Partnerships for skills training in the care home sector

Aim: This paper describes an initiative in North East London that aimed to facilitate access to training for care-home staff by using a mobile skills-centre in the form of an adapted bus. Background: It has proved difficult to take a strategic approach to quality assurance in care homes and the first comprehensive national training strategy for the sector was not published until 2000. Staff value and benefit from training, but organizing the provision of education and training may be problematic, given resource constraints and staffing levels that make it difficult to release staff to go off-site. Method: Collaboration between the School of Community and Health Sciences, City University London; My Home Life, an initiative led by Help the Aged in collaboration with the National Care Forum and City University London; local care homes; local primary care trusts (PCTs); and the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at City University London and Queen Mary University of London. The project involved facilitation, training in the mobile skills-centre and evaluation through questionnaires. Findings: The project was successful at a number of different levels: providing training to care-home staff; fostering collaborative relationships between care homes and PCTs; providing a forum to enable a wider educational discussion of care-home needs; and stimulating the planning of future education programmes for care-home staff and of the provision in care homes of student nurse placements

Identifying Lepidopteran resistance within hcf mutants

Abstract only availableSouthwestern corn borer (SWBC) and fall armyworm (FAW) feeding on maize causes extensive crop damage in the United States. Total crop loss is valued at approximately 300 million dollars annually. Previous proteomic analysis comparing resistant and susceptible lines of maize has shown genes found in the photosystem II pathway are highly expressed in the resistant line. The high chlorophyll fluorescence mutants have defects in photosystem I or photosystem II genes. Preliminary feeding trials indicate hcf mutants have resistance to Lepidopteran feeding. A preference test was performed comparing hcf mutants to their wild-type siblings. Oy , pg , and g mutants were also compared to their wild-type siblings to ensure that the pigmentation was not a factor in insect resistance. Leaf tissue from both the hcf mutant and the wild-type plant were pinned to a piece of moist filter paper within a petri dish. A single SWCB or FAW was placed in between the two samples and allowed to choose which tissue sample it preferred. There were five replicates per genotype. Pictures were taken after four days and tissue damage area was assessed using AlphaEaseFC software. A few hcf mutants showed increased resistance to feeding than their wild-type siblings, while most hcf mutants did not. SWCB preferred the wild-type over hcf11-N1205A and hcf49-N1480 mutants, indicating these genes may be resistance factors. Some hcf mutants were preferred by SWCB, indicating they may represent susceptibility genes. These genotypes were Oyl-Andrew and hcf13-N1097B . hcf49-N1480 , hcf7-N1029D , and pg15-N340B had reduced FAW damage compared to wild-type siblings, indicating they may confer resistance. The genotype hcf44-N1278B showed increased susceptibility to FAW feeding compared to its wild-type sibling. Further analysis will be needed to examine the resistance capabilities of the hcf11-N1205A , hcf7-1029D , pg15-N340B , and hcf49-N1480 genotypes. The mutants evaluated for effects of pigmentation displayed varying results indicating color differences associated with some hcf mutants are unlikely to be responsible for the differences observed. This experiment has provided data showing that some hcf mutants confer resistance to insect feeding. These genes may be useful in increasing resistance to FAW and SWCB in commercial hybrids.Life Sciences Mission Enhancement Progra

Lepidopteran preference test of Glossy mutants and Glossy15 allels for maize resistance [abstract]

Abstract only availableFaculty Mentor: Georgia Davis, AgronomyEvery year fall armyworm and Southwestern corn borer cause severe yield loss in maize. Both fall armyworm and the Southwestern corn borer are known to specifically attack the whorl leaf tissue resulting in major crop losses. Over the past few years maize resistant lines have been developed. In our study we have compared the larval feeding habits of both insects on resistant and susceptible genotypes, and on maize mutants that affect epicuticular wax formation. A previous study has shown that the Glossy15 and Glossy8 genes have Lepidopteran resistance in maize during the whorl stage. Our objectives in this study are to analyze both fall armyworm and Southwestern corn borer feeding preferences on various glossy mutants, and to further examine thier feeding habits on different alleles of the Glossy15 gene. In both studies we compared feeding preferences on three inbreds ( Mp705, Oh28, and Va35 ) to the glossy mutants. Mp705 has resistance to whorl stage Lepidopteran feeding while Oh28 and Va35 are susceptible. An inbred adult leaf was placed directly next to a glossy mutant adult leaf in a Petri dish. We then placed a single larva between the two adult leaves. We evaluated the larvae preference by using the AlphaEaseFC software. With this software we measured the areas of damaged leaf tissue. In the first study we have concluded that the adult leaves of bm1 , Gl1 , gl2-PF , Gl3 , Gl7 , Gl14 , and gl15-Sprague are very susceptible to insect feeding. There was no preference for adult leaves of bm4 , Gl4 , Gl11 , gl3-N531 , gl13-U440B , Gl18 , gl18-N166A , and Gl21 . However, we have found that Gl8 , gl15-KEW , and gl15-LAM exhibit some resistance. We also examined insect preference on different allels of Glossy15 gene. We observed allelic differences; gl15-63 and gl15-L are susceptible to insect feeding, while gl15-S , gl15-H , gl15-956 , and gl15-94317 have no preference. The goal of this study is to determine which mutants and alleles are more resistant than the others. The resistant alleles can then be inserted into different maize lines to improve resistance to Lepidopteran insects

Hydromorphological control of phosphorus in a large free-flowing gravel bed river: the Garonne river (France)

The objective of this paper is to relate phosphorus (P) transport dynamics and hydromorphological characteristics of a large human-influenced river, the River Garonne within a sector receiving the waste water of a sewage treatment plant for a population of 600 000. Two studies were conducted in 1997 and 1999 during two different hydrological conditions at low-flow periods. The 1997 study was carried out on an 18-km stretch with discharges varying between 33 and 53 m3/s and with very small fluctuations. The 1999 study concerned a longer stretch of 47 km, divided into four smaller reaches, and with discharges fluctuating rapidly from 40 to 108 m3/s. Downstream of the sewage treatment plant, total phosphorus (TP) concentrations ranged from 0.19 to 0.27 mg/L and were mainly in the dissolved form: between 60 and 78% of TP was dissolved reactive phosphorus (DRP). P concentrations were significantly lower upstream of the sewage treatment plant. By a mass-balance approach, we estimated that the sewage treatment plant represents more than half the input (between 59 and 67%) of the studied sector. TP dynamic is linked to suspended solids for discharges above 60 m3/s. During established low-flow period in the 1997 study (<60 m3/s), 22 and 27% of TP and DRP were retained by the river bed. In the 1999 study, under different low-water period hydraulic conditions, we calculate that particulate P retention occurred in two reaches among the four under study and only for discharges below 60 m3/s. We show that for established discharges below 60 m3/s, there is an active uptake of transported P by functional compartments (i.e. the hyporheic zone and the periphyton). During the low-water period with relatively high hydraulic fluctuations, and for discharges >60 m3/s, P retention is controlled as expected by suspended matter dynamics

Reasoning about agent deliberation

We present a family of sound and complete logics for reasoning about deliberation strategies for SimpleAPL programs. SimpleAPL is a fragment of the agent programming language 3APL designed for the implementation of cognitive agents with beliefs, goals and plans. The logics are variants of PDL, and allow us to prove safety and liveness properties of SimpleAPL agent programs under different deliberation strategies. We show how to axiomatize different deliberation strategies for SimpleAPL programs, and, for each strategy we consider, prove a correspondence between the operational semantics of SimpleAPL and the models of the corresponding logic. We illustrate the utility of our approach with an example in which we show how to verify correctness properties for a simple agent program under different deliberation strategies

Cognitive control: componential or emergent?

The past twenty-five years have witnessed an increasing awareness of the importance of cognitive control in the regulation of complex behavior. It now sits alongside attention, memory, language and thinking as a distinct domain within cognitive psychology. At the same time it permeates each of these sibling domains. This paper reviews recent work on cognitive control in an attempt to provide a context for the fundamental question addressed within this Topic: is cognitive control to be understood as resulting from the interaction of multiple distinct control processes or are the phenomena of cognitive control emergent

Knowledge management and human trafficking: using conceptual knowledge representation, text analytics and open-source data to combat organized crime

Globalization, the ubiquity of mobile communications and the rise of the web have all expanded the environment in which organized criminal entities are conducting their illicit activities, and as a result the environment that law enforcement agencies have to police. This paper triangulates the capability of open-source data analytics, ontological knowledge representation and the wider notion of knowledge management (KM) in order to provide an effective, interdisciplinary means to combat such threats, thus providing law enforcement agencies (LEA’s) with a foundation of competitive advantage over human trafficking and other organized crime

Topology optimization for the conduction cooling of a heat-generating volume with orthotropic material

In this paper the two dimensional numerical topology optimization of a high conductive conduit material, distributed within a heat-generating material, is investigated with regards to the effect of orthotropic materials. Specifically, materials with orthotropic thermal conductivities (different primary and secondary principal thermal conductivities). Two cases are considered in this study, namely the optimal distribution of an isotropic conduit material within an orthotropic heat generating material; and the optimal distribution of an orthotropic conduit material within an isotropic heat-generating material. A finite volume method (FVM) code, coupled with the method of moving asymptotes (MMA); the solid isotropic with material penalization (SIMP) scheme; and the discrete adjoint method, was used to find the optimal distribution of the high conductive conduit material within the heat generating material. For the optimal distribution of an isotropic conduit material within an orthotropic heat-generating material is was found that a heat-generating material angle 10 6 h0 6 60 is preferred, for a higher thermal performance, and a heat-generating material angle h0 60 should be avoided. For the optimal distribution of an orthotropic conduit material within an isotropic heat-generating material is was found that an optimal conduit material angle exists giving the best thermal performance (lowest smax). It was found that the optimal conduit material angle remains the same for different conductivity ratios and different heat-generating material angles. It was also found that the optimal conduit material angle directly corresponds to the domain aspect ratio, h1;opt ¼ tan 1ð2H=LÞ, with a minimum improvement of 3% and a maximum improvement of 50% of the thermal performance when using an orthotropic conduit material over that of an isotropic conduit material. A 50% improvement of the thermal performance effectively translates to either double the allowable heat generation or half the peak operating temperature of the isotropic heat-generating material.The University of Pretoria and the South African National Research Foundation (NRF-DST).http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhmt2017-12-31hb2016Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineerin

Maximum heat transfer density rate enhancement from cylinders rotating in natural convection

In this paper we investigate the thermal behaviour of an assembly of consecutive cylinders in a counterrotating configuration cooled by natural convection with the objective of maximizing the heat transfer density rate (heat transfer rate per unit volume). A numerical model is used to solve the governing equations that describe the temperature and flow fields. The spacing between the consecutive cylinders is optimised for each flow regime (Rayleigh number) and cylinder rotation speed. It was found that the optimized spacing decreases as the Rayleigh number increases and the heat transfer density rate increases, for the optimized structure, as the cylinder rotation speed is increased. Results further show that there is an increase in the heat transfer density rate of the rotating cylinders over stationary cylinders.The National Research Foundation (NRF-DST)http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ichmtai201