Search

Long-chain fatty acid oxidation disorders (LC-FAOD) are a group of inborn errors of metabolism wherein patients are unable to process long-chain fatty acids into useable energy in the mitochondria. LC-FAOD commonly affects organ systems with high energy demand, manifesting as hypoketotic hypoglycemia, liver dysfunction, cardiomyopathy, rhabdomyolysis, and skeletal myopathy, as well as peripheral neuropathy and retinopathy in some subtypes. Collectively, LC-FAOD have a high mortality rate, especially in cases of early onset disease, and in the presence of cardiomyopathy. Triheptanoin is a synthetic medium-odd chain triglyceride, produced using a GMP-compliant process, which was designed to replenish mitochondrial metabolic deficits and restore energy homeostasis. Prior to its approval, triheptanoin was only available through clinical trials or to seriously ill patients as part of an expanded access program (EAP) following physician request. This retrospective study examined the impact of triheptanoin on cardiovascular parameters, in critically ill patients who participated in the EAP from February 2013 to January 2018. These patients persisted in critical condition despite receiving standard treatment in highly qualified centers by expert metabolic physicians and dietitians. Physician-completed questionnaires and narrative summaries were used to evaluate the disease presentation and management prior to the trigger event leading to triheptanoin request and use, and the response to triheptanoin treatment. Following triheptanoin initiation, most patients survived the initial trigger event (e.g., severe urinary tract infection, pneumonia) and demonstrated improvements in both short-term and long-term LC-FAOD manifestations. In patients with cardiomyopathy, stabilization or improvement from pretreatment levels was reported in left ventricular ejection fraction and left ventricular mass, in particular, all infants with cardiomyopathy showed improvement in cardiac function during triheptanoin therapy. Triheptanoin therapy was generally well tolerated. The study results are consistent with the existing positive benefit/risk profile of triheptanoin and reflect the effect of triheptanoin improving cardiac function in patients experiencing severe episodes of metabolic decompensation despite standard therapy.

Objective To compare oral voriconazole vs placebo in addition to topical antifungals in the treatment of filamentous fungal keratitis. Design Non-prespecified, secondary case-control analysis from a multicenter, double-masked, randomized placebo-controlled clinical trial. Methods Study Participants : Patients with smear-positive filamentous fungal ulcers and visual acuity of 20/400 or worse who eventuated to therapeutic penetrating keratoplasty (TPK). Intervention : Study participants were randomized to oral voriconazole vs oral placebo; all received topical antifungal drops. Main Outcome Measures : TPK button culture positivity. Results A total of 95 of 194 (49.5%) study participants enrolled at Madurai, Coimbatore, or Pondicherry, India eventuated to TPK in an average of 20.9 days (standard deviation 15.2 days, range 2-71 days). TPK button cultures were available for 67 of 95 (71%) of the TPKs performed and were positive for filamentous fungus in 45 of 67 (67%) cases. For each 1-day increase in the time to TPK there was 0.94-fold decreased odds of fungal culture positivity (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.90–0.98, P = .005). Those randomized to oral voriconazole had 1.26-fold increased odds of TPK button culture positivity after controlling for time to TPK and baseline organism, but this was not statistically significant (95% CI 0.32–4.87; P = .74). Those who underwent TPK for lack of response to medical therapy were 10.64-fold more likely to be culture positive than if the indication for surgery was perforation and this was statistically significant (95% CI 2.16–51.70; P = .003). Conclusions There appears to be no benefit to adding oral voriconazole to topical antifungal agents in the treatment of severe filamentous fungal ulcers. Infection rather than inflammation appears to be the reason for the worsening clinical picture in many of these patients.

Titanium root form dental implants are among the major advances modern dentistry can offer patients. Occasionally, in spite of all precautions and best operator intentions, implants are inadvertently placed in positions that do not permit their use for high-quality esthetic dental restorations. Salvaging these implants to permit their use is a challenge for practitioners. Such a situation came to our attention in 2012 after two anterior implants placed in 2009 were found to be in unusable positions. A plan to remove the implants, regraft the area and-after a considerable waiting period-replace the implants in a more "proper" position was considered. Instead, by combining oral/maxillofacial surgical techniques developed for reconstruction of severe dentofacial deformities with newer clinical and laboratory techniques for crown fabrication, the problem was corrected for the patient with a minimum of lost time. And an esthetically pleasing result that more than satisfied our patient was achieved.

This article describes what is believed to be an innovative methodology for capturing the patterns and sequence of users' information service-seeking behaviour in one academic institution. The article outlines the thinking behind and development of this methodology; its application in terms of collecting data: and highlights the general results that emerged.

Recent years have seen an expansion in the work on the attitudes, beliefs and preferences of those middle-class groups that have accompanied the return of capital to many North American and western European city centres and their surrounding urban suburbs. Yet despite this, it is argued that there is little research linking gentrification to wider processes of social transformation, particularly debates over housing market decision-making, the balancing of work and life, and the gender division of labour within the household. It is to examining the interaction of these aspects of everyday life in a gentrifying area that this paper turns, using the example of Chorlton, a southern urban suburb of Manchester. © 2010 Urban Studies Journal Limited.

Factors affecting larval growth and nutrition have consequences on adult fecundity. Since the mosquito larval midgut is the primary organ of digestion and nutrient absorption, factors that affect the growth and development of the midgut may have potential consequences on the reproductive potential of the adult. To gain a better understanding of mosquito midgut development the growth and metamorphic remodeling of the Aedes aegypti L. and Culex pipiens L. (Diptera: Culicidae) midguts were investigated. Cytological evidence was obtained suggesting that, in both the anterior and posterior Ae. aegypti larval midgut, diploid regenerative cells give rise to new endoreplicating cells that significantly contribute to the growth and metabolism of the midgut. This hypothesis was supported by BrdU incorporation studies showing that diploid cells, as well as large and small endoreplicating cells, synthesize DNA during the 2(nd), 3(rd) and 4(th) instars. Cytological studies of the Cx. pipiens larval midgut suggest that anterior midgut growth in this species is primarily by cell enlargement. To study metamorphic remodeling of the midgut, DNA synthesis in Ae. aegypti 4(th) instar midguts was followed by using 5-bromo-2-deoxyuridine (BrdU) incorporation. During the 24 hr period after the last larval-larval molt both endoreplicating and diploid cells incorporate BrdU. After the critical weight is achieved, endoreplicating cell BrdU incorporation gradually ceases while diploid cells continue to replicate. The period of maximum diploid cell incorporation correlated with the period of maximum ecdysone titer.

In this paper we explore the responses of a group of long-term unemployed men to chronic labour market insecurity and ‘active’ labour market policies promoting individual responsibility for employability. We draw from an evaluation of a recent pilot scheme: the UK Employment Retention and Advancement Demonstration. We identify a range of responses, shaped through experiences which reflect gender, class, and age divisions. Despite significant labour market disadvantage, some of the men responded by proactively engaging with the employability agenda. Drawing on qualitative longitudinal data, we follow the trajectories of the men in work, examining how they fared in insecure, precarious labour markets. We conclude by looking at the strengths and limitations of the current policy agenda, suggesting that more creative ways need to be found to engage some of the most disadvantaged in the reskilling agenda and that employers are currently a ‘weak link’ in the package of support provided.

Much has been written on the apparent urban renaissance in UK cities and the new lifestyle arrangements, working time patterns, economic activities and the more general reordering of work and life that appears to accompany it. Certainly, recent decades have witnessed a range of economic, social and cultural changes in the lives of those living and working in cities and surrounding suburbs. Much of the attention in this work has focused on those groups for whom the changes have appeared most profound: the high-income earners returning to live in the city – the gentrifiers – or those who suffer multiple deprivations as a result of economic restructuring. Seemingly absent from many accounts of urban change are those places where, at first glance, the effects of change have been less pronounced: low-income, working class neighbourhoods where most people continue to get by, albeit in the context of a harsher, and less secure political economic context. In light of this apparent silence, this paper draws on interviews from Wythenshawe in South Manchester, to examine how low-income mothers cope, live and labour, in a rapidly changing city, as they perform paid work at the same time as ensuring the social reproduction of the household.

Exposure of mosquito 4th instars to the juvenile hormone analogue methoprene prevents the emergence of adults by interfering with metamorphosis. One metamorphic processes that is disrupted is midgut remodeling. To investigate the molecular mechanisms by which this occurs, the pattern of transcription factor gene expression during the Aedes aegypti (L.) 4th instar was investigated by the method of real time PCR. The results indicate that in untreated larvae, expression of transcription factors genes AHR3 and AaE75B increases within 24h after the last larval-larval molt, transcription of AaEcR-B, AaUSP-a and AassFTZ-F1 increases approximately 24h later, and transcription of AaE75A increases just before the larval-pupal molt. There is uniform expression of AaUSP-b throughout the 4th instar. The effect of methoprene exposure on transcription factor gene expression during midgut remodeling was investigated. The results indicate that, in a dose and stage dependent manner, methoprene affects increases in expression that normally occur during midgut remodeling. The coincident effects of methoprene on metamorphic midgut remodeling and on transcription factor gene expression suggests that the two processes are related.

Female labour force participation has been increasing in recent decades, in part encouraged by state policies to raise the employment rate to encourage economic competitiveness and combat social exclusion. Social provision for care, however, has lagged behind this increase, creating practical and moral dilemmas for individuals and for society, facing parents with complex choices about how to combine work and care. In this paper, we draw on a qualitative study in London to explore the extent to which the large-scale entry of women into waged work is altering women's understandings of their duties and responsibilities to care for others. We conclude that their decisions are influenced by class position, entrenched gender inequalities in the labour market, varying abilities to pay for care and complex gendered understandings of caring responsibilities.

Introduction There is little agreement over what the Onew economyO is: its size, in financialand employment terms; its impact on the work men and women do inside andoutside of the formal labour market; or its geographical implications. And yetdespite this lack of conceptual and empirical clarity the term Onew economyOhas found its way into all manner of publications, from government press releases, white papers and more populist journalistic accounts of contemporaryBritain through to high social theory.At the same time, and in the context of concerns about equal opportunities,the desire to retain highly qualified female employees and more generally tofacilitate and raise female employment rates, interest in flexible working, workÐlife balance, and reconciling work and family life has grown among tradeunions, corporations and government. These issues are related because thegrowing use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), as part ofthe emergence of the Onew economyO, appears to be extending the temporal andspatial boundaries of paid work, allowing people to work more flexibly and sopotentially reconcile paid work with other activities, including unpaid caring.And yet, ICTs are also conducive to more intense and longer working hours,with more critical interpretations of the Onew economyO linking it with pre-carious, fragmented and insecure working patterns, all of which could make itmore difficult to effect workÐlife balance policies and realize equal opportuni-ties. Moreover, changes in educational attainment levels, lifestyle choices andfamily formation, together with the changes in working arrangements, have

In this paper we examine the relationships between class and gender in the context of current debates about economic change in Greater London. It is a common contention of the global city thesis that new patterns of inequality and class polarisation are apparent as the expansion of high-status employment brings in its wake rising employment in low-status, poorly paid ‘servicing’ occupations. Whereas urban theorists tend to ignore gender divisions, feminist scholars have argued that new class and income inequalities are opening up between women as growing numbers of highly credentialised women enter full-time, permanent employment and others are restricted to casualised, low-paid work. However, it is also argued that working women's interests coincide because of their continued responsibility for domestic obligations and still-evident gender discrimination in the labour market. In this paper we counterpose these debates, assessing the consequences for income inequality, for patterns of childcare and for work–life balance policies of rising rates of labour-market participation among women in Greater London. We conclude by outlining a new research agenda.

This paper reports and reflects upon a number of the findings and issues emerging from evidence collated to date as part of JUBILEE (Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) user behaviour in information seeking: longitudinal evaluation of electronic information services), a significant, ongoing UK research project. The evidence is largely based on analysis and interpretation of the qualitative data from the research, with discussion focusing on information seeking behaviour and information skills in relation to electronic information sources. The background and aims of the research are outlined, succeeded by an exploration of the differing types of information technology (IT) skills needed by users to ensure effective use of electronic information services (EIS). Finally, extrapolating from the research data, there is consideration as to how these IT skills can be effectively developed in the higher education environment. Referring back to the title of this paper, a stress is placed on the importance of a converged, “joined up” approach to EIS provision.

Political representation of ethnicized and other identities is a complex process, whereby identities are constructed and shaped through the competing claims of different collectivities. In the article I explore this process through a case study of a local authority community development project for Asian women. The analysis demonstrates that institutions are not neutral spaces in which contestations over collectivity are played out, but exert a constitutive impact upon the identities produced. Current theories of fluidity and instability in identities mean that collective identities must be staked strategically and contingently, determinant upon the political strategies appropriate within given institutional contexts.

The paper is based on a presentation made at Northumbria Lite, the one‐day session held by the Northumbria Performance Measures Conference series team at IFLA in Glasgow, August 2002, on the invitation of the IFLA Statistics and Library Theory and Research Roundtables. It has been supplemented with some up‐dated figures and graphs. Dr Linda Banwell, Director of the JUBILEE project, gave the presentation, which focuses on evaluation in JUBILEE, with specific reference to the derivation and representation of impact and outcomes for library services.

Many juvenile hormone analogs interfere with insect metamorphosis, a property that makes them useful in insect control and as investigatorial tools with which to study metamorphic mechanisms. We report that one such analog, methoprene, interferes with mosquito metamorphic midgut remodeling. Methoprene treated Aedes aegypti (L.), Aedes albopictus (Skuse), and Culex quinquefasciatus (Say) fourth instars pupate, but the pupal midguts are morphologically similar to larval midguts. The degree of midgut remodeling is affected by the dose of methoprene applied and the extent of fourth instar development when methoprene exposure is initiated. DNA staining indicates that high methoprene concentrations interfere with diploid cell division and programmed death of polytene cells. Lower methoprene concentrations do not interfere with diploid cell division but the removal of polytene cells is incomplete. The effect of methoprene dose on the extent of midgut remodeling correlates well with its effect on pupal and adult survival. Metamorphic midgut remodeling offers a mosquito system with which to study the effect of ecdysone, juvenile hormone and juvenile hormone analogs on metamorphosis. An understanding of the molecular mechanisms by which methoprene affects mosquito metamorphosis might lead to the development of more effective mosquito control chemicals having fewer deleterious environmental effects and to genetic strategies by which mosquito populations might be controlled.

This paper applies social network analysis to three case study social movement organizations based in the north of England: a local Labour Party branch, an environmental group, and a conservation group. Using a postal survey of members, we chart the extent of ties between members of these three groups, indicating how each group has its own internal social dynamics and characteristics that are related to the nature of the movement organizations themselves. We explore how the network structures interrelate with the socio-demographic structure of the membership of the three organizations, and we show there are important differences in the way that core members of the three organizations are recruited compared to those who are either peripheral or isolated. Our paper is the first to analyse the networks of whole populations of case study organizations in the UK, and can therefore be read as developing the potential of social network analysis for case study research and for understanding social movements. Analytically we argue it is important to distinguish two different types of ways that networks are important. They can be seen as offering resources for mobilization, or they can be seen as providing a means of integrating particular types of individuals into organizations. It is this latter sense that offers a more fundamental role for network analysis, and we argue that it offers an important way of developing insights from resource mobilization theory by relating them to Bourdieu's provocative arguments regarding the exclusiveness of the political field.

(2002). Bidding for Records: Local authority archives and competitive funding. Journal of the Society of Archivists: Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 35-503.

The further education sector has been exposed to many changes during the last decade, including the development of a National Information and Technology structure, an increasing emphasis on ‘lifelong learning’, ‘key skills’, collaboration and regional planning, changes in funding arrangements and growth in student numbers and wider participation. Growing emphasis on the use of Electronic Information Services (EIS) in teaching is forcing academic staff to acquire and expand their ICT and information literacy skills. In the course of this paper some of the main barriers and impediments faced by academic staff in the present climate are discussed as identified by the JUBILEE research. These included access to technology, staff attitudes and skill levels and the focus of available EIS. Enabling access to EIS has emerged as a pivotal aim and the research found that through the implementation of an informed EIS strategy, effective communication and awareness raising, tailored user training programmes, and embed...

Effective participation in the competitive bidding arena is one of the main vehicles for securing the necessary additional funds to maintain and develop UK public library services. This paper documents the extent and scale of bidding by public libraries and presents areas of good practice emerging from research into the effects that the bidding culture has had on the development of English local government archive, library and museum services. Key findings suggest that approaches to external funding should be strategy‐driven taking place within a framework of purpose and rationale; that success is often highly dependent on the leadership and networking skills of library managers; and that partnership working should be encouraged and adopted. Successful proposals should demonstrate the benefits and credibility of proposers to deliver; provide evidence of properly resourced project management including methods of monitoring and evaluation; explicitly address the relevant funding criteria and be well‐researched and carefully planned.

This paper presents some of the findings from research into the effects that the emergent bidding culture has had on the development of English local government archive, library and museum services. The project was funded by Resource and undertaken by the Information Management Research Institute at the University of Northumbria at Newcastle. The research revealed that the extent of involvement by archives and record management services in competitive bidding for external funds was dependent on a number of factors including the level of existing resource bases of archive services; the geographical and cognitive locations of archives; and the focus of external funding opportunities. However, the need for archives and records management services to engage in effective bidding is not likely to disappear, and it is suggested that these organisations must adopt a dynamic approach to bidding and marketing, asserting that their needs – ‘sexy’ or otherwise – deserve appropriate funding.

The modern library is an ensemble of information services. The ways that its users choose and move between its services can be investigated and the picture so obtained complements that obtained from surveys on the effectiveness of individual services.

Presents the findings of the LOGOPLUS project. The aim of this project was to ascertain to what extent the move to unitary authorities during the 1995‐1998 re‐organisation of local government was seamless for public library users and staff. Case studies were undertaken in nine local authorities. Representatives formed the Steering Group which identified the following significant areas of change to be investigated: politics, finance, integration, co‐operation, staff, communication and users. Research findings have indicated a number of success factors which contributed to seamlessness: councillors and managers who were committed to the provision of excellent services; transitional finance sufficient to cover the process of the change; effective leadership; clear definition of mission and goals; multi‐skilling where appropriate and supportive users. However, some libraries have suffered because councillors or managers did not have a clear vision; there was insufficient finance; managers were not good communicators and there was little or no training for staff.

This report presents the final results on the implementation, impacts, costs, and economic benefits of the UK Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) programme. ERA’s distinctive combination of post-employment advisory support and financial incentives was designed to help low-income individuals who entered work sustain employment and advance in the labour market. Launched in 2003 in selected Jobcentre Plus offices, ERA targeted three groups: (1) unemployed lone parents receiving Income Support and volunteering for the New Deal for Lone Parents welfare-to-work programme, (2) lone parents working part time and receiving Working Tax Credit, and (3) long-term unemployed people aged 25 or older receiving Jobseeker’s Allowance who were required to participate in the New Deal 25 Plus welfare-to-work programme. The effectiveness of the programme was evaluated using a random assignment research design. The evaluation found that ERA produced short-term earnings gains for the two lone parent target groups. The early gains resulted from increases in the proportion of participants who worked full time (at least 30 hours per week). However, these effects generally faded after the programme ended, largely because the control group caught up with the ERA group. More impressive were the results for the long-term unemployed participants (mostly men) in the New Deal 25 Plus target group. For them, ERA produced modest but sustained increases in employment and substantial and sustained increases in earnings. These positive effects emerged after the first year and were still evident at the end of a five-year follow-up period. The earnings gains were accompanied by lasting reductions in benefits receipt. ERA proved cost-effective for this group from the perspectives of the participants themselves, the Government budget, and society as a whole.

This report presents new findings from Britain’s Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) demonstration programme, launched in autumn 2003. ERA was designed to test the effectiveness of a programme to improve the labour market prospects of low-paid workers and long-term unemployed people. One of ERA’s key goals was to encourage human capital development by supporting and incentivising training among low-wage workers. The programme provided personal adviser support and financial incentives for completing training and working full-time.This report looks at the delivery, take-up, and outcomes of ERA’s training support and incentives. A central question is whether intensive adviser support and financial incentives encourage training beyond what would normally occur. Because training encompasses a broad range of activities, this report details the kinds of training courses people took in ERA. Finally, it is important to assess whether training leads to better labour market outcomes. Some programmes have increased training with no corresponding effect on earnings. One hypothesis to explain these results is that the training might not have been in courses relevant to advancement. Therefore, this study examines the occupational relevance of the courses taken.

Following disturbances in northern cities of the UK in the summer of 2001, investigations suggested that tensions amongst different ethnic groups were a key factor (Home Office Community Cohesion Unit 2002). In this context community relationships have come under greater scrutiny, with particular emphasis on the role of ethnicity and the meanings and values attached to national identity and ‘integration’. The aftermath of the 2001 disturbances generated a new emphasis in policy with respect to promoting ‘social (and community) cohesion’. Earlier policy discourses around multiculturalism, which emphasised difference and diversity, were said to have gone too far in challenging the notion of a British collective identity, and had presented problems for the ‘integration’ of new communities. The promotion of a stronger sense of community along with greater community involvement, particularly in disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods, has become an important strand of current government thinking, infusing policy and strategy across a range of departments (Phillips 2006; Hudson et al. 2007). This paper seeks to engage in this debate about the relationship between everyday interactions and community cohesion, by exploring the everyday lives of residents in a diverse neighbourhood where established and new communities are living side by side.

How is women’s employment shaped by family and domestic responsibilities? This book, written by leading experts in the field, examines twenty-five years of change in women’s employment and addresses the challenges facing women today.

Questions of national identity and the ‘integration’ of immigrants have become a major focus of political debate in recent years, in the context of globalization, increasing international population movements and, consequently, the demographic restructuring of cities. In Britain, a raft of government policies progressively reducing the rights of asylum-seekers, combined with xenophobic media, have created a persistent sense among the public of an asylum ‘crisis’ (Lewis and Neal, 2005, p. 439). In addition, concerns about national identity and the ‘failures’ of multiculturalism have been fuelled in the wake of the ‘Islamist’ terrorist attacks in New York, Madrid and London and the subsequent ‘war on terror’.

Women in the European Union are increasingly expected to be in paid employment to meet the Lisbon Strategy targets for growth and competitiveness and to offset the rising costs of welfare, given increased ageing and declining fertility. Yet despite the passing of equalities legislation over 30 years ago, gender inequalities remain in the scale and character of paid employment and in the division of domestic labour.1 The lack of any real change in the gender distribution of domestic work to match women’s increased paid employment has led to debates about how to reconcile paid work and family life, now more usually expressed as work-life balance. Policy discussions revolve around the relative roles of the state and market in meeting the care deficit and how employment practices can be modified to enable both women and men to meet their caring obligations. In addition to these pragmatic issues, in some states, notably the UK, moral questions have also been raised about the desirability of mothers of young children undertaking paid work, especially on a full-time basis.

Growing numbers of women with children living in western cities are entering the labour market, raising new questions about changes in the allocation of the tasks of social reproduction between household members and others and about the effects of the increasing time women now spend in the workplace. As Manuel Castells noted over 25 years ago, women’s unpaid labour has long been essential, not only in the domestic arena, but also in patching together facilities separated in space. The spatial layout of cities, with its specialized and segregated land-uses, only works, he argued, if women’s unpaid labour is available to connect urban locations. But many women now spend many more hours in the labour market, replacing their former domestic labour with a range of commodified goods and services as well as by help from a range of related or unrelated others, sometimes but not always remunerated and/or by state-provided or supported services. This article examines the consequences of the growth of women’s employment in Britain and the concomitant decline of the old breadwinner family, the growth of workfare policies that assume all individuals are available for waged work and the rise of commodified caring. The arguments are illustrated by empirical examples from interviews undertaken with middle-class mothers in waged work in London and Manchester in the UK.

In a recent revival of the older tradition of community studies, sociologists and geographers have begun to address the changing nature of attachment to locality in contemporary cities in advanced industrial societies. Challenging older definitions of attachment to place, a new form of communal attachment has recently been identified, termed 'elective belonging'. This sense of place is particularly important among the middle classes and is, it is argued, closely associated with the growing significance of reproduction, especially access to schooling, as a key part of the reasons for choosing to live in a particular urban neighbourhood. Sociologists of education have also argued that school choice is important. A recent paper has suggested that pre-school childcare also figures in locational choices and in urban differentiation, leading to different traditions of caring/mothering in different neighbourhoods in London. This paper critically assesses these arguments about school and childcare choices and the associated development of place-based middle-class cultures. Based on an empirical study in three London neighbourhoods, it explores the extent to which occupational position and sector of employment-class-based factors-as well as place-based factors continue to play a key role in the types of opportunities and choices that middle-class households make about childcare.

Describes key aspects of the methodology and outcomes of the JISC User Behaviour Monitoring and Evaluation Framework in its first three annual cycles (1999‐2002). The Framework was initiated to assure the JISC that their investment in digital content and network infrastructure facilitates use and learning, and to identify barriers and facilitators to the use of electronic information services (EIS). Key Framework outcomes are: a multi‐dimensional across sector methodology for the continued monitoring of user behaviour in respect of EIS and the factors that impact on that behaviour; a profile of user behaviour in respect of EIS over the three annual cycles of the Framework; the EIS Diagnostic Toolkit that can be used to benchmark development in the provision and use of EIS in specific disciplines or at specific institutions; a methodology for monitoring, and a profile of the EIS resources available to higher and further education users; and a summary of some of the key issues in their provision. The challenge for the future is the embedding of EIS in curricula and learning experiences.

Within the Third Annual Cycle of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) User Behaviour Monitoring and Evaluation Framework, six small-scale action research interventions were undertaken in further education (FE) institutions. The aims of these interventions were two-fold: (i) to develop understanding of the facilitators and barriers to the use of digital information resources by students in FE; (ii) to test the value of the action research approach in facilitating change and developing transferable knowledge in this context. The objectives for each intervention were developed in collaboration with the FE college site staff and students. The process generally involved identification and elaboration of the problem situation, development of an intervention that might help to overcome some of the barriers to more effective use of electronic information services and evaluation of the outcomes of the intervention. Both practical-deliberative and participatory action research methods were used, with interviews and focus groups used to determine the problem and assess the effectiveness of interventions. Six interventions are reported. These included: a database implementation, the development of a subject guide, training sessions, a major change project and a web site. The main findings on the use of digital information resources in FE were: (i) interventions can make the students more aware of resources available, but the immediate impact may be low; (ii) FE students are often part-time and work in subject/cohort groups in the FE college, therefore targeted initiatives which are aimed at 'their' group are likely to be most effective; (iii) incorporation of the use of specialized digital resources in assignments is constrained by student preference for books and/or the Internet, a lack of new products aimed at the FE student market and physical information technology (IT) problems or the perceived lack of IT support. The action research methodology offers benefits not available through survey-based methodologies. The challenges that arise from the integration of learning from different action research projects need to be balanced against the benefits accruing from embedding learning and knowledge creation in innovation and using research to promote change, rather than simply to measure it.

This article aims to provide a baseline for future studies on the provision and support for the use of digital or electronic information services (EIS) in further education. The analysis presented is based on a multi-level model of access, which encompasses access to and availability of information and communication technology (ICT) resources, access to and availability of EIS resources, and the third leg of staff skills and their development. The research was conducted within the third cycle of the JISC (Joint Information Services Committee) User Behaviour Monitoring and Evaluation Framework, in 2001/2002. Evidence was gathered from library and information service web sites and various stakeholders, including library and information service staff, academic staff and students to generate insights into the provision of access to EIS in further education. Sector-wide funding initiatives have had a significant impact on ICT infrastructures, and these attract a positive response from students. EIS are represented on some library web sites but both web site development and EIS availability is very much less advanced than in higher education. Staff, however, lack sufficient dedicated access to ICT to be able to develop their own skills and use. There remains a low level of access to electronic information resources, with only limited access to these resources through library web sites. LIS managers face a number of challenges in enhancing this provision, including licensing arrangements, tight budgets that need to be spread across many discipline areas, and the absence of EIS designed specifically for the further education student. The other key challenge lies in the provision of time and opportunity for academic and LIS staff to develop their ICT and EIS skills, and, more generally in the further development of the role of Information and Learning Technology (ILT) Champions.

This Note uses the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) to consider the changing volume and distribution of voluntary association membership (and hence social capital) in Great Britain. We aim to supplement Hall's study of trends in social capital published in this Journal with more recent and longitudinal data. This allows us to show that whilst the volume of social capital is not declining, it is becoming increasingly class specific, and that its relative aggregate stability masks considerable turnover at the individual level. These findings are significant for current debates on social capital.

This article considers how part-time post qualifying nursing students can be supported in their learning both in the clinical setting and at their university. It assesses, using the University of Northumbria as a case study, the most effective processes that enable part-time post qualifying nursing students to have access to electronic sources of information (EIS). The move to electronic delivery of services to users has made the systems more complex, with the issue of authentication becoming increasingly important. It becomes vital that the users of these systems experience a seamless process in connecting to EIS. Findings suggest that the current systems at Northumbria are sufficiently flexible to ensure that, in most cases, part-time post qualifying nursing students receive their passwords and IDs at the correct time. Problems are experienced in ensuring the students receive concise and useful documentation, as well as information skills training to meet their specific needs.