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Information for those involved in guidance development.
Contributing to NICE guidelines
This guide explains how individuals and organisations can get involved in developing NICE guidelines.
Developing NICE guidelines: how to get involved
Contributing to a technology appraisal: help for patients and carers
We've developed the following guides to support national patient and carer organisations and patient experts involved in NICE technology appraisals.
Information for national patient and carer organisations
An overview of NICE technology appraisals for patient and carer groups PDF 330 kB
Scoping technology appraisals: a factsheet for patient and carer organisations PDF 370 kB
Developing technology appraisal guidance: a factsheet for patient and carer organisations PDF 200 kB
Frequently asked questions on the cancer drugs fund: for patient and carer organisations PDF 152 kB
Hints and tips on nominating patient experts PDF 150 kB
Submitting evidence to a NICE technology appraisal
You can provide evidence on behalf of your organisation using the submission template. In the guide below we have pulled together advice on gathering and presenting the information, as well as what to avoid.
Patient organisation submission guide PDF 648 kB
Patient organisation submission template Microsoft Word 40 kB
Information for patient experts
This document contains information for patient experts on how to prepare for the meeting and what to expect.
Hints and tips for patient experts PDF 403 kB
If you are a patient expert at a committee meeting, you have the opportunity to submit a personal statement before the meeting. This is so that you can tell the committee about your experience of the condition and treatments using our template for patient experts.
Patient expert statement template Microsoft Word 40 kB
If you have any questions or would like further information about participating in technology appraisals, please contact the Public Involvement Advisers for technology appraisals, Heidi Livingstone on 0207 045 2183 or Chloe Kastoryano on 0207 045 2188.
NICE diagnostics guidance: patient and carer organisations submissions
We welcome patient and carer organisation submissions to NICE's diagnostics assessment programme. The following information document, submission guide and submission template were developed by an international working group, which included NICE staff. We have adapted the documents to make them suitable for our purposes.
The information for patient and carer organisations document gives an overview of patient and carer organisation submissions for the diagnostics assessment programme.
Information for patient and carer organisations PDF 152 kB
Submitting evidence to the NICE diagnostics assessment programme
Use the template to provide evidence on behalf of your organisation. The guide gives you information about how to complete your submission, including how to gather and present your evidence.
Submission template for patient and carer organisations Microsoft Word 29 kB
Submission guide for patient and carer organisations PDF 446 kB
If you have any questions about participating in diagnostics guidance development, please contact the Public Involvement Adviser for diagnostics, Lydia Shears on 0161 870 3213.


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Equal Opportunities Policy
So everyone can achieve their best.
Britain has a hugely diverse workforce with a rich balance of skills and experience. Discrimination limits an organisation's ability to best utilise this expertise.
To create an environment where employees are valued and supported, Lynx Networks is committed to a policy of non-discrimination and to promote equal treatment and opportunities for all. So that we employ the right people and make best use of existing staff in all areas of employment; appointments, promotions, remuneration, training and development will be made on the basis of aptitude, skills, ability, attitude to the job and current qualifications.
No job applicant, employee, customer or supplier will receive less favourable treatment than another, based on gender, age, sexual orientation, marital status, race, colour, religion, ethnic origin, part-time or fixed term status or disability. We ensure that all employees, irrespective of job level must abide by and adhere to this principle, taking into account any requirements issued by the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Commission for Racial Equality.
News, Articles & Case Studies
9 False Economies of Cheap Data Cabling Installations
When purchasing a data cabling system there are many factors to consider, price is often at the forefront of people's decision-making process. However, cheap cabling installations are often rife with false economies that end up costing you more...
Christmas Opening Hours 2019
We would like to take this opportunity to wish all our customers a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Cabling Upgrade for Southern Housing Group
Southern Housing Group (SHG) decided to refurbish one of their existing buildings in Maidstone. Half of the space was already occupied by a local business and the other half vacant.

subset: commoncrawl


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Board of Directors
Our Board of Directors are elected in the late fall annually. If you have experience working with the CATESOL organization and would like to be considered for our Board, please contact our current president.
Right to left: John Liang, Danielle Pelletier, Nina Ito, Monica Cueva,
Don Sillings, Margaret Teske, Helen Nam, Chelsea Lo, and Jun Li.
The 2019 CATESOL Education Foundation board of directors.
President - Margaret Teske
Vice President - Judith O'Loughlin
Treasurer - Jun Li
Interim Secretary - Nina Ito
CATESOL Liaison - Danielle Pelletier
Directors At-Large:
Website - John Liang
Sponsorships - Chelsea Lo
Fundraising - Monica Cueva
Award - Helen Nam
Donald Sillings
Susan Gaer
Right to left: Judith O'Loughlin, Margaret Teske, Karen Dennis, Don Sillings, Nina Ito, Sydney Rice, and Karen Russikoff.
Right to left: Karen Dennis, Barbara Ishida, Dan Fitchner, Judith O'Loughlin, Don Sillings, Gail Simons, Margaret Teske
Right to left: Karen Dennis, Judith O'Loughlin, Sydney Rice, Margaret Teske, Marina McLaughlin, Magdalena Kwiatkowski, Nina Ito, and Don Sillings


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I've seen
Robert J. Sternberg in action at the American Psychological Association
conventions, and he's always been a favorite of mine. Given a list of choices
for say, a morning, I would choose him out of the crowd of presenters. No
matter what his subject matter it was sure to be interesting. He motivated me
to go back home and do what I do best: psychology.
A group of
16 psychologists each contributed a chapter to this book. Each of them had
their way of "defying the crowd." The introduction by Sternberg sets
the tone. Most of these psychologists state that they never intentionally set
out to be "defiant," but found their passion in whatever they did to
be out of the mainstream of psychology. Any psychologist reading this book
would recognize at least one of these people. Some are in university
settings, some are clinical, and most do psychological research.
I think it
is important to learn what the crowd is doing first, in graduate school, and
then to make up your own mind about what is ethical and then interesting,
relevant, and helpful to society. Each of these individuals definitely has a
great story to tell, and the variety of what they each do make this book on top
of my list of books every psychologist should read.
I attended
graduate school in Florida during the mid-80's, which is important to know
because some of these people hadn't yet come into their own, while others were
at the height of their career when I was in high school. I went to school for
nine years in a row to complete all of my degrees leading to my doctorate, and
I chose a clinical degree (PsyD) because I knew I wanted to be a clinician.
Nevertheless, I learned early in my schooling about the importance of
publishing research, and in my junior year of undergraduate I published my
first article on rape. I also later published articles in graduate school,
although I was more peripheral to the design and statistics involved. Still,
when one of the students presented his work to the faculty, I was the one who
told him on a break what was wrong with his statistics. Sure enough, the
faculty came back into the room with the same comments.
One other
relevant thing to mention is that psychology on the west coast is different
than psychology on the east coast or in the Midwest. These are generalizations
all with exceptions, but it could generally be said at the time (mid-80's) that
the east coast, especially New York, focused on psychoanalysis
in therapy, while the Midwest was generally more cognitive-behavioral, and
the west coast was cognitive. I was trained on both coasts because
undergraduate work was at San Diego State University, which had a significant
impact on my own approaches to clinical work later, and on the east coast I
received my doctorate, where the "crowd" was psychoanalytic, or as
they liked to say, "object relations." I
managed to get myself into a practicum where the professor was a woman who
became my mentor. She was a feminist with a cognitive and family therapy thrown
into the mix.
When I read
the stories in this book, it reminds me of my own story of going against the
crowd, because other students in my class were using object relations and I was
guided by mentor and other wonderful supervisors to use concepts from feminism,
family therapy such as Bowenian, and cognitive therapy. I specialized in learning
about women's issues, working mostly with victims of domestic violence. My
approach affected not only the lives of many women, but also that of their
partners, with whom I also worked separately with groups of men, and children.
I taped my therapy sessions with the consent of the patients, and used them
with my supervisors to improve my skills. Some of the supervisors and
professors were very psychoanalytic, and I often put my grades on the line by
disagreeing with them. Amazingly, my grades were as high as they could be, and
I believe, as did my mentor, that at times I was educating the supervisor about
women's issues, without using the psychoanalytic approach.
The reason
I have told my story, which is only a small part of my story and time, is to
show by example how the authors in this book "defied the crowd." My
peers were sure I would fail, not be liked by my professors, etc., but my
mentor and supervisors were much better than they gave them credit for. I had
learned what the crowd did, and could pass any test on it, but I had learned
several totally different approaches that in that time and place were not with
the crowd. Years later, as a licensed clinical psychologist with a private
practice, I applied whatever I needed to for any particular patient. I've never
believed in seeing every patient with only one model. The authors of this book
have similar stories except each is unique in the specifics of how they defied
the crowd. I am not famous, but most of them are.
I think
this would be an excellent book for third year graduate students, who have
learned the basics, and now consider alternatives. No matter which way they go
in their career (psychologists have many choices), each story would provide
fodder for class discussion, followed later by application. Each story can be
applied to a different facet of psychology; for example, social psychologists
would Elliot Aronson's story applicable to their career. Sternberg has kept up
with my expectations and more. Psychology professors and clinicians should all
read this book for consideration of not only their careers, but those of their
students, who in turn go out into the world and affect the lives of so many
© 2003 Patricia Ferguson
Ferguson is a freelance writer/editor/publisher, as well as a licensed clinical
psychologist. She is a co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Apolloslyre,
an online magazine for and about writers of all genres. She is an editorial
reviewer for The Writer's Room, and a book reviewer for several venues,
including, among others, Absolute Write and Metapsychology Online. Her most
recent publication was in Girl Wars: 12 Strategies That Will End Female
Bullying by Cheryl Dellasega, PhD and Charisse Nixon, PhD. She and her husband and son live in
northern California.
Welcome to Metapsychology.
Note that Metapsychology will be moving to a new server in January 2020. We will not put up new reviews during the transition. We thank you for your support and look forward to coming back with a revised format.
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TRANSNATIONAL QUEER UNDERGROUND is a registered NGO in Germany (learn more) with a transnational membership programme. Membership is open to everyone who shares our vision and wants to support our mission.
Our members are activists, artists, musicians, citizens, civil society organisations and grassroots initiatives who are actively supporting equal rights for all.
Together, we are the Transnational Queer Underground, a place to make meaningful connections and establish support and exchange across borders and beyond physical limitations.
As a member you
get one vote online every year to decide on the strategic goals of Transnational Queer Underground for the year, approve the composition of the board and elect representatives to the board and to approve Transnational Queer Undergrounds accounts.
stay connected with other members, receive the TQU newsletter and membership updates from TQU. You get to learn more about opportunities to engage with us and with other members (call for applications, call for petitions, invitations to events, etc.)
may share information about activities and events you believe should be shared with the network, through our newsletter and our website, in coordination with staff.
are invited to write articles to be published on transnational-queer-underground.net
Any questions? Let us know.
Become a member
Read vision & mission.


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A recent post by Godless in Dixie blogger Neil Carter got me to thinking yet again about one of my most annoying pet peeves about religion — its conceit that what people feel is true emotionally within themselves must also be true externally.
Yet, there's zero provable evidence for such a sense.
For example, fervent Pentecostals (Christians who curiously "speak in tongues") often claim that the "Holy Spirit" is alive within them, driving them to behave in certain ways. In other words, it's not them that's doing it, independently, but an effect caused by a more powerful external reality.
Of course, in the real world, there is zero compelling evidence that invisible divinities of any kind actually exist other than as imaginings in human minds, much less, enter our bodies from some unlocatable somewhere else somehow, causing us to act in specific ways. Like those invisible "demons" purportedly inhabiting young girls in the infamous American "Salem Witch Trials" incident in the 17th century.
Which turned out to be simple viral hysteria whipped up by he girls themselves, worried about personal sins they were concealing. They started accusing people to divert attention. In the end 150 accused "witches" were arbitrarily and wrongly identified and 19 hung. The governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, where Salem was located, later denigrated the community for this crime against humanity based on religious nonsense and human prejudice
Yet, there are tongue-talkers galore still in writhing America today convinced that such ghostly apparitions have taken up residence and absolute sovereignty within them.
Why do so many rational people accept this kind of unequivocal nonsense as not only possible but probable, even inevitable? They do because of tradition, because of the intellectual echo chambers within which church congregations continually communally embrace traditional irrationalities, and because of human nature's powerful tendency to agree with those in their "in" group and reject anything seeming in conflict. And because we Homo sapiens folk tend to "go" first with our feelings, not our reason.
So in so-called "charismtic" churches where Pentacostals — members of the world's fastest growing Christian sect — sway and jabber, you don't hear fellow worshippers saying things like, "Fred, what the hell are you saying! Nobody can even understand you." No, like a contact high, people speak in tongues virally, like an infectious disease. All in. All "understanding."
This kind of magical thinking, unfortunately, is not marooned in religion. Human beings also tend to get all jacked-up emotionally and spout nonsense when they think they're "in love." I'm not talking about the real kind of love, where feelings of warmth, intimacy and trusting familiarity grow slowly in long, close human relationships. I'm talking about that instantaneous Romantic tornado of "love at first sight," which more accurately should be called "lust at first sight."But human beings tend to misinterpret feelings that primal-lust chemicals bathe us with in romantic attraction as something that will last forever. A sense that by the intercession of some invisible, Cupid-like sprite, we are able at a glance to know that a particular person is not only the most sexually attractive person for us in the whole world but someone who will be a permanently compatible, lifelong soulmate.
Right. We all know how many times that works out as we imagine (e.g., the roughly 50 percent divorce rate).
In fact, our emotions lie to us all the time. You could say (and scientific studies do say) that the tendency is encoded in our DNA for ancient, once-practical purposes now long forgotten. Like the tendency to imagine beings where there are none.
The American divorce rate (although dropping a bit) is solid evidence of the fundamental disconnect between emotion and the practical material realities of relationships in general, much less in matrimony.
This includes feelings (and widely shared assumptions) that a omnibenevolent being directs our lives and is utterly incapable of allowing suffering or evil (and could have precluded them if he wanted). Yet, we humans chronically suffer and endure evil and have for eons.
So, to a rational person, divinities thus really seem feeble in the real world. But the faithful have an answer: If you don't believe, if you don't feel it, you can't know what you're dismissing.
"The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit."
How convenient.
But it's a dodge. Just believing something causes a feeling you're experiencing is not proof that that's actually the cause. The real cause could be a psychosis. An unsound assumption. A lazy guess. An invention enhanced by intoxicating or disorienting substances. The feeling itself is probably real (unless faked), but the cause could be anything at all. Anything but divine intervention, which we can safely assume is always a fairy tale.
It reminds me of the old Late Night with David Letterman show's "Is It Anything?" segment. The silly, obscure incidents presented in the sketches were completely inconclusive regarding their "meaning," if any, so there was really no way other than random, pointless guessing to determine what they might represent.
That's how I feel about epiphanies and other religious feelings. They certainly don't prove the existence of an all-powerful being ruling our lives. But they absolutely prove that we are slaves to our emotions, and very irrationally inventive in our interpretations of them.
Therefore, if you only feel something, be wary. It's not God talking to you, but, as usual, your reptilian brain.


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Wizards and Warriors: Fall of Ironspire
Posted by George on Apr 9, 2009 in remix | 0 comments
One of my favorite games of years past was Wizards and Warriors. It was one of those staple games that was brought out when my friends would come over and we'd try to see who could get through the game in the shortest amount of time. For some reason, it never got old to replay that same game over and over again. Part of it was the fun gameplay, and...Read More
Ultima III: Mass Exodus
Posted by George on Apr 9, 2009 in remix | 0 comments
Dwelling of Duels was something that I was intoduced to by none other than Jake 'virt' Kaufman a few years back now. He had been sending me enties that he was doing and they were equal parts inspiring and scary all at the same time: inspiring because it was what I had always dreamed of doing in terms of remixing music and terrifying because I...Read More


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Meet the Executive
Richard Smith
Chief Executive Officer
Richard is a founder member of Qwarie. He brings 35 years of experience to the company, directing and managing mission critical and secure processes, in high risk environments across multiple jurisdictions.
Executive Officer Training & Investigations
Neil is a founder member of Qwarie. After more than 10 years in a UK Police Force, he realised the value of on-line research whilst working as a fraud investigator. Neil is a world leader in OSINT techniques.


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June 11, 2018
Top Investment Plans for Senior Citizens
Retirement is a phase of life that everyone looks forward to living comfortably. Individuals start planning for their finances early or at least before the retirement phase peeps in. There are various concerns when doing investment planning post-retirement. The major challenge is that the source of income is limited and the options for taking risks are less. Despite that, one needs a surplus amount to meet their sustenance needs.
Hence, it is advisable to look carefully for investment options based on your post-retirement financial goals and needs. If you are a senior citizen or on the verge of retiring, you may consider investing in schemes below.
1.Senior Citizen Savings Schemes(SCSS)
The scheme is specially tailored to meet the financial needs of senior citizens and hence should be considered as a part of your investment portfolio. The primary criteria to be eligible for the scheme is to be above the age of 60. It can be availed from any bank or post office. The maximum investment allowed in this scheme is of Rs 15 lakhs at the interest rate of 8.3% annually, which is reset every quarter. The scheme is covered under tax benefits of Section 80C up to Rs. 1.5 lakhs.
However, the investment is locked in for five years, which can be extended further up to 3 years. You can make premature withdrawals in this scheme. For early retirees, the funds should be invested in SCSS within a month of receiving the retirement funds.
- Fixed Deposits
Another popular choice for senior citizens when it comes to investing is FD. In case of fixed deposits, banks, as well as financial companies, offer competitive interest rates to senior citizens. FDs score high on safety and security of funds with a good amount of returns. FD's with longer tenure have higher gains and benefits, but you can also invest in it for short-term needs. Unlike other schemes, FD provides flexibility to invest in tenure ranging from 7 days to 10 years. Moreover, with Bajaj Finance, senior citizens get an opportunity to avail 8.20% interest on their investment as compared to other investment options.
- Post Office Monthly Income Scheme(POMIS):
POMIS is a five-year investment scheme by Indian Post where an individual can invest up to Rs 4.5 lakhs and Rs. 9 lakh in a joint account with a minimum investment starting at Rs 1500. The interest rate offered in this scheme is 7.8% annually, which is payable monthly and is fixed for a maturity period of up to five years. Though this scheme does not qualify for any tax benefits, it is considered to be ideal and safe investment scheme for senior citizens offering higher yields with stable returns.
- Mutual Funds
Mutuals funds signify risks, though this option is known for their higher returns on investment when invested in right equities. The interest may go as high as 20% in mutual funds with the associated risk factor. So, it is always advisable to start off with investing in low risk mutual funds and then move on to higher risk high-performance mutual funds. Depending on risk profile, one may consider investing a percentage of their funds into equity mutual funds(MFs) due to their nature of high returns. While you take risks, one way of reducing the risks is to diversify the investment portfolio across a variety of industries. Debt funds are another good alternative for senior citizens due to their obvious liquidity.
- Tax Free Bonds:
Bonds are securities issued by government-backed companies or projects like Indian Railway Finance Corporation, Power Finance Corporation Ltd or National Highway Authority of India to raise finances with reasonable interest rates. The interest earned on these bonds gets credited to bond holder's bank account. One can also trade these tax-free bonds as they are listed as securities on the stock market. Currently, tax-free bonds of top rated public sector companies on an average offer a yield of 6.4-6.5 percent. As the investment period is longer ranging over 15 years or more, one must plan in advance to include tax-free bonds as a part of their retirement plan.
The last thing you want to worry about post-retirement is the shortage of funds. Hence it is best to plan and opt for the best investment plans that suit your needs. A right investment planning boosts your income but can give you the perks of retirement life that everyone hopes.