Evaluating the Substantive Representation of Women and Domestic Violence Legislation in England and Wales: a Critical Path Approach

More women entering politics has led to questions regarding so-called ‘women’s issues’ and whether female representatives make a difference in reference to these issues. This thesis moves beyond the question of whether women represent women and instead, focuses on the representation process as a whole. This approach widens the scope beyond seeing women as a homogenous group, with uniform interests and unvarying political motivations. To do so, this thesis evaluates the substantive representation of women in England and Wales. Specifically, this thesis assesses four pieces of domestic violence legislation: The Crime and Security Act 2010, the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, and the Serious Crime Act 2015. This thesis employs a critical path framework and uses this framework to research the impact of substantive representation regarding this specific category of legislation. In addition to utilizing this framework, the main aims of this thesis include: drawing conclusions on substantive representation and expanding present knowledge regarding both the political representation of women and domestic violence legislation in England and Wales. In order to accomplish these aims, this thesis considers the following research question: what does the substantive representation of women mean in England and Wales, regarding domestic violence legislation? The case study is driven by a substantive political problem, domestic violence, and uses longstanding conceptual ideas, such as political representation, in order to ask new questions. This thesis further adds to the conversation surrounding the substantive representation of women by creating a critical path, or logical pathway, used to evaluate what is ‘going on’ in regard to representation. This pathway aids in tracing occurrences across instances of time, legislation, sites, and actors. The pathway utilises many concepts within the field including critical junctures, critical acts, and critical actors, and assembles them in a logical way, by employing the framework of questions mentioned above. This thesis benefits from and demonstrates the changing nature of representation and how we as researchers evaluate and draw conclusions from it. Evaluating substantive representation is important because numbers do not equal an understanding of behaviour, and why representatives and legislators may attempt to represent one group of citizens rather than another

Is communications a strategic activity in UK Education?

This qualitative exploratory paper investigates whether communications/public relations is regarded by opinion formers in UK education as a strategic business activity or a tactical marketing tool. It is based upon depth interviews with 16 senior managers with strategic roles in UK higher or further education, or Government bodies, conducted between June and September 2004. The findings seem to suggest that communications/PR is ideally seen by leaders as a strategic function, but that there are limitations to this vision becoming a reality. The research goes on to offer initial conclusions on some of the issues surrounding perception, resource, and implementation of strategic communications/PR in UK education, with implications for practitioners considered

MCMC-ODPR : primer design optimization using Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling

Background Next generation sequencing technologies often require numerous primer designs that require good target coverage that can be financially costly. We aimed to develop a system that would implement primer reuse to design degenerate primers that could be designed around SNPs, thus find the fewest necessary primers and the lowest cost whilst maintaining an acceptable coverage and provide a cost effective solution. We have implemented Metropolis-Hastings Markov Chain Monte Carlo for optimizing primer reuse. We call it the Markov Chain Monte Carlo Optimized Degenerate Primer Reuse (MCMC-ODPR) algorithm. Results After repeating the program 1020 times to assess the variance, an average of 17.14% fewer primers were found to be necessary using MCMC-ODPR for an equivalent coverage without implementing primer reuse. The algorithm was able to reuse primers up to five times. We compared MCMC-ODPR with single sequence primer design programs Primer3 and Primer-BLAST and achieved a lower primer cost per amplicon base covered of 0.21 and 0.19 and 0.18 primer nucleotides on three separate gene sequences, respectively. With multiple sequences, MCMC-ODPR achieved a lower cost per base covered of 0.19 than programs BatchPrimer3 and PAMPS, which achieved 0.25 and 0.64 primer nucleotides, respectively. Conclusions MCMC-ODPR is a useful tool for designing primers at various melting temperatures at good target coverage. By combining degeneracy with optimal primer reuse the user may increase coverage of sequences amplified by the designed primers at significantly lower costs. Our analyses showed that overall MCMC-ODPR outperformed the other primer-design programs in our study in terms of cost per covered base

Trends in the availability and usage of electrophysical agents in physiotherapy practices from 1990 to 2010: A review

This is the Pre-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2012 Maney PublishingBackground: The use of electrophysical agents has a historically important role in physiotherapy practice. There are anecdotal reports that the availability and usage of electrotherapy modalities are declining, which may have implications for physiotherapy practice. The aim of this literature review was to provide scientific evidence on electrotherapy usage in the last 20 years by identifying trends in availability, use, and non-use of nine electrotherapeutic modalities in physiotherapy practices during 1990s and 2000s. Methods: Review of empirical studies published in the English language from 1990 to 2010 and identified through searching online bibliographic databases, which included: Medline/OvidSP, PubMed Central, CINAHL/EBSCOhost, ScienceDirect, Scopus, ISI Web of Science, and Google Scholar. Findings: In the last 20 years, ultrasound availability and usage show increasing trends in several countries. The availability and use of pulsed shortwave diathermy and laser have shown steady trends. Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, interferential, and biofeedback availability and usage have shown increasing trends in the UK and decreasing trends in Australia and the Republic of Ireland. Trends of continuous shortwave diathermy availability and use are declining irrespective of the country of the study. The availability and usage of microwave diathermy and H-wave show steeply declining trends, while there is a sharp rise in their non-availability over the last several years. Conclusions: The availability and use of electrophysical agents have greatly changed in the last 20 years. Declining trends in the availability and usage along with increasing trend of non-availability of electrotherapy modalities may have implications for electrotherapy education, training, and practice in the coming years.This study was funded by Health & Safety Executive, UK (grant no. 4371/R47.022)

Aberrations in shift-invariant linear optical imaging systems using partially coherent fields

Here the role and influence of aberrations in optical imaging systems employing partially coherent complex scalar fields is studied. Imaging systems require aberrations to yield contrast in the output image. For linear shift-invariant optical systems, we develop an expression for the output cross-spectral density under the space-frequency formulation of statistically stationary partially coherentfields. We also develop expressions for the output cross{spectral density and associated spectral density for weak-phase, weak-phase-amplitude, and single-material objects in one transverse spatial dimension

Surface-based molecular self-assembly: Langmuir-Blodgett films of amphiphilic Ln(III) complexes

The unique photophysical properties of the Ln(III) series has led to significant research efforts being directed towards their application in sensors. However, for “real-life” applications, these sensors should ideally be immobilised onto surfaces without loss of function. The Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) technique offers a promising method in which to achieve such immobilisation. This mini-review focuses on synthetic strategies for film formation, the effect that film formation has on the physical properties of the Ln(III) amphiphile, and concludes with examples of Ln(III) LB films being used as sensors

CT dose reduction factors in the thousands using X-ray phase contrast

Phase-contrast X-ray imaging can improve the visibility of weakly absorbing objects (e.g. soft tissues) by an order of magnitude or more compared to conventional radiographs. Previously, it has been shown that combining phase retrieval with computed tomography (CT) can increase the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by up to two orders of magnitude over conventional CT at the same radiation dose, without loss of image quality. Our experiments reveal that as radiation dose decreases, the relative improvement in SNR increases. We discovered this enhancement can be traded for a reduction in dose greater than the square of the gain in SNR. Upon reducing the dose 300 fold, the phase-retrieved SNR was still almost 10 times larger than the absorption contrast data. This reveals the potential for dose reduction factors in the tens of thousands without loss in image quality, which would have a profound impact on medical and industrial imaging applications

The Prognostic Value of Brain Extracellular Fluid Nitric Oxide Metabolites After Traumatic Brain Injury.

BACKGROUND: Nitric oxide (NO) is a compound with both protective and damaging effects on neurons. Quantification of NO metabolites in humans is limited by sample contamination with blood. In vivo cerebral microdialysis may offer an alternative approach as sampling of extracellular fluid (ECF) adjacent to neurons becomes possible. We investigate the prognostic value of brain ECF NO metabolites in patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI). METHODS: A prospective case cohort of 195 ECF samples collected from 11 cases over 4 days following TBI was collected. Nitrate and nitrite concentrations ([NO( x )]) were quantified using a vanadium-based colorimetric assay. RESULTS: Early ECF [NO( x )] (<48 h post TBI) were significantly higher in non-survivors (median 59.2 μmol/l, n = 7) compared to survivors (23.3 μmol/l, n = 4) (P = 0.04). Late (48-96 h) ECF [NO( x )] remained higher in non-survivors (47.9 μmol/l) compared to survivors (23.0 μmol/l) but this was not significant (P = 0.29). Receiver operator characteristic analysis shows an optimized cutoff level for ECF [NO( x )] of 26.5 μmol/l measured <48 h post TBI for predicting non-survival (sensitivity 100%, specificity 75%). CONCLUSION: Early ECF NO( x ) concentrations are of prognostic value after TBI. ECF NO( x ) may be a useful biomarker for treatment trials targeted at nitric oxide metabolism

A performance evaluation of commercial fibrinogen reference preparations and assays for Clauss and PT-derived fibrinogen

The wide availability of fibrinogen estimations based on the prothrombin time (PT-Fg) has caused concern about the variability and clinical utility of fibrinogen assays. In a multi-centre study, we investigated fibrinogen assays using various reagents and analysers, Clauss assays generally gave good agreement, although one reagent gave 15-30% higher values in DIC and thrombolysis. Two commercial reference preparations had much lower potencies than the manufacturers declared, and plasma turbidity influenced parallelism in some Clauss assays, PT-Fg assays gave higher values than Clauss and showed calibrant dependent effects, the degree of disparity correlating with calibrant and test sample turbidity. Analyser and thromboplastin dependent differences were noted. The relationship between Clauss and PT-Fg assays was sigmoid, and the plateau of maximal PT-Fg differed by about 2 g/l between reagents. ELISA and immunonephelometric assays correlated well, but with a high degree of scatter. Antigen levels were higher than Clauss, but slightly lower than PT-Fg assays, which appeared to be influenced by degraded fibrinogen. Clauss assays are generally reproducible between centres, analysers and reagents, but PT-Fg assays are not reliable in clinical settings