4,667 research outputs found
EXAMINING QUALITY INDICATOR RATES FOR OLDER HOME CARE CLIENTS WITH DUAL SENSORY IMPAIRMENT (DSI) AND EXPLORING THE HETEROGENEITY WITHIN DSI.
Older adults with impairments in both hearing and vision, called dual sensory impairment (DSI), are at an increased risk of negative health outcomes such as impaired communication and difficulties with mobility. It is unknown whether DSI is associated with potential quality of care issues. This study used a set of home care quality indicators (HCQIs) to examine potential quality issues in older clients (65+) with DSI. Further, it looked to explore how HCQI rates differed based on the geographic region of care and whether the client’s level of hearing and vision impairment was related to certain HCQIs. The HCQIs were generated from data collected using the Resident Assessment Instrument for Home Care and capture undesirable outcomes (e.g., falls, cognitive decline). Higher rates indicate a greater frequency of experiencing the issue. In this sample (n=352,656), the average age was 82.8 years (sd=7.9), the majority were female (63.2%), and 20.5% experienced DSI. Compared to those without DSI, clients with DSI had higher rates across 20 of the 22 HCQIs. The HCQI rates differed by geographic region, with specific regions consistently performing worse than others. Finally, the level of hearing and vision impairment was related to certain HCQIs more than others, for example hearing impairment appeared to be more related to the quality indicator measuring communication difficulty. Overall, the hope is that this information can help to identify some of the potential issues around quality and in turn, assist in continually improving the services being provided to these clients
Urban-rural contrasts in Arbor Week in South Africa
Trees provide people with environmental benefits. Greening projects have been implemented worldwide, but many of them have frustratingly low participation levels. In South Africa, tree-planting campaigns such as the national Arbor Week are generally aimed at schools. Because of the remoteness of rural schools, there are urban / rural disparities in standards of education, infrastructure and support provided at schools, and hence we hypothesized that these disparities would be mirrored in tree-planting activities associated with national Arbor Week. In the study reported here, 236 urban and rural schools were assessed by means of postal surveys and subsampled via direct interviews, as to their participation in Arbor Week activities, the provision of trees, constraints to participation, and the perceived benefits of planting trees. Very few urban schools had never participated in any Arbor Week activities, whereas one-fifth of rural ones had never participated in any way. Urban schools participated in a greater number of Arbor Week activities than rural schools, including tree-planting, displaying posters and having speeches. Thus, overall information about Arbor Week is lacking in rural areas compared to urban ones. Rural schools derived more benefits from planting trees, with shade and education being the primary benefits overall. Rural schools were supplied with trees by NGOs, whereas urban schools received trees from individual or company donations. The major constraints to tree-planting are livestock damage, water shortages, vandalism and theft. These obstacles need to be addressed in a holistic fashion in order to improve the participation and success of National Arbor Week as a vehicle for tree-planting and environmental awareness
An Environmental and Energy Information System
The Environmental Information System Office (EISO) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) provides information support for researchers and administrators involved with energy and environmental policy and progress. Multiple EISO activities for various governmental agencies have resulted in establishment of compatible data bases concerned with energy and environmental information, methods for effectively developing these, development and computer display of numerical data summaries, and reports evaluating published information. Direction is provided by continuing dialogue between users and information system staff
On the investigations of galaxy redshift periodicity
In this article we present a historical review of study of the redshift
periodicity of galaxies, starting from the first works performed in the
seventies of the twentieth century until the present day. We discuss the
observational data and methods used, showing in which cases the discretization
of redshifts was observed. We conclude that galaxy redshift periodisation is an
effect which can really exist. We also discussed the redshift discretization in
two different structures: the Local Group of galaxies and the Hercules
Supercluster. Contrary to the previous studies we consider all galaxies which
can be regarded as a structure member disregarding the accuracy of velocity
measurements. We applied the power spectrum analysis using the Hann function
for weighting, together with the jackknife error estimator. In both the
structures we found weak effects of redshift periodisation.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, to be published in Part. and Nucl. Lett. 200
On the relation between circular velocity and central velocity dispersion in high and low surface brightness galaxies
In order to investigate the correlation between the circular velocity Vc and
the central velocity dispersion of the spheroidal component sigma_c, we
analyzed these quantities for a sample of 40 high surface brightness disc
galaxies (hereafter HSB), 8 giant low surface brightness spiral galaxies
(hereafter LSB), and 24 elliptical galaxies characterized by flat rotation
curves. We find that the Vc-sigma_c relation is descri ed by a linear law out
to velocity dispersions as low as sigma_c~50km/s, while in previous works a
power law was adopted for galaxies with sigma_c>80k/ms.
Elliptical galaxies with Vc based on dynamical models or directly derived
from the HI rotation curves follow the same relation as the HSB galaxies in the
Vc-sigma_c plane. On the contrary, the LSB galaxies follow a different
relation, since most of them show either higher Vc (or lower sigma_c) with
respect to the HSB galaxies. This argues against the relevance of baryon
collapse in the radial density profile of the dark matter haloes of LSB
galaxies. (abridged)Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, ApJ in pres
Conversion of an Atomic Fermi Gas to a Long-Lived Molecular Bose Gas
We have converted an ultracold Fermi gas of Li atoms into an ultracold
gas of Li molecules by adiabatic passage through a Feshbach resonance.
Approximately molecules in the least-bound, ,
vibrational level of the X singlet state are produced with an
efficiency of 50%. The molecules remain confined in an optical trap for times
of up to 1 s before we dissociate them by a reverse adiabatic sweep.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Letter
Chain Galaxies are Edge-On Low Surface Brightness Galaxies
Deep HST WFPC2 images have revealed a population of very narrow blue galaxies
which Cowie et al. (1996) have interpreted as being a new morphological class
of intrinsically linear star forming galaxies at . We show that the
same population exists in large numbers at low redshifts (z=0.03) and are
actually the edge-on manifestation of low surface brightness disk galaxies.Comment: 18 pages + 3 pages of figures. Uuencoded, gzipped, tar file of 1
latex file, 5 figures, and 2 latex style files. To appear in the
Astrophysical Journal Letter
Post-Disaster Housing Reconstruction in Sri Lanka: What Methodology?
Research methodology is the procedural framework within which the research is conducted. This includes the overall
approach to a problem that could be put into practice in a research process, from the theoretical underpinning to the
collection and analysis of data. Choice of methodology depends on the primary drivers: topic to be researched and the
specific research questions. Hence, methodological perspectives of managing stakeholder expectations of PDHR context
are composed of research philosophies, research strategy, research design, and research techniques. This research belonged
to social constructivism or interpretivism within a philosophical continuum. The nature of the study was more toward
subjectivism where human behavior favored voluntary stance. Ontological, methodological, epistemological, and axiological
positioning carried the characteristics of idealism, ideographic, anti-positivism, and value laden, respectively. Data collection
comprises two phases, preliminary and secondary. Exploratory interviews with construction experts in the United Kingdom
and Sri Lanka were carried out to refine the interview questions and identify the case studies. Case study interviews during
the secondary phase took place in Sri Lanka. Data collected at the preliminary stage were used to assess the attributes of
power, legitimacy/proximity, and urgency of stakeholders to the project using Stakeholder Circle™ software. Moreover,
the data collected at secondary phase via case studies will be analyzed with NVivo 8. This article aims to discuss these
methodological underpinnings in detail applied in a post-disaster housing reconstruction context in Sri Lanka
Recursion operator for stationary Nizhnik--Veselov--Novikov equation
We present a new general construction of recursion operator from zero
curvature representation. Using it, we find a recursion operator for the
stationary Nizhnik--Veselov--Novikov equation and present a few low order
symmetries generated with the help of this operator.Comment: 6 pages, LaTeX 2
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