Refugee Reintegration in Rural Areas: Land Distribution in Ban Pha Thao, Lao PDR

The successful reintegration of refugee groups in rural areas often depends on people’s access to and control over productive land resources. The acquisition of land and the preservation of secure use rights depend on people’s ability to invest household labour and capital resources to intensify agricultural production. For the Hmong of Ban Pha Thao in Laos, people with social and political capital, as well as financial assets, were able to acquire and invest in better quality land following the introduction of an irrigation scheme. The unequal distribution of land has resulted in a rapid re-articulation of the village social structure, in which some people in the community have been able to re-integrate more successfully than others. Policy makers and planners must ask themselves if such outcomes are desirable in terms of how they envision "successful reintegration.

The Performing Style of Alexander Scriabin by Anatole Leikin

Lincoln Ballard discusses and reviews Leikin\u27s 2011 work. Leikin, Anatole. The Performing Style of Alexander Scriabin. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. ISBN: 978-0-7546-6021-

EVALUATION OF SELECTED COMPONENTS OF THE NURSING WORKLIFE MODEL PATHWAYS AND ASSOCIATION WITH CATHETER ASSOCIATED URINARY TRACT INFECTIONS

ABSTRACT Identification of elements of the practice environment that influence both nurse satisfaction and patient outcomes is an important area for nursing research. While several valid and reliable tools to measure the components of the practice environment have been developed by nurse researchers with two measures, , the Practice Environment Scale and Job Enjoyment Scale, are included in the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators® (NDNQI®) RN Satisfaction Survey. Leiter and Lachinger (2006) posited the Nursing Worklife Model (NWLM) to explain how the elements identified are interrelated in the complex system of the nurse practice environment with subsequent work that extended the model to include association of nurse perception of patient adverse events. Further exploration of the impact of the specific elements of the practice environment on patient adverse events is needed. To date, researchers have primarily evaluated the impact of clinical outcomes using administrative data at the hospital or individual nurse level using nurse perceived adverse patient outcomes. In addition to RN Survey data, the NDNQI® provides a database of nurse-sensitive clinical outcomes (e.g., urinary tract infections rates) at the unit level. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the association of elements of the NWLM on a measured nurse-sensitive outcome, catheter associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) at the unit level. Hospital acquired conditions (HACs) related to nosocomial infection are adverse patient events that have a significant impact on financial, morbidity and mortality outcomes. Catheter associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) has been identified as one of the nurse sensitive indicators that is the most commonly occurring HACs (CDC, 2010). Specifically this study used a secondary analysis to fit the NWLM to unit level data from the 2011 NDNQI® RN Survey using structural equation modelling and resulted in a modified NWLM of job enjoyment. Additional significant paths were added to job enjoyment, staffing and resource adequacy, and foundations for quality care (CFI=.999; RMSEA=.059 [95% CI=.034-.089]; SRMR= .002). A second study followed that confirmed the modified NWLM of job enjoyment using 2012 NDNQI® RN Survey data. The model was extended to include data from the Quality Outcome database from which CAUTI rate was calculated to evaluate the NWLM path to CAUTI using structural equation modelling (CFI=.995; RMSEA= .04 [95% CI=.028-.056]; SRMR=.020). This study will add to the literature about the impact of the nurse practice environment on clinical outcomes at the unit level using a measured clinical outcome

Surfactant status and respiratory outcome in premature infants receiving late surfactant treatment.

BACKGROUND:Many premature infants with respiratory failure are deficient in surfactant, but the relationship to occurrence of bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) is uncertain. METHODS:Tracheal aspirates were collected from 209 treated and control infants enrolled at 7-14 days in the Trial of Late Surfactant. The content of phospholipid, surfactant protein B, and total protein were determined in large aggregate (active) surfactant. RESULTS:At 24 h, surfactant treatment transiently increased surfactant protein B content (70%, p < 0.01), but did not affect recovered airway surfactant or total protein/phospholipid. The level of recovered surfactant during dosing was directly associated with content of surfactant protein B (r = 0.50, p < 0.00001) and inversely related to total protein (r = 0.39, p < 0.0001). For all infants, occurrence of BPD was associated with lower levels of recovered large aggregate surfactant, higher protein content, and lower SP-B levels. Tracheal aspirates with lower amounts of recovered surfactant had an increased proportion of small vesicle (inactive) surfactant. CONCLUSIONS:We conclude that many intubated premature infants are deficient in active surfactant, in part due to increased intra-alveolar metabolism, low SP-B content, and protein inhibition, and that the severity of this deficit is predictive of BPD. Late surfactant treatment at the frequency used did not provide a sustained increase in airway surfactant

Integrating VLEs and Repositories

Presentation describing the purpose and background of using repositories to store teaching and learning materials, and integrating deposit, search and retrieval functions into VLEs. The presentation focuses on the JISC-funded CLASM project, which embeds a SWORD-compliant repository deposit tool into the open source Moodle VLE