The Cost of Success: The Significance of Funding in the Academic Success of Charter Schools\u27 Minority Students

Since the state of Minnesota first began charter schools nearly three decades ago, they have slowly become a major part of public education throughout the United States. Often times strategically placed in communities of low socioeconomic status, charter schools have offered alternative options to at-risk, low-income students who would otherwise attend the traditional public school within their school zones. In New York City today, there are almost four times the number of charter schools than there were ten years ago. Across the city, at-risk students who have the opportunity to attend charter schools are reaching higher levels of educational achievement and succeeding in more varied fields than their public-school-attending counterparts. It is not possible to say that any single factor contributes to the success of charter schools; however, in my investigation I hypothesize that one major contributing factor to New York charter school success is funding. As such, I compared the annual state revenue brought in by charter schools versus that of traditional public schools. In analyzing both total funding for two specific charter networks and six individual public schools, as well as funding per-pupil, I found that funding discrepancies have most likely made a difference in the differing education systems

Succeeding Through Collaborative Conflict: The Paradoxical Lessons of Shared Leadership

Facing serious challenges that may dictate the complete overhaul of business mindset and industry must be directed by sound leadership. But is it possible to lead alone or is collaboration necessary to confront these challenges? These authors tackle the well-known idiom “two heads are better than one” and extract from its meaning the inherent dichotomy in shared leadership, mediating differences of direction, and preserving the integrity of individual perspective in this new age

Your new colleague is a robot. Is that ok?

Human robot collaboration is a concept under development that will be applied within manufacturing environments in the near future to increase efficiency and quality. While there have been significant advances in technology to enable this progress there is still little known about the wider human factors issues of employing such systems in High Value Manufacturing environments. This paper sets out our current understanding of key organisational and individual factors which need to be explored

The use of job aids for visual inspection in manufacturing and maintenance

Visual inspection is a task regularly seen in manufacturing applications and is still primarily carried out by human operators. This study explored the use of job aids (anything used to assist the operator with the task, such as lists, check sheets or pictures) to assist with visual inspection within a manufacturing facility that inspects used parts. Job aids in the form of inspection manuals were used regularly during the inspection process, and how accurately they were followed was dependent on a number of factors such as size of part, experience of the operator, and accuracy of the inspection manuals. If the job aids were well structured, well written and accessible, then the inspectors were seen to follow them, however for certain jobs inspectors were seen to change the inspection order making inspection more efficient. The findings of the study suggest that prior experience can help in designing efficient, easy to use job aids and that a collaborative approach to design as well as using pictorial examples for comparison purposes would improve the inspection process

The Effect of an Acuity Adaptable Unit on Efficiency in Non-critical Trauma Patients

Problem Statement: It was observed a large academic medical center is experiencing impeding congestion of non-critical care patients due to challenges with bed availability and high patient volumes. Delays in transferring patients to an appropriate level of care can impose safety risks and prolong length of stay. Implementation of an acuity adaptable unit may be a cost-effective approach to a growing problem. Background: A fixed bed model limits the acuity of patients admitted to a specific space. Using the Iowa Model of Evidence Based Practice as the framework for design, moving to an acuity adaptable unit could facilitate patient throughput by allowing the bed accommodation to be flexible between acute and progressive care needs freeing up bed capacity for critical care (ICU), post anesthesia care unit (PACU), and emergency department (ED) needs. Decreasing unnecessary transfers and handoffs have shown to improve quality and safety among hospitalized patients (Hendrich et al., 2004). Utilizing available resources and training nurses to practice at their highest skill provide a more efficient and comprehensive approach to care through implementation of an acuity adaptable unit. Methods: This was a retrospective, comparative analysis evaluating patient outcomes, and efficiency during 11-months pre- and 14-months post- implementation of the acuity adaptable unit. Patients were included or excluded based on the nature of the admission and level of care required. The sample consisted of adult trauma patients ages 16 and older, admitted to UK HealthCare with any diagnosis related to trauma, and that did not require critical care. Exclusion criteria included those admitted to hospice, and those that discharged to the morgue. Results: Demographics between the two groups were well matched and did not differ significantly between pre and post groups. The implementation of the acuity adjustable unit showed an improvement of efficiency by providing the nurse the ability to care for the patient in the same room despite the change in level of care. In the post group there was a significant decrease in emergency department boarding times. Significantly more patients were discharged home and efficiency of the unit significantly improved evidenced by a decrease in unnecessary movement due to the ability to remain in the same room regardless of monitoring needs. Additionally, nursing productivity data supported the demand for an additional staff nurse to accommodate as the number of progressive level beds increased. Discussion: The implementation of an acuity adaptable model was an efficient and cost-effective option. As nursing shortages and overpopulated hospitals continue, the challenge remains to find innovative ways to provide safe high quality, safe patient care at minimal cost. This model was demonstrated to be an effective solution in this trauma center. Conclusion: The combined results of this study illustrate the benefits of an acuity adaptable unit on efficiency and patient outcomes without increasing the number of physical beds, making it a viable option for addressing challenges with patient throughput

Poisson noise reduction with non-local PCA

Photon-limited imaging arises when the number of photons collected by a sensor array is small relative to the number of detector elements. Photon limitations are an important concern for many applications such as spectral imaging, night vision, nuclear medicine, and astronomy. Typically a Poisson distribution is used to model these observations, and the inherent heteroscedasticity of the data combined with standard noise removal methods yields significant artifacts. This paper introduces a novel denoising algorithm for photon-limited images which combines elements of dictionary learning and sparse patch-based representations of images. The method employs both an adaptation of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for Poisson noise and recently developed sparsity-regularized convex optimization algorithms for photon-limited images. A comprehensive empirical evaluation of the proposed method helps characterize the performance of this approach relative to other state-of-the-art denoising methods. The results reveal that, despite its conceptual simplicity, Poisson PCA-based denoising appears to be highly competitive in very low light regimes.Comment: erratum: Image man is wrongly name pepper in the journal versio

Glucocorticoid Receptor and Adipocyte Biology.

Glucocorticoids are steroid hormones that play a key role in metabolic adaptations during stress, such as fasting and starvation, in order to maintain plasma glucose levels. Excess and chronic glucocorticoid exposure, however, causes metabolic syndrome including insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, and hyperglycemia. Studies in animal models of metabolic disorders frequently demonstrate that suppressing glucocorticoid signaling improves insulin sensitivity and metabolic profiles. Glucocorticoids convey their signals through an intracellular glucocorticoid receptor (GR), which is a transcriptional regulator. The adipocyte is one cell type that contributes to whole body metabolic homeostasis under the influence of GR. Glucocorticoids' functions on adipose tissues are complex. Depending on various physiological or pathophysiological states as well as distinct fat depots, glucocorticoids can either increase or decrease lipid storage in adipose tissues. In rodents, glucocorticoids have been shown to reduce the thermogenic activity of brown adipocytes. However, in human acute glucocorticoid exposure, glucocorticoids act to promote thermogenesis. In this article, we will review the recent studies on the mechanisms underlying the complex metabolic functions of GR in adipocytes. These include studies of the metabolic outcomes of adipocyte specific GR knockout mice and identification of novel GR primary target genes that mediate glucocorticoid action in adipocytes