Book Review

Text: Nutta, J. W., Mokhtari, K., & Strebel, C. (2012). Preparing every teacher to reach English learners. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press

How nurses perceive the impact of health IT applications on their performance and satisfaction: Examining the organizational, social, and personal factors

Applying information technology tools in the healthcare industry is an appropriate solution to integrate and record medical data and provide complete access of patients’ information. However, the effectiveness of these technologies depends on their successful implementation and adaptation. This study addresses the impact of result observability, autonomy, perceived barriers, task structure, privacy and security anxiety, and communication (social) patterns on the perception of the performance and satisfaction of nurses using IT applications in healthcare. Furthermore, the effects of nurses’ years of experience, age, different hospitals, different electronic medical records (EMR) applications, and personality factors are examined as a moderator factors on the relationships between the organizational and social factors, and nurses’ performance and satisfaction. This study proposes a model of the relationship of organizational and social variables as predictor factors on the perception of performance and satisfaction with EMR among nurses. Multivariate linear regression was used to build models for the perception of performance and the perception of EMR satisfaction. Professional autonomy, communication patterns, privacy and security anxiety, and result observability are the most important predictors for the nurses’ perception of performance relationship. Personality factors do not have a direct relationship with the perception of performance and satisfaction; however, they have moderator effects on the relationship of the independent and dependent variables. Based on the result, financial incentives and sufficient training could influence the nurses’ perception of EMR effectiveness. Based on the findings of this study, the healthcare administrators could focus on increasing employee awareness about the results and tangible benefits of EMR applications and their effects on their performance and satisfaction. EMR development companies in collaboration with healthcare administrators could design the EMR applications more flexible in terms of professional autonomy and give the healthcare staff more freedom to make decisions and deliver care to patients. Moreover, EMR companies may need to reconsider the communication patterns among healthcare staff and patients

Essays in the Economics of Healthcare

This dissertation examines three phenomena, that are prevalent in healthcare, and their consequences for patient health outcomes. The focus of Chapter 2 is the adoption and diffusion of robots in England for the surgical treatment of prostate cancer patients in the National Health Service (NHS). Exploiting quasi-random variation in the geographic allocation of robots, Chapter \ref{chapterlabel2} shows that robots shorten patients’ length of stay and decrease the incidence of adverse events from surgery, but their effects are heterogeneous and significantly depend on surgeons’ skills. High-skilled surgeons benefit the least from using the technology, while lower-skilled surgeons appear to gain the most from it. Chapter 3 studies the impact of hospital mergers on the quality of clinical care. Using the universe of hospital medical records in England, it examines all public hospital mergers after the introduction of hospital choice in 2006. There were 159 hospital sites involved in mergers over our sample period, comprising 13 transactions. Using an event study framework, this Chapter finds that mergers have immediate and persistent negative impacts on clinical quality. Chapter 4 uses a unique source of information, Real-Time Location System (RTLS) Data, to study the effect of contact time on patient health outcomes. RTLS allows to perfectly observe the amount of time nurses spend with patients in the hospital. This Chapter exploits the granularity of this data to estimate a causal impact of contact time on patient outcomes by decomposing contact time into an endogenous and plausibly exogenous component and shows that direct contact between nurses and patients significantly reduces in-hospital mortality and accidents

Effects of Post-harvest Pre-cooling Processes and Cyclical Heat Treatment on the Physico-chemical Properties of "Red Haven Peaches" and "Shahmiveh Pears" During Cold Storage

Rosana G. Moreira, Editor-in-Chief; Texas A&M UniversityThis is a paper from International Commission of Agricultural Engineering (CIGR, Commission Internationale du Genie Rural) E-Journal Volume 6 (2004): A. Kalbasi-Ashtari. Effects of Post-harvest Pre-cooling Processes and Cyclical Heat Treatment on the Physico-chemical Properties of "Red Haven Peaches" and "Shahmiveh Pears" During Cold Storage. (July 2004)

BARRIERS TO ADVANCED HERITAGE LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Speakers of heritage languages do not universally achieve advanced levels in the language. We present evidence that three barriers are responsible: (1) lack of access to comprehensible, interesting reading material in the heritage language. (2) The use of traditional language teaching methods in heritage language classes, and (3) the reactions of elders who scold young heritage language speakers for their “errors.”

A Decision-Support Tool for the Choice of Fabrication Routes in the Context of Mass Personalization

In the saturated competitive markets of today, Mass Personalization (MP) is getting more and more attention. MP refers to the affordable fabrication of personalized products where the customer is involved from the beginning of product life-cycle (design phase). In order to keep personalized products affordable, it is important to select the most cost-effective fabrication route for each individualized order. To do so, this study proposes a Web-based Personalized Manufacturing Consulting System (WebPMCS) towards selecting the most cost-effective processes/resources for mass personalization in the on-demand manufacturing context. The proposed tool includes a Graphical User Interface (GUI), a cost estimation model, and a relational database. In this document, we explain the steps towards WebPMCS design and development. Then, we adapt WebPMCS to Spark Assisted Chemical Engraving (SACE). By the aid of this case-study, we validate the tool, and determine the most cost-effective fabrication routes for several personalized orders. Finally, we suggest using multi-head machines for SACE personalized fabrication and prove its benefits using WebPMCS. The proposed tool acts as an advanced calculator and a process/resource selector, and is aimed to be used as an enabling module for industry 4.0 manufacturing philosophy

Identifying invariant solutions of wall-bounded three-dimensional shear flows using robust adjoint-based variational techniques

Invariant solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations play an important role in the spatiotemporally chaotic dynamics of turbulent shear flows. Despite the significance of these solutions, their identification remains a computational challenge, rendering many solutions inaccessible and thus hindering progress towards a dynamical description of turbulence in terms of invariant solutions. We compute equilibria of three-dimensional wall-bounded shear flows using an adjoint-based matrix-free variational approach. To address the challenge of computing pressure in the presence of solid walls, we develop a formulation that circumvents the explicit construction of pressure and instead employs the influence matrix method. Together with a data-driven convergence acceleration technique based on dynamic mode decomposition, this yields a practically feasible alternative to state-of-the-art Newton methods for converging equilibrium solutions. We successfully converge multiple equilibria of plane Couette flow starting from inaccurate guesses extracted from a turbulent time series. The variational method significantly outperforms the standard Newton-hookstep method, demonstrating its superior robustness and suggesting a considerably larger convergence radius