Summary Of Project Research Articles

Summary of Ringing Project for Raptors and Owls in Slovakia from 2002 to 2004

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To what extent does A-level physics prepare students for undergraduate laboratory work?

This paper is a summary of a small-scale research project carried out to investigate the transition from A-level to university physics, with a specific focus on practical or laboratory skills. A brief description of the methods used precedes the headline findings of the research. A non-evidential discussion of the possible reasons behind any shortcomings found and some ideas for A-level teachers to help with a smoother transition are also included.

Indonesian Learners’ Difficulties In Understanding The Meaning Of Present Perfect Form In English

This concise essay is a summary of a limited research project attempting to investigate Indonesian learners’ problems in understanding the English perfect forms. It consists of four parts. Firstly the introduction, which gives an outline of what the essay is about. The second part, a brief literature review, discusses the basic verb phrase structure in English and Indonesian. The third part is a prediction of learners' likely difficulties, and hypotheses based on the ideas drawn from the literature review. Then, the methodology section, the fourth part, discusses how the study is conducted. The fifth part is the result and discussion of the findings, which is finally followed by the conclusion

HSTEP – Homogeneous Studies of Transiting Extrasolar Planets

AbstractThis paper presents a summary of the HSTEP project: an effort to calculate the physical properties of the known transiting extrasolar planets using a homogeneous approach. I discuss the motivation for the project, list the 83 planets which have already been studied, run through some important aspects of the methodology, and finish with a synopsis of the results.

Relationships for learning: using pupil voice to define teacher−pupil relationships that enhance pupil engagement

This paper is a summary of a pupil voice research project conducted to investigate the influence that teacher−pupil relationships have on pupils’ feelings of engagement with their school. The study involved two year groups (12−13 and 14−15 year olds) in a rural secondary school in Cambridgeshire. Data sources were collected through a questionnaire and follow-up focus groups and pupil interviews to explore pupils’ opinions and experiences of learning relationships and their impact. Findings include pupils’ identification of the features of effective teacher−pupil relationships and their perspectives on how these have a positive influence on their levels of motivation and engagement at school.

Investigating Students’ Ways to Learn English Outside of Class: A Researchers’ Narrative

This paper provides a summary of a multi-stage research project described through the narratives of the two authors. The research project investigated what students thought were effective (i.e., Good) and less effective (i.e., Bad) ways to learn English. The paper presents some of the main findings of the various components of the studies. One important finding relevant to educators working in self-access centres is that students responding to the open-ended portions of the study did not mention electronic, online or multimedia resources, or self-access learning centres (SALCs). Follow-up closed-response questionnaire findings indicated that students evaluated electronic resources and SALCs positively as good ways to learn outside of class. The authors suggest that a questionnaire-based list of ways to learn English out of class is an effective way to raise students’ awareness of alternatives for learners. Subsequent diary studies showed how participants used ideas that were introduced mainly via the questionnaire for their outside class study.

Websites of note

Websites of note

Towards Sustainable But Still Adequate Pensions in the EU: Theory, Trends and Simulations

This report is a summary of the research project on the 'Adequacy and Sustainability of Old-Age Income Maintenance' (AIM). Thirteen institutes from across the EU have collaborated on the task of assessing the situation of today’s pensioners and providing insights into future trends and policy options for securing adequate income for EU pensioners.The AIM project produced several state-of-the-art additions to the debate on EU pension reforms. Among others, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in the UK calculated cohort spending for a sample of European countries to show how much countries need to save to take care of future pensioners. The team led by the Belgian Federal Planning Bureau developed the first EU, multi-country, dynamic simulation model for pension expenditure called MIDAS. A group of research institutes led by the Netherlands Institute for Social Research provided a current map of the social exclusion of the elderly in the EU.The report starts with a discussion on what pensions we can consider adequate. Indicators of adequacy are proposed. Then, to determine the different pension mechanisms in existence in the EU and the prevalence of various kinds of schemes, the report provides an up-to-date classification of pension systems. This classification section is followed by an analysis of public opinion on pension reforms. While the public is generally in favor of the status quo, certain segments of the population fear and resist changes for diverse reasons.The bulk of the study entails a statistical description of the material situation of the elderly in the EU-15 and the new member states, simulations of assorted policy scenarios and discussions on incentives to retire or stay in the labor force. The broad conclusion of the report is that the pension incomes of future generations are under threat everywhere, mostly owing to demographic developments. Yet policy-makers have a range of reform options at their disposal that, when implemented with careful regard for the political and social context, can ensure adequate incomes of the elderly in the future.

The project summary: An essential fundraising tool

Brin Best explains how project summaries can help maximise your school's fundraising work.

Teaching Artists and the Future of Education

ABSTRACT A summary of the large-scale Teaching Artist Research Project.

CSM 2012 Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy Section Programming

CSM 2012 Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy Section Programming

Cancer Survivorship Research: A Review of the Literature and Summary of Current NCI-Designated Cancer Center Projects

The number of cancer survivors and the amount of cancer survivorship research have grown substantially during the past three decades. This article provides a review of interventional and observational cancer survivorship research efforts as well as a summary of current cancer survivorship research projects being conducted by National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers in an effort to identify areas that need further attention.

Generating rules from data mining for collaboration moderator services

A Moderator is a knowledge based system that supports collaborative working by raising awareness of the priorities and requirements of other team members. However, the amount of advice a Moderator can provide is limited by the knowledge it contains on team members. The use of data mining techniques can contribute towards automating the process of knowledge acquisition for a Moderator and enable hidden data patterns and relationships to be discovered to facilitate the moderation process. A novel approach is presented, consisting of a knowledge discovery framework which provides a semi-automatic methodology to generate rules by inserting relationships discovered as a result of data mining into a generic template. To demonstrate the knowledge discovery framework methodology an application case is described. The application case acquires knowledge for a Moderator to make project partners aware of how to best formulate a proposal for a European research project by data mining summaries of successful past projects. Findings from the application case are presented.

Podcast Interview Transcript

Podcast Interview Transcript Susan Sommer, Laurie Stillman, Polly Hoppin, and Leandris Liburd In each volume of the Journal, the editors select one article for our Beyond the Manuscript post-study interview with the authors. Beyond the Manuscript provides the authors the opportunity to tell listeners what they would want to know about the project beyond what went into the final manuscript. The associate editors who handled the articles conduct our Beyond the Manuscript interviews. Beyond the Manuscript podcasts are available for download at the Journal’s website at http://pchp.press.jhu.edu. This issue’s Beyond the Manuscript podcast was conducted by REACH special issue Guest Editor Leandris Liburd and features Susan Sommer, Laurie Stillman, and Polly Hoppin, the lead author and community partners for “Children’s Hospital Boston Community Asthma Initiative: Partnerships and Outcomes Advance Policy Change” The following is an edited transcript of the Beyond the Manuscript podcast. Leandris Liburd Susan, can you provide a brief summary of your asthma project, including its purpose and any results you’ve found for everybody who is listening to give them an orientation to the project? Susan Sommer The Children’s Hospital Boston Community Asthma Initiative was founded as the result of an extensive community needs assessment back in 2003 and 2004. At that time, the community identified asthma as one of their four major pediatric concerns; in addition, from Children’s perspective, asthma was the number one cause of hospitalizations, and 70% of those children came from the five low-income neighborhoods very close to the Hospital. We also noted that there were very high rates for Latino and Black children, and in fact, three to five times the rate for White children. So there was a very marked health disparity that needed to be addressed and many social determinants of health that were underlying these statistics. We identified four ZIP Codes within inner city Boston, largely African American and Latino communities, who were the populations hardest hit by these asthma rates. And at that point consulted, (and then we’ll get into this more) with many of our already existing partners and people working on asthma issues throughout the city and region as to how to go about addressing these disparities. As a result, we developed a case management model with a strong home visiting component. Home visits were conducted by both nurses and community health workers, and delivered tailored asthma education as well as home environmental assessments, and a moderate level of remediation. Thanks to our partners, we had built in a strong evaluation component including cost analysis, and had very positive results, with a 79% reduction in hospitalizations, and a 64% reduction in emergency department visits after 1 year as well as a return on investment of 1.46. [End Page 337] Susan Sommer We realized from the beginning that there were larger, systemic, policy issues that needed to be addressed. Certainly, many of them housing issues—a lot of substandard housing with many environmental triggers. We are active in coalitions working on that, but also looking for sustainable payment models for these kinds of asthma programs that clearly were very effective, but were really limited by grant funding. That’s where we turn to our partners and coalitions to work on that policy issue. Leandris Liburd These are quite impressive findings. You had a team of partners, and I know they included community as well as academic partners, that represented different disciplines and backgrounds. How was this an asset for the project? Susan Sommer We did, in fact, have a strong group of partners even before our particular project started, including the Boston Public Health Commission that was doing a lot of work around home environmental triggers, and in particular pests and mold in the houses. Inspectional Services, Boston Medical Center, and then a local advocacy group, Boston Urban Asthma Coalition was its name at the time. And then in addition, the Asthma Regional Council which is represented by Laurie Stillman today, and UMass Lowell represented by Polly Hoppin, who were instrumental in helping us set the policy agenda Laurie Stillman The Asthma Regional Council of New England is a coalition of governmental, academic, and...

Enhancing education through service learning: a project overview

PurposeThis paper intendsto provide a summary of a service learning project that was used as a form of work‐based learning to facilitate leadership training and education for undergraduate business students.Design/methodology/approachDetails regarding the service learning project are provided, including objectives and a general overview of the methodology. This specific project required undergraduate business students in a leadership course to function in simulated roles as consultants for a fictional consulting company charged with developing and delivering a leadership training seminar for practicing managers/employees of non‐profit organizations located near the university.FindingsBenefits or advantages to using this project are described. One of the most significant benefits associated with the project included the opportunity for students, as fictional employees, to become subject matter experts, while also becoming actively engaged or immersed in the content of leadership.Practical implicationsThis project provides evidence that service learning can be an effective method for “teaching” leadership skills and knowledge to undergraduate business students.Originality/valueThe service learning project summarized here provides a unique perspective on how this form of work based learning can be designed to foster the development of leadership knowledge and skills to undergraduate business students. Further, this project provides evidence of how this approach to learning can also benefit the community by enhancing the knowledge levels of employees in community organizations.

Cheaper by the hour: temporary lawyers and the deprofessionalization of the law

Contents Preface 1. Degraded and Insecure: The New Workforce 2. Basically Interchangeable: The Creation of the Temporary Lawyer 3. Life on the Concourse Level: Doing Document Review 4. Box Shopping in Nike Town: Struggles over Work 5. Keeping Count of Every Freakin' Minute: Struggles over Time 6. A Glorified Data Entry Person: Struggles over Identity 7. I Would Rather Grow in India: The Emerging Legal Underclass Appendix A: Document Review Project Summary Appendix B: The Questionnaire Appendix C: The Attorneys References Index

Project summary: a critical synopsis of mechanisms of action of low-dose xenobiotics in mammalian organisms as a basis for assessing aggregated effects of chemical mixtures and identifying "new" toxicological end points

Abstract Background European chemicals legislation (registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemical substances (REACH)) requires a broad assessment of chemicals with respect to, inter alia, their health-relevant properties. Due to the extreme number of substances to be assessed and the limited current toxicological knowledge on their respective properties, REACH implicitly requires a paradigm change: away from knowledge generated mainly from costly animal experiments towards the use of mechanistic findings. Moreover, effect mechanisms at the biochemical or cellular level are essential when conclusions shall be drawn about "new" endpoints and mixtures of xenobiotics. This study (funded by the German Federal Environment Agency) describes examples of biochemical processes in the mammalian organism and how xenobiotics interfere with them. Interference with physiological processes expected to lead to adverse health effects is characterised as "toxicity pathway". The study describes toxicological endpoints not usually covered in routine animal testing and the respective toxicity pathways. Results and conclusions Screening for chemicals which exert effects via common toxicity pathways and subsequently conducting targeted short-term tests may generate new information about the toxicity of chemicals without performing extensive substance-by-substance animal experiments. Information on common toxicity pathways may also provide input for the assessment of mixture effects. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is working intensely on this concept. It involves the use of enormous amounts of data on relevant biochemical and cellular processes, which are generated by "high-throughput screening" methods, and then are combined with substance-specific kinetic data, experimental apical test outcomes and modelling. Current limitations in the regulatory use of this integrated approach on risk assessment will be outlined.

Valuing the wealth of restorative activity and using it as a source of inspiration

This issue of EMR contains an unusually high number of articles relating to fauna and habitat management, including both research and on-ground projects. This issue’s two features, for example – one on improving fire regimes in the Kimberley, Western Australia (Legge et al., this issue), and the other on removing cats from Christmas Island (Hilmer et al.) – both represent cutting edge initiatives to improve habitats for native species, particularly threatened species. These are impressive initiatives that go beyond current best practice, breaking new ground to inspire others elsewhere to adapt the initiatives for their own areas. Also among the longer and shorter research reports in this issue are articles on the eradication of the House Mouse from Montague Island, WA (Cory et al. this issue); trials to improve reptile environments in the agricultural landscape by removing tree regrowth around rocky outcrops (Pike et al. this issue), and assessment of the longevity of habitat log piles (Grigg, this issue). All these seek to trial (or add insight into) possible solutions to current environmental challenges. While there are many papers on fauna and habitat topics in this issue, vegetation matters are not neglected. Longer articles include a timely review of the range of values of the networks of travelling stock routes and reserves in NSW and Queensland (Lentini et al. this issue) and a method of assessing the relative conservation values of wetlands in the Murray-Darling Basin to maximise the conservation management effectiveness of environmental water use (Peake et al. this issue). Shorter reports continue on the theme of vegetation assessment (Briggs et al., Kelly et al. and Lentini et al. this issue), and there are also a number of notes relating to revegetation techniques (So et al., Ruthroff et al. and Grose this issue), all of which are highly relevant to improving on-ground restoration outcomes. Indeed, the breadth of articles shows that there is a wealth of restoration management activity going on in Australia involving both plant and animal habitats and that managers are recognising the need to draw upon research expertise to enhance success. Researchers are also drawing increasingly on the special insights of managers. This two-way process is no better reflected than in this issue’s guest editorial by David Freudenberger and team from the practitioner organisation Greening Australia, who outline their initiative to become involved in the Ecological Society of Australia’s (ESA) 2010 conference. Among other things this involved the team pitching their own presentations to appeal to researchers interested in applied science and seeking to involve in symposia, researchers whose work would appeal to managers. The point of their article is to encourage other practitioner groups to become involved in this and other such conferences, to ‘collaborate with the great talent of ecological researchers in Australia’. While we cannot be blind to the increasing alienation and decline of natural environments across the globe, we need to be encouraged by the wealth of environmental repair work going on across the country and the rest of the world. If this number of projects can be represented in just one small issue of EMR, it stands to reason that there are many more projects out there in various stages of gestation, development and completion. As ecologists, policy makers and practitioners, we are doing our bit, but thankfully there are also many projects being undertaken in the related field of sustainability science and practice that have potential to address some of the causes of ecosystem decline, projects which can further inspire cross-disciplinary initiatives. (Please note that EMR is open to consider papers on any such work.) Readers may have missed the project summaries in the last issue and may be wondering whether EMR has lost an important element? The answer is no – EMR is developing a web-based project summaries facility, which will be similar in scope to our traditional paper project summaries but they will be much more readable, permanently archived and fully searchable and illustrated with coloured photos and maps etc. Many summaries are being uploaded onto the new website as I write, and when it is up and running, we will promote its launch through the ESA and EMR’s affiliate practitioner organisations. We hope that readers, once inspired by the summaries they read, will give some thought to whether one or more of their own projects, however small or incomplete, might suit a summary. In the meantime, please email your ideas for project summaries to me at emreditor@ecolsoc.org.au.

Impact of Accreditation on the Quality of Healthcare Services: a Systematic Review of the Literature

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE:Accreditation is usually a voluntary program in which trained external peer reviewers evaluate a healthcare organization's compliance and compare it with pre-established performance standards. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of accreditation programs on the quality of healthcare servicesMETHODS:We did a systematic review of the literature to evaluate the impact of accreditation programs on the quality of healthcare services. Several databases were systematically searched, including Medline, Embase, Healthstar, and Cinhal.RESULTS:Twenty-six studies evaluating the impact of accreditation were identified. The majority of the studies showed general accreditation for acute myocardial infarction (AMI), trauma, ambulatory surgical care, infection control and pain management; and subspecialty accreditation programs to significantly improve the process of care provided by healthcare services by improving the structure and organization of healthcare facilities. Several studies showed that general accreditation programs significantly improve clinical outcomes and the quality of care of these clinical conditions and showed a significant positive impact of subspecialty accreditation programs in improving clinical outcomes in different subspecialties, including sleep medicine, chest pain management and trauma management.CONCLUSIONS:There is consistent evidence that shows that accreditation programs improve the process of care provided by healthcare services. There is considerable evidence to show that accreditation programs improve clinical outcomes of a wide spectrum of clinical conditions. Accreditation programs should be supported as a tool to improve the quality of healthcare services.

Introduction to bioinformatics: sequencing technology

Bioinformatics, the study of integrating high throughput biological data and statistical model through intensive computation, has been attracting great interest in recent times and Sequencing is at the very center of it. The large amount of information obtained from sequencing has deepened our understanding and fundamental knowledge of organisms. This review will aim to provide a brief summary of new sequencing technology, current issues, and projects focused on medical applications. The article is organized in three parts. Part I explains common terminologies and background of sequencing technology, and Part II compares distinct features of currently available platforms. Part III contains applications in various medical fields.