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Vitamin D metabolites are associated with musculoskeletal injury in young adults: a prospective cohort study
Get PDFThe relationship between vitamin D metabolites and lower body (pelvis and lower limb) overuse injury is unclear. In a prospective cohort study, we investigated the association between vitamin D metabolites and incidence of lower body overuse musculoskeletal and bone stress injury in young adults undergoing initial military training during all seasons. In 1637 men and 530 women (aged 22.6 ± 7.5 years; body mass index [BMI], 24.0 ± 2.6 kg/m-2; 94.3% white ethnicity), we measured serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) and 24,25-dihydroxyvitamin D (24,25(OH)2D) by high-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry, and 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D (1,25(OH)2D) by immunoassay during week 1 of training. We examined whether the relationship between 25(OH)D and 1,25(OH)2D:24,25(OH)2D ratio was associated with overuse injury. During 12 weeks of training, 21.0% sustained ≥1 overuse musculoskeletal injury, and 5.6% sustained ≥1 bone stress injury. After controlling for sex, BMI, 2.4 km run time, smoking, bone injury history, and Army training course (Officer, standard, or Infantry), lower body overuse musculoskeletal injury incidence was higher for participants within the second lowest versus highest quartile of 24,25(OH)2D (odds ratio [OR] = 1.62; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.13–2.32; p = 0.009) and lowest versus highest cluster of 25(OH)D and 1,25(OH)2D:24,25(OH)2D (OR = 6.30; 95% CI 1.89–21.2; p = 0.003). Lower body bone stress injury incidence was higher for participants within the lowest versus highest quartile of 24,25(OH)2D (OR = 4.02; 95% CI 1.82–8.87; p
Regional perspectives on the coordination and delivery of paediatric end-of-life care in the UK: a qualitative study
Get PDFBackgroundProvision of and access to paediatric end-of-life care is inequitable, but previous research on this area has focused on perspectives of health professionals in specific settings or children with specific conditions.This qualitative study aimed to explore regional perspectives of the successes, and challenges to the equitable coordination and delivery of end-of-life care for children in the UK.The study provides an overarching perspective on the challenges of delivering and coordinating end-of-life care for children in the UK, and the impact of these on health professionals and organisations. Previous research has not highlighted the successes in the sector, such as the formal and informal coordination of care between different services and sectors.MethodsSemi-structured interviews with Chairs of the regional Palliative Care Networks across the UK. Chairs or co-Chairs (n = 19) of 15/16 Networks were interviewed between October-December 2021. Data were analysed using thematic analysis.ResultsThree main themes were identified: one standalone theme (“Communication during end-of-life care”); and two overarching themes (“Getting end-of-life services and staff in the right place”, with two themes: “Access to, and staffing of end-of-life care” and “Inconsistent and insufficient funding for end-of-life care services”; and “Linking up healthcare provision”, with three sub-themes: “Coordination successes”, “Role of the networks”, and “Coordination challenges”). Good end-of-life care was facilitated through collaborative and network approaches to service provision, and effective communication with families. The implementation of 24/7 advice lines and the formalisation of joint-working arrangements were highlighted as a way to address the current challenges in the specialism.ConclusionsFindings demonstrate how informal and formal relationships between organisations and individuals, enabled early communication with families, and collaborative working with specialist services. Formalising these could increase knowledge and awareness of end of life care, improve staff confidence, and overall improve professionals’ experiences of delivering care, and families’ experiences of receiving it.There are considerable positives that come from collaborative working between different organisations and sectors, and care could be improved if these approaches are funded and formalised. There needs to be consistent funding for paediatric palliative care and there is a clear need for education and training to improve staff knowledge and confidence
Properties of Nanocrystalline Thin Films of Metal and Metal Alloys Obtained at the Oil – Water Interface
Get PDFACEtimation—The Combined Effect of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Violence, Health-Harming Behaviors, and Mental Ill-Health: Findings across England and Wales
Get PDFAdverse childhood experiences (ACEs) encompass various adversities, e.g., physical and/or emotional abuse. Understanding the effects of different ACE types on various health outcomes can guide targeted prevention and intervention. We estimated the association between three categories of ACEs in isolation and when they co-occurred. Specifically, the relationship between child maltreatment, witnessing violence, and household dysfunction and the risk of being involved in violence, engaging in health-harming behaviors, and experiencing mental ill-health. Data were from eight cross-sectional surveys conducted in England and Wales between 2012 and 2022. The sample included 21,716 adults aged 18–69 years; 56.6% were female. Exposure to child maltreatment and household dysfunction in isolation were strong predictors of variant outcomes, whereas witnessing violence was not. However, additive models showed that witnessing violence amplified the measured risk beyond expected levels for being a victim or perpetrator of violence. The multiplicative effect of all three ACE categories demonstrated the highest level of risk (RRs from 1.7 to 7.4). Given the increased risk associated with co-occurring ACEs, it is crucial to target individuals exposed to any ACE category to prevent their exposure to additional harm. Implementing universal interventions that safeguard children from physical, emotional, and sexual violence is likely to mitigate a range of subsequent issues, including future involvement in violence
Secondary Shakespeare in the UK: pedagogies and practice
Get PDFIn this paper, we report data from the first national survey of secondary Shakespeare teaching in the UK, conducted online in 2017–18 with a sample of 211 teachers distributed throughout Wales, England, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. In this article, we outline the pedagogical practices which are dominant. Specifically, we examine the group of pedagogies known as ‘Active Methods’ and consider their popularity in secondary classrooms, and why teachers say they do or do not use them. The most popular activities for teaching Shakespeare plays in the UK across the key stages are as follows: reading with parts around the groups; creating scene summaries; watching a film; and historical context activities
A multifaceted framework to establish the presence of meaning in non-human communication
Get PDFABSTRACTDoes non‐human communication, like language, involve meaning? This question guides our focus through an interdisciplinary review of the theories and terminology used to study meaning across disciplines and species. Until now, it has been difficult to apply the concept of meaning to communication in non‐humans. This is partly because of the varied approaches to the study of meaning. Additionally, while there is a scholarly acknowledgement of potential meaning in non‐human cognition, there is also scepticism when the topic of communication arises. We organise some of the key literature into a coherent framework that can bridge disciplines and species, to ensure that aspects of meaning are accurately and fairly compared. We clarify the growing view in the literature that, rather than requiring multiple definitions or being split into different types, meaning is a multifaceted yet still unified concept. In so doing, we propose that meaning is an umbrella term. Meaning cannot be summed up with a short definition or list of features, but involves multiple complexities that are outlined in our framework. Specifically, three global facets are needed to describe meaning: a Signal Meaning Facet, an Interactant Meaning Facet, and a Resultant Meaning Facet. Most importantly, we show that such analyses are possible to apply as much to non‐humans as to humans. We also emphasise that meaning nuances differ among non‐human species, making a dichotomous approach to meaning questionable. Instead, we show that a multifaceted approach to meaning establishes how meaning appears within highly diverse examples of non‐human communication, in ways consistent with the phenomenon's presence in human non‐verbal communication and language(s). Therefore, without further recourse to ‘functional’ approaches that circumvent the critical question of whether any non‐human meaning exists, we show that the concept of meaning is suitable for evolutionary biologists, behavioural ecologists, and others to study, to establish exactly which species exhibit meaning in their communication and in what ways
Multi-scale pedestrian intent prediction using 3D joint information as spatio-temporal representation
Get PDFThere has been a rise of use of Autonomous Vehicles on public roads. With the predicted rise of road traffic accidents over the coming years, these vehicles must be capable of safely operate in the public domain. The field of pedestrian detection has significantly advanced in the last decade, providing high-level accuracy, with some technique reaching near-human level accuracy. However, there remains further work required for pedestrian intent prediction to reach human-level performance. One of the challenges facing current pedestrian intent predictors are the varying scales of pedestrians, particularly smaller pedestrians. This is because smaller pedestrians can blend into the background, making them difficult to detect, track or apply pose estimations techniques. Therefore, in this work, we present a novel intent prediction approach for multi-scale pedestrians using 2D pose estimation and a Long Short-term memory (LSTM) architecture. The pose estimator predicts keypoints for the pedestrian along the video frames. Based on the accumulation of these keypoints along the frames, spatio-temporal data is generated. This spatio-temporal data is fed to the LSTM for classifying the crossing behaviour of the pedestrians. We evaluate the performance of the proposed techniques on the popular Joint Attention in Autonomous Driving (JAAD) dataset and the new larger-scale Pedestrian Intention Estimation (PIE) dataset. Using data generalisation techniques, we show that the proposed technique outperformed the state-of-the-art techniques by up to 7%, reaching up to 94% accuracy while maintaining a comparable run-time of 6.1 ms
Students' views and experiences of blended learning and employability in a post-pandemic context, Social Sciences & Humanities Open
Get PDFExisting research has investigated university students' experiences of learning during restrictive lockdowns (e.g. Ela et al., 2021; Khan, 2021) as well as their perceptions of their own employability (Haekal et al., 2021; Plakhotnik et al., 2021). This study addresses a research gap, by exploring these topics from a post-pandemic perspective. Our research collected data with a cohort of university students at a UK institution, otherwise known as ‘NorthSea’, in relation to their views and experiences of both ‘blended learning’ (BL) and employability. The study had a multi-method design comprising of an online focus group (OFG) with n.18 respondents, n.10 semi structured interviews (SSI) and anecdotal data collected from n.6 students. Students were generally supportive of the continuation of BL due to its flexibility. Anecdotal data, collected six months after the original research study, noted further support for BL due to financial concerns about the cost of living crisis. Although other respondents preferred face to face teaching as they observed a disconnect between lectures being delivered online and in person. In terms of employability, respondents were complimentary of the support provided by the Employability Service, (ES), although mature did not always avail themselves of this support, and international students did not perceive that the service was available to them. Respondents also talked of wanting tailored information, advice and guidance (IAG) that considered their degree subject. Recommendations included further research in the shape of an action research project that focused on tailored IAG and included student unions, and for ES to take proactive steps such faculty endorsements, peer ambassadors (who have successfully used the employability service) and a university incentive scheme