4,256 research outputs found
Setting priorities to inform assessment of care homesâ readiness to participate in healthcare innovation: a systematic mapping review and consensus process
© 2020 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly citedOrganisational context is known to impact on the successful implementation of healthcare initiatives in care homes. We undertook a systematic mapping review to examine whether researchers have considered organisational context when planning, conducting, and reporting the implementation of healthcare innovations in care homes. Review data were mapped against the Alberta Context Tool, which was designed to assess organizational context in care homes. The review included 56 papers. No studies involved a systematic assessment of organisational context prior to implementation, but many provided post hoc explanations of how organisational context affected the success or otherwise of the innovation. Factors identified to explain a lack of success included poor senior staff engagement, non-alignment with care home culture, limited staff capacity to engage, and low levels of participation from health professionals such as general practitioners (GPs). Thirty-five stakeholders participated in workshops to discuss findings and develop questions for assessing care home readiness to participate in innovations. Ten questions were developed to initiate conversations between innovators and care home staff to support research and implementation. This framework can help researchers initiate discussions about health-related innovation. This will begin to address the gap between implementation theory and practice.Peer reviewe
Signal-to-Noise Eigenmode Analysis of the Two-Year COBE Maps
To test a theory of cosmic microwave background fluctuations, it is natural
to expand an anisotropy map in an uncorrelated basis of linear combinations of
pixel amplitudes --- statistically-independent for both the noise and the
signal. These -eigenmodes are indispensible for rapid Bayesian analyses of
anisotropy experiments, applied here to the recently-released two-year COBE
{\it dmr} maps and the {\it firs} map. A 2-parameter model with an overall
band-power and a spectral tilt describes well inflation-based
theories. The band-powers for {\it all} the {\it dmr} + GHz
and {\it firs} 170 GHz maps agree, , and
are largely independent of tilt and degree of (sharp) -filtering. Further,
after optimal -filtering, the {\it dmr} maps reveal the same
tilt-independent large scale features and correlation function. The unfiltered
{\it dmr} + index is ; increasing the
-filtering gives a broad region at (1.0--1.2)0.5, a jump to
(1.4--1.6)0.5, then a drop to 0.8, the higher values clearly seen to be
driven by -power spectrum data points that do not fit single-tilt models.
These indices are nicely compatible with inflation values (0.8--1.2), but
not overwhelmingly so.Comment: submitted to Phys.Rev.Letters, 4 pages, uuencoded compressed
PostScript; also bdmr2.ps.Z, via anonymous ftp to ftp.cita.utoronto.ca, cd to
/pub/dick/yukawa; CITA-94-2
Systematic Errors in Cosmic Microwave Background Interferometry
Cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization observations will require
superb control of systematic errors in order to achieve their full scientific
potential, particularly in the case of attempts to detect the B modes that may
provide a window on inflation. Interferometry may be a promising way to achieve
these goals. This paper presents a formalism for characterizing the effects of
a variety of systematic errors on interferometric CMB polarization
observations, with particular emphasis on estimates of the B-mode power
spectrum. The most severe errors are those that couple the temperature
anisotropy signal to polarization; such errors include cross-talk within
detectors, misalignment of polarizers, and cross-polarization. In a B mode
experiment, the next most serious category of errors are those that mix E and B
modes, such as gain fluctuations, pointing errors, and beam shape errors. The
paper also indicates which sources of error may cause circular polarization
(e.g., from foregrounds) to contaminate the cosmologically interesting linear
polarization channels, and conversely whether monitoring of the circular
polarization channels may yield useful information about the errors themselves.
For all the sources of error considered, estimates of the level of control that
will be required for both E and B mode experiments are provided. Both
experiments that interfere linear polarizations and those that interfere
circular polarizations are considered. The fact that circular experiments
simultaneously measure both linear polarization Stokes parameters in each
baseline mitigates some sources of error.Comment: 19 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Observational constraints on the spectral index of the cosmological curvature perturbation
We evaluate the observational constraints on the spectral index , in the
context of the CDM hypothesis which represents the simplest viable
cosmology. We first take to be practically scale-independent. Ignoring
reionization, we find at a nominal 2- level . If
we make the more realisitic assumption that reionization occurs when a fraction
to 1 of the matter has collapsed, the 2- lower bound is
unchanged while the 1- bound rises slightly. These constraints are
compared with the prediction of various inflation models. Then we investigate
the two-parameter scale-dependent spectral index, predicted by running-mass
inflation models, and find that present data allow significant scale-dependence
of , which occurs in a physically reasonable regime of parameter space.Comment: ReVTeX, 15 pages, 5 figures and 3 tables, uses epsf.sty Improved
treatment of reionization and small bug fixed in the constant n case; more
convenient parameterization and better treatment of the n dependence in the
CMB anisotropy for the running mass case; conclusions basically unchanged;
references adde
Components of palliative care interventions addressing the needs of people with dementia living in long term care: a systematic review
© The Author(s) 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).Background: People with dementia requiring palliative care havemultiple needs that require complex, multicomponent interventions. Thisneed is amplified in the long term care setting. The European Associationfor Palliative Care (EAPC) White Paper offers recommendations forpalliative care in dementia and highlights domains of care integral forthis population, thus providing useful guidance to developing suchinterventions. This review maps components of palliative careinterventions for people with dementia in LTCFs, with a particular focuson shared decision-making.Peer reviewe
Three flavor neutrino oscillation analysis of the Superkamiokande atmospheric neutrino data
Superkamiokande atmospheric neutrino data for 535 days are analyzed in the
framework of three flavor oscillations with mass hierarchy. It is shown that
the best fit point is very close to the pure maximal
case and
eV. The allowed region at 90 %CL is given and the implications to the long
baseline experiments are briefly discussed.Comment: 8 pages + 1 Table + 28 PostScript figures updated using 535 day dat
Measuring life events and their association with clinical disorder: a protocol for development of an online approach
Background: Severe life events are acknowledged as important aetiological factors in the development of clinical disorders, including major depression. Interview methods capable of assessing context and meaning of events have demonstrated superior validity compared to checklist questionnaire methods and arguments for interview approaches have resurfaced as choice of assessment tool has been implicated in gene-environment interactions in depression. Such approaches also have greater potential for understanding and treating clinical cases or for use in interventions.
Objectives: (i) To argue that life events need sophisticated measurement not satisfactorily captured in checklist approaches. (ii) To review life events measures and key findings related to disorder, exemplifying depression. (iii) To describe an ongoing study with a new online measure, to assess its psychometric properties and the association of life events in relation to disorder and educational outcomes.
Methods: The Computerised Life Events Assessment Record (CLEAR) is under development as a tool for online assessment of adult life events. Based on the Life Events and Difficulties Schedule (LEDS) interview, CLEAR seeks to assess life events to self and close others, link these to other events and difficulties and utilise calendar-based timing, to improve upon checklist approaches. The phases of the study are outlined in terms of its samples of midlife cases with depression, unaffected controls and students, testing of the psychometric properties of CLEAR, as well as proposed investigations of its association with disorder and educational outcomes.
Conclusions: There is currently no sophisticated technological application of social risk factor assessment, such as life events and difficulties. CLEAR is designed to gather reliable and valid life event data whilst combatting the limitations of interviews (e.g. time consuming and costly) and life event checklists (e.g. inability to accurately measure severity and independence of life events). The advantages of using such innovative methodology for research, clinical practice and interventions are discussed
Mapping the 3-D Dark Matter potential with weak shear
We investigate the practical implementation of Taylor's (2002) 3-dimensional
gravitational potential reconstruction method using weak gravitational lensing,
together with the requisite reconstruction of the lensing potential. This
methodology calculates the 3-D gravitational potential given a knowledge of
shear estimates and redshifts for a set of galaxies. We analytically estimate
the noise expected in the reconstructed gravitational field, taking into
account the uncertainties associated with a finite survey, photometric redshift
uncertainty, redshift-space distortions, and multiple scattering events. In
order to implement this approach for future data analysis, we simulate the
lensing distortion fields due to various mass distributions. We create
catalogues of galaxies sampling this distortion in three dimensions, with
realistic spatial distribution and intrinsic ellipticity for both ground-based
and space-based surveys. Using the resulting catalogues of galaxy position and
shear, we demonstrate that it is possible to reconstruct the lensing and
gravitational potentials with our method. For example, we demonstrate that a
typical ground-based shear survey with redshift limit z=1 and photometric
redshifts with error Delta z=0.05 is directly able to measure the 3-D
gravitational potential for mass concentrations >10^14 M_\odot between
0.1<z<0.5, and can statistically measure the potential at much lower mass
limits. The intrinsic ellipticity of objects is found to be a serious source of
noise for the gravitational potential, which can be overcome by Wiener
filtering or examining the potential statistically over many fields. We examine
the use of the 3-D lensing potential to measure mass and position of clusters
in 3-D, and to detect clusters behind clusters.Comment: 21 pages, including 24 figures, submitted to MNRA
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