Home Health Care: Reliability and Validity Testing of a Patient-Classification Instrument

The purposes of this methodologic, descriptive, correlation study were to assess the reliability and validity of the Easley-Storfjell (ES) patient-classification instrument for home care, and determine to what extent it was useful in a large, hospital-based home health care setting. A model for home health care developed by the investigator was used. In-terrater reliability and concurrent validity were established by four nurse-raters using a random sample. Nonparametric bi-variate correlational analysis demonstrated that the ES instrument was both reliable and valid at a significant level. In addition, there was agreement between the overall ES category rating and rater frequency of home visits. Intrarater reliability for each of the four nurse-raters on a random sample was at a significant level. The results of this study have important implications for home health care agencies providing care to chronically ill patients.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72564/1/j.1525-1446.1991.tb00656.x.pd

Factors influencing staff nurses' decisions for non-documentation of patient response to analgesia administration

• The purpose of this descriptive field study is to determine what factors influence staff nurses' decisions for non-documentation of patients' response to analgesic administration. • The study, based on Herbert Simon's descriptive model of decision making, has two components: (a) to determine staff nurses' perceptions of the factors that influence their documentation as well as how frequently they document analgesic administration and (b) to determine the actual frequency of nurses' documentation. • Data collected from 67 staff nurses using a questionnaire designed for this study and through an audit of 65 patients' charts allowed comparison of nurses' perceptions with their actual practice. • Analysis involved both quantitative and qualitative approaches. • The results of the study have implications for nurse educators and nurse administrators.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73890/1/j.1365-2702.1992.tb00112.x.pd

Maximizing energy deposition by shaping few-cycle laser pulses

We experimentally investigate the impact of pulse shape on the dynamics of laser-generated plasma in rare gases. Fast-rising triangular pulses with a slower decay lead to early ionization of the gas and depose energy more efficiently than their temporally reversed counterparts. As a result, in both argon and krypton, the induced shockwave as well as the plasma luminescence are stronger. This is due to an earlier availability of free electrons to undergo inverse Bremsstrahlung on the pulse trailing edge. Our results illustrate the ability of adequately tailored pulse shapes to optimize the energy deposition in gas plasmas

Growing Healthy Kids: A School Enrichment Nutrition Education Program to Promote Healthy Behaviors for Children

The Growing Healthy Kids Program is a school-based nutrition education program that teaches students in Kindergarten through 2nd grade about healthy eating, physical activity, and how their body uses food. Pre- and post-knowledge data is collected from the students to measure changes in nutrition knowledge. In the first 2 years of the program, significant improvements in nutrition knowledge were found in all three grades. Teachers reported that students were more aware of the importance of nutrition and were making healthier meal and/or snack choices at the end of the program

The Effect of 17beta Estradiol on Glut1 Expression In The Right Ventricle Of Rats With Severe Pulmonary Hypertension

poster abstractPulmonary hypertension (PH) is a devastating disease that is characterized by a rise of blood pressure in the blood vessels of the lung. This puts significant strain on the right ventricle (RV) of the heart. If untreated, PH can lead to right heart failure and death. One of the hallmarks of right heart failure in PH is the development of cytoplasmic glycolysis in the cardiac muscle cells (myocytes) of the RV. This describes a compensatory process where glucose uptake into the mitochondria is inhibited, thereby leading to its conversion to lactate in the cytoplasm. Importantly, cytoplasmic glycolysis is associated with an increase in a protein called glucose transporter 1 (Glut 1). 17beta estradiol (E2) can ameliorate experimental PH, but its effects on RV glut 1 expression are not yet known. The aim of this project is to determine the RV expression of Glut 1 in a rat model of severe PH, and to investigate whether this is decreased by E2 treatment. We assessed Glut 1 via immunofluorescence staining in cryosections of RV tissue from control rats, untreated PH rats, and E2-treated PH rats. Cell nuclei were stained with DAPI (Diamidinophenyl-indole), cell membranes were stained with WGA (wheat germ agglutinin), and Glut1 was stained with a Glut1 antibody conjugated to a red immunofluorescent dye. Nuclei are stained blue; cell membranes are stained green. Glut 1 quantification occurs via visual inspection and determination of red staining via specific software (Metamorph). We were able to successfully establish the protocol for Glut1 staining. In pilot experiments, there was little Glut1 staining present in normal RVs, but we detected up-regulation of Glut 1 in the RV of animals with PH. Whether this is affected by E2 is currently under investigation

Notes On GGH13 Without The Presence Of Ideals

We investigate the merits of altering the Garg, Gentry and Halevi (GGH13) graded encoding scheme to remove the presence of the ideal $\langle g \rangle$. In particular, we show that we can alter the form of encodings so that effectively a new $g_i$ is used for each source group $\mathbb{G}_i$, while retaining correctness. This would appear to prevent all known attacks on indistinguishability obfuscation (IO) candidates instantiated using GGH13. However, when analysing security in simplified branching program and obfuscation security models, we present branching program (and thus IO) distinguishing attacks that do not use knowledge of $\langle g \rangle$. This result opens a counterpoint with the work of Halevi (EPRINT 2015) which stated that the core computational hardness problem underpinning GGH13 is computing a basis of this ideal. Our attempts seem to suggest that there is a structural vulnerability in the way that GGH13 encodings are constructed that lies deeper than the presence of $\langle g \rangle$