Streamlining Care for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Background: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a chronic and developmental disorder that affects about one out of every 65 children in California, and one in 59 children in the United States. Children with ASD have difficulty communicating and interacting with others, and experience oversensitivity to new stimuli and environments. Problem: In healthcare settings, children with ASD experience numerous challenges related to lack of adequate knowledge and education of staff regarding ASD, and lack of appropriate environmental and sensory resources which reduce quality of care provided to this population. Methods: The project took place in a Psychiatric Emergency Services (PES) Unit of a Hospital in Northern California that provides psychiatric and mental health services to approximately 15 children with ASD. This setting had no toolkit and/or sensory room to help staff better care for these children. Interventions: An educational toolkit to educate and guide staff, and a sensory room available for staff to offer children with ASD to reduce stimuli were implemented within PES. Results: 21 staff completed pre- and post- Likert-scale surveys, with 100% of the staff stated utilization of the interventions and agreeing with their effectiveness. Moreover, “Sensory Room Log” was used to evaluate the utility of the sensory room, with 100% of the staff using the sensory room for all 15 children with ASD that presented to PES (100% of children with ASD were offered and used the sensory room to decrease stimulation and promote relaxation). Conclusions: All participating staff believed the educational toolkit and the sensory room were effective interventions to help streamline and improve the quality of care provided to children with ASD in PES and recommended them to be utilized within other healthcare settings

Streamlining Care for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Background: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a chronic and developmental disorder that affects about one out of every 65 children in California, and one in 59 children in the United States. Children with ASD have difficulty communicating and interacting with others, and experience oversensitivity to new stimuli and environments. Problem: In healthcare settings, children with ASD experience numerous challenges related to lack of adequate knowledge and education of staff regarding ASD, and lack of appropriate environmental and sensory resources which reduce quality of care provided to this population. Objective: To analyze and evaluate the evidence regarding effective staff education and toolkit implementation, along with sensory room and items, and the potential impacts that these interventions can create to help mitigate this issue. Methods: To help guide the project and literature search, a PICOT question was designed and used to search across relevant databases and journals using applicable key terms to identify studies from 2012 to 2020. Selected studies were analyzed using John Hopkins Nursing Evidence-Based Practice Tools by Dang & Dearholt (2017). Results: Initial search resulted in 4157 studies across the databases and 2097 results across the journals. After applying further criteria and removing duplicates, final yield was five articles. Analysis of the five studies identified guidelines/interventions addressing behavioral and social concerns, healthcare staff knowledge and education, and sensory and environment. Conclusions: All five selected studies highlight the need and importance of implementing an educational toolkit for staff, and sensory room for children with ASD to streamline their care within healthcare settings

A method to improve transparency of electronic election process without identification

Transparency of bank accounts, nowadays, is an undeniable necessity, but no one denies that definite transparency throughout election process is not realized thus far in the world. This calls for fundamental changes in traditional electronic election methods. The new method must close the way for any complaints by the candidate as to the voting process as the public completely trusts in the voting mechanism. Synchronizing voting and votes counting improves the public's trust in the results of election. The proposed secure room-corridor of electronic voting employs election watchers and reports real time results of election along with observance of confidentiality of the votes. © 2015 The Authors

Explaination of personnel selection model in private IT companies

Maintain and enhance the quality of human resources and achieve maximum value from IT industry employees is the most important concern of managers. Most of researches in this area focus on companies’ endeavour to recruiting qualified experts in the IT industry in the next decade. The selection of qualified personnel for organizations which focus on human resouces as a strength, will be a major issue. Therefore, in this study, companies active in the field of information technology as one of the technology companies, have been examined for optimal absorption of manpower. In the present study, multi-criteria decision-making is used. IT active companies are studied in the current research. In order to design the proper employment model of this companies and due to a variety of quantitative and qualitative parameters, TOPSIS multi attribute decision making (MADM) model is used for prioritization of employment alternatives. Moreover Meta synthesis method is employed to extract the effective indices in the scientific literature. Among authentic researches, finally 7 indices are selected for TOPSIS weighted measure. According to the model, 33 alternatives are investigated at a sample active company. The model is used for three types of professions: IT project manager, information systems analyst and computer programmer. Our model is compared with the traditional methods of personnel selection. The results, shows the consistency between the model and traditional methods. At the end, cause of some contradictions is discussed

Role of brain CT scan in the diagnosis of patients with minor head injury in trauma emergency center

Currently, a large burden of hospital admissions is related to minor head trauma and its related imaging studies. One of the challenging issues for emergency physicians is brain computed tomography scan. Sensible use of computed tomography studies could minimize unnecessary radiation exposure and resource use. On the other hand, it can result in delayed or missed early treatment of intracranial injury. The aim of this review is to evaluate and summarize the costs and benefits of using diagnostic measurements in minor head trauma with particular focus on computed tomography scan and the advances and limitations of available guidelines. We studied different issues related to the current approach to minor head trauma in emergency departments. Altogether, it seems using brain computed tomography scan in the setting of emergency is a cost-effective method for the selected patients with minor head injury. However, concerning considerable costs of caring for patients with head injury and high sensitivity of brain computed tomography in terms of minor head injury, it seems reasonable to use brain computed tomography scan for a wider range of patients with minor head injury

Thermal and mechanical properties of PCM-incorporated normal and lightweight concretes containing silica fume

Improving the thermal performance of concrete, as an important construction and pavement material, by incorporating phase change materials (PCMs) has been the topic of much research. Also, various carrier agents such as lightweight aggregate (LWA) have been introduced to incorporate PCMs into concrete. However, incorporation of PCM-impregnated LWA reduces the compressive strength of concrete. In this study, the application of silica fume to improve the compressive strength of PCM-incorporated concrete is investigated. Two types of PCMs, salt hydrate PCM and polyethylene glycol PCM, were incorporated into concrete via scoria LWA, and different physical and mechanical characteristics of the concrete were studied when silica fume was incorporated into the mix. The results show that incorporation of silica fume increases the compressive strength of PCM-incorporated concrete, and at the same time does not diminish the thermal performance of the incorporated PCM. Therefore, incorporation of silica fume was found to be a promising strategy to improve the compressive strength of PCM-incorporated concrete

The Design of an Optimal and Secure Routing Model in Wireless Sensor Networks by Using PSO Algorithm

AbstractWireless sensor networks (WSNs) are consisted of tens, hundreds or even thousands of self-directed sensors which are embedded in an environment wirelessly at a distance from each other to communicate with each other, and their task is discovering and aggregation of environmental information and transmitting it to a monitoring center. Continuous movement of sensor nodes and their limited battery power causes routing problems for these types of networks. Thus, providing a reliable and secure protocol in wireless sensor networks seems crucial. Our main emphasis in this paper is on utilizing artificial intelligence techniques such as clustering and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm for finding a safe and efficient routing in wireless sensor networks

Enzyme mass transfer coefficient in aqueous two phase system using a packed extraction column

Fractional dispersed phase hold-up and dispersed side mass transfer coefficients for amyloglucosidase were measured in a 56 mm i.d. packed extraction column using a sodium sulphate-polyethylene glycol 4000 system. Raschig rings (3 to 13.3 mm), Berl saddles (12 mm), Pall rings (12.6 mm), glass spheres (5.2 mm) and structured wire gauze were used as packings. The effect of packing size was investigated in the case of ceramic Raschig rings. The effect of phase composition of the aqueous phase system also was studied. Correlations have been developed for fractional dispersed phase hold-up and volumetric mass transfer coefficient with packing voidage, dry surface area of packings, superficial dispersed phase velocity and the liquid phase physical properties

Effect of viscosity and drag reducing agents on mass transfer in liquid-liquid spray columns

The effects of dispersed phase viscosity and drag reducing agents on liquid-liquid mass transfer has been investigated in a 52 mm i.d. spray column. Methyl lsobutyl ketone was used as the continuous phase. Aqueous solutions of polyethylene glycol (0-60% w/w) and polyacrylamide (0-500 ppm)were used as the dispersed phase. Correlations have been developed for fractional phase holdup and mass transfer coefficient