Charting Complex Changes: Application of the eHealth Implementation Toolkit (e-HIT) in the Delivering Assisted Living Lifestyles at Scale (dallas) Programme

The 'dallas' (Delivering Assisted Living Lifestyles at Scale) programme is a UK-wide digital healthcare initiative that has been designed to support independent living, enhance preventative care, and improve lifestyles by harnessing the potential of e-health technologies and digital services. This short paper presents a brief update on one strand of the University of Glasgow evaluation of the dallas programme. We have used the e-Health Implementation Toolkit (e-HIT) to investigate processes involved in the implementation of e-health tools and digital services being developed and deployed across the dallas communities and to assess 'distance travelled' by communities from baseline to midpoint of a three year programme. Qualitative data analysis was guided by the Normalisation Process Theory (NPT) and Framework Analysis. The e-HIT scores indicated that the dallas communities had underestimated the amount of work involved in implementing at scale. Qualitative data analysis showed that communities have successfully navigated barriers in order to make significant progress in strategic areas, including the development of new models of partnership working resulting in brand recognition and agile service design. The dallas communities are now sharing lessons learned and generating new professional knowledge, skills and understanding across several key strategic areas required for operationalising the implementation of e-health technologies and digital services at scale. The new knowledge being generated through the dallas programme will contribute to the ongoing transformation of digitally enabled healthcare based on more personalised flexible models of provision which resonates with the current e-health policy environment

Regular expressions as violin bowing patterns

String players spend a significant amount of practice time creating and learning bowings. These may be indicated in the music using up-bow and down-bow symbols, but those traditional notations do not capture the complex bowing patterns that are latent within the music. Regular expressions, a mathematical notation for a simple class of formal languages, can describe precisely the bowing patterns that commonly arise in string music. A software tool based on regular expressions enables performers to search for passages that can be handled with similar bowings, and to edit them consistently. A computer-based music editor incorporating bowing patterns has been implemented, using Lilypond to typeset the music. Our approach has been evaluated by using the editor to study ten movements from six violin sonatas by W. A. Mozart. Our experience shows that the editor is successful at finding passages and inserting bowings; that relatively complex patterns occur a number of times; and that the bowings can be inserted automatically and consistently

Communication Activism Pedagogy in Higher Education: Community/ Intergroup Dialogue as a Prerequisite to Service Learning

Education in the U.S. is heavily influenced by neoliberalism, i.e. an emphasis on measurable marketable skills that perpetuate hegemonic status quo. Communication Activism Pedagogy (CAP) is an offshoot of critical pedagogy, which emphasizes the use of communication to enable students to become agents of change by promoting justice and equality. Service-learning has been the preferred vehicle to teach these skills, this paper argues that students may not possess the requisite skills to adequately navigate service learning courses. Instead intergroup or community dialogue should be used to introduce students to issues of injustice and inequality to allow them to explore their root causes, while exploring their own voices and opinions that were not previously developed during their K-12 education

Assessing the impact of autonomous motivation and psychological need satisfaction in explaining adherence to an exercise referral scheme

Given the mixed findings concerning self-determination theory in explaining adherence to exercise referral schemes (ERS), the present study attempted to examine whether autonomous motivation and psychological need satisfaction could predict ERS adherence. Participants referred to an 8-week ERS completed self-report measures grounded in self-determination theory and basic needs theory at baseline (N = 124), mid-scheme (N = 58), and at the end of the scheme (N = 40). Logistic regressions were used to analyse the data. Autonomous motivation measured at mid-scheme explained between 12 and 16% of the variance in ERS adherence. Autonomy, relatedness and competence measured at mid-scheme explained between 18 and 26% of the variance in ERS adherence. This model also explained between 18 and 25% when measured at the end of the scheme. The study found limited evidence for the role of autonomous motivation in explaining ERS adherence. Stronger support was found for the satisfaction of the three needs for autonomy, relatedness and competence in predicting ERS adherence. Future research should tap into the satisfaction of all three needs collectively to help foster ERS adherence

secCl is a cys-loop ion channel necessary for the chloride conductance that mediates hormone-induced fluid secretion in Drosophila

Organisms use circulating diuretic hormones to control water balance (osmolarity), thereby avoiding dehydration and managing excretion of waste products. The hormones act through G-protein-coupled receptors to activate second messenger systems that in turn control the permeability of secretory epithelia to ions like chloride. In insects, the chloride channel mediating the effects of diuretic hormones was unknown. Surprisingly, we find a pentameric, cys-loop chloride channel, a type of channel normally associated with neurotransmission, mediating hormone-induced transepithelial chloride conductance. This discovery is important because: 1) it describes an unexpected role for pentameric receptors in the membrane permeability of secretory epithelial cells, and 2) it suggests that neurotransmitter-gated ion channels may have evolved from channels involved in secretion

Lactobacillus ruminis strains cluster according to their mammalian gut source

peer-reviewedBackground Lactobacillus ruminis is a motile Lactobacillus that is autochthonous to the human gut, and which may also be isolated from other mammals. Detailed characterization of L. ruminis has previously been restricted to strains of human and bovine origin. We therefore sought to expand our bio-bank of strains to identify and characterise isolates of porcine and equine origin by comparative genomics. Results We isolated five strains from the faeces of horses and two strains from pigs, and compared their motility, biochemistry and genetic relatedness to six human isolates and three bovine isolates including the type strain 27780T. Multilocus sequence typing analysis based on concatenated sequence data for six individual loci separated the 16 L. ruminis strains into three clades concordant with human, bovine or porcine, and equine sources. Sequencing the genomes of four additional strains of human, bovine, equine and porcine origin revealed a high level of genome synteny, independent of the source animal. Analysis of carbohydrate utilization, stress survival and technological robustness in a combined panel of sixteen L. ruminis isolates identified strains with optimal survival characteristics suitable for future investigation as candidate probiotics. Under laboratory conditions, six human isolates of L. ruminis tested were aflagellate and non-motile, whereas all 10 strains of bovine, equine and porcine origin were motile. Interestingly the equine and porcine strains were hyper-flagellated compared to bovine isolates, and this hyper-flagellate phenotype correlated with the ability to swarm on solid medium containing up to 1.8% agar. Analysis by RNA sequencing and qRT-PCR identified genes for the biosynthesis of flagella, genes for carbohydrate metabolism and genes of unknown function that were differentially expressed in swarming cells of an equine isolate of L. ruminis. Conclusions We suggest that Lactobacillus ruminis isolates have potential to be used in the functional food industry. We have also identified a MLST scheme able to distinguish between strains of L. ruminis of different origin. Genes for non-digestible oligosaccharide metabolism were identified with a putative role in swarming behaviour.This work was supported by a Principal Investigator Award (07/IN.1/B1780) from Science Foundation Ireland to P.W. O’Toole

Effects of prescribed fire and timber harvest on terrestrial salamander abundance, behavior, and microhabitat use

The goal of my dissertation was to assess how terrestrial salamanders respond to two common forest management practices -- prescribed fire and timber harvest. Previous studies have reported that timber harvest adversely affects terrestrial salamanders, but there is not enough information to draw conclusions about the effects of prescribed fire. It is important to understand how prescribed fire affects wildlife, as it is increasingly being used to decrease wildfire risk and restore fire-adapted ecosystems. However, many fire management decisions are currently based on predicted plant responses, since there is more data available on plants than wildlife. To estimate terrestrial salamander population size (abundance) prior to treatments, I conducted surveys for three years and used a statistical modeling approach that accounted for the tendency of terrestrial salamanders to be belowground and unavailable for surveys. I found that terrestrial salamander density at our Missouri Ozark study site ranged from 0.4 to 1.6 salamanders per square meter. I found that salamanders were most likely to be on the forest floor surface during or following rainfall, and that they were more likely to be in leaf litter than under cover objects if it had recently rained. Following timber harvest and prescribed fire, salamanders were less likely to be on the surface. It appears that terrestrial salamander abundance is more adversely affected by timber harvest than by prescribed fire. I also tracked individual salamanders before and after a prescribed burn, and found that they stayed belowground much more frequently in burned areas than non-burned areas. However, I did not find evidence of direct salamander mortality due to the fire. My results indicate that terrestrial salamanders respond to post-fire and post-harvest conditions by spending more time belowground to avoid increased physiological stress. Though it appears that terrestrial salamanders can generally avoid direct consequences of prescribed fire, behavioral responses to post-fire micro-environmental conditions could affect salamander populations in ways that are not yet apparent