6,222 research outputs found
The measurement of interwar poverty: notes on a sample from the second survey of York
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Does simulation enhance nurses' ability to assess deteriorating patients?
Recognising and responding to patient deterioration has been identified as a key skill in nursing care to ensure that care is escalated for prompt, efficient management of the potentially critically ill patient. Simulation is one teaching strategy that has been established in nurse education as a method for enhancing skills.
The objective was to explore the experiences of registered nurses to ascertain whether they perceived that simulation enhanced their skills in recognising the deteriorating patient.
An exploratory qualitative design was used. Data were collected from registered nurses using semi-structured interviews following a professional development course where scenario-based simulation had been used to assess the patient. Eight registered nurses were interviewed for this study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted face to face. Verbatim transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis to identify major themes.
Four themes were identified: knowledge, improved assessment skills in caring for the acutely ill patient, the learning environment and decision making. The use of simulation as a strategy was perceived by nurses to improve their own ability in identifying deteriorating patients. The participants described how their knowledge was transferred to clinical practice, with the overall perception that this led to improved patient care
Twitter reciprocal reply networks exhibit assortativity with respect to happiness
The advent of social media has provided an extraordinary, if imperfect, 'big
data' window into the form and evolution of social networks. Based on nearly 40
million message pairs posted to Twitter between September 2008 and February
2009, we construct and examine the revealed social network structure and
dynamics over the time scales of days, weeks, and months. At the level of user
behavior, we employ our recently developed hedonometric analysis methods to
investigate patterns of sentiment expression. We find users' average happiness
scores to be positively and significantly correlated with those of users one,
two, and three links away. We strengthen our analysis by proposing and using a
null model to test the effect of network topology on the assortativity of
happiness. We also find evidence that more well connected users write happier
status updates, with a transition occurring around Dunbar's number. More
generally, our work provides evidence of a social sub-network structure within
Twitter and raises several methodological points of interest with regard to
social network reconstructions.Comment: 22 pages, 21 figures, 5 tables, In press at the Journal of
Computational Scienc
Temporal patterns of happiness and information in a global social network: Hedonometrics and Twitter
Individual happiness is a fundamental societal metric. Normally measured
through self-report, happiness has often been indirectly characterized and
overshadowed by more readily quantifiable economic indicators such as gross
domestic product. Here, we examine expressions made on the online, global
microblog and social networking service Twitter, uncovering and explaining
temporal variations in happiness and information levels over timescales ranging
from hours to years. Our data set comprises over 46 billion words contained in
nearly 4.6 billion expressions posted over a 33 month span by over 63 million
unique users. In measuring happiness, we use a real-time, remote-sensing,
non-invasive, text-based approach---a kind of hedonometer. In building our
metric, made available with this paper, we conducted a survey to obtain
happiness evaluations of over 10,000 individual words, representing a tenfold
size improvement over similar existing word sets. Rather than being ad hoc, our
word list is chosen solely by frequency of usage and we show how a highly
robust metric can be constructed and defended.Comment: 27 pages, 17 figures, 3 tables. Supplementary Information: 1 table,
52 figure
Unmasking the Active Galactic Nucleus in PKS J2310-437
PKS J2310-437 is an AGN with bright X-ray emission relative to its weak radio
emission and optical continuum. It is believed that its jet lies far enough
from the line of sight that it is not highly relativistically beamed. It thus
provides an extreme test of AGN models. We present new observations aimed at
refining the measurement of the source's properties. In optical photometry with
the NTT we measure a central excess with relatively steep spectrum lying above
the bright elliptical galaxy emission, and we associate the excess wholly or in
part with the AGN. A new full-track radio observation with the ATCA finds that
the core 8.64GHz emission has varied by about 20 per cent over 38 months, and
improves the mapping of the weak jet. With Chandra we measure a
well-constrained power-law spectral index for the X-ray core, uncontaminated by
extended emission from the cluster environment, with a negligible level of
intrinsic absorption. Weak X-ray emission from the resolved radio jet is also
measured. Our analysis suggests that the optical continuum in this radio galaxy
has varied by at least a factor of four over a timescale of about two years,
something that should be testable with further observations. We conclude that
the most likely explanation for the bright central X-ray emission is
synchrotron radiation from high-energy electrons.Comment: 7 pages, 12 figure
Impairments in motor coordination without major changes in cerebellar plasticity in the Tc1 mouse model of Down syndrome
Down syndrome (DS) is a genetic disorder arising from the presence of a third copy of human chromosome
21 (Hsa21). Recently, O’Doherty et al. [An aneuploid mouse strain carrying human chromosome 21 with Down
syndrome phenotypes. Science 309 (2005) 2033–2037] generated a trans-species aneuploid mouse line (Tc1)
that carries an almost complete Hsa21. The Tc1 mouse is the most complete animal model for DS currently
available. Tc1 mice show many features that relate to human DS, including alterations in memory, synaptic
plasticity, cerebellar neuronal number, heart development and mandible size. Because motor deficits are
one of the most frequently occurring features of DS, we have undertaken a detailed analysis of motor behaviour
in cerebellum-dependent learning tasks that require high motor coordination and balance. In addition,
basic electrophysiological properties of cerebellar circuitry and synaptic plasticity have been investigated.
Our results reveal that, compared with controls, Tc1 mice exhibit a higher spontaneous locomotor activity,
a reduced ability to habituate to their environments, a different gait and major deficits on several measures
of motor coordination and balance in the rota rod and static rod tests. Moreover, cerebellar long-term
depression is essentially normal in Tc1 mice, with only a slight difference in time course. Our observations
provide further evidence that support the validity of the Tc1 mouse as a model for DS, which will help us to
provide insights into the causal factors responsible for motor deficits observed in persons with DS
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