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A qualitative analysis of the experience of gambling harm and accessing support among United Kingdom Armed Forces personnel
Get PDFBackground:
Military personnel (both currently serving and veterans) are vulnerable to harm from gambling, yet many are reluctant to seek help. The aims of this study were to explore the lived experience of gambling and gambling harm in currently serving members of the UK Armed Forces and to seek to improve military-specific gambling harm information and support.
Methods:
Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with self-selected currently serving personnel from the UK Armed Forces. Interview questions focus on lived experience of gambling harm, motivators and triggers around gambling, and awareness of gambling information and support.
Results:
Thematic analysis identified four main themes: (1) sociocultural pathways to gambling harm; (2) influencing factors unique to military life; (3) obstacles to early intervention and support; and (4) facilitators of help and support.
Conclusions:
Findings showed that the nature and extent of gambling harm within the UK Armed Forces may not be fully acknowledged, and that currently serving personnel face barriers accessing safer gambling information and support. Specifically, there was a lack of education around the nature of gambling harm, identifying it, how to go about seeking help, and from whom. The normalisation of potentially harmful behaviour, stigmatising attitudes, and concerns around anonymity serve as further barriers to help-seeking. There is a need to raise awareness, reduce stigma, and enhance support for gambling harm within the UK Armed Forces
How to create a VS code extension for API health checks?
No full textHave you ever thought about to build a Visual Studio Code extension as your capstone project? That’s what I did!
I have created a Visual Studio Code Extension, API Guardian, that identifies API endpoints in a project and checks their functionality before deployment. This solution was developed to help developers save time spent fixing issues caused by breaking or non-breaking changes and to alleviate the difficulties in performing maintenance due to unclear or outdated documentation.
Let's build your very own extension
Develop a VS code extension for your capstone project
No full textAs software and APIs evolve, developers encounter significant difficulties in maintaining and updating API endpoints. Breaking changes can lead to system instability, while outdated or unclear documentation makes maintenance less efficient.
These challenges are further compounded by the time-consuming nature of updating dependencies and the tendency to prioritize new features over maintenance tasks. The absence of effective tools and processes to tackle these issues reduces overall productivity and developer efficiency.
To address this, API Guardian was created as a Visual Studio Code extension that identifies API endpoints in a project and checks their functionality before deployment. This solution was developed to help developers save time spent fixing issues caused by breaking or non-breaking changes and to alleviate the difficulties in performing maintenance due to unclear or outdated documentation
Addressing the inverse care law in Scottish general practice: systematic scoping review
Get PDFBackground Recent evidence demonstrates persistence of the inverse care law (ICL) in general practice in England. Although the ICL was well-described in Scotland 20 years ago, progress in interventions since then is unclear. Aim To review national and local interventions which aimed to specifically address the ICL in Scottish general practice since 2000. Design & Setting Systematic scoping review, Scotland. Method We searched EMBASE, Web of Science, MEDLINE, CINAHL, Cochrane and BASE from 2000 to February 2024. We also performed a systematic grey literature search of government, NHS and third sector websites. All papers were double screened for inclusion. We included quantitative and qualitative studies and assessed quality using the Joanna Briggs Institute tools. Results Out of 13089 results, 67 papers reporting on 20 interventions were included. Interventions to improve general practice in deprived areas were categorised as: 1) enhancing patients’ financial or social support, 2) targeting specific health conditions, 3) targeting specific groups and 4) enhancing generalist healthcare. Six interventions accounted for 49% of all included papers. Only two interventions have been rolled out nationally – Community Link Workers and Welfare Advice and Health Partnerships – with both facing uncertain long-term funding. Conclusion There remains a major implementation gap between Scottish Government’s policy ambitions to address health inequalities and sustainable delivery on the ground. To address the inverse care law, greater overall investment in general practice is needed, together with additional resources for more deprived areas according to local population need (a “proportionate universalism” approach)
Improving the oral health of older people in care homes: results from a randomised feasibility study
Get PDFObjectives:
Poor oral health is a considerable burden for older adults in care homes. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) issued guideline NG48 on “Improving oral health in care homes”. However, empirical evidence for oral health interventions among care home residents is weak, and the feasibility of the NG48 recommended interventions is not established. This study aimed to determine the feasibility of delivering a co-designed oral health intervention, based on NG48 recommendations, in care homes in two sites in the UK.
Methods:
This was a pragmatic cluster randomised controlled feasibility study with a 12-month follow-up, undertaken in 22 care homes across two sites (11 each in London and Northern Ireland). Care homes were randomised to an intervention arm (n = 11), and a control arm (n = 11) that continued with usual routine practice. The complex intervention contained materials were co-designed with care home staff and consisted of: care home staff training package; Oral Health Assessment Tool (OHAT) administered by trained care home staff; and a support worker assisted twice daily tooth-brushing regimen with 1500 ppm fluoride toothpaste. Rates of recruitment and retention, data completion, and intervention fidelity were recorded to determine feasibility.
Results:
One-hundred-and-nineteen residents from 22 care homes were recruited and 82 residents from 19 care homes completed the study (retention: 86% for care homes and 69% for residents). Twenty residents were lost to follow-up and another 17 withdrew throughout the study. Data completion rates ranged between 88% and 97% at baseline and between 91% and 96% at the 12-month follow-up. Intervention fidelity records showed high completion rates for oral care plans (90%), and lower rates for weekly oral hygiene records (73%) and the OHAT (61%).
Conclusions:
This study documented the feasibility of an oral health intervention in care homes, while also highlighting issues to consider for a definitive trial to assess the effectiveness of the co-designed intervention.
Trial Registration:
Clinical Trial Registration: ISRCTN1027661
Smart grid security through fusion-enhanced federated learning against adversarial attacks
No full textThe proliferation of smart grids introduces significant challenges for energy networks in managing and securing the vast data they generate. Federated Learning (FL) provides a cost-effective and privacy-preserving
framework for distributed model training, addressing critical concerns around customer data privacy and security. However, FL remains vulnerable to adversarial threats, particularly data poisoning attacks, which can significantly impair model performance. This study presents a novel data poisoning attack and proposes a mitigation framework tailored for resource-constrained smart grids. The Centroid-Based Anomaly Aware Federated Averaging (CBAA-FedAvg) framework is introduced, achieving a Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of 2.7 percent, closely aligning with baseline performance while maintaining robustness. CBAAFedAvg integrates advanced fusion techniques, including parameter quantization (from 32-bit floating point to 8-bit fixed point) and dynamic clustering, to minimize computational complexity and optimize data processing. Furthermore, an automatic stopping criterion optimizes convergence, reducing energy consumption
and computation time. Experimental results demonstrate that CBAA-FedAvg exhibits remarkable resilience to both data and model poisoning attacks, leveraging fusion strategies to enhance security and efficiency.
This framework provides a scalable and effective solution for improving the fusion, security, and operational efficiency of smart grids
Sustainable solution for direct absorption of solar thermal energy in biochar-based form stable thermal energy storage media for low radiation regions by integration of Cross Compound Parabolic Concentrator
Get PDFRenewable energy to meet the low temperature thermal needs is need of the hour as it contributes to almost half of the consumption. The adoption of thermal energy storage can accelerate the share of renewable heat by improving reliability and efficiency. A novel thermal energy storage material is developed by encapsulating paraffin-based Phase Change Material (PCM) in porous biochar to improve thermal conductivity and prevent leakage. This composite is then placed in a rectangular cavity and radiated using a halide light source from top to mimic the actual solar heating. To reach a high level of irradiance a Cross Compound Parabolic Concentrator (CCPC) with a concentration of 4× has been designed and utilised. The work includes a comparative study of pure RT28 and RT28-softwood biochar composite. A solution is proposed to advance the applicability of latent heat energy storage, charged through direct solar absorption, by use of a well-designed CCPC under low radiation conditions. The composite with concentration melts 5.4 times faster as compared to non-concentration condition. Similarly, the melting is quicker in the composite as that of RT28 due to improvement of thermal conductivity by 80 %. CCPC integrated thermal energy storage can reach an average storage temperature of 89.7 °C with an irradiance of 540 W/m². These findings could be helpful to accelerate the deployment of PCM based biochar composite for energy storage applications in the locations with low solar irradiance and short sunshine duration
Assessing Primary School Teacher Readiness for Supporting Students with Dyscalculia
Get PDFTeachers must be well-prepared to educate students with additional learning needs. Teacher preparedness to support students with dyscalculia – which affects how well people understand and manipulates numbers and mathematical concepts – is under-researched. This study investigated primary teacher preparedness in educating students with dyscalculia, utilizing a quantitative online survey with 386 primary school teachers pan-Malaysia. Findings revealed that teachers exhibited a moderate level of readiness in addressing the needs of students with dyscalculia. Results also showed no significant difference in readiness indices between male and female teachers. Teachers demonstrated professionalism by adapting and diversifying methods when working with students facing learning challenges, particularly in inclusive classrooms. These results offer valuable insights for multiple stakeholders (e.g., teachers, teacher educators, policymakers), highlighting the state of teacher readiness in mainstream primary schools for educating students with dyscalculia. Data can inform strategies to ensure that students receive optimal and inclusive educational experiences
The brain computes dynamic facial movements for emotion categorization using a third pathway
Get PDFEmerging theories in cognitive neuroscience propose a third brain pathway dedicated to processing biological motion, alongside the established ventral and dorsal pathways. However, its role in computing dynamic social signals for behavior remains uncharted. Here, participants (N = 10) actively categorized dynamic facial expressions synthesized by a generative model and displayed on different face identities—as “happy,” “surprise,” “fear,” “anger,” “disgust,” “sad”—while we recorded their MEG responses. Using representational interaction measures that link facial features with MEG activity and categorization behavior, we identified within each participant a functional social pathway extending from the occipital cortex to the superior temporal gyrus. This pathway selectively represents, communicates, and integrates facial movements that are essential for the behavioral categorization of emotion, while task-irrelevant identity features are filtered out in the occipital cortex. Our findings uncover how the third pathway selectively computes complex dynamic social signals for emotion categorization in individual participants, offering computational insights into the dynamics of neural activity
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