Poverty-of-the-stimulus and SLA epistemology: considering L2 knowledge of aspectual phrasal semantics

Coupling a review of previous studies on the acquisition of grammatical aspects undertaken from contrasting paradigmatic views of second language acquisition (SLA) with new experimental data from L2 Portuguese, the present study contributes to this specific literature as well as general debates in L2 epistemology. We tested 31 adult English learners of L2 Portuguese across three experiments, examining the extent to which they had acquired the syntax and (subtle) semantics of grammatical aspect. Demonstrating that many individuals acquired target knowledge of what we contend is a poverty-of-the-stimulus semantic entailment related to the checking of aspectual features encoded in Portuguese preterit and imperfect morphology, namely, a [±accidental] distinction that obtains in a restricted subset of contexts, we conclude that UG-based approaches to SLA are in a better position to tap and gauge underlying morphosyntactic competence, since based on independent theoretical linguistic descriptions, they make falsifiable predictions that are amenable to empirical scrutiny, seek to describe and explain beyond performance, and can account for L2 convergence on poverty-of-the-stimulus knowledge as well as L2 variability/optionality.

An experimental analysis of body checking

The relationship between repeated body checking and its impact on body size estimation and body dissatisfaction is of interest for two reasons. First, it has importance in theoretical accounts of the maintenance of eating disorders and, second, body checking is targeted in cognitive-behavioural treatment. The aim of this study was to determine the impact of manipulating body checking on body size estimation and body dissatisfaction. Sixty women were randomly assigned either to repeatedly scrutinize their bodies in a critical way in the mirror ("high body checking") or to refrain from body checking but to examine the whole of their bodies in a neutral way ("low body checking"). Body dissatisfaction, feelings of fatness and the strength of a particular self-critical thought increased immediately after the manipulation among those in the high body checking condition. Feelings of fatness decreased among those in the low body checking condition. These changes were short-lived. The manipulation did not effect estimations of body size or the discrepancy between estimations of body size and desired body size. The implications of these findings for understanding the influence of body checking on the maintenance of body dissatisfaction are considered. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

From Hippocrates to commodities: three models of NHS governance

A series of inquiries and reports suggest considerable failings in the care provided to some patients in the NHS. Although the Bristol Inquiry report of 2001 led to the creation of many new regulatory bodies to supervise the NHS, they have never enjoyed consistent support from government and the Mid Staffordshire Inquiry in 2013 suggests they made little difference. Why do some parts of the NHS disregard patients’ interests and how we should we respond to the challenge? The following discusses the evolution of approaches to NHS governance through the Hippocratic, Managerial and Commercial models, and assesses their risks and benefits. Apart from the ethical imperative, the need for effective governance is driven both by the growth in information available to the public and the resources wasted by ineffective systems of care. Appropriate solutions depend on an understanding of the perverse incentives inherent in each model and the need for greater sensitivity to the voices of patients and the public.

Errors associated with the preparation of aseptic products in UK hospital pharmacies: lessons from the national aseptic error reporting scheme

Background Pharmacy aseptic units prepare and supply injectables to minimise risks. The UK National Aseptic Error Reporting Scheme has been collecting data on pharmacy compounding errors, including near-misses, since 2003. Objectives The cumulative reports from January 2004 to December 2007, inclusive, were analysed. Methods The different variables of product types, error types, staff making and detecting errors, stage errors detected, perceived contributory factors, and potential or actual outcomes were presented by cross-tabulation of data. Results A total of 4691 reports were submitted against an estimated 958 532 items made, returning 0.49% as the overall error rate. Most of the errors were detected before reaching patients, with only 24 detected during or after administration. The highest number of reports related to adult cytotoxic preparations (40%) and the most frequently recorded error was a labelling error (34.2%). Errors were mostly detected at first check in assembly area (46.6%). Individual staff error contributed most (78.1%) to overall errors, while errors with paediatric parenteral nutrition appeared to be blamed on low staff levels more than other products were. The majority of errors (68.6%) had no potential patient outcomes attached, while it appeared that paediatric cytotoxic products and paediatric parenteral nutrition were associated with greater levels of perceived patient harm. Conclusions The majority of reports were related to near-misses, and this study highlights scope for examining current arrangements for checking and releasing products, certainly for paediatric cytotoxic and paediatric parenteral nutrition preparations within aseptic units, but in the context of resource and capacity constraints.

The impact of a closed-loop electronic prescribing and administration system on prescribing errors, administration errors and staff time: a before-and-after study

Objectives: To assess the impact of a closed-loop electronic prescribing, automated dispensing, barcode patient identification and electronic medication administration record (EMAR) system on prescribing and administration errors, confirmation of patient identity before administration, and staff time. Design, setting and participants: Before-and-after study in a surgical ward of a teaching hospital, involving patients and staff of that ward. Intervention: Closed-loop electronic prescribing, automated dispensing, barcode patient identification and EMAR system. Main outcome measures: Percentage of new medication orders with a prescribing error, percentage of doses with medication administration errors (MAEs) and percentage given without checking patient identity. Time spent prescribing and providing a ward pharmacy service. Nursing time on medication tasks. Results: Prescribing errors were identified in 3.8% of 2450 medication orders pre-intervention and 2.0% of 2353 orders afterwards (p<0.001; χ2 test). MAEs occurred in 7.0% of 1473 non-intravenous doses pre-intervention and 4.3% of 1139 afterwards (p = 0.005; χ2 test). Patient identity was not checked for 82.6% of 1344 doses pre-intervention and 18.9% of 1291 afterwards (p<0.001; χ2 test). Medical staff required 15 s to prescribe a regular inpatient drug pre-intervention and 39 s afterwards (p = 0.03; t test). Time spent providing a ward pharmacy service increased from 68 min to 98 min each weekday (p = 0.001; t test); 22% of drug charts were unavailable pre-intervention. Time per drug administration round decreased from 50 min to 40 min (p = 0.006; t test); nursing time on medication tasks outside of drug rounds increased from 21.1% to 28.7% (p = 0.006; χ2 test). Conclusions: A closed-loop electronic prescribing, dispensing and barcode patient identification system reduced prescribing errors and MAEs, and increased confirmation of patient identity before administration. Time spent on medication-related tasks increased.

The impact of a closed-loop electronic prescribing and automated dispensing system on the ward pharmacist’s time and activities

Objective To assess the impact of a closed-loop electronic prescribing and automated dispensing system on the time spent providing a ward pharmacy service and the activities carried out. Setting Surgical ward, London teaching hospital. Method All data were collected two months pre- and one year post-intervention. First, the ward pharmacist recorded the time taken each day for four weeks. Second, an observational study was conducted over 10 weekdays, using two-dimensional work sampling, to identify the ward pharmacist's activities. Finally, medication orders were examined to identify pharmacists' endorsements that should have been, and were actually, made. Key findings Mean time to provide a weekday ward pharmacy service increased from 1 h 8 min to 1 h 38 min per day (P = 0.001; unpaired t-test). There were significant increases in time spent prescription monitoring, recommending changes in therapy/monitoring, giving advice or information, and non-productive time. There were decreases for supply, looking for charts and checking patients' own drugs. There was an increase in the amount of time spent with medical and pharmacy staff, and with 'self'. Seventy-eight per cent of patients' medication records could be assessed for endorsements pre- and 100% post-intervention. Endorsements were required for 390 (50%) of 787 medication orders pre-intervention and 190 (21%) of 897 afterwards (P < 0.0001; chi-square test). Endorsements were made for 214 (55%) of endorsement opportunities pre-intervention and 57 (30%) afterwards (P < 0.0001; chi-square test). Conclusion The intervention increased the overall time required to provide a ward pharmacy service and changed the types of activity undertaken. Contact time with medical and pharmacy staff increased. There was no significant change in time spent with patients. Fewer pharmacy endorsements were required post-intervention, but a lower percentage were actually made. The findings have important implications for the design, introduction and use of similar systems.

Cognitive-behavior therapy for compulsive checking in OCD

There is substantial evidence for the effectiveness of psychological treatments for OCD, and various approaches have been widely recommended. These approaches tend to be characterized by exposure and response prevention (ERP) and also tend to be applied equally to all forms of OCD. Patients/clients (and some therapists) often find ERP to be a difficult treatment, and both dropout and refusal rates are unacceptably high. Based on specific cognitive conceptualizations of different manifestations of OCD, new and refined cognitive treatment methods are now available. The present article describes a specific cognitively based approach to the treatment of compulsive checking.

Comparative advantage in demand: Experimental evidence of preferences for genetically modified food in the United States and European Union

The United States (US) exports more than US$6 billion in agricultural commodities to the European Union (EU) each year, but one issue carries the potential to diminish this trade: use of biotechnology in food production. The EU has adopted more stringent policies towards biotechnology than the US. Understanding differences in European and American policies towards genetically modified (GM) foods requires a greater understanding of consumers' attitudes and preferences. This paper reports results from the first large-scale, cross-Atlantic study to analyse consumer demand for genetically modified food in a non-hypothetical market environment. We strongly reject the frequent if convenient assumption in trade theory that consumer preferences are identical across countries: the median level of compensation demanded by English and French consumers to consume a GM food is found to be more than twice that in any of the US locations. Results have important implications for trade theory, which typically focusses on differences in specialization, comparative advantage and factor endowments across countries, and for on-going trade disputes at the World Trade Organization.

Importance of mycotoxins in food and feed in India

Various food and feed samples including groundnut seed, maize, sorghum, soyabean cake, groundnut cake, cotton cake, poultry feed, buffalo milk, cow milk and milk powders were collected from farmers' fields, farmer's stores, oil millers storage, traders' storage, retail shops and supermarkets. More than 2000 samples were analysed by ELISA and most of the commodities, with the exception of sorghum seed, contained high levels of aflatoxin. Groundnut cake was one of the major cattle feed ingredients in the peri-urban area of Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh, India) and >75% of the samples contained >100 µg/kg aflatoxin, leading to a high level of aflatoxin M1, in milk samples. Strategies to reduce aflatoxin levels (especially in groundnut) by management interventions at preharvest, harvest and storage, are discussed.

A comparative study of Java and C performance in two large-scale parallel applications

In the 1990s the Message Passing Interface Forum defined MPI bindings for Fortran, C, and C++. With the success of MPI these relatively conservative languages have continued to dominate in the parallel computing community. There are compelling arguments in favour of more modern languages like Java. These include portability, better runtime error checking, modularity, and multi-threading. But these arguments have not converted many HPC programmers, perhaps due to the scarcity of full-scale scientific Java codes, and the lack of evidence for performance competitive with C or Fortran. This paper tries to redress this situation by porting two scientific applications to Java. Both of these applications are parallelized using our thread-safe Java messaging system—MPJ Express. The first application is the Gadget-2 code, which is a massively parallel structure formation code for cosmological simulations. The second application uses the finite-domain time-difference method for simulations in the area of computational electromagnetics. We evaluate and compare the performance of the Java and C versions of these two scientific applications, and demonstrate that the Java codes can achieve performance comparable with legacy applications written in conventional HPC languages. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Modelling the likely impact of healthy eating guidelines on agricultural production and land use in England and Wales

Quadratic programming techniques were applied to household food consumption data in England and Wales to estimate likely changes in diet under healthy eating guidelines, and the consequences this would have on agriculture and land use in England and Wales. The first step entailed imposing nutrient restrictions on food consumption following dietary recommendations suggested by the UK Department of Health. The resulting diet was used, in a second step as a proxy for demand in agricultural commodities, to test the impact of such a scenario on food production and land use in England and Wales and the impacts of this on agricultural landscapes. Results of the diet optimisation indicated a large drop in consumption of foods rich in saturated fats and sugar, essentially cheese and sugar-based products, along with lesser cuts of fat and meat products. Conversely, consumption of fruit and vegetables, cereals, and flour would increase to meet dietary fibre recommendations. Such a shift in demand would dramatically affect production patterns: the financial net margin of England and Wales agriculture would rise, due to increased production of high market value and high economic margin crops. Some regions would, however, be negatively affected, mostly those dependent on beef cattle and sheep production that could not benefit from an increased demand for cereals and horticultural crops. The effects of these changes would also be felt in upstream industries, such as animal feed suppliers. While arable dominated landscapes would be little affected, pastoral landscapes would suffer through loss of grazing management and, possibly, land abandonment, especially in upland areas.

Analysis of physiological data from the International Clonal Trial (CFC)

A range of physiological parameters (canopy light transmission, canopy shape, leaf size, flowering and flushing intensity) were measured from the International Clone Trial, typically over the course of two years. Data were collected from six locations, these being: Brazil, Ecuador, Trinidad, Venezuela, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. Canopy shape varied significantly between clones, although it showed little variation between locations. Genotypic variation in leaf size was differentially affected by the growth location; such differences appeared to underlie a genotype by environment interaction in relation to canopy light transmission. Flushing data were recorded at monthly intervals over the course of a year. Within each location, a significant interaction was observed between genotype and time of year, suggesting that some genotypes respond to a greater extent than others to environmental stimuli. A similar interaction was observed for flowering data, where significant correlations were found between flowering intensity and temperature in Brazil and flowering intensity and rainfall in Côte d’Ivoire. The results demonstrate the need for local evaluation of cocoa clones and also suggest that the management practices for particular planting material may need to be fine-tuned to the location in which they are cultivated.