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The Conforming, The Innovating and The Connecting Teacher: A qualitative study of why teachers in lower secondary school adopt physically active learning
Get PDFYesThis paper explores why teachers adopt physically active learning (PAL). Data were collected through ‘go-alongs’ supplemented by individual interviews with 13 teachers in seven Norwegian lower secondary schools. Data were then analysed thematically. Results indicated that as well as to enhance their teaching and pupils' learning, teachers adopt PAL to adhere to school policy (The Conforming Teacher), to be an innovative educator (The Innovating Teacher), and, because it matches past positive personal experiences (The Connecting Teacher). The findings can be used to shape PAL teacher training programs to increase the likelihood of adoption
Challenges of common service centers (CSCs) in delivering e-government services to citizens in rural India
No full textYesMany developing countries across the world are allocating a significant share of their budgets for e-government initiatives. Common service centers (CSCs) are e-government initiatives that aim to increase access to public services and promote easy and direct interaction with the government. These e-government initiatives are largely underutilised, especially in rural areas in developing countries. This study attempts to identify the key challenges facing CSCs and determine their hierarchical relationships in the context of rural India. A set of 15 challenges was identified through a rigorous literature review and by surveying experts and CSC owners. Data were collected on the identified challenges and were analysed using interpretive structural modeling (ISM)-MICMAC-fuzzy MICMAC analysis. Subsequently, we developed a hierarchical model of challenges. The findings revealed that “longer travel time and transaction cost”, “low digital literacy”, and “low awareness” of e-government services are among the key challenges CSCs face in rural India. This study suggests several recommendations to all the stakeholders involved in the management of CSCs to improve the delivery of e-government services in rural India
COVID-19-related social support service closures and mental well-being in older adults and those affected by dementia: a UK longitudinal survey
Get PDFYesThe COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on delivery of social support services. This might be expected to particularly affect older adults and people living with dementia (PLWD), and to reduce their well- being.
Aims: To explore how social support service use by older adults, carers and PLWD, and their mental well-being changed over the first 3 months since the pandemic outbreak.
Methods: Unpaid dementia carers, PLWD and older
adults took part in a longitudinal online or telephone survey collected between April and May 2020, and at two subsequent timepoints 6 and 12 weeks after baseline. Participants were asked about their social support service usage in a typical week prior to the pandemic (at baseline), and in the past week at each of the three timepoints. They also completed measures of levels of depression, anxiety and mental well-being.
Results: 377 participants had complete data at all three timepoints. Social support service usage dropped shortly after lockdown measures were imposed at timepoint 1 (T1), to then increase again by T3. The access to paid care was least affected by COVID-19. Cases of anxiety dropped significantly across the study period, while cases of depression rose. Well-being increased significantly for older adults and PLWD from T1 to T3.
Conclusions: Access to social support services has been significantly affected by the pandemic, which is starting
to recover slowly. With mental well-being differently affected across groups, support needs to be put in place to maintain better well-being across those vulnerable groups during the ongoing pandemic.University of Liverpool COVID-19 Strategic Research Fund, National Institute for Health Research Applied Research Collaboration North West Coast, The University of Bradford QR Research FundResearch Development Fund Publication Prize Award winner, Jan 2021
Associations between anticholinergic medication exposure and adverse health outcomes in older people with frailty: A systematic review and meta-analysis
No full textYesThere are robust associations between use of anticholinergic medicines and adverse effects in older people. However, the nature of these associations for older people living with frailty is yet to be established.
The aims were to identify and investigate associations between anticholinergics and adverse outcomes in older people living with frailty and to investigate whether exposure is associated with greater risks according to frailty status.
MEDLINE, CINAHL, EMBASE, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Web of Science and PsycINFO were searched to 1 August 2019. Observational studies reporting associations between anticholinergics and outcomes in older adults (average age ≥ 65 years) that reported frailty using validated measures were included. Primary outcomes were physical impairment, cognitive dysfunction, and change in frailty status. Risk of bias was evaluated using the Cochrane Risk of Bias In Non-randomised Studies of Interventions (ROBINS-I) tool. Meta-analysis was undertaken where appropriate.
Thirteen studies (21,516 participants) were included (ten community, one residential aged-care facility and two hospital studies). Observed associations included reduced ability for chair standing, slower gait speeds, poorer physical performance, increased risk of falls and mortality. Conflicting results were reported for grip strength, timed up and go test, cognition and activities of daily living. No associations were observed for transitions between frailty states, psychological wellbeing or benzodiazepine-related adverse reactions. There was no clear evidence of differences in risks according to frailty status.
Anticholinergics are associated with adverse outcomes in older people living with frailty; however, the literature has significant methodological limitations. There is insufficient evidence to suggest greater risks based on frailty, and there is an urgent need to evaluate this further in well-designed studies stratifying by frailty.NIHR YHPSTRC, Health Data Research UK (HDR UK North, Award Ref. CFC0124), Dunhill Medical Trust, UK [RTF107/0117], NIHR Applied Research Collaboration
Role of microRNA-145 in DNA damage signalling and senescence in vascular smooth muscle cells of Type 2 diabetic patients
No full textYesIncreased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in individuals with type 2 diabetes (T2DM) is a significant clinical problem. Despite advancements in achieving good glycaemic control,
this patient population remains susceptible to macrovascular complications. We previously discovered that vascular smooth muscle cells (SMC) cultured from T2DM patients exhibit persistent phenotypic aberrancies distinct from those of individuals without a diagnosis of T2DM. Notably, persistently elevated expression levels of microRNA-145 co-exist with characteristics consistent with
aging, DNA damage and senescence. We hypothesised that increased expression of microRNA-145 plays a functional role in DNA damage signalling and subsequent cellular senescence specifically in SMC cultured from the vasculature of T2DM patients. In this study, markers of DNA damage
and senescence were unambiguously and permanently elevated in native T2DM versus non-diabetic (ND)-SMC. Exposure of ND cells to the DNA-damaging agent etoposide inflicted a senescent phenotype, increased expression of apical kinases of the DNA damage pathway and elevated expression levels of microRNA-145. Overexpression of microRNA-145 in ND-SMC revealed evidence of functional
links between them; notably increased secretion of senescence-associated cytokines and chronic activation of stress-activated intracellular signalling pathways, particularly the mitogen-activated protein kinase, p38a. Exposure to conditioned media from microRNA-145 overexpressing cells resulted in chronic p38a signalling in naïve cells, evidencing a paracrine induction and reinforcement of cell senescence. We conclude that targeting of microRNA-145 may provide a route to novel interventions to eliminate DNA-damaged and senescent cells in the vasculature and to this end further detailed studies are warranted
What is the Role of a Pharmacist in a Parkinson’s Disease Interdisciplinary Team?
No full textThe care of people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) involves input from different
healthcare professionals (HCPs). A literature search identified that the HCPs
involved in PD multidisciplinary (MDT) clinics, including interdisciplinary team
(IDT), varied both in the number and type of HCPs. None of the studies
identified involved pharmacists. Pharmacists have shown benefits when
working in MDTs for other long-term conditions (LTCs); however, their role in
PD MDTs was identified as a gap in the literature.
The aim of the study was to determine the role of pharmacists in a PD IDT.
Patients attended a PD IDT clinic comprising PD nurse, physiotherapist,
occupational therapist and pharmacist. A mixed methods convergent design
was used to collect both qualitative and quantitative data. Qualitative focus
group and interview data were analysed using The Framework Method.
Quantitative data analysis involved counts of HCP interventions.
Pharmacists can support PD IDTs as they have in other LTC MDTs by
conducting holistic medication reviews. Three new roles were identified for
pharmacists in PD IDTs as: 1) independent prescribing, 2) supporting HCPS in
their roles by supporting staff knowledge, and 3) leading the PD IDT clinics.
Quantitative data showed the pharmacist made a medication review
intervention for all patients.
HCPs and patients identified the roles and value of involving pharmacists in PD
IDTs. The PD IDT clinics offer a holistic approach to patient care and a greater
opportunity for patients to be involved. The findings identified a ‘review-shared care template’
for PD IDTs and recommends development of a ‘pharmacist’s PD competency framework’
Raman spectroscopic study of the pigments in a putative John Constable oil sketch
No full textYesRaman has long been established as a nondestructive and noninvasive technique that has found increasing application in the area of cultural heritage and the study of works of art. Here, we present a further application of Raman spectroscopy in the study of an oil painting belonging to the de Brécy Trust. In the work presented, Raman microscopy has been employed to spectroscopically study minute fragments of excised pigments from a small oil painting bearing the hallmarks of a study sketch by the famous English landscape artist John Constable. Raman spectra were collected from 18 discrete areas of the work, chosen due to their colour in order to potentially cover all of the pigments used in this work. Of the 18, six positive identifications were made, confirming that the painting contained pigments and minerals known to be favoured by the artist. Whilst the remaining 12 sample sites were complicated by the fluorescence effects observed from the applied varnish, this can be useful in providing evidence to support the application of the ‘scumbling’ technique known to be favoured by Constable. We have positively identified the pigments: ultramarine/lapis lazuli, lead white, red lead, Prussian blue, chrome yellow and ivory black. We have also identified amorphous carbon and gypsum. These positively identified pigments link into Constable's existing colour box and four palettes, providing evidence that could lead to the painting being attributed to Constable
Integration of Hidden Markov Modelling and Bayesian Network for Fault Detection and Prediction of Complex Engineered Systems
No full textYesThis paper presents a methodology for fault detection, fault prediction and fault isolation based on the
integration of hidden Markov modelling (HMM) and Bayesian networks (BN). This addresses the nonlinear
and non-Gaussian data characteristics to support fault detection and prediction, within an explainable hybrid
framework that captures causality in the complex engineered system. The proposed methodology is based
on the analysis of the pattern of similarity in the log-likelihood (LL) sequences against the training data for
the mixture of Gaussians HMM (MoG-HMM). The BN model identifies the root cause of
detected/predicted faults, using the information propagated from the HMM model as empirical evidence.
The feasibility and effectiveness of the presented approach are discussed in conjunction with the application
to a real-world case study of an automotive exhaust gas Aftertreatment system. The paper details the
implementation of the methodology to this case study, with data available from real-world usage of the
system. The results show that the proposed methodology identifies the fault faster and attributes the fault
to the correct root cause. While the proposed methodology is illustrated with an automotive case study, its
applicability is much wider to the fault detection and prediction problem of any similar complex engineered
system
Deep Quantile Regression for Unsupervised Anomaly Detection in Time-Series
No full textYesTime-series anomaly detection receives increasing research interest given the growing number of data-rich application domains. Recent additions to anomaly detection methods in research literature include deep neural networks (DNNs: e.g., RNN, CNN, and Autoencoder). The nature and performance of these algorithms in sequence analysis enable them to learn hierarchical discriminative features and time-series temporal nature. However, their performance is affected by usually assuming a Gaussian distribution on the prediction error, which is either ranked, or threshold to label data instances as anomalous or not. An exact parametric distribution is often not directly relevant in many applications though. This will potentially produce faulty decisions from false anomaly predictions due to high variations in data interpretation. The expectations are to produce outputs characterized by a level of confidence. Thus, implementations need the Prediction Interval (PI) that quantify the level of uncertainty associated with the DNN point forecasts, which helps in making better-informed decision and mitigates against false anomaly alerts. An effort has been made in reducing false anomaly alerts through the use of quantile regression for identification of anomalies, but it is limited to the use of quantile interval to identify uncertainties in the data. In this paper, an improve time-series anomaly detection method called deep quantile regression anomaly detection (DQR-AD) is proposed. The proposed method go further to used quantile interval (QI) as anomaly score and compare it with threshold to identify anomalous points in time-series data. The tests run of the proposed method on publicly available anomaly benchmark datasets demonstrate its effective performance over other methods that assumed Gaussian distribution on the prediction or reconstruction cost for detection of anomalies. This shows that our method is potentially less sensitive to data distribution than existing approaches.Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) PhD Scholarship, Nigeria (Award Number: PTDF/ ED/PHD/IAT/884/16
Velocity Profile and Turbulence Structure Measurement Corrections for Sediment Transport-Induced Water-Worked Bed
No full textYesWhen using point measurement for environmental or sediment laden flows, there is well-recognised risk for not having aligned measurements that causes misinterpretation of the measured velocity data. In reality, these kinds of mismeasurement mainly happen due to the misinterpretation of bed orientation caused by the complexity of its determination in natural flows, especially in bedload laden or rough bed flows. This study proposes a novel bed realignment method to improve the measured data benchmarking by three-dimensional (3D) bed profile orientation and implemented it into different sets of experimental data. More specifically, the effects of realignment on velocity profile and streamwise turbulence structure measurements were investigated. The proposed technique was tested against experimental data collected over a water-worked and an experimentally arranged well-packed beds. Different from the well-packed rough bed, the water-worked bed has been generated after long sediment transport and settling and hence can be used to verify the proposed bed-alignment technique thoroughly. During the flow analysis, the corrected velocity, turbulence intensity and Reynolds stress profiles were compared to the theoretical logarithmic law, exponential law and linear gravity (universal Reynolds stress distribution) profiles, respectively. It has been observed that the proposed method has improved the agreement of the measured velocity and turbulence structure data with their actual theoretical profiles, particularly in the near-bed region (where the ratio of the flow measurement vertical distance to the total water depth, z/h, is limited to ≤0.4)