An arts project failed, censored or … ? A critical incident approach to artist–school partnerships

When a successful primary school engaged a writer to work with children on an arts project, the teachers and the writer thought that the result would be a lively, publishable product. When the writer worked with the children, he thought that he should use the children's experiences and ideas as a basis for meaningful and engaged composition. However, the result was a text which the head-teacher and her staff felt was inappropriate. They were concerned that it could bring disapproval from parents and possible adverse publicity. The head refused to publish but continues to worry about this decision. The writer describes the project as censored. In this paper, we suggest that this critical incident raises important questions about the nature of 'partnership' between artists and schools and the role of the flagship Creative Partnerships policy and programme. We suggest some possibilities for dealing with such situations in future and argue that Creative Partnerships must do more to promote dialogue about the critical role of the arts and artists in society.

An applied framework for modelling a critical infrastructure system incident

The research applies the TARDIS system security analysis and modelling framework to an adverse critical infrastructure system incident. This paper reports on the practical application of the framework to a case study based on an actual critical infrastructure system failure and the resultant implications for the system and the wider regional community. Then a reflective discussion is undertaken reviewing the TARDIS framework approaches employed within the blended hybrid approach incorporated into the framework, before speculating on future research areas of framework development and application.

Laguerre Runge-Kutta-Fehlberg method for simulating laser pulse propagation in biological tissue

An efficient algorithm for solving the transient radiative transfer equation for laser pulse propagation in biological tissue is presented. A Laguerre expansion is used to represent the time dependency of the incident short pulse. The Runge–Kutta– Fehlberg method is used to solve the intensity. The discrete ordinates method is used to discretize with respect to azimuthal and zenith angles. This method offers the advantages of representing the intensity with a high accuracy using only a few Laguerre polynomials, and straightforward extension to inhomogeneous media. Also, this formulation can be easily extended for solving the 2-D and 3-D transient radiative transfer equations.

Identification of incident fractures : the Geelong Osteoporosis Study

Background: Complete fracture ascertainment is critical for fracture cost estimates and planning for future health care facilities. Virtually complete ascertainment is possible for hip fractures because they nearly always require hospitalisation.

Aims: To validate the use of radiological reports as a resource for ascertaining fracture cases, using hip fracture as a model.

Methods: Hip fracture rates obtained from radiological reports were compared with rates obtained from hospital discharge summaries of medical records using International Classification of Diseases-9 (ICD-9) codes 820.0–820.9 and 733.1 over a three-year period.

Results: Hip fracture cases numbered 589 using radiological reports and 585 using medical records. Discharge summaries failed to identify 15 cases ascertained through radiology reports whereas 11 cases ascertained through medical records were not identified from X-ray reports. The age-specific incidence rates for radiological ascertainment were within the 95% confidence limits of the rates derived from medical records.

Conclusions: Among a population of patients generally admitted to hospital for treatment of their fracture, we were able to identify more cases from radiological reports than from medical records. Incidence rates for hip fracture were comparable using the two methods. Radiological reports provide a valuable resource for identifying incident fractures. This method of case ascertainment would be suitable for identifying both major and minor fractures in regions with self-contained health services where access to all radiological reports is possible.

Real solutions number of the switching angles in the selective harmonic eliminated PWM

With the purpose of solving the real solutions number of the nonlinear transcendental equations in the selective harmonic eliminated PWM (SHEPWM) technology, the nonlinear transcendental equations were transformed to a set of polynomial equations with a set of inequality constraints using the multiple-angle formulas, an analytic method based on semi-algebraic systems machine proving algorithm was proposed to classify the real solution number of the switching angles. The complete classifications of the real solution number and the analytic boundary point of the single phase and three phases SHEPWM inverter with switch points of N=3 and the single phase SHEPWM inverter with switch points of N=4 are obtained. The results indicate that the relationship between the modulation ratio and the real solution number can be demonstrated theoretically by this method, which has great implications for the solution procedure of switching angles and the improvement of harmonic elimination effects of the inverter.

Risk factors for incident delirium in acute medical in-patients. A systematic review

Review question/objective
What risk factors are associated with incident delirium in adult patients during an acute medical hospitalisation?
More specifically, the objectives are to:
Identify and synthesise the best available evidence on the factors which are associated with delirium in adult patients admitted to acute medical facilities.

Types of participants
This review will consider studies that include adults (defined as 18 years and above) who were admitted to an acute medical setting (e.g. general medical units, stroke units, short stay units and neuromedical units) who were not delirious on admission (in order to differentiate incident delirium) but who developed incident delirium during hospitalisation

The review will exclude patients who were:
- critically ill and admitted to specialist unit e.g. ICU or CCU
- admitted for any type of surgery
- admitted for alcohol related reasons
- admitted to psychiatric facility
These patients will be excluded in order to determine factors that may be exclusive to the medical in patient setting.

Types of intervention(s)/phenomena of interest
This review will consider studies that evaluate any risk factors that may contribute to the development of delirium during in-patient hospitalisation. The review will look at factors present on admission (predisposing) and also factors that may occur during hospitalisation (precipitating) that contribute to incident delirium.

Types of outcomes
This review will consider studies that include the following outcome measures: the incidence of delirium as related to individual risk factors.

Risk factors for incident delirium in acute medical in-patients: a systematic review

Delirium is a serious problem that can occur in many older people admitted to hospital. Delirium has the potential to dramatically complicate the hospitalisation of a patient, and often results in functional decline, an increased likelihood of complications associated with longer hospital stays, increasing the risk of admission to a care facility post discharge, a greater incidence of falls and is associated with high mortality and morbidity rates. Understanding the factors that contribute to delirium can provide insights into the mechanisms that underlie the syndrome.

Dive angles for a green turtle (Chelonia mydas)

The depth and swim speed of a green turtle (Chelonia mydas) were measured during the internesting period in Cyprus. For dives to the seabed (U-dives) we used these data to determine dive angles. Typically the turtle initially descended at a steep angle ([similar]60°) but as the dive continued this angle lessened until the turtle approached the seabed at an average angle of [similar]15°. This systematic change in descent angle is consistent with the prediction that the energetic implications of dive angle are most important at the start of the dive when the turtle is fighting to overcome its positive buoyancy. On leaving the seabed, the turtle often seemed to rise passively.

Learning over sets using boosted manifold principal angles (BoMPA)

In this paper we address the problem of classifying vector sets. We motivate and introduce a novel method based on comparisons between corresponding vector subspaces. In particular, there are two main areas of novelty: (i) we extend the concept of principal angles between linear subspaces to manifolds with arbitrary nonlinearities; (ii) it is demonstrated how boosting can be used for application-optimal principal angle fusion. The strengths of the proposed method are empirically demonstrated on the task of automatic face recognition (AFR), in which it is shown to outperform state-of-the-art methods in the literature.

Understanding the role of social media in incident crisis communication

How organisations communicate with their audience during an incident or crisis is important because it can adversely affect corporate reputation if mishandled. With the advent of social media, organisations have only a few "golden minutes" rather than "golden hours" to communicate with their audience as an incident/crisis unfolds. However, while social media usage by the general population is increasing rapidly, most organisations are not ready to manage incidents or crises via the use of social media. Theoretical knowledge is still lacking in this regard This study provides a conceptual fl·mnework for investigating how organisations communicate with their audience via social media during an incident or crisis and aims to identifY the  important factors relating to the use of social media in a negative situation.

Rheumatoid arthritis and incident fracture in women: a case-control study

Background:
To examine fracture incidence in women with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) for an entire geographical region of south-eastern Australia.

Methods:
Women aged 35 years and older, resident in the Barwon Statistical Division (BSD) and clinically diagnosed with RA 1994–2001 were eligible for inclusion as cases (n =1,008). The control population (n = 172,422) comprised the entire female BSD population aged 35 years and older, excluding those individuals identified as cases. Incident fractures were extracted from the prospective Geelong Osteoporosis Study Fracture Grid. We calculated rate ratios (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) to compare the age- adjusted rate of fracture between the RA and non-RA populations, and used a chi-square test to compare proportions of fractures between women with and without RA, and a two-sided Mann–Whitney U-test to examine age-differences.

Results:
Among 1,008 women with RA, 19 (1.9%) sustained a fracture, compared to 1,981 fractures sustained by the 172,422 women without RA (1.2%). Fracture rates showed a trend for being greater among women diagnosed with RA (age-adjusted RR 1.43, 95%CI 0.98-2.09, p= 0.08). Women with RA sustained vertebral fractures at twice the expected frequency, whereas hip fractures were underrepresented in the RA population (p< 0.001). RA status was not associated with the likelihood of sustaining a fracture at sites adjacent to joints most commonly affected by RA (p= 0.22).

Conclusion:
Given that women with RA have a greater risk of fracture compared to women without RA, these patients may be a suitable target population for anti-resorptive agents; however, larger studies are warranted.