Evidence-informed discharge planning model for stroke rehabilitation

Stroke is a leading cause of long-term disability (Benjamin et al., 2017) and patients with this diagnosis have been found to have higher incidences of inappropriately long hospital lengths of stay (McDonagh, Smith, & Goddard, 2000). Generalist training in occupational therapy curriculum coupled with variable research utilization (Dysart & Tomlin, 2002; McKenna et al., 2005) leads to inconsistent methods of evaluation and decreased communication between providers across settings. Furthermore, there are currently no standardized discharge planning models or guidelines for clinicians to follow when evaluating patients or making recommendations (Ilett, Brock, Graven, & Cotton, 2010). An evidence-informed discharge planning model was created to address these issues. This model utilizes a multidisciplinary approach, with guidelines for selecting and administering evaluations to quantify a patient’s functional status. Assessments are clustered into four domains: activities of daily living, balance and mobility, cognition, and other (i.e. visual inattention, motor control and spasticity). These assessments supplement a basic patient evaluation, and results are used to guide clinical decision making regarding recommendations for the next level of care. Stroke rehabilitation and care cannot be standardized, but the methods used to select measures and make discharge recommendations should have distinct guidelines. By choosing from a core set of measures, clinicians can use a common “language” to describe patient function and measure progress across settings over time. This will ensure patients are discharged to the appropriate level of rehabilitation to optimize their recovery, and it will also help prevent excessively long hospital admissions

Twenty years of coordination technologies: State-of-the-art and perspectives

Since complexity of inter- and intra-systems interactions is steadily increasing in modern application scenarios (e.g., the IoT), coordination technologies are required to take a crucial step towards maturity. In this paper we look back at the history of the COORDINATION conference in order to shed light on the current status of the coordination technologies there proposed throughout the years, in an attempt to understand success stories, limitations, and possibly reveal the gap between actual technologies, theoretical models, and novel application needs

Autonomic and Apoptotic, Aeronautical and Aerospace Systems, and Controlling Scientific Data Generated Therefrom

A self-managing system that uses autonomy and autonomicity is provided with the self-* property of autopoiesis (self-creation). In the event of an agent in the system self-destructing, autopoiesis auto-generates a replacement. A self-esteem reward scheme is also provided and can be used for autonomic agents, based on their performance and trust. Art agent with greater self-esteem may clone at a greater rate compared to the rate of an agent with lower self-esteem. A self-managing system is provided for a high volume of distributed autonomic/self-managing mobile agents, and autonomic adhesion is used to attract similar agents together or to repel dissimilar agents from an event horizon. An apoptotic system is also provided that accords an "expiry date" to data and digital objects, for example, that are available on the internet, which finds usefulness not only in general but also for controlling the loaning and use of space scientific data

The Effect of the Frostig Program for the Development of Visual Perception on Readiness Skills

The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate what effect use of the Frostig Program for the Development of Visual Perception would have on readiness skills for kindergarten children. The results of this study would appear to have meaning for elementary school teachers, administrators and school counselors

S100B concentration in colostrums of Burkinabe and Sicilian women

The aim of this study is to determine the S100B concentration in colostrums of 51 Burkinabe and 30 Sicilian women, still living in their countries, and in case of a difference to search for its explanations, considering also ethnic differences

Network e-Volution

Modern society is a network society permeated by information technology (IT). As a result of innovations in IT, enormous amounts of information can be communicated to a larger number of recipients faster than ever before. The evolution of networks is heavily influenced by the extensive use of IT, which has enabled co-evolving advanced quantitative and qualitative forms of networking. Although several networks have been formed with the aim to reduce or deal with uncertainty through faster and broader access to information, it is in fact IT that has created new kinds of uncertainty. For instance, although digital information integration in supply chains has made production planning more robust, it has at the same time intensified mutual dependencies, thereby actually increasing the level of uncertainty. The aim of this working paper is to investigate the aspects of evolving networks and uncertainty in networks at the cutting edges of different types of networks and from the perspective of different layers defining these networks