Standardized Postoperative Handoff Tool to Improve Handoff Quality

Abstract Effective communication between healthcare providers is an essential element in the delivery of safe patient care. Loss of relevant information can occur during all phases of patient care but is most inclined to occur during the handoff from the operating room to the postoperative anesthesia care unit (PACU). Evidence has indicated that the transfer of patients by anesthesia providers remains informal and brief despite practice guidelines. When pertinent details are omitted during the anesthesia handoff there is a potential increase for medical errors, delayed treatment, and patient harm. The purpose of this project was to analyze the use of a standardized handoff tool in the postoperative setting to improve anesthesia handoff accuracy and completeness at a community hospital. Results showed that the use of a standardized handoff tool improved the adequacy and completeness of the anesthesia report and improved staff satisfaction. However, a with small sample was utilized indicating potential weak internal validity of results. Therefore, further research is needed to foster a better understanding of handoff accuracy of the anesthesia care provider

Assessing the Oceanographic Conditions and Distribution of Reef Fish Assemblages Throughout the Galápagos Islands Using Underwater Visual Survey Methods

The Galápagos Islands are one of the most diverse marine ecosystems in the world because they lie at the confluence of several ocean currents in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean (ETP). The Galápagos Marine Reserve (GMR) is a 138,000 km^2 area surrounding the archipelago that is divided into several zones based on the dispersal of fauna and marine resources. The goal of this thesis was to assess the distribution and abundance of reef fish assemblages throughout the GMR and to contribute to the existing knowledge of these assemblages. This project was performed during three visits to Galápagos: 16-30 May 2013, 16-19 November 2013, and 12-24 July 2014. Reef fish assemblage composition throughout the GMR was examined by collecting qualitative and semi-quantitative data using underwater visual survey techniques. Data on current and past oceanographic conditions around Galápagos were collected through in situ measurements and examining data collected by satellites. Underwater surveys found a high species richness and wide range of trophic levels to exist across the Galápagos archipelago. Data were analyzed using several techniques including rank order of abundance (ROA), hierarchical cluster analysis, principal coordinates analysis, and regression. During 2013 surveys, 60 species from 32 families were recorded at 12 survey sites across the GMR. Through tests of similarity, it was found that fish assemblages across the GMR are not uniformly distributed and vary spatially. Ocean conditions such as temperature may influence fish assemblage composition at different islands. These results support previous studies that surveyed fish assemblages throughout the GMR and found that assemblages vary based on geographic location and that water temperature may play a role in how they are structured. In July 2014, data were collected around the northwest coast of Isla San Cristóbal at two sites previously surveyed in 2013. Fish assemblages around San Cristóbal showed little change from one year to the next in terms of species richness and diversity. Ocean temperatures were warmer and chlorophyll-a levels were lower in 2014 than in 2013, caused in part by El Niño climactic variations in the ETP during 2014. Information from this thesis may be used for a variety of applications including marine resource management and to support future zoning proposals in the GMR

‘Cin u get aff my facebook hen?’: variation and identity marking in adolescent Glaswegian girls

Chambers asserts that "adolescence requires a purposeful divergence from adult norms in favour of alternative norms instituted and reinforced by age-mates" (2009:184). Adolescents need to distinguish themselves from children and from adults. This manifests itself in language use which "differs from their parents in the frequency of certain variants" (ibid:187). I look for evidence of divergence from adult norms in the spontaneous spoken interactions of adolescent females in dance classes and youth club sessions; does this pattern of divergence emerge in the data observed? I also supplement my quantitative analysis of this spoken data with a qualitative analysis of the participants' writing on Facebook, in order to further investigate how variables are used in marking adolescent identity. The literature shows evidence of the use of certain types of variable in identity marking (e.g. phonetic variables in Stuart-Smith et al. 2007), but there is also evidence that some types of variable do not participate (e.g. morphosyntactic variables in Macafee 1994). This may be because variables from different levels of the grammar exist at different levels of speaker awareness (Trudgill 1986, Cutler 1999, Kerswill and Williams 2002). To test this, I analyse a range of variables from different levels of the grammar. I find evidence that the adolescents are diverging from the adult norms of their speech community at the lexical level, at the morphophonological level and at the phonetic level. The morphosyntactic variable which I analyse does not appear to participate in this pattern of divergence. I suggest that this may be because it is below the level of consciousness for these speakers. Although all of the speakers show a pattern of divergence from adult norms, their language use is not homogenous; there is evidence of individual stylistic choices being made both in the spoken data and the written data

Language, migration and identity at school: a sociolinguistic study with Polish adolescents in Glasgow

When young migrants enter a new community, are they able to acquire the community’s sociolinguistic norms? In this thesis, I examine the speech of 14 adolescents who were born in Poland, and who now attend a high school in the East End of Glasgow. I spend two years in this high school, conducting ethnographic analysis and collecting speech recordings. The linguistic behaviour of these young migrants is compared to that of a matched group of seven of their classmates who were born in Glasgow. Focusing on several sociolinguistic variables from different levels of the grammar, I use quantitative analysis to ask whether the Polish speakers are matching the local patterns of use shown by their Glaswegian peers. I use quantitative and qualitative analysis to explore why some individuals are matching these patterns to a greater extent than others. The results show that as a group, the Polish speakers come close to matching the rates of use shown by the Glaswegian speakers. They have successfully replicated some of the native constraints on the variation, although not all. They have also innovated some constraints on use which are not significant for the Glaswegian speakers. I suggest that these innovations represent a type of hypercorrection in some cases, and a lexical diffusion effect in others. I find that the individual learners are not all acquiring sociolinguistic variation to the same extent or in the same way. The individual differences observed are not explained by the length of time an individual has spent in Glasgow. Neither are they explained by the age at which an individual arrived in Glasgow, or by an individual’s gender. Instead, I suggest that friendship networks may play a role in the acquisition of more highly-constrained, ‘under-the-counter’ variables, and individual speaker agency and identity may play a role in the acquisition of the variables which are higher in speaker awareness

“I just sound Sco[ʔ]ish now”: The acquisition of word-medial glottal replacement by Polish adolescents in Glasgow

This article investigates the speech of adolescents who have moved directly from Poland to Glasgow, using data from a range of social contexts and comparing their speech to that of their locally-born peer-group. Focusing on the acquisition of word-medial glottal replacement, I find that the Polish participants have replicated one of the constraints shown by their locally-born peers (number of syllables), have come close to replicating another (following segment), and have three which are not significant for the Glaswegians: lexical frequency, preceding segment and speech context. The emergence of the speech context constraint for the Polish group (and not for the Glaswegians) is a novel finding, and sheds light on how learners come to understand and negotiate style in the L2. I suggest that as they are going through the acquisition process, the Polish group use speech context as an interpretive framework around which they structure their stylistic variation

The Scottish Mathematics Support Network

The preliminary meeting of the Scottish Mathematics Support Network was held at the University of St Andrews on 18 July 2008. The aim of the meeting was to initialise a support network for people working in Scottish Universities and Colleges who were either currently providing or would like to be providing mathematical and statistical support to their students. A variety of institutions were represented: St Andrews University, which at this time had a dedicated Mathematics support tutor who worked with the Effective Learning Adviser (ELA); Dundee University and Robert Gordon University, which both had a similar arrangement; Abertay University which had both a Mathematics and a Statistics support tutor who were also part of the ELA team; Glasgow University which had just appointed a Mathematics support tutor, since their Mathematics support provision was due to start in September 2008; and Edinburgh Napier University, where the Mathematics support had been successfully run by the Mathematics lecturers for the last 20 years, with Statistics support being provided by Statistics lecturers. At the University of Aberdeen, the ELA team were aware of the growing need for a specialist Mathematics support tutor and were hoping that funding for such a post would be made available in the near future

CFD modelling and prototype testing of a vertical axis wind turbines in planetary cluster formation.

This study aims to improve the applicability of Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) by investigating their feasibility in a novel planetary cluster configuration by observing its effect on efficiency and overall power density. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations were carried out using a two-dimensional vertical axis wind turbine model in ANSYS Fluent 2020 R1. This software was used to solve the transient k-omega (SST) turbulence model. For the isolated VAWT the wind velocity, rotor radius and tip speed ratio were varied to find the optimum turbine performance at a given parameter. A peak efficiency of 34.05% was attained and equivalent configuration used as the 'sun' turbine in the novel planetary design. The parametric study of the novel set up was conducted with the PCD (Pitch Circle Diameter) and oblique angular (ø) position of the smaller 'planet' turbines being varied in relation to the 'sun' turbine. The planetary system was then evaluated in terms of efficiency improvements against the isolated VAWT model. Use of the 'planet' turbines resulted in power extraction from the free stream which in turn creates varying wind velocities and improved the efficiency of the central 'sun' turbine. The optimal PCD was found to be 5D (3.75 m) and the optimum angular position of the 'planets' was discovered at 30°. Ultimately this gave a percentage increase of 1.01% from 33.04% to 34.05% when comparing the 'sun' turbine of the planetary arrangement to the optimum isolated respectively. An average improvement of 4% over the range of tip speed ratios (TSR) was found. Lastly, a scale model of the isolated VAWT was constructed and tested through wind tunnel experiments. The characteristic curve correlation was found between the CFD and experimental results which allowed validation of the CFD models

The 4th Scottish Maths Support Network meeting 2011

This year the annual meeting of the Scottish Maths Support network (SMSN) was held at the University of Strathclyde on Friday 9 September. Almost all Scottish universities were represented along with one attendee from Ireland. The meeting was organised by the SMSN committee and was sponsored by the MSOR Network. The aim of these annual meetings is to improve awareness of the progress of the Mathematics Support provision at the various institutions, and also to keep up-to-date with current thinking on the running of such support systems