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Improving learning effectiveness by leveraging spaced repetition (SR)
No full textThe academic efficiency and knowledge retention of students can be improved by practising active recall testing and implementing spaced repetition techniques. The process of trying to recall information previously learned with the aim of increasing the chance of committing the information to long-term memory is called active recall. Spaced repetition is a technique which can help students to memorize and learn information by outspreading reviews of the topics over larger range of time revising the same topic multiple times in a single session. A qualitative method has been followed in this paper which takes a grounded theory approach while evaluating literature on different memory models, memory creation, and retrieval processes. Based on the literature review, an algorithm has been proposed with the aim of improving learning effectiveness by leveraging spaced repetition techniques
Performance of admission pathways within acute medicine services: Analysis from the Society for Acute Medicine Benchmarking Audit 2022 and comparison with performance 2019 - 2021
Get PDFUrgent and emergency care services face increasing pressure, impacting patient care. We evaluated the performance of acute medicine services, assessing clinical quality indicators for unplanned medical admissions to acute
hospital services.
152 acute UK hospital services accepting unplanned admissions to acute and general internal medicine
completed a day-of-care survey incorporating organisational structure questionnaire and patient-level data over
a pre-defined 24-hour period in June 2022. Clinical quality indicators were: Early Warning Score (EWS) measurement within 30 min of hospital arrival; clinician assessment within 4 h; assessment by consultant physician
within 6 h (daytime) or 14 h (night-time). Results were compared with 2019, 2020, 2021.
7293 sequential patients were included (and compared with 19,817 patients across 2019–2021). In 2022, 69%
of patients (95%CI 67.7–69.9%) had an EWS documented within 30 min. 79% of patients (95%CI 77.8–79.7%)
were reviewed by a clinical decision maker within 4 h of hospital arrival. Patients assessed in Same Day
Emergency Care services were more likely to meet this target than those assessed in Acute Medical Units or
Emergency Departments (OR 2.4, 95%CI 2.02–2.87, p<0.001). Overall, 50% of patients received consultant
physician review within the target time (3065/6161, 95%CI 48.5–51.0%); performance varied with time of
arrival and location of initial assessment. Performance against all three clinical quality indicators was lower than
2019, 2020 and 2021 (p<0.001 for all).
Performance against all quality indicators within acute medicine services is deteriorating. However, performance in Same Day Emergency Care Units is greater than in Acute Medical Units or Emergency Department
Is laughter really the best medicine? Reflecting on a mental health initiative using pragmatic collaborative autoethnography
Get PDFThis article relates to the potential of applied laughter in social science. Here, we explore the “Laughie Challenge Australia.” This community-based mental health initiative aims to get Australians laughing. We invite its instigator to discuss it, using a pragmatic qualitative research approach, Invited Collaborative Autoethnography (ICAE). Our purpose is to gain insight into the rationale and practicalities of using laughter to alleviate community mental health issues. Thus, we use ICAE instrumentally as a discourse platform to build understanding through joint narrative with a view of facilitating laughter community-science research collaborations. We recount the “story” of the Laughie Challenge, and the meeting of two academics and a community laughter leader, with a shared interest in the healing power of laughter and “real-world” laughter applications. ICAE enabled transparent, in-depth discourse. It has resulted in citizen science research to further advance knowledge in this area
Facile preparation of flame-retardant cellulose composite with biodegradable and water resistant properties for electronic device applications
Get PDFThe aim of the present study is to produce flexible, flame-retardant, water-resistant and biodegradable composite materials. The ultimate goal of this research is to develop simple processes for the production of bio-based materials capable of replacing non-degradable substrates in printed circuit board. Cellulose was chosen as a renewable resource, and dissolved in 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate ionic liquid to prepare a cellulosic continuous film. Since flame retardancy is an important criterion for electronic device applications and cellulose is naturally flammable, we incorporated ammonium polyphosphate (APP) as a flame-retardant filler to increase the flame retardancy of the produced materials. The developed material achieved a UL-94 HB rating in the flammability test, while the cellulose sample without APP failed the test. Two hydrophobic agents, ethyl 2-cyanoacrylate and trichloro(octadecyl)silane were applied by a simple dip-coating technique to impart hydrophobicity to the cellulose-APP composites. Dynamic mechanical analysis indicated that the mechanical properties of the cellulosic materials were not significantly affected by the addition of APP or the hydrophobic agents. Moreover, the biodegradability of the cellulosic materials containing APP increased owing to the presence of the cellulase enzyme. The hydrophobic coating slightly decreased the biodegradability of cellulose-APP, but it was still higher than that of pure cellulose film
Challenges for school leadership and management in the four nations of the United Kingdom during the pandemic: conceptual shifts and implications for future thinking
Get PDFThis chapter draws on research carried out during the pandemic into the responses of head teachers in diverse school and community contexts. A need for a deepening sense of shared identity with leaders binding people together and being seen “to stand with them” was needed[1] enabling a shared understanding of goals in moving forward together. In developing relationships across the school community (staff, pupils and parents), the importance of trust and fairness is highlighted, led by moral imperatives focused on the collective good of the community. A framework emerging from this work highlights dynamic elements as school leaders adapted and negotiated new ways of being part of the school imaginary while holding on to principles and values and a sense of leadership as an essential part of investment in education and education communities as vehicles for the common good
Language Games: the gendered politics of the speech act in Ben Lerner’s The Topeka School
Get PDFR.W. Connell argues that masculinity is not a unitary phenomenon; rather, that masculinities emerge out of situationally specific choices drawn from a ‘cultural repertoire’ of so-called masculine behaviour that result in a particular ‘configuration of practice.’ Ben Lerner’s novel The Topeka School (2019) calls attention to this process by focussing on the coding of particular speech-acts as masculine in the context of mid-nineties, small-town Kansas; moreover, he contextualises these particular speech-acts as the cultural precursors to the political rise of the alt-right, leading to Trump’s presidency. In The Topeka School, then, speech-acts are not simply gendered but shown to have significant political ramifications. In this paper I argue that while Lerner dissects the genealogy of this particular construction of masculinity, he also presents alternative models of gendered speech-acts that subvert what Hélène Cixous calls the libidinal and cultural masculine economy, and that he explicitly links each of these models to the figure of the mother. Lerner thus suggests a gender-inclusive speaking-back against the dominant masculinist order, with the mother acting as a key locus of political dissent, resistance, and change – he suggests, too, what Connell would call a necessary reconfiguration of masculine practice
National Early Warning Scores following emergency hospital transfer: implications for care home residents
Get PDFObjective.
Care home residents have high rates of hospital admission. The UK National Early Warning Score (NEWS2) standardises the secondary care response to acute illness. However, the ability of NEWS2 to predict adverse health outcomes specifically for care home residents is unknown. This study explored the relationship between NEWS2 on admission to hospital and resident outcome 7 days later.
Design.
Repeated cross-sectional study.
Setting and participants.
Data on UK care home residents admitted to 160 hospitals in two 24-hour periods (2019 and 2020).
Method.
Chi-squared and Kruskal–Wallis tests, and multinomial regression were used to explore the association between low (score ≤2), intermediate (3-4), high (5-6) and critically high (≥7) NEWS2 on admission and each of the following: discharge on day of admission, admission and discharge within 7 days, prolonged hospital admission (> 7days), and death.
Results.
From 665 resident admissions across 160 hospital sites, NEWS2 was low for 54%, intermediate 18%, high 13% and critically high for 16%. The 7-day outcome was 10% same-day discharge, 47% admitted and subsequently discharged, 34% remained in-patients and 8% died. There is a significant association between NEWS2 and these outcomes (P<0.001). Compared to those with low NEWS2, residents with high and critically high NEWS2 had 3.6 and 9.5 times increased risk of prolonged hospitalisation ((relative risk ratio 3.56, 95%CI (1.02–12.37), RRR 9.47, CI (2.20–40.67)) respectively. The risk of death was approximately 14 times higher for residents with high NEWS2 (RRR 13.62, CI 3.17–58.49) and 54 times higher (RRR 53.50, CI 11.03–259.54) for critically high NEWS2.
Conclusion and implications.
Higher NEWS2 measurements on admission are associated with an increased risk of hospitalisation up to 7 days duration, prolonged admission, and mortality for care home residents. NEWS2 may have a role as an adjunct to acute care decision-making for hospitalised residents
Prevalence of perceived discrimination and associations with mental health inequalities in the UK during 2019-2020: A cross-sectional study
Get PDFExperiencing discrimination is associated with poorer mental health and
demographic patterning of discrimination may explain inequalities in mental health.
The present research examined prevalence of perceived discrimination in the UK
and associations with inequalities in mental health. Data were taken from the UK
Household Longitudinal Study (n = 32,003). Population subgroups (sex, age,
ethnicity, health, religiousness, income, education, and occupation), perceived
personal discrimination (personal experience) and perceived belonging to a
discriminated group (identified as belonging to a group discriminated against in this
country), and probable mental health problems (GHQ-12 assessed, cut off 4+) were
reported on in 2019/2020. Nineteen percent of participants perceived personal
discrimination in the last year, 9% perceived belonging to a discriminated group, and
22% had probable mental health problems. There were significant inequalities in
both perceived discrimination and mental health. Being a younger adult, of mixed
ethnicity, having health problems, having a university degree, and being unemployed
increased risk of mental health problems and these associations were partially
explained by perceived discrimination being more common among these groups.
Perceived discrimination is common among UK adults, but prevalence differs by population subgroup. Perceived discrimination may contribute to social inequalities in
mental health
Specifying an innovative route in confronting youth unemployment in Ghana: a policy brief for the Ministry of Trade, Government of Ghana
No full textThis policy brief has been developed from a funded British Council Innovation for African Universities programme (IAU). In this document the authors provide an executive summary of the current youth unemployment landscape in Ghana, and a research synopsis of the fieldwork data collection. The policy brief also devises a number of recommendations on entrepreneurship, innovation, training and skills for young people
Twitter sentiment analysis and emotion detection using NLTK and TextBlob
Get PDFOn a worldwide level, every second around 6000
tweets are sent, which counts to around 200 billion tweets in a
year. People share their ideas and views publicly on Twitter,
thus it serves as a good platform for analyzing public trends and
behaviour towards any person, product or news. Customers
frequently utilize social media platforms to share their thoughts
and experiences regarding goods and services. Businesses can
find areas for improvement and better understand the attitudes
of their customers towards their goods and services by using
sentiment analysis. In order to perform sentiment analysis on
twitter, text classification using Natural Language
Processing(NLP) has been proved to be very helpful. Using NLP
word tokenizer, we can divide the sentences into different sets of
words, thereafter we remove the stop words. Manually
tokenizing long tweets and categorizing them into separate
groups is challenging. The primary goal of this model is to
analyze the tweets related to a given keyword entered by the
user, classify the tweets as positive, negative or neutral using
(VADER sentiment analysis or alternately). TextBlob library,
which will help consumers as well as manufacturers to
understand people's overall opinion regarding the product. This
study makes an attempt to suggest a text sentiment analysis on
twitter data using the NLTK and TextBlob libraries