Creating a service design for happy sustainable homes using art therapy [poster]

Creating a service design for happy sustainable homes using art therapy [poster

A nomogram to determine required seed air kerma strength in planar 131 Cesium permanent seed implant brachytherapy

Purpose: Intraoperatively implanted Cesium-131 ( 131 Cs) permanent seed brachytherapy is used to deliver highly localized re-irradiation in recurrent head and neck cancers. A single planar implant of uniform air kerma strength (AKS) seeds and 10 mm seed-to-seed spacing is used to deliver the prescribed dose to a point 5 mm or 10 mm perpendicular to the center of the implant plane. Nomogram tables to quickly determine the required AKS for rectangular and irregularly shaped implants were created and dosimetrically verified. By eliminating the need for a full treatment planning system plan, nomogram tables allow for fast dose calculation for intraoperative re-planning and for a second check method. Material and methods: TG-43U1 recommended parameters were used to create a point-source model in MATLAB. The dose delivered to the prescription point from a single 1 U seed at each possible location in the implant plane was calculated. Implant tables were verified using an independent seed model in MIM Symphony LDR™. Implant tables were used to retrospectively determine seed AKS for previous cases: three rectangular and three irregular. Results: For rectangular implants, the percent difference between required seed AKS calculated using MATLAB and MIM was at most 0.6%. For irregular implants, the percent difference between MATLAB and MIM calculations for individual seed locations was within 1.5% with outliers of less than 3.1% at two distal locations (10.6 cm and 8.8 cm), which have minimal dose contribution to the prescription point. The retrospectively determined AKS for patient implants using nomogram tables agreed with previous calculations within 5% for all six cases. Conclusions: Nomogram tables were created to determine required AKS per seed for planar uniform AKS 131 Cs implants. Comparison with the treatment planning system confirms dosimetric accuracy that is acceptable for use as a second check or for dose calculation in cases of intraoperative re-planning

Work Related Paternal Absence among Petroleum Workers in Canada

Work-Related Parental Absence (WRPA) is common in contemporary family life. Industries such as aviation, fishing, logging, mining, and petroleum extraction all require the employee to work away from family from short to significant periods of time. In Canada’s petroleum industry, work schedules that involve parental absence are especially common. There has been ample research conducted on the impact of military deployment on families, some research on how mining families are impacted by WRPA, and a small amount of research on the effects of WRPA among offshore European petroleum workers and their families. However, there is no research currently available that investigates the impact of WRPA on Canadian oil and gas petroleum workers and their families. In this article, we share the results of a qualitative study that examined the experience of WRPA through interviewing 10 heterosexual couples. Use of Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis identified a tripartite thematic structure consisting of positive, negative, and neutral aspects of the WRPA experience, which in turn were shaped by specific adaptive strategies undertaken by families. The results of this research provide important insights into a common, yet poorly understood, lifestyle within the Canadian employment landscape

Understanding school food in Newfoundland and Labrador through a systems framework

Using systems thinking, I address the question of how to improve school food in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador (NL). Chapter Two provides an interdisciplinary review of school food literature. This review establishes the rationale for adopting systems thinking as a conceptual and analytic tool. The systems methodology used in this dissertation is described in Chapter Three. In Chapter Four I review what is known about school food in the NL context and describe the gap to be filled by using multi-method research to answer the following questions: What school food programs and policies exist in NL? What knowledge and attitudes exist about the current school food system? How do knowledge and programs interact to facilitate or inhibit development of a more healthy and sustainable school food system? Next, three research-based chapters contribute to new understanding. Chapter Five is a case study about a school greenhouse. The case study took place earlier in my PhD program and helped lead to the adoption of the systems methodology applied throughout this dissertation. Chapter Six is based on a survey of 68 principals. The results of the survey highlight the persistence of variability as a key defining feature of school food in the province and the need for more responsive and collaborative tools to assess and enhance school food systems across the province. Chapter Seven discusses findings from 34 key informant interviews of stakeholders throughout the system of school food in NL. An analysis of these interviews shows how school food system innovators drive systems change by responding to system weaknesses as a source for strategic collaboration and learning. Taken together, the findings provide a deeper understanding of how persistent and substantial barriers make interventions ineffective. Future areas for learning and collaboration are identified. I suggest that collaborative and critical knowledge about the NL school food system is essential for future transformation

Meeting the challenge of population ageing.

The welfare state is based on a life course that no longer matches current experience. It assumes that people, or at least men and unmarried women, spend their early years in education and then go on to a long period in work followed by a short period in retirement, when they live off the pension accumulated while in work or, more usually, the tax and pension contributions of those still in work. At a time when many people did not survive to draw their pensions or, if they did, survived for only a few more years, welfare systems coped reasonably well. It is less clear whether they will be able to do so in the future. The scale of the challenge is shown by a single stark statistic. If there is no change in work and retirement patterns, the ratio of workers to older inactive persons in the countries that were European Union member states in May 2004 (the EU-25), now at 3:1, is projected to increase to 1:1 in 2050

A Comparison of Bird Diversity and Water Quality Within Aquatic Ecosystems

Undergraduate Theoretical Proposa

An Educational Video Intervention to Increase Advance Care Planning Knowledge and Advance Directive Completion for Community-Dwelling Veterans

Approved July 2017 by the faculty of UMKC in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Nursing PracticeAdvance Care Planning is the process by which patients with the healthcare provider and family establish values, goals, and preferences for future care. Advance Directives provide written documentation of patients wishes for future care following Advance Care Planning conversations. The problem exists that only 17% of adults have had Advance Care Planning discussions with a healthcare provider and 18-36% have completed an Advance Directive. Lack of knowledge and awareness regarding ACP is the most common reason people have not completed an Advance Directive. The purpose of this quasi-experimental Doctor of Nursing Practice pilot project was to determine if an educational video intervention increased Advance Care Planning knowledge and Advance Directive completion in 30 community-dwelling Veterans whom are members of American Legion or Veterans of Foreign War Posts. Videos from the Nous Foundation were utilized for this educational intervention. Veterans were administered a questionnaire before and after the educational video intervention. This study supported the use of an educational video intervention to increase Advance Care Planning knowledge and increase participants plan to complete an Advance Directive. The implementation of this pilot project benefits the physical, psychological, psychosocial, spiritual, and financial well-being of patients, families, providers, healthcare organizations, and society

Disability coaching in a pandemic

Purpose: An applied study using convenience data was conducted to compare the experiences of neurodivergent adults undergoing workplace coaching before and during the pandemic. Design/Methodology/Approach: The naturally occurring opportunity permitted a comparison of face-to-face and remote coaching in three cohorts, pre-pandemic (100% face-to-face), forced remote (100% remote) and choice (remote or face-to-face; 85% selected remote). A total of 409 participants self-reported performance before and 12 weeks after completing an average of 11 hours coaching. Findings: Significant differences between before and after scores for performance, with large effect sizes, were reported for all three cohorts across six dependent variables: memory, time management, organisational skills, stress management, understanding neurodiversity and concentration. There was no significant difference between the cohorts in terms of the magnitude of the effect. We found significant differences between the cohorts in terms of which topics were chosen as foci for the coaching, with executive functions related topics becoming less popular in the choice cohort. Implications: We abductively reasoned our results to suggest a positive relationship between personalized environments and cognitive demands for this client group. We call for further, theoretically grounded research exploring the role of coaching and environment in understanding the work performance of neurodivergent adults at work. Originality: The study contributes to the emerging knowledge on the different experiences of in-person and video-mediated coaching. Our focus on neurodivergent employees, which are heretofore less well researched within the workplace, provides essential data to support practitioners in maximizing opportunity for a marginalized group

Ca II H and K Chromospheric Emission Lines in Late K and M Dwarfs

We have measured the profiles of the Ca II H and K chromospheric emission lines in 147 main sequence stars of spectral type M5-K7 (0.30-0.55 solar masses) using multiple high resolution spectra obtained during six years with the HIRES spectrometer on the Keck 1 telescope. Remarkably, the average FWHM, equivalent widths, and line luminosities of Ca II H and K increase by a factor of 3 with increasing stellar mass over this small range of stellar masses. We fit the H and K lines with a double Gaussian model to represent both the chromospheric emission and the non-LTE central absorption. Most of the sample stars display a central absorption that is typically redshifted by ~0.1 km/s relative to the emission, but the nature of this velocity gradient remains unknown. The FWHM of the H and K lines increase with stellar luminosity, reminiscent of the Wilson-Bappu effect in FGK-type stars. Both the equivalent widths and FWHM exhibit modest temporal variability in individual stars. At a given value of M_v, stars exhibit a spread in both the equivalent width and FWHM of Ca II H and K, due both to a spread in fundamental stellar parameters including rotation rate, age, and possibly metallicity, and to the spread in stellar mass at a given M_v. The K line is consistently wider than the H line, as expected, and its central absorption is more redshifted, indicating that the H and K lines form at slightly different heights in the chromosphere where the velocities are slightly different. The equivalent width of H-alpha correlates with Ca II H and K only for stars having Ca II equivalent widths above ~2 angstroms, suggesting the existence of a magnetic threshold above which the lower and upper chromospheres become thermally coupled.Comment: 40 pages including 12 figures and 17 pages of tables, accepted for publication in PAS