be the most effective in reducing the costs of blunt trauma care

The impacts of tourism on two communities adjacent to the Kruger National Park, South Africa

This paper explores the socioeconomic impacts of tourism associated with the Kruger National Park, South Africa's flagship national park, on the neighbouring villages of Cork and Belfast. Case study research, where the study area was characterised as a social-ecological system, was used to investigate the impacts of Park tourism on these communities. The findings offer a micro-scale, local community perspective of these impacts and indicate that the enclave nature of Park tourism keeps local communities separate from the Park and makes it hard for them to benefit from it. The paper concludes with reflections on this perceived separation, and suggests the need to make the Park boundaries more 'permeable' so as to improve relationships with adjacent communities, while also pragmatically managing community expectation

Succinct Representations of Permutations and Functions

We investigate the problem of succinctly representing an arbitrary permutation, \pi, on {0,...,n-1} so that \pi^k(i) can be computed quickly for any i and any (positive or negative) integer power k. A representation taking (1+\epsilon) n lg n + O(1) bits suffices to compute arbitrary powers in constant time, for any positive constant \epsilon <= 1. A representation taking the optimal \ceil{\lg n!} + o(n) bits can be used to compute arbitrary powers in O(lg n / lg lg n) time. We then consider the more general problem of succinctly representing an arbitrary function, f: [n] \rightarrow [n] so that f^k(i) can be computed quickly for any i and any integer power k. We give a representation that takes (1+\epsilon) n lg n + O(1) bits, for any positive constant \epsilon <= 1, and computes arbitrary positive powers in constant time. It can also be used to compute f^k(i), for any negative integer k, in optimal O(1+|f^k(i)|) time. We place emphasis on the redundancy, or the space beyond the information-theoretic lower bound that the data structure uses in order to support operations efficiently. A number of lower bounds have recently been shown on the redundancy of data structures. These lower bounds confirm the space-time optimality of some of our solutions. Furthermore, the redundancy of one of our structures "surpasses" a recent lower bound by Golynski [Golynski, SODA 2009], thus demonstrating the limitations of this lower bound.Comment: Preliminary versions of these results have appeared in the Proceedings of ICALP 2003 and 2004. However, all results in this version are improved over the earlier conference versio

Feed-forward and its role in conditional linear optical quantum dynamics

Nonlinear optical quantum gates can be created probabilistically using only single photon sources, linear optical elements and photon-number resolving detectors. These gates are heralded but operate with probabilities much less than one. There is currently a large gap between the performance of the known circuits and the established upper bounds on their success probabilities. One possibility for increasing the probability of success of such gates is feed-forward, where one attempts to correct certain failure events that occurred in the gate's operation. In this brief report we examine the role of feed-forward in improving the success probability. In particular, for the non-linear sign shift gate, we find that in a three-mode implementation with a single round of feed-forward the optimal average probability of success is approximately given by p= 0.272. This value is only slightly larger than the general optimal success probability without feed-forward, P= 0.25.Comment: 4 pages, 3 eps figures, typeset using RevTex4, problems with figures resolve

Effectiveness of an influenza vaccine programme for care home staff to prevent death, morbidity, and health service use among residents: cluster randomised controlled trial

Objective To determine whether vaccination of care home staff against influenza indirectly protects residents.Design Pair matched cluster randomised controlled trial.Setting Large private chain of UK care homes during the winters of 2003-4 and 2004-5.Participants Nursing home staff (n = 1703) and residents (n = 2604) in 44 care homes (22 intervention homes and 22 matched control homes).Interventions Vaccination offered to staff in intervention homes but not in control homes.Main outcome measures The primary outcome was all cause mortality of residents. Secondary outcomes were influenza-like illness and health service use in residents.Results In 2003-4 vaccine coverage in full time staff was 48.2% (407/884) in intervention homes and 5.9% (51/859) in control homes. In 2004-5 uptake rates were 43.2% (365/844) and 3.5% (28/800). National influenza rates were substaritially below average in 2004-5. In the 2003-4 period of influenza activity significant decreases were found in mortality of residents in intervention homes compared with control homes (rate difference - 5.0 per 100 residents, 95% confidence interval - 7.0 to - 2.0) and in influenza-like illness (P = 0.004), consultations with general practitioners for influenza-like illness (P = 0.008), and admissions to hospital with influenza-like illness (P = 0.009). No significant differences were found in 2004-5 or during periods of no influenza activity in 2003-4.Conclusions Vaccinating care home staff against influenza can prevent deaths, health service use, and influenza-like illness in residents during periods of moderate influenza activity