Should Dogs and Cats be Given as Gifts?

Policies that state pets should not be adopted as gifts are prevalent at animal welfare organizations, despite the fact that this belief is unfounded. Denying adopters who intend to give the animals as gifts may unnecessarily impede the overarching goal of increasing adoptions of pets from our nations' shelter system. We found that receiving a dog or cat as a gift was not associated with impact on self-perceived love/attachment, or whether the dog or cat was still in the home. These results suggest there is no increased risk of relinquishment for dogs and cats received as a gift

Parental Verbal Responsiveness during Prelinguistic Vocal Development: Variability and Association with Language Outcomes

The current study explored infants’ prelinguistic vocalizations with mothers and fathers, in addition to how parents responded to infants’ vocalizations. In particular, we were interested in determining if mothers and fathers differed in their level of responsivity, or in specific types of responses. In addition, we examined the relation between parents’ responsiveness and language development. To test this, we observed seven infants once per month from age 8-12 months with their mothers and fathers separately during free play to compare parental verbal and behavioral responses to infants’ vocalizations. The main findings of this study are that: 1) infants did not differ in their vocal production when playing with mothers and fathers; 2) mothers and fathers did not differ in overall responsiveness or responsiveness to vowel-like (V) or consonant-vowel (CV) vocalizations. Interestingly, we found that parents tended to respond to proportionally more V vocalizations than CV vocalizations, and previous studies have found no differences in responses to V vs. CV vocalizations. Importantly, both mothers and fathers produced sensitive responses significantly more than redirective responses. This means that parents are more likely to respond to their infant’s vocalizations semantically and verbally rather than semantically behaviorally. Given that parents’ most frequent responses were sensitive vocal responses, we classified mothers’ and father’s responses as ten specific speech acts. Overall, the most frequent speech acts by parents were questioning, naming, imitating and descriptives, whereas the least frequent speech acts by parents were prohibiting, exclamation, and affirmation. However, parents varied slightly depending on whether infants produced V or CV vocalizations. Play vocalizations were more frequent than prohibitions, affirmations, and exclamations when parents responded to V vocalizations, whereas when parents responded to CV vocalizations, imitations and questions were most frequent responses. In addition, parents imitated CV more than V vocalizations. A novel aspect of our study is that we not only examined maternal responsiveness but also paternal responsiveness to compare mothers and fathers and to investigate fathers’ impact on infants’ language growth. Fathers were similar to mothers in their production of sensitive verbal and behavioral responses; however, there was a trend that fathers produced fewer specific speech acts compared to mothers. Further studies are required to investigate how specific speech acts specifically relate to infants’ language outcomes

Big data based intelligent decision support system for sustainable regional development

Timely intelligent decision making is increasingly important for modern society. With the availability of big data and advanced artificial intelligence in decision making, more objective and evidence-based quantitative smart decisions can be made in a timely manner. This research proposed a big data based intelligent decision support system (B-IDSS) for sustainable business development. The system can be used by both the government agencies and corporate business (e.g. farms. mining) in advanced planning, collaboration and management. This paper also addresses the performance optimization as bilevel decision-making problem with one leader and multiple followers. An extended Kuhn-Tucker approach is introduced as one of the algorithms that can be adapted in the system

A systematic review examining reducing unplanned hospital admissions in adults with cancer

Review question:1.What interventions have been tested and have successfully reduced unplanned hospital admissions in adults with cancer?2.What are the factors associated with unplanned hospital admissions in adults with cancer

Developing a model of evacuation after an earthquake in Lebanon

This article describes the development of an agent-based model (AMEL, Agent-based Model for Earthquake evacuation in Lebanon) that aims at simulating the movement of pedestrians shortly after an earthquake. The GAMA platform was chosen to implement the model. AMEL is applied to a real case study, a district of the city of Beirut, Lebanon, which potentially could be stricken by a M7 earthquake. The objective of the model is to reproduce real life mobility behaviours that have been gathered through a survey in Beirut and to test different future scenarios, which may help the local authorities to target information campaigns.Comment: 8 pages, 11 figures, ISCRAM Vietnam Conference, November 201

Emergency admissions and subsequent inpatient care through an emergency oncology service at a tertiary cancer centre: service users’ experiences and views

Purpose Avoiding unnecessary emergency admissions and managing those that are admitted more effectively is a major concern for both patients and health services. To generate evidence useful for improving services for direct patient benefit, this study explores service users’ views and experiences of emergency admissions and subsequent inpatient care.Methods Participants were recruited during a cancer-related emergency admission from a tertiary cancer centre with an emergency oncology service and emergency department. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with fifteen patients and twelve carers post hospital discharge. Interview transcripts were analyzed using framework analysis.Results Twenty patients experienced 43 emergency admissions over six months. Most admissions (35/43) followed patients presenting acutely or as emergencies with cancer treatment side-effects. Most admissions (35/43) were directly to an oncology ward following specialist advice, review and triage and thus unavoidable. Participants experienced outstanding inpatient care because of: prompt and effective symptom control and stabilization of acute conditions; continuity of cancer care and coordination between acute and long-term treatment; satisfactory professional-patient communication and information sharing; responsive, motivated and competent staff; and less restrictive visiting times. Gaps in care were identified. Conclusions Many emergency admissions are necessary for people with cancer. Future work should focus on: improving easy access to specialist advice and triage, and the process of admission; providing rapid palliation of symptoms and prompt stabilization of acute conditions, and satisfactory inpatient care; closing the circle of care for patients by actively involving primary care and palliative/end-of-life care services to address the complex needs of patients and carers