Mobile phone and tablet apps to support young people’s management of their physical long-term conditions: a systematic review protocol

Background: The prevalence of long-term or chronic conditions that limit activity and reduce quality of life in young people aged 10-24 years is rising. This group has distinct health care needs and requires tailored support strategies to facilitate increasing personal responsibility for the management of their condition wherever possible, as they mature. Mobile phone and tablet mobile technologies featuring software program apps are already well used by young people for social networking or gaming. They have also been utilized in health care to support personal condition management, using condition-specific and patient-tailored software. Such apps have much potential, and there is an emerging body of literature on their use in a health context making this review timely. Objective: The objective of this paper is to develop a systematic review protocol focused on identifying and assessing the effectiveness of mobile phone and tablet apps that support young people’s management of their chronic conditions. Methods: The search strategy will include a combination of standardized indexed search terms and free-text terms related to the key concepts of young people; long-term conditions and mobile technology. Peer-reviewed journal articles published from 2003 that meet the inclusion and exclusion criteria will be identified through searching the generated hits from 5 bibliographical databases. Two independent reviewers will screen the titles and abstracts to determine which articles focus on testing interventions identified as a mobile phone or tablet apps, and that have been designed and delivered to support the management of long-term conditions in young people aged 10-24 years. Data extraction and quality assessment tools will be used to facilitate consistent analysis and synthesis. It is anticipated that several studies will meet the selection criteria but that these are likely to be heterogeneous in terms of study design, reported outcomes, follow-up times, participants’ age, and health condition. Sub-group analyses will be undertaken and where possible meta-analyses will take place.Results: This review will synthesize available knowledge surrounding tablet and mobile phone apps that support management of long term physical health conditions in young people. The findings will be synthesized to determine which elements of the technologies were most effective for this population. Conclusions: This systematic review aims to synthesize existing literature in order to generate findings that will facilitate the development of an app intervention. The review will form the first phase of development and evaluation of a complex intervention as recommended by the United Kingdom Medical Research Council. The knowledge gained from the review will be verified in subsequent phases, which will include primary qualitative work with health professionals and young people with long term conditions as research participants. Young people living with long-term conditions will be involved as co-researchers and consumer advisors in all subsequent phases to develop and evaluate an app to support the management of long-term physical health conditions

Perfume Vessels in South-East Italy: A comparative analysis of Perfume Vessels in Greek and Indigenous Italian Burials from the 6th to 4th Centuries B.C.

To date there has been a broad range of research investigating both perfume use in the Mediterranean and the cultural development of south-east Italy. The use of perfume was clearly an important practice in the broader Mediterranean, however very little is known about its introduction to the indigenous Italians and its subsequent use. There has also been considerable theorising about the nature of the cross-cultural relationship between the Greeks and the indigenous Italians, but there is a need for archaeological studies to substantiate or refute these theories. This thesis therefore aims to make a relevant contribution through a synthesis of these areas of study by producing a preliminary investigation of the use of perfume vessels in south-east Italy. The assimilation of perfume use into indigenous Italian culture was a result of their contact with the Greek settlers in south-east Italy, however the ways in which perfume vessels were incorporated into indigenous Italian use have not been systematically studied. This thesis will examine the use of perfume vessels in indigenous Italian burials in the regions of Peucetia and Messapia and compare this use with that of the burials at the nearby Greek settlement of Metaponto. The material studied will consist of burials from the sixth to fourth centuries B.C., to enable an analysis of perfume use and social change over time. An analysis of the broad distribution of perfume vessels was undertaken, followed by a more detailed examination of the relationships between perfume vessels and specific burial features. An interpretation of the results given by these analyses proposes that the use of perfume vessels by indigenous Italians was closely connected to developments in their settlement centralisation and social structure, and became a well integrated aspect of burial ritual by the end of the fourth century B.C

Paris via Brussels: A three-level game analysis of the EU’s behaviour at the 2015 Paris international climate negotiations (COP21)

The EU has been a rare example of a consistent global leadership on climate change. At a time when governments around the world are reluctant to face the challenges of climate change mitigation, the EU was widely praised for helping to push states towards an ambitious Paris Agreement. This thesis asks what influenced the EU’s behaviour at the 2015 Paris international climate negotiations (COP21). To answer this it undertakes an inductive case study of COP21 and the intra-EU negotiations that led up to it. It focuses on the EU’s positions on climate mitigation proposals and more specifically greenhouse gas reductions. The thesis argues that the three-level game, incorporating national, supranational (EU), and international (UNFCCC) negotiating games, is superior to other theoretical frameworks for explaining the EU’s behaviour. It shows that EU member states adopted positions based on political pressures at a national level, but also took into account how they would be received at a supranational level and how they could effect the international negotiations. Ignoring any one of the levels leads to an incomplete analysis of the factors influencing EU climate policy. Throughout the thesis I develop the three-level game, building on Putnam’s two-level game, as a framework for analysing the EU’s behaviour in international climate negotiations and challenge the mainstream, EU-centric explanations for EU climate policy

Perfume Vessels in South-East Italy: A comparative analysis of Perfume Vessels in Greek and Indigenous Italian Burials from the 6th to 4th Centuries B.C.

To date there has been a broad range of research investigating both perfume use in the Mediterranean and the cultural development of south-east Italy. The use of perfume was clearly an important practice in the broader Mediterranean, however very little is known about its introduction to the indigenous Italians and its subsequent use. There has also been considerable theorising about the nature of the cross-cultural relationship between the Greeks and the indigenous Italians, but there is a need for archaeological studies to substantiate or refute these theories. This thesis therefore aims to make a relevant contribution through a synthesis of these areas of study by producing a preliminary investigation of the use of perfume vessels in south-east Italy. The assimilation of perfume use into indigenous Italian culture was a result of their contact with the Greek settlers in south-east Italy, however the ways in which perfume vessels were incorporated into indigenous Italian use have not been systematically studied. This thesis will examine the use of perfume vessels in indigenous Italian burials in the regions of Peucetia and Messapia and compare this use with that of the burials at the nearby Greek settlement of Metaponto. The material studied will consist of burials from the sixth to fourth centuries B.C., to enable an analysis of perfume use and social change over time. An analysis of the broad distribution of perfume vessels was undertaken, followed by a more detailed examination of the relationships between perfume vessels and specific burial features. An interpretation of the results given by these analyses proposes that the use of perfume vessels by indigenous Italians was closely connected to developments in their settlement centralisation and social structure, and became a well integrated aspect of burial ritual by the end of the fourth century B.C

FREQUENCY OF CIWA SCORING IN PATIENTS WITH ALCOHOL DEPENDENCE IN A MENTAL HEALTH SETTING

The purpose of this quality improvement project was too assess the knowledge and attitudes of nursing staff toward assessing patients diagnosed with alcohol dependence who are detoxing from alcohol in a mental health facility. An educational intervention was done with nursing staff to assess their knowledge of the Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment for Alcohol (CIWA) scale and to stress the importance of frequent and accurate use of the scale. Data was collected for three months before the educational intervention and three months after the educational intervention on the total number of patients admitted to the facility with a diagnosis of alcohol dependence, the number of alcohol-related withdrawal seizures decreased as well as the number of patients transferred to the ER. This project supports adequate training of nursing staff on frequent and accurate CIW scoring to improve patient outcomes and nursing satisfaction

Introduction: Biodiversity, Biotechnology, and the Legal Protection of Traditional Knowledge

This symposium volume is composed of five articles that were originally presented as papers at a conference, held at Washington University School of Law on April 4–6, 2003, on the general topic, “Biodiversity, Biotechnology, and the Legal Protection of Traditional Knowledge,” as well as a concluding article which discuss an important post-conference development at Washington University School of Law. Like the conference itself, these articles address the three general topics that are implicit in the title of the conference and this symposium volume

The Interface Between International Intellectual Property and Environmental Protection: Biodiversity and Biotechnology

The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights ( TRIPS ) Agreement, part of the Final Act of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations, concluded on December 15, 1993. It seeks to strengthen international intellectual property protection in order to promote world trade. TRIPS also seeks to stimulate rapid international economic development that will likely produce a virtual technological transformation of human society and perhaps much of the natural world. In contrast, the United Nations Framework Convention on Biological Diversity ( Biodiversity Treaty ), concluded on June 5, 1992, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, seeks to preserve the natural world and maintain society\u27s traditional, essentially agrarian, relationship to it. It also seeks to promote the concept of sustainable development. The debate over TRIPS and the Biodiversity Treaty has exposed a series of fault lines dividing technology-rich industrialized countries located in the temperate zone of the Northern Hemisphere, and the biodiversity-rich developing countries located primarily in the tropics and Southern Hemisphere. Part I of this Article will describe two of the most visible North- South conflicts, and Part II will examine the treaty provisions that have given rise to these conflicts. Part III will examine the two specific issues that are at the root of these North-South conflicts, and will conclude with a more cooperative vision of the interface between international intellectual property and environmental protection