Effectiveness of an Emergency Vehicle Operations Course Component, Visual and Perceptual Skills: Analyzing Student Response to Searching, Identifying, Predicting, Deciding, and Executing Skills

As funding for driver education declines according to the National Highway Safety Administration (NHSA) 2013 Traffic Safety Facts, there were 2,345,719 people injured or killed as a result of vehicle crashes. NHTSA reported that there were a total of 118 people killed in 2013 from accidents involving emergency vehicles. The effectiveness of an Emergency Vehicle Operations Course component of visual and perceptual skills can be measured by administering the Driver Performance Test prior to and after student participation. This study examined the population of the students who participated in the TRS 235: Emergency Vehicle Operations Course at Eastern Kentucky University (EKU) in a traditional classroom and online delivery formats. This study determined the potential for a participant to be involved in a crash prior to and after completing TRS 235, as well as the effect the course had on the participants’ visual and perceptual skills. The results of this study indicated that the online and traditional course delivery formats pre and post-test total scores increased significantly. This study also determined that there was a significant difference between the efficacy of online and traditional delivery with online participants scoring higher than the traditional participants. It is important to note that this study does not examine the actual physical performance of the participants’ driving skills or behavior

Re -inventing the "cry for help": attempted suicide in Britain in the mid-twentieth centuary c 1937-1969

PhDAfter 1945 in Britain there emerges an ‘epidemic’ of ‘attempted suicide’ that is read as not aiming at death exclusively, but is instead a form of communication – a ‘cry for help’. This ‘epidemic’ consists predominantly of young people (increasingly gendered female) who present at general hospitals after having taken an amount of medication that is deemed excessive, but insufficient to kill them. This thesis places this ‘epidemic’ into historical context by looking at two interlinked developments in healthcare provision in Britain. First, models of mental healthcare provision change. With mental health included in the NHS, provision slowly and unevenly moves away from the geographically remote asylum, and into general hospitals and ‘the community’. The legislative high point of this process is the 1959 Mental Health Act, removing all legal barriers to mental treatment in general hospitals. This enables consistent psychological scrutiny upon patients presenting at general hospitals. This is cemented by the Suicide Act 1961 which decriminalises suicide and attempted suicide, and is swiftly followed by a government memorandum asking hospitals to ensure that all ‘attempted suicide’ patients presenting at casualty receive psychiatric assessment. The second development is in psychiatric thought, moving towards a socially-focused model of the causation of mental disorder. This is underpinned by broad concepts of ‘mental stress’ which enable pathology to be located in social relationships and social situations. This is achieved through much intellectual and practical labour, with psychiatric social workers carrying out home visits and follow-up, as well as interviewing friends, relatives and even employers, in order to construct a ‘social constellation’ around the ‘overdose’. Thus, the increased scrutiny at general hospitals recasts that presenting ‘physical injury’ as a symptom of a disordered social situation, and a communication with a social circle: ‘a cry for help’, newly possible on a nationwide scale.Wellcome Trus

The Effectiveness of an Emergency and Defensive Driving Techniques Course Component: Analyzing Student Response to Searching, Identifying, Predicting, Deciding and Executing Skills

This study examined the effectiveness of an Emergency and Defensive Driving Techniques Course by measuring the students\u27 visual and perceptual skills. The final analysis involved 117 students who participated in Eastern Kentucky University\u27s (EKU) Traffic Safety (TRS) 233. Records were obtained through the Traffic Safety Institute and contained no identifying information. Records obtained included a generic unique identification number, gender, pre-test scores and post-test scores

The Authenticity of Person Centred Planning for People who use Learning Disability Services.

ABSTRACT This thesis describes an interpretative, qualitative study of one person centred planning, circle of support. The eight people in the circle support a person with a learning disability, to help plan the life the person would like, utilising person centred planning techniques and tools. This study uses an ontological foundation of phenomenology, existentialism, and social psychology to examine the authenticity of the process of person centred planning for the circle of support members, and the person they have all chosen to support (focused person). A variety of data collection methods are employed, particularly those utilising ethnographic characteristics, and participatory approaches. These include video of a circle of support meeting, informal interviews using a video elicitation technique with circle members, and the use of photographs of the person’s plan. The data analysis is interpretative, and uses a two stage thematic analysis. Findings focus on the key concepts of individual agency, social inclusion, rights, choice and social emancipation. In addition the study attempts to examine the individual’s “truth” of current service experiences, and of person centred planning as a method of life planning, for people with learning disabilities. This study adds to understandings of learning disability, and disability generally, by providing new insights into how people should be supported in the future. It emphasises recognising the importance of individual experience both as participants in circles of support, but also as people involved in, or using learning disability services in the United Kingdom. This includes appreciating that human experience is shaped not only by what can be observed and measured, but that individual agency, imagination, feelings and thought are just as important in how individuals view and experience their world

Development of forward and reverse genetic tools for Eubacterium limosum

Eubacterium limosum is an anaerobic, acetogenic Gram-positive bacterial species which is able to subsist on mixtures of CO, CO2 and H2. Additionally, it is able to grow on methanol. While growing autotrophically on these single-carbon feedstocks, E. limosum produces a range of fermentation products of industrial interest. However, no techniques for genetic manipulation of E. limosum have yet been published, and current studies concentrate on the optimisation of fermentation conditions. Here, techniques for both random insertional mutagenesis and directed genetic manipulation of E. limosum are described and exemplified. The transposon mutagenesis procedure demonstrated during this study should enable the generation of large insertional mutant libraries, which will in turn allow the study of gene essentiality during autotrophic growth on single-carbon gases and methanol. The directed genetic manipulations undertaken during this study include gene knockout via Allele-Coupled Exchange (ACE) and in-frame gene deletion via CRISPR-Cas9. In addition to the establishment of genetic techniques in E. limosum, a novel Gram-positive replicon was isolated from a cryptic plasmid of Clostridium carboxidivorans during this study. This Gram-positive plasmid replicon is described and characterised. The replicon was modularised in accordance with the clostridial pMTL80000 plasmid system, and has proven suitable for use in E. limosum and in a range of other solventogenic and acetogenic clostridia. The copy number of the novel replicon was determined in E. limosum and C. beijerinckii, as was the copy number of the widely-used pCB102 replicon