Quality and risk management frameworks for biosolids: An assessment of current international practice.

Biosolids, a product of wastewater treatment, provide a valuable resource, but to optimize the use of this resource it is necessary to manage risks posed to public health and the environment. Key requirements include identifying contaminant sources and providing barriers to ensure containment and treatment while maintaining the viability and value of biosolids products. Responsibility for managing biosolids is the remit of many stakeholders but primarily it rests with private and public wastewater facilities.

Assessment of motor limb strength by neuroscience nurses: variations in practice and associated challenges.

Background: Limb strength is a central component of neurological assessment and monitoring in nursing practice, yet there is a lack of research examining the tools used by nurses or challenges nurses encounter when using these tools. The evidence base is lacking to inform effective practice and the underpinning educational approaches.

Aim: To determine which tools are used by UK and Irish neuroscience nurses in the assessment of limb strength and the associated challenges and variations in practice.

Nurses' understanding and experience of applying painful stimuli when assessing components of the Glasgow Coma Scale.

Aims And Objectives: To evaluate nurses' application, understanding and experience of applying painful stimuli when assessing components of the Glasgow Coma Scale.

Background: The Glasgow Coma Scale has been subjected to much scrutiny and debate since its publication in 1974. However, criticism, confusion and misunderstandings in relation to the use of painful stimuli and its application remain.

Family members' experience with in-hospital health care after severe traumatic brain injury: a national multicentre study.

Background: Family member's experience and satisfaction of health care in the acute care and in-patient rehabilitation are important indicators of the quality of health care services provided to patients with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). The objective was to assess family members' experience of the health care provided in-hospital to patients with severe TBI, to relate experiences to family member and patient demographics, patients' function and rehabilitation pathways.

Methods: Prospective national multicentre study of 122 family members of patients with severe TBI.

Patterns of change and stability in caregiver burden and life satisfaction from 1 to 2 years after severe traumatic brain injury: A Norwegian longitudinal study.

Objective: To assess burden and life satisfaction in family members of patients with severe traumatic brain injury (sTBI) at 1 and 2 years post-injury, examine if change in burden can be predicted by family member and patient demographics, patient's functional status, family members social network or level of burden at 1 year.

Methods: Prospective national multicenter study. Self-report from family members, patient data collected from a national cohort study on patients with sTBI.

The Glasgow Coma Scale and evidence-informed practice: a critical review of where we are and where we need to be.

Aims And Objectives: This paper aims to critically consider the evidence since the Glasgow Coma Scale was first launched, reflecting on how that evidence has shaped practice. It illustrates the lack of clarity and consensus about the use of the tool in practice and draws upon existing evidence to determine the route to clarity for an evidence-informed approach to practice.

Background: The Glasgow Coma Scale has permeated and influenced practice for over 40 years, being well-established worldwide as the key tool for assessing level of consciousness.

An evaluation of post-registration neuroscience focused education and neuroscience nurses' perceived educational needs.

Background: People with complex neurological conditions require co-ordinated care provided by nurses educated in meeting service needs, understanding the pathophysiological processes of disease and the preparation to care for those with complex needs. However, evidence suggests that neuroscience specific education provision is largely unregulated and set outside of a cohesive professional development context. Furthermore, it largely seems to only address the induction phase into working within neurosciences.

A comparison between intravenous and subcutmaneous immunogobulin.

Multifocal motor neuropathy (MMN) is a rare immune-mediated disease that presents with predominantly distal motor weakness in one or more limbs without sensory loss. Symptoms may give riseto functional impairment and consequently may affect quality of life. High-dose intravenous immunoglobulin's therapy (IVIg) is the current mainstay treatment, however, subcutaneous immunoglobuli(SCIg) is emerging as a viable alternative.

The experience of living with a family member with challenging behavior post acquired brain injury.

Acquired brain injury (ABI) can be a sudden, dramatic, and, sometimes, fatal event that instantly disrupts the lives of the patients and their families. Healthcare professionals and families are being confronted with the long-term effects of ABI. This article presents a descriptive phenomenological study that aimed to explore the families' meaning of living with the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral sequelae of ABI survivors.

Exploring student's perceptions and experience of personal tutors.

There are a variety of arrangements to support pre-registration nursing students whilst they engage with the theoretical and practical elements of their course; these includes academic supervisor and a personal tutor. The personal tutor system is recognized as an effective method of ensuring that each student has access to a wide range of support services and that the individual's academic progress and personal development are monitored by a skilled member of academic staff (Harrison, 1990). However, there is a dearth of studies relating to the role of the personal tutor in nurse education from the students' perspective.

Exploring new nurse teachers' perception and understanding of reflection: an exploratory study.

Reflection and the development of reflective practitioners are integral in many nursing programmes. This study set out to explore new lecturers' perception and understanding of reflection and how well they are preparing nurses to be reflective practitioners. Using a mixed method, new lecturers appointed to the school of nursing within the last 18 months were questioned using a semi-structured questionnaire.

Clinical governance: applying theory to practice.

Although clinical governance is prominent in modern health care, it is often perceived as an abstract concept. This article explains the key components of clinical governance and relates these to nursing practice. The author emphasises that clinical governance should be viewed as an opportunity to improve care delivery.

What do children know about the universal quantifiers all and each?

Children's comprehension of the universal quantifiers all and each was explored in a series of experiments using a picture selection task. The first experiment examined children's ability to restrict a quantifier to the noun phrase it modifies. The second and third experiments examined children's ability to associate collective, distributive, and exhaustive representations with sentences containing universal quantifiers.

Propositional reasoning by mental models? Simple to refute in principle and in practice.

Two experiments compared the predictions of mental-models theory with a mental-logic theory. Results show that people do not make fallacious inferences predicted by mental-models theory but not predicted by mental-logic theory and that people routinely make many valid inferences predicted by mental-logic theory that should be too difficult on mental-models theory. Thus, the mental-logic theory accounts better for the data.

Is nativism sufficient?

The past and present state of the empiricism-nativism issue is analysed. Empiricist philosophical doctrine ('no innate ideas') distinguished idea from structure or mechanism. However, Chomsky's conception of innate linguistic universals erased this distinction.

What sort of innate structure is needed to "bootstrap" into syntax?

The paper starts from Pinker's theory of the acquisition of phrase structure; it shows that it is possible to drop all the assumptions about innate syntactic structure from this theory. These assumptions can be replaced by assumptions about the basic structure of semantic representation available at the outset of language acquisition, without penalizing the acquisition of basic phrase structure rules. Essentially, the role played by X-bar theory in Pinker's model would be played by the (presumably innate) structure of the language of thought in the revised parallel model.

Can children use a verb without exposure to its argument structure?

We hypothesize that canonical sentence schemas (e.g. Agent-verb-Patient) can sometimes assign argument structure to verbs.

Reasoning about conditional sentences: development of understanding of cues to quantification.

The previous literature has reported that when children are asked to judge the truth or falsity of universally quantified conditional sentences of the form If a thing is P then it is Q they typically give responses, e.g., responding "true" whenever there is a case of P and Q even if there are also cases of P and not-Q.