489,922 research outputs found

    Rural Hispanics At A Glance

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    Rural Hispanics at a Glance provides the latest information from the 2000 Census and other Federal data sources about Hispanics living in nonmetro counties. This six-page brochure highlights growth and geographic dispersion, demographic characteristics, and the most recent indicators of social and economic conditions for this population. It emphasizes rapid Hispanic population growth, particularly in new rural destinations of the Midwest and Southeast, and it illustrates differences in age structure between Hispanics and non-Hispanic Whites. The report also provides data on important demographic, labor market, income, poverty, and social service indicators for nonmetro Hispanics. Using a visually interesting format that incorporates text bullets with charts and maps, it quickly provides information on key indicators of the rural Hispanic population to assist public officials, community organizations, private decision makers and others in their efforts to enhance the economic opportunities and quality of life for this rapidly growing population.Farm Structure, Employment and Wages, Agribusiness, Food processing, Rural Policy Food and Nutrition, Poverty and Economy, Rural America, Rural Income, Rural Welfare, Labor and Education, Rural Population, and Rural Migration, ERS, USDA, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

    Content-Based Quality Estimation for Automatic Subject Indexing of Short Texts under Precision and Recall Constraints

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    Semantic annotations have to satisfy quality constraints to be useful for digital libraries, which is particularly challenging on large and diverse datasets. Confidence scores of multi-label classification methods typically refer only to the relevance of particular subjects, disregarding indicators of insufficient content representation at the document-level. Therefore, we propose a novel approach that detects documents rather than concepts where quality criteria are met. Our approach uses a deep, multi-layered regression architecture, which comprises a variety of content-based indicators. We evaluated multiple configurations using text collections from law and economics, where the available content is restricted to very short texts. Notably, we demonstrate that the proposed quality estimation technique can determine subsets of the previously unseen data where considerable gains in document-level recall can be achieved, while upholding precision at the same time. Hence, the approach effectively performs a filtering that ensures high data quality standards in operative information retrieval systems.Comment: authors' manuscript, paper submitted to TPDL-2018 conference, 12 page

    Process, structural, and outcome quality indicators to support perioperative opioid stewardship: a rapid review

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    Opioids are effective analgesics but can cause harm. Opioid stewardship is key to ensuring that opioids are used effectively and safely. There is no agreed set of quality indicators relating to the use of opioids perioperatively. This work is part of the Yorkshire Cancer Research Bowel Cancer Quality Improvement programme and aims to develop useful quality indicators for the improvement of care and patient outcomes at all stages of the perioperative journey. A rapid review was performed to identify original research and reviews in which quality indicators for perioperative opioid use are described. A data tool was developed to enable reliable and reproducible extraction of opioid quality indicators. A review of 628 abstracts and 118 full-text publications was undertaken. Opioid quality indicators were identified from 47 full-text publications. In total, 128 structure, process and outcome quality indicators were extracted. Duplicates were merged, with the final extraction of 24 discrete indicators. These indicators are based on five topics: patient education, clinician education, pre-operative optimization, procedure, and patient-specific prescribing and de-prescribing and opioid-related adverse drug events. The quality indicators are presented as a toolkit to contribute to practical opioid stewardship. Process indicators were most commonly identified and contribute most to quality improvement. Fewer quality indicators relating to intraoperative and immediate recovery stages of the patient journey were identified. An expert clinician panel will be convened to agree which of the quality indicators identified will be most valuable in our region for the management of patients undergoing surgery for bowel cancer

    Changes to soil quality indicators following conversion to organic vegetable production (OF0401)

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    This is the final report of Defra project OF0401. The attached report document starts with an Executive Summary, from which this text is extracted. The aim of this 1 year study was to examine how key functional indicators of soil quality are affected by contrasting organic and conventional management regimes. In particular, the project investigated the impact of contrasting fertility building regimes on soil quality, focussing on the initial 5-year period following conversion from conventional to organic production. Five 0.8 ha areas at HRI-Wellesbourne were selected for study. These were: two organic vegetable rotations supporting contrasting fertility building regimes, an organic arable rotation, a grass-clover ley, and a conventionally managed cereal rotation. The organic areas had been converted from conventional cereal production 5 years prior to the start of the study. The conventional area was adjacent. A range of chemical, biological and physical attributes were determined. There were differences between the organic and conventional management regimes in most chemical, biological and physical soil quality parameters. Contrasting organic management regimes had different effects on soil quality. Relative to organic vegetable and conventional arable management, the organic arable management rotation enhanced amounts of light fraction organic matter and labile N, with beneficial implications for long term nutrient retention and soil organic matter development. There was little difference in chemical quality between the organic vegetable and the conventional arable areas. There was evidence that organic management promoted a microbial community that was distinct in composition and functional attributes to that in conventional soil. Relative to conventional management, areas under organic management had greatly increased inoculum of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, a larger proportion of 'active' relative to 'resting' biomass within the microbiota, increased metabolic diversity and a distinct microbial community metabolism. However, there was evidence that the productivity of newly converted organic systems could be limited by low inoculum and diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi inherited following conventional management. The clearest effect on soil structure was with regard to the detrimental effects of vegetable production rather than to any benefit associated with organic management. Wheeling lines caused compaction that resulted in poor growth of subsequent cereal crops. However, it is likely that increased levels of organic matter may result in a soil better able to cope with damaging operations. There were differences in the susceptibility of the chemical and biological quality parameters to change. These differences provide possibilities to use selected parameters as early indicators of the effects of management on soil quality. Furthermore, the results highlight the need, when investigating soil quality, to consider a wide variety of 'quality' analyses. Limited data sets, focussing on traditional measures of soil quality (e.g. total SOM and biomass-N), could lead to unsound conclusions regarding the effects of management on other functional aspects of soil quality. There are opportunities to conduct further statistical analysis of our comprehensive data set in order to develop an index suitable for quantifying soil quality in organic systems. Such an index would be of generic value to rate soil quality in diverse agricultural systems. Further work is needed to determine the applicability and conclusions of our study to other soil types and organic management regimes. The work has highlighted fundamental shifts in microbial community structure and functioning following conversion from conventional to organic management. There is a need to characterise and quantify these changes. This will provide new groups of 'indicator' organisms which could be suitable for assessing changes to soil quality, and could also provide opportunities to manage soil microbial communities to improve the sustainability of organic and conventional farming

    Nursing-sensitive indicators: A concept analysis

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    AIM: To report a concept analysis of nursing-sensitive indicators within the applied context of the acute care setting. BACKGROUND: The concept of ‘nursing sensitive indicators’ is valuable to elaborate nursing care performance. The conceptual foundation, theoretical role, meaning, use and interpretation of the concept tend to differ. The elusiveness of the concept and the ambiguity of its attributes may have hindered research efforts to advance its application in practice. DESIGN: Concept analysis. DATA SOURCES: Using ‘clinical indicators’ or ‘quality of nursing care’ as subject headings and incorporating keyword combinations of ‘acute care’ and ‘nurs*’, CINAHL and MEDLINE with full text in EBSCOhost databases were searched for English language journal articles published between 2000–2012. Only primary research articles were selected. METHODS: A hybrid approach was undertaken, incorporating traditional strategies as per Walker and Avant and a conceptual matrix based on Holzemer's Outcomes Model for Health Care Research. RESULTS: The analysis revealed two main attributes of nursing-sensitive indicators. Structural attributes related to health service operation included: hours of nursing care per patient day, nurse staffing. Outcome attributes related to patient care included: the prevalence of pressure ulcer, falls and falls with injury, nosocomial selective infection and patient/family satisfaction with nursing care. CONCLUSION: This concept analysis may be used as a basis to advance understandings of the theoretical structures that underpin both research and practical application of quality dimensions of nursing care performance

    Predicting ADL disability in community-dwelling elderly people using physical frailty indicators: a systematic review

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    <p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Disability in Activities of Daily Living (ADL) is an adverse outcome of frailty that places a burden on frail elderly people, care providers and the care system. Knowing which physical frailty indicators predict ADL disability is useful in identifying elderly people who might benefit from an intervention that prevents disability or increases functioning in daily life. The objective of this study was to systematically review the literature on the predictive value of physical frailty indicators on ADL disability in community-dwelling elderly people.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A systematic search was performed in 3 databases (PubMed, CINAHL, EMBASE) from January 1975 until April 2010. Prospective, longitudinal studies that assessed the predictive value of individual physical frailty indicators on ADL disability in community-dwelling elderly people aged 65 years and older were eligible for inclusion. Articles were reviewed by two independent reviewers who also assessed the quality of the included studies.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>After initial screening of 3081 titles, 360 abstracts were scrutinized, leaving 64 full text articles for final review. Eventually, 28 studies were included in the review. The methodological quality of these studies was rated by both reviewers on a scale from 0 to 27. All included studies were of high quality with a mean quality score of 22.5 (SD 1.6). Findings indicated that individual physical frailty indicators, such as weight loss, gait speed, grip strength, physical activity, balance, and lower extremity function are predictors of future ADL disability in community-dwelling elderly people.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This review shows that physical frailty indicators can predict ADL disability in community-dwelling elderly people. Slow gait speed and low physical activity/exercise seem to be the most powerful predictors followed by weight loss, lower extremity function, balance, muscle strength, and other indicators. These findings should be interpreted with caution because the data of the different studies could not be pooled due to large variations in operationalization of the indicators and ADL disability across the included studies. Nevertheless, our study suggests that monitoring physical frailty indicators in community-dwelling elderly people might be useful to identify elderly people who could benefit from disability prevention programs.</p

    An assessment of spatial relationship between lung cancer incidence rate and quality of urban life: Izmir case

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    Thesis (Master)--Izmir Institute of Technology, City and Regional Planning, Izmir, 2013Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 130-138)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishxvi, 152 leavesThe study assesses spatial clusters of lung cancer incidences within Izmir province on the basis of districts and also neighborhood using an objective sets of quality of life indicators. Lung cancer data, approximately 18.000 cases, were acquired from the Izmir Cancer Registry Center (ICRC) between the years of 1992-2007. Cases have been confirmed in terms of accuracy by World Health Organization (WHO). As objective indicator data, point source air pollution data acquired from the Izmir Metropolitan Municipality database between the years of 1993-2007. Besides, socio-economic statistics data were obtained from Turkish Statistical Institute (TSI) regional indicators (2000,2007) and Izmir Metropolitan Municipality city health profile (2007). The datasets were used to determine whether there is a significant spatial relationship between cancer case density and environmental contamination. This thesis uses spatial statistical models and Geographical Information System (GIS) techniques to analyze population-based cancer incidence rate. Additionally, Age Standardized Incidence (ASR) of the lung cancer was calculated. Spatial autocorrelation technique was performed to investigate local distribution of lung cancer. Results of the study suggest that spatial clusters of lung cancer were detected in geographic locations with low level environmental quality and high level socio-economic profile. Then, the results are discussed in terms of life quality and environmental quality of Izmir. The results of this study are useful for interdisciplinary researchers, epidemiological studies, policymakers and governmental agencies in terms of health and environmental assessment, regulation and control of spatial strategies
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