General practitioners’ perceptions of the barriers and solutions to good quality palliative care in dementia

The general practitioner (GP) is in a pivotal position to initiate and adapt care for their patients living with dementia. This study aimed to elicit GPs' perceptions of the potential barriers and solutions to the provision of good-quality palliative care in dementia in their practices. A postal survey of GPs across Northern Ireland was conducted with open-ended items soliciting for barriers in their practices and possible solutions; 40.6% (138/340) were returned completed. Barriers to palliative care in dementia were perceived to be a dementia knowledge deficit for healthcare staff and the public, a resource shortfall within the GP practice and community, poor team coordination alongside inappropriate dementia care provision, and disagreements from and within families. These findings have significant implications for educators and clinicians as enhanced dementia education and training were highlighted as a strong agenda for GPs with the suggestions of dementia awareness programmes for the public.

Caught in a 'spiral': barriers to healthy eating and dietary health promotion needs from the perspective of unemployed young people and their service providers

The number of young people in Europe who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) is increasing. Given that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to have diets of poor nutritional quality, this exploratory study sought to understand barriers and facilitators to healthy eating and dietary health promotion needs of unemployed young people aged 16-20 years. Three focus group discussions were held with young people (n=14). Six individual interviews and one paired interview with service providers (n=7). Data were recorded, transcribed verbatim and thematically content analysed. Themes were then fitted to social cognitive theory (SCT). Despite understanding of the principles of healthy eating, a ‘spiral’ of interrelated social, economic and associated psychological problems was perceived to render food and health of little value and low priority for the young people. The story related by the young people and corroborated by the service providers was of a lack of personal and vicarious experience with food. External, environmental factors such as the proliferation and proximity of fast food outlets and the high perceived cost of ‘healthy’ compared to ‘junk’ food rendered the young people low in self-efficacy and perceived control to make healthier food choices. Agency was instead expressed through consumption of junk food and substance abuse. Both the young people and service providers agreed that for dietary health promotion efforts to succeed, social problems needed addressed and agency encouraged through (individual and collective) active engagement of the young people themselves.

The Effect of Illuminant Position on Perceived Curvature

In shaded scenes surface features can appear either concave or convex, depending upon the viewers judment about the direction of the prevailing illuminant. If other curvature cues are added to the image this ambiguity can be removed. However, it is not clear to what extent, if any, illuminant positin exerts an influence on the perceived magnitude of surface curvature. Subjects were presented with pairs of spherical surface patches in a curavture matching task. The patches were defined by shading and texture cues. The percevied curvature of a standard patch was measured as a function of light source position. We found a clear effect of light source position on apparent curvature. Perceived curvature decreased as light source tilt increased and as light source slant decreased. We also found that the strength of this effect is determined partly by a surface's reflectance function and partly by the relative weight of the texture cue. When a specular component was added to the stimuli, the effect of light source orientation was weakened. The weight of the texture cue was manipulated by disrupting the regular distribution of texture elements. We found an inverse relationship between the strength of the effecct and the weight of the texture cue: lowering the texture cue weight resulted in an enhancement of the illuminant position effect.

Test stimulus characteristics determine the perceived speed of the dynamic motion aftereffect

Using a speed-matching task, we measured the speed tuning of the dynamic motion aftereVect (MAE). The results of our Wrst experiment, in which we co-varied dot speed in the adaptation and test stimuli, revealed a speed tuning function. We sought to tease apart what contribution, if any, the test stimulus makes towards the observed speed tuning. This was examined by independently manipulating dot speed in the adaptation and test stimuli, and measuring the eVect this had on the perceived speed of the dynamic MAE. The results revealed that the speed tuning of the dynamic MAE is determined, not by the speed of the adaptation stimulus, but by the local motion characteristics of the dynamic test stimulus. The role of the test stimulus in determining the perceived speed of the dynamic MAE was conWrmed by showing that, if one uses a test stimulus containing two sources of local speed information, observers report seeing a transparent MAE; this is despite the fact that adaptation is induced using a single-speed stimulus. Thus while the adaptation stimulus necessarily determines perceived direction of the dynamic MAE, its perceived speed is determined by the test stimulus. This dissociation of speed and direction supports the notion that the processing of these two visual attributes may be partially independent.

Engineering passive bioreactive barriers: risk-managing the legacy of industrial soil and groundwater pollution

Permeable reactive barriers are a technology that is one decade old, with most full-scale applications based on abiotic mechanisms. Though there is extensive literature on engineered bioreactors, natural biodegradation potential, and in situ remediation, it is only recently that engineered passive bioreactive barrier technology is being considered at the commercial scale to manage contaminated soil and groundwater risks. Recent full-scale studies are providing the scientific confidence in our understanding of coupled microbial (and genetic), hydrogeologic, and geochemical processes in this approach and have highlighted the need to further integrate engineering and science tools.

'A Job in Politics is not for Woman': Analysing Barriers to Women's Political Representation in CEE

This article discusses women’s political representation in Central and Eastern Europe in the fifteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the adoption of liberal democratic political systems in the region. It highlights the deepseated gender stereotypes that define women primarily as wives and mothers, with electoral politics seen as an appropriate activity for men, but less so for women. The article explores the ways in which conservative attitudes on gender roles hinders the supply of, and demand for, women in the politics of Central and Eastern Europe. It also discusses the manner in which the internalisation of traditional gender norms affects women’s parliamentary behaviour, as few champion women’s rights in the legislatures of the region. The article also finds that links between women MPs and women’s organisations are weak and fragmented, making coalition-building around agendas for women’s rights problematic.

Making the law accessible to non-lawyers: effects of different kinds of expertise on perceived usability of online legal information services

To help design an environment in which professionals without legal training can make effective use of public sector legal information on planning and the environment - for Add-Wijzer, a European e-government project - we evaluated their perceptions of usefulness and usability. In concurrent think-aloud usability tests, lawyers and non-lawyers carried out information retrieval tasks on a range of online legal databases. We found that non-lawyers reported twice as many difficulties as those with legal training (p = 0.001), that the number of difficulties and the choice of database affected successful completion, and that the non-lawyers had surprisingly few problems understanding legal terminology. Instead, they had more problems understanding the syntactical structure of legal documents and collections. The results support the constraint attunement hypothesis (CAH) of the effects of expertise on information retrieval, with implications for the design of systems to support the effective understanding and use of information.