In bed with the arts...

In the same way that an embryo is formed, exciting and creative new things can evolve by a synergy of two things coming together. However, with new things, there is always a process of adaptation and growing pains, as the new being takes shape and form. This article will address some of the issues that arise through the synthesis and innovative nature of collaboration between visual methodologies and social research. It will draw specifically on examples from a recent research project that looked at the sex and relationship needs of young people with learning disabilities (hereafter referred to as the Sex and Relationships project), where drama was used as a research tool. It will highlight the way in which the young people in the study had their voices heard by producing a play based around their experiences and views. The article will draw the discussion together by considering the contested nature of visual methods and I will reflect on my own personal response to being a researcher on the Sex and Relationships project. Finally, I will attempt to answer the question, ‘…but is it really research?

Final Report: Talking about sex and relationships: The views of young people with learning disabilities

We ran a drama group with young people with learning disabilities. We also interviewed parents of young people with learning disabilities. We also talked to groups of teachers. There has not been much research done about this before

‘Do we all get a PhD?' Attempting emancipatory research relating to disability in an academic environment. Relating to disability in an academic environment

Within the model of emancipatory research, the researcher is situated as one member of a team. They are often conceptualised as providing methodological tools and skills to others involved in the research project but the definition of topic, data analysis and dissemination is presented as a joint enterprise. This model of research (deliberately) contradicts with the view of the expert researcher prevalent within higher education establishments and particularly with the individualised construction of research degrees such as PhDs which requires a thesis to be the exclusive product of one individual. The paper discusses attempts which have been made to reconcile the tensions inherent in adopting an emancipatory model within an academic environment including our own experiences of researching and supervising a doctoral thesis on citizenship and disability. The project is led by an advisory panel of disabled people who are involved in the preparation, selection and analysis of the interviews and pragmatic aspects of attempting such an emancipatory model of research from the viewpoint of the entire research team. It raises the question as to whether such models can only be completely adhered to in particular, probably non-academic settings

The conversation: developing confidence to provide end of life care in Salford nursing homes

The study was funded by the Burdett Trust for Nursing and partly by Salford Primary Care Trust. A realistic evaluation design was used to collect data using a range of approaches, from before and after surveys of confidence in delivering end of life care, to participant observation and interviews. A total of 43 people were interviewed involving both staff, residents and relatives. Key Messages a) Significant resources are needed to engage staff, residents and relatives/carers with the idea of advance care planning b) Care home staff are optimistic about involving residents and relatives in planning care at the end of life and some relatives become very involved in care c) Clearly registered nurses and other care home workers such as care assistants have different roles, but the overlap between these and the appropriate boundaries would benefit from further work d) Talking to residents and relatives about their feelings and wishes for care at the end of life remains especially difficult, but education and training in key skills and knowledge can engender both ability and motivation e) Care homes need strong and well-informed leadership in order to implement the Gold Standards Framework f) Placing a relative in a care home involves strain and an ability to compromise ‘there’s no perfect place’ g) Advance care planning can reduce the distress and the number of inappropriate hospital admissions, but is challenging in the face of staff rotation and out of hours medical staff being unpredictable h) The principles of the Gold Standards Framework are widely seen as sensible, but clinical challenges include diagnosing and predicting dying trajectories, especially in heart failure, chronic pulmonary disease and dementia i) A particular concern of staff is how to approach nutrition and hydration as frailty and death approach j) Communicating about diagnosis and especially prognosis with residents who lack capacity is an increasing problem k) Natural justice suggests that resources should be allocated to the general standardisation of a good quality of care at the end of life in ALL care homes whatever their Care Quality Commission ratin

Neutrino clustering and the Z-burst model

The possibility that the observed Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays are generated by high energy neutrinos creating "Z-bursts" in resonant interactions with the background neutrinos has been proposed, but there are difficulties in generating enough events with reasonable incident neutrino fluxes. We point out that this difficulty is overcome if the background neutrinos have coalesced into "neutrino clouds" --- a possibility previously suggested by some of us in another context. The limitations that this mechanism for the generation of UHECRs places on the high energy neutrino flux, on the masses of the background neutrinos and the characteristics of the neutrino clouds are spelled out.Comment: 13 pages and 3 figures. Contributed to the XX International Symposium on Lepton and Photon Interactions at High Energies, Rome, July 2001, and to the International Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics, Budapest, July 2001. Preprint numbers added, misprints correcte

Barriers and facilitators to HPV vaccination in primary care practices: A mixed methods study using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research

Abstract Background In the United States, the effective, safe huma papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine is underused and opportunities to prevent cancer continue to be missed. National guidelines recommend completing the 2–3 dose HPV vaccine series by age 13, well before exposure to the sexually transmitted virus. Accurate characterization of the facilitators and barriers to full implementation of HPV vaccine recommendations in the primary care setting could inform effective implementation strategies. Methods We used the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) to systematically investigate and characterize factors that influence HPV vaccine use in 10 primary care practices (16 providers) using a concurrent mixed methods design. The CFIR was used to guide collection and analysis of qualitative data collected through in-person semi-structured interviews with the primary care providers. We analyzed HPV vaccine use with data abstracted from medical charts. Constructs that most strongly influenced vaccine use were identified by integrating the qualitative and quantitative data. Results Of the 72 CFIR constructs assessed, seven strongly distinguished and seven weakly distinguished between providers with higher versus lower HPV vaccine coverage. The majority of strongly distinguishing constructs were facilitators and were related to characteristics of the providers (knowledge and beliefs; self-efficacy; readiness for change), their perception of the intervention (relative advantage of vaccinating younger vs. older adolescents), and their process to deliver the vaccine (executing). Additional weakly distinguishing constructs that were facilitators were from outer setting (peer pressure; financial incentives), inner setting (networks and communications and readiness for implementation) and process (planning; engaging, and reflecting and evaluating). Two strongly distinguishing constructs were barriers to use, one from the intervention (adaptability of the age of initiation) and the other from outer setting (patient needs and resources). Conclusions Using CFIR to systematically examine the use of this vaccine in independent primary care practices enabled us to identify facilitators and barriers at the provider, interpersonal and practice level that need to be addressed in future efforts to increase vaccine use in such settings. Our findings suggest that implementation strategies that target the provider and help them to address multi-level barriers to HPV vaccine use merit further investigation

The Effects of Additives on the Physical Properties of Electroformed Nickel and on the Stretch of Photoelectroformed Nickel Components

The process of nickel electroforming is becoming increasingly important in the manufacture of MST products, as it has the potential to replicate complex geometries with extremely high fidelity. Electroforming of nickel uses multi-component electrolyte formulations in order to maximise desirable product properties. In addition to nickel sulphamate (the major electrolyte component), formulation additives can also comprise nickel chloride (to increase nickel anode dissolution), sulphamic acid (to control pH), boric acid (to act as a pH buffer), hardening/levelling agents (to increase deposit hardness and lustre) and wetting agents (to aid surface wetting and thus prevent gas bubbles and void formation). This paper investigates the effects of some of these variables on internal stress and stretch as a function of applied current density.Comment: Submitted on behalf of TIMA Editions (http://irevues.inist.fr/tima-editions