On the Out and Out

Several student development theories directly address the experiences of lesbian, gay, and bisexual students, the Cass model being the most well-known. However, most of these models assume that involvement and integration in the larger gay community is vital to the development of the gay individual. This article explores the flaws in such assumptions through the experiences of one gay man who has not found a home in the gay community and how we, as student affairs professionals, can be of support to similar students

Legitimacy and procedural justice in prisons

All social situations are ‘ordered’ in some way, comprising a constantly changing set of relationships that establish the structure within which human action occurs. In many circumstances this order is hidden, even ephemeral; we are barely aware of its presence. But this is not the case in prisons. Social order in prison is in many ways highly visible: it is established and managed by the omnipresent rules that govern prison life. In large part these rules are oriented toward reproducing the extant regime. They lay down apparently strict criteria for what constitutes order and what is to be done if it is breached. But what is meant by order in prison? Most socia

Ally Immersion: A New Look at Anti-Racist Work

Multicultural centers exist on most predominately white campuses in one form or another as a primary support system and safe space for Students of Color. With an explosion of literature in recent years centering on how white student affairs professionals can be allies in anti-racist work, the question arises, can white staff at such centers be successful in supporting students? The personal experiences of the Director of the African, Latino/a, Asian, Native American (ALANA) Student Center at The University of Vermont and a white graduate student working at the same center provide the backdrop for this discussion

Entropic descriptor of a complex behaviour

We propose a new type of entropic descriptor that is able to quantify the statistical complexity (a measure of complex behaviour) by taking simultaneously into account the average departures of a system's entropy S from both its maximum possible value Smax and its minimum possible value Smin. When these two departures are similar to each other, the statistical complexity is maximal. We apply the new concept to the variability, over a range of length scales, of spatial or grey-level pattern arrangements in simple models. The pertinent results confirm the fact that a highly non-trivial, length-scale dependence of the entropic descriptor makes it an adequate complexity-measure, able to distinguish between structurally distinct configurational macrostates with the same degree of disorder.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures, extended versio

Deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus modulates sensitivity to decision outcome value in Parkinson's disease.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus in Parkinson's disease is known to cause a subtle but important adverse impact on behaviour, with impulsivity its most widely reported manifestation. However, precisely which computational components of the decision process are modulated is not fully understood. Here we probe a number of distinct subprocesses, including temporal discount, outcome utility, instrumental learning rate, instrumental outcome sensitivity, reward-loss trade-offs, and perseveration. We tested 22 Parkinson's Disease patients both on and off subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS), while they performed an instrumental learning task involving financial rewards and losses, and an inter-temporal choice task for financial rewards. We found that instrumental learning performance was significantly worse following stimulation, due to modulation of instrumental outcome sensitivity. Specifically, patients became less sensitive to decision values for both rewards and losses, but without any change to the learning rate or reward-loss trade-offs. However, we found no evidence that DBS modulated different components of temporal impulsivity. In conclusion, our results implicate the subthalamic nucleus in a modulation of outcome value in experience-based learning and decision-making in Parkinson's disease, suggesting a more pervasive role of the subthalamic nucleus in the control of human decision-making than previously thought.GRF gratefully acknowledges support by the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, KFO-219). Ray Dolan is supported by the Wellcome Trust (R.J.D., Senior Investigator Award 098362/Z/12/Z) and the the Senate of Berlin (R.J.D., Einstein Fellowship). Ben Seymour is funded by the Wellcome Trust and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Japan; Peter Dayan is funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation

Enhancing Widening Participation Evaluation through the development of a self-assessment tool for practitioners: Learning from the Standards of Evaluation Practice (Phase 2) project 2017-2019

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the Open University via the DOI in this recordThe ultimate goal of widening participation work, that unites policy makers, practitioners and academics, is to enhance outcomes for disadvantaged students in HE access, success and outcomes. This article presents the Office for Students (OfS) commissioned project ‘Understanding effective evaluation of the impact of outreach interventions on access to higher education: Phase Two’. This project sought to create a step-change in robustness of evidence used and evaluation practices. Our 2017-19 project explored evaluation practices among nine partner organisations drawn from higher education providers (HEPs) and third sector partners. The initial aim was to pilot test the Standards of Evidence developed during Phase One research, to share practices that work and highlight examples of best practice. As the project developed, a further outcome of the project was envisaged through ongoing discussions between the OfS, academics, HEPs and third-sector parties: a self-assessment tool for evaluation practitioners. This tool provides a framework and guidance which allows practitioners to map their own evaluation approaches. Through using prompts, the five dimensions of the tool highlight strengths and weaknesses of evaluation within five domains (strategic context, programme design, evaluation design, evaluation design and learning). This new tool is in effect a five point framework setting guidance about good evaluation practice. It was rolled out to all HEPs in spring 2019 when providers were invited to return the completed tool and their reflection as part of their Access and Participation planning.Office for Fair Access (OFFA

Microbial contamination of domiciliary nebulisers and clinical implications in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Domiciliary nebulisers are widely used in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) but nebuliser cleaning practice has not been assessed in patients with COPD who are often elderly and may have severe disease and multiple comorbidities. We aimed to evaluate microbial contamination of home nebulisers used by patients with COPD. METHODS: Random microbiological assessment of domiciliary nebulisers was undertaken together with an enquiry into cleaning practices. We also examined the effectiveness of the trust-wide cleaning instructions in eradicating isolated microorganisms in a laboratory setting. RESULTS: The mean age of patients in this study was 71 (range 40-93) years, and in 68% of patients a large number of significant comorbidities were present. Forty-four nebuliser sets were obtained and 73% were contaminated with microorganisms at >100 colony forming units/plate. Potentially pathogenic bacteria colonised 13 of the 44 nebulisers (30%) and organisms isolated included Pseudomonas aeroginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, multidrug resistant Serratia marcesans, Escherichia coli and multiresistant Klebsiella spp, Enterobacteriaceae and fungus Fusarium oxysporum. Washing of nebuliser masks, chambers and mouthpieces achieved complete eradication of Gram-positive bacterial and fungal flora. Gram-negative organisms were incompletely eradicated, which may be attributed to the presence of biofilms. We also found that in patients with pathogenic organisms cultured on the nebuliser sets, there was a higher probability of occurrence of a COPD exacerbation with a mean number of exacerbations of 3.3 (SD=1) per year in the group in whom pathogens were isolated compared with 1.7 (SD=1.2) exacerbations per year in those whose sets grew non-pathogenic flora (p=0.02). CONCLUSIONS: Nebulisers contaminated with microorganisms are potential reservoirs delivering serious pathogens to the lung. Relationships between nebuliser contamination, clinical infection and exacerbations require further examination, but is a potential concern in elderly patients with COPD with comorbidities who fail to effectively maintain reasonable standards of nebuliser cleanliness

Inhomogeneity and complexity measures for spatial patterns

In this work we examine two different measures for inhomogeneity and complexity that are derived from nonextensive considerations a' la Tsallis. Their performance is then tested on theoretically generated patterns. All measures are found to exhibit a most sensitive behaviour for Sierpinski carpets. The procedures here introduced provide us with new, powerful Tsallis' tools for analysing the inhomogeneity and complexity of spatial patterns.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures; replaced with published versio

Tendency to Maximum Complexity in a Non-Equilibrium Isolated System

The time evolution equations of a simplified isolated ideal gas, the "tetrahe- dral" gas, are derived. The dynamical behavior of the LMC complexity [R. Lopez-Ruiz, H. L. Mancini, and X. Calbet, Phys. Lett. A 209, 321 (1995)] is studied in this system. In general, it is shown that the complexity remains within the bounds of minimum and maximum complexity. We find that there are certain restrictions when the isolated "tetrahedral" gas evolves towards equilibrium. In addition to the well-known increase in entropy, the quantity called disequilibrium decreases monotonically with time. Furthermore, the trajectories of the system in phase space approach the maximum complexity.Comment: 22 pages, 0 figures. Published in Phys. Rev. E 63, 066116(9) (2001