33 research outputs found
Adapting home : residential development and domestic comfort in Vermont
Vermont is experiencing a loss of âruralnessâ as social insulation replaces physical comfort as the driver of residential design. Furthermore, the pre-packaged comfort often associated with social insulation requires an upfront cost. The variety of Vermontâs housing stock is limited, as most homes are single-family and 36% of Vermonters are currently cost-burdened, meaning they spend over 30% of their income on housing. Ultimately, there is a shortage of housing that can affordably meet diverse comfort needs. Without the ability to adapt the home over time, in the tradition of the local Vermont home, the house is only compatible with specific familial compositions and incomes. By providing the means to adapt a dwelling at will, residents are able to customize the home to fit their individual physical and social comfort needs, based on income and family demographics. In turn, this infuses the housing stock with a variety of affordable homes in the tradition of the local Vermont home
A systematic review of strategies to recruit and retain primary care doctors
Background There is a workforce crisis in primary care. Previous research has looked at the reasons underlying recruitment and retention problems, but little research has looked at what works to improve recruitment and retention. The aim of this systematic review is to evaluate interventions and strategies used to recruit and retain primary care doctors internationally. Methods A systematic review was undertaken. MEDLINE, EMBASE, CENTRAL and grey literature were searched from inception to January 2015.Articles assessing interventions aimed at recruiting or retaining doctors in high income countries, applicable to primary care doctors were included. No restrictions on language or year of publication. The first author screened all titles and abstracts and a second author screened 20%. Data extraction was carried out by one author and checked by a second. Meta-analysis was not possible due to heterogeneity. Results 51 studies assessing 42 interventions were retrieved. Interventions were categorised into thirteen groups: financial incentives (n=11), recruiting rural students (n=6), international recruitment (n=4), rural or primary care focused undergraduate placements (n=3), rural or underserved postgraduate training (n=3), well-being or peer support initiatives (n=3), marketing (n=2), mixed interventions (n=5), support for professional development or research (n=5), retainer schemes (n=4), re-entry schemes (n=1), specialised recruiters or case managers (n=2) and delayed partnerships (n=2). Studies were of low methodological quality with no RCTs and only 15 studies with a comparison group. Weak evidence supported the use of postgraduate placements in underserved areas, undergraduate rural placements and recruiting students to medical school from rural areas. There was mixed evidence about financial incentives. A marketing campaign was associated with lower recruitment. Conclusions This is the first systematic review of interventions to improve recruitment and retention of primary care doctors. Although the evidence base for recruiting and care doctors is weak and more high quality research is needed, this review found evidence to support undergraduate and postgraduate placements in underserved areas, and selective recruitment of medical students. Other initiatives covered may have potential to improve recruitment and retention of primary care practitioners, but their effectiveness has not been established
Beyond Frozen Conflict Scenarios for the Separatist Disputes of Eastern Europe. CEPS Paperback
This book forms part of a wider project on the relations between the
European Union and Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, and in
particular the Association Agreements and Deep and
Comprehensive Free Trade Areas (DCFTAs) between these three
states and the European Union.
The wider project was begun in 2015 in the aftermath of the
Maidan uprising at the beginning of 2014, which had been provoked
when President Yanukovich reneged over the signing of Ukraineâs
Association Agreement with the EU. Following Yanukovichâs flight
to Russia, the Association Agreement was duly signed later in 2014.
The agreements with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine have a
substantial common content, while differing in various details.
Overall, they provide an association model of unprecedented extent
and depth. Democratic political values are at the heart of the
agreements, while the economic content goes far beyond classic free
trade agreements to include a wholesale approximation of EU
internal market regulatory law. The purpose of our wider project was
first of all to explain the complex content of the Association
Agreements and DCFTAs, which was achieved in a series of
comprehensive handbooks published at www.3dcftas.eu.
However, the agreements contain only short and simple
articles on conflict prevention and management, without meaningful
operational content. This was notwithstanding the fact that the EU
considers itself, for its own historical reasons, to have a special
vocation in conflict prevention and resolution. In addition, Georgia
and Moldova were already the sites of unresolved separatist conflicts
originating around the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades
ago, namely Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, and
Transdniestria in Moldova, to which we have added the case of the
Nagorny Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan. On top of this legacy, the Maidan uprising led to the Russian annexation of Crimea
and its hybrid war in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts of the Donbas.
The Donbas thus joined the old âfrozen conflictsâ.
In the light of the above, CEPS took the initiative to examine all
five unresolved conflicts, to assess where these disputes seem to be
heading, and what different scenarios could be imagined for their
future, including how the European Union might become more
engaged. Indeed, while none of the conflicts are resolved, none are
for that matter âfrozenâ. Our first practical priority was to find an
author to undertake a comprehensive study of the Donbas, since
conditions there make it practically impossible for any analysts from
the government-controlled part of Ukraine or from Europe to safely
enter these territories for research purposes. We were therefore very
fortunate to find Nikolaus von Twickel who had recently been
travelling in the Donbas as part of the OSCE Mission there, and is
now an independent analyst. For the other four âoldâ conflicts we
were also most fortunate to bring in Thomas de Waal, who has been
a leading scholar of the region for some decades, and was willing to
bring the stories of these conflicts up to date. The two authors were
able to address the complete set of conflicts with a consistent
analytical approach, as will be evident from reading the sets of
scenarios.
We express our warm appreciation towards Sweden and the
Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) for their support
to the entire project.
This volume looks at future prospects for the string of unresolved
conflicts that continue to plague the post-Soviet world. Four of them
date back to the period when the USSR began to break up in the late
1980s. A new conflict, with many different elements and some
similarities, was added to the list in 2014: the Donbas in eastern
Ukraine. The open confrontation between Russia and Ukraine over
the Donbas and Crimea not only destroyed relations between
Moscow and Kyiv but changed politics across the region, shaking up
the dynamics of the four existing protracted territorial conflicts over
Abkhazia, Nagorny Karabakh, South Ossetia and Transdniestria.
The five post-Soviet conflicts are often called âfrozenâ, but this
is a misnomer. Although the peace processes around them often look
frozen, the situations themselves are anything but frozen and are
constantly changing. Two of them, over the Donbas and Nagorny
Karabakh, are either ongoing or close to violence. Each dispute has
its own history, character and context, which has grown more
distinctive over time and has been further shaped by the
confrontation over Ukraine. Each continues to evolve. Here we chart
scenarios for how these conflicts may develop further with the aim of
focusing policymakersâ thinking on which tendencies are dangerous
and which ones can be encouraged. There are many moving parts to
these situations and complacency is not an option
Master of Arts
thesisThe archaeology of southwestern Caucasia has for centuries been overshadowed by the classical Ancient Near Eastern civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. This paper consists of an archaeologically-driven surface survey of the Sharur Plain, in Naxgivan, Azerbaijan. This survey was undertaken to investigate local Iron-Age civilizations separately from their Near Eastern counterparts in the effort to contribute data towards a discussion of emergent social complexity in this region. Several Iron Age fortresses were located as a result of this survey. Their data have been compiled and examined through a socio-economic approach and through the lens of landscape archaeology
Rural internship job preferences of final year medical students in South Africa: a discrete choice experiment
To achieve Sustainable Development Goal 3 in developing countries, Good health and wellbeing for all, the health workforce is vital however the unpopularity of rural medical practice results in widening healthcare inequalities between urban and rural areas. This study determined the heterogeneity in valuations for rural facility attributes by final year medical students at one South African public university to inform cost-effective recruitment policy recommendations. Focus groups conducted identified facility attributes, a D-efficient design was generated with 15 choice sets, each with two rural hospital alternatives and no opt-out option. An online, unlabelled discrete choice experiment (DCE) was conducted, the results effects coded, and mixed logit models applied. The final sample size was 193 (86,16% of the class), majority female 130 (66.33%), with urban origins 176 (89.80%), unmarried 183 (93.37%) and without children 193 (98.47%). Most had undergraduate rural medicine exposure 110 (56.12%) and intended to specialise 109 (55.61%). The main-effects mixed logit found advanced practical experience, hospital safety, correctly fitted personal protective equipment (PPE) and availability of basic resources the highest weighted attributes with their mean utilities increasing by 0.82, 0.64, 0.62 and 0.52 respectively (p=0.000). In contrast, increases in rural allowance and the provision of housing provided smaller mean utility increases of 0.001 (p<0.01) and 0.09 (p<0.05) respectively. The interaction terms; female, general practise and prior rural medicine exposure, were associated with higher weighting for hospital safety, mean utility increases 1.59, 1.82, 1.42 respectively (p=0.000). Participants were willing to pay ZAR 2636.45 monthly (95%CI: 1398.55;3874.355) to gain advanced practical experience (equivalent to 65.91% of current rural allowance). Medical studentsâ facility preferences have been found to be influenced by their gender, career aspirations and prior experienced with rural medicine. The policy recommendations derived from this research include publicising rural health facility âdraw-cardsâ among medical graduates, such as the opportunity to gain practical experience, improving the physical and occupational safety at rural health facilities and providing greater transparency about rural facility attributes to medical graduates
Civil Courts Coping with Covid-19
The unforeseen Covid-19 pandemic has propelled, and continues to propel, unprecedented transformations to civil proceedings and the landscape in which they operate. Courts have proven to be creative and innovative in their responses to the pandemic, and in their ability to implement digitisation of paperwork and remote hearings. This book contains a comparative study of how courts in 23 countries have coped with the pandemic, addressing selected innovations and adaptations to court proceedings, factors facilitating and impeding the digital leap, and new concerns that new technology and the pandemic engenders. The authors discuss the implications of digitisation, such as ensuring equal access to courts, novel issues concerning fair trial rights in remote proceedings, the role of alternative dispute resolution during the pandemic, and the roots of resistance to digitisation. Several contributions also address whether and how innovations during the pandemic may transform civil litigation in the future
Proceeding: 3rd Java International Nursing Conference 2015 âHarmony of Caring and Healing Inquiry for Holistic Nursing Practice; Enhancing Quality of Careâ, Semarang, 20-21 August 2015
This is the proceeding of the 3rd Java International Nursing Conference 2015 organized by School of Nursing, Faculty of Medicine, Diponegoro University, in collaboration with STIKES Kendal. The conference was held on 20-21 August 2015 in Semarang, Indonesia.
The conference aims to enable educators, students, practitioners and researchers from nursing, medicine, midwifery and other health sciences to disseminate and discuss evidence of nursing education, research, and practices to improve the quality of care. This conference also provides participants opportunities to develop their professional networks, learn from other colleagues and meet leading personalities in nursing and health sciences.
The 3rd JINC 2015 was comprised of keynote lectures and concurrent submitted oral presentations and poster sessions.
The following themes have been chosen to be the focus of the conference: (a) Multicenter Science: Physiology, Biology, Chemistry, etc. in Holistic Nursing Practice, (b) Complementary Therapy in Nursing and Complementary, Alternative Medicine: Alternative Medicine (Herbal Medicine), Complementary Therapy (Cupping, Acupuncture, Yoga, Aromatherapy, Music Therapy, etc.), (c) Application of Inter-professional Collaboration and Education: Education Development in Holistic Nursing, Competencies of Holistic Nursing, Learning Methods and Assessments, and (d) Application of Holistic Nursing: Leadership & Management, Entrepreneurship in Holistic Nursing, Application of Holistic Nursing in Clinical and Community Settings
Journal of the Senate of the Tenth General Assembly of the State of Iowa, 1864
The published daily journals of the transactions of the Senate for the legislative session and the official bound journals printed after adjournment for previous legislative sessions
Annual reports of the town of Washington, New Hampshire for the year 2011.
This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire