Processes for metal extraction

This report describes the processing of plutonium at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), and operation illustrating concepts that may be applicable to the processing of lunar materials. The toxic nature of plutonium requires a highly closed system for processing lunar surface materials

A Nurse\u27s Perception of Hand-Off Communication Before and After Utilization of the I-5 Verification of Information Tool

Abstract Miscommunication or omission of critical patient information contributes to preventable medical errors that result in 98,000 patient deaths each year. The hand-off communication process creates a critical time for the patient as necessary information for the continuity of care must be communicated. The purpose of this practice project was to evaluate the nurses\u27 perception of the current hand-off communication process before and after an educational intervention and implementation of the I-5 Verification of Information Tool. Registered nurses were asked to complete a pre survey of their perception of the current hand-off communication process, followed by an educational power point describing the I-5 Verification of Information Tool. Participants utilized the I-5 Verification of Information Tool during hand-off over a 3-week period, and then were asked to complete a post survey to evaluate the nurses\u27 perception of the hand-off process including of the I-5 Verification of Information Tool. A paired t test was used to determine if there was a difference in the nurses\u27 perception of the current hand-off communication process before and after an educational intervention and implementation of the I-5 Verification of Information Tool. Although there was no statistically significant difference in the pre- and post-survey scores, post survey results demonstrated clinical significance. This project has implications for positive social change by addressing nurse communication as a method to improve the quality of hand-off reports, which has the potential to reduce medical errors and improve patient outcomes

Post-inpatient Attrition from Care “As Usual” in Veterans with Multiple Psychiatric Admissions

Disengagement from outpatient care following psychiatric hospitalization is common in high-utilizing psychiatric patients and contributes to intensive care utilization. To investigate variables related to treatment attrition, a range of demographic, diagnostic, cognitive, social, and behavioral variables were collected from 233 veterans receiving inpatient psychiatric services who were then monitored over the following 2 years. During the follow-up period, 88.0 % (n = 202) of patients disengaged from post-inpatient care. Attrition was associated with male gender, younger age, increased expectations of stigma, less short-term participation in group therapy, and poorer medication adherence. Of those who left care, earlier attrition was predicted by fewer prior-year inpatient psychiatric days, fewer lifetime psychiatric hospitalizations, increased perceived treatment support from family, and less short-term attendance at psychiatrist appointments. Survival analyses were used to analyze the rate of attrition of the entire sample as well as the sample split by short-term group therapy attendance. Implications are discussed

Seeing Black: Foote's Afro-American Company and the Performance of Racial Uplift in Imperial Germany in 1891

By 1914 African American entertainers had become a regular part of variety show programmes across the German lands, but despite their evident popularity, they have received little scholarly attention except as part of the pre-history of jazz. But even before 1914 African American performers took an active part in transatlantic conversations about the meanings of race, challenging racialized understandings of nation, culture and modernity. To illustrate the challenge presented by African American performance and the range of German responses, this article takes up a little-known case study, the German tour of William Foote’s Afro-American Company in 1891. Led by a white impresario, the show brought together the broad range of black popular performance—minstrel song and dance, jubilee choirs, social dance and concert singing—to demonstrate the rapid progress of African American cultivation since emancipation. This message of racial uplift was framed in ethnographic terms, making a case that African Americans, like Germans, possessed distinctive folk forms that could be refined into cultivated forms with universal value. This framing made an uplifting case for an equivalence between African American and German cultures, but there were also ambivalences built into Foote’s project as organizers played to audiences’ racialized expectations. Analysing German commentators’ responses to performances of American blackness allows us to interrogate competing discourses of blackness in the German lands and the ways they could be used strategically. More broadly, those responses also illustrate how ideas about race were negotiated, produced and popularized in commercial entertainments

'Loyal Sons of the Church and Fatherland'? Center-Polish Relations in Upper Silesia, 1871-1907

This article examines the German Center party’s changing relationship with its Polish-speaking constituency in Upper Silesia between 1871 and 1907. In doing so, it explores the development of the Center party from a party representing the interests of Catholics in Germany to a party representing the interests of German Catholics. In Upper Silesia the Center built a unique (and hitherto unexplored) constituency of German and Polish Catholics during the anti-Catholic Kulturkampf of the 1870s and 1880s. By the 1890s, however, German Catholics throughout the Kaiserreich no longer faced the type of overt harassment that Poles continued to deal with. As a result, the national Center assumed a more conciliatory posture toward the government. In Silesia, heightened nationalist tensions in the region led local party leaders to become increasingly ambivalent towards the demands of their Polish-speaking constituency and sympathetic German-speaking moderates. As a result of the intransigence of local leaders hoping to capitalize on intensified German nationalism in Silesia, Polish voters turned towards Polish Center candidates in the 1890s and then toward locally organized Polish parties that routed the Center by 1907. This shift illustrates a certain degree of flexibility within the Wilhelmine political system. Underlying this discussion of political culture is an attempt, following the work of James Retallack and Alon Confino, to tease out the ways that local contexts shape understandings of the nation and vice versa. // Cel article examine les rapports changeants du parti du centre d’Allemagne avec ses éleecteurs de la haute Silésie entre 1871 et 1907. En ce faisant, nous étudions le développement du parti du centre à partir d’un parti représentant les intérêts des catholiques en Allemagne à un parti représentant les intérêts des catholiques allemands. En haute Silésie, le parti bâti une circonscription unique (et jusque là inexplorée) d’allemands et de polonais catholiques durant le Kulturkampf anti-catholique des décennies de 1870 et 1880. Toutefois, dans les années 1890, les allemands catholiques dans le Kaiserreich ne souffraient plus du même harcèlement manifeste que les polonais enduraient toujours. Conséquemment, le parti du centre national adopta une attitude plus conciliante envers le gouvernement. En Silésie, les tensions augmentèrent chez les leaders du parti local au point qu’ils devinrent de plus en plus ambivalents envers les demandes de leurs électeurs polonais et des allemands modérés et sympatiques. Face à l’intransigeance des leaders locaux qui comptaient tirer parti du nationalisme allemand grandissant en Silésie, les électeurs polonais favorisèrent les candidats du parti du centre polonais dans les années 1890, pour finalement se concentrer sur les partis polonais locaux qui défirent le centre en 1907. Ce changement démontre un certain degré de flexibilité à l’intérieur du système politique de Wilhelm. Sous-jacent à cette discussion sur la culture politique et suivant les travaux de James Retallack et Alon Confino, nous tentons de démêler par quelles manières les contextes locaux formulent des ententes dans une nation et vice versa