Does longer roster lead-time reduce temporary staff usage? A regression analysis of e-rostering data from 77 hospital units

Aims Utilisation of temporary nursing staff is contentious and expensive. Using e-rostering data from 77 hospital units, this research investigates whether longer roster lead-times reduce temporary staff usage. Background It is commonly assumed that longer roster approval lead-times, the time from when a roster is approved, to when it is worked, result in better, more cost-effective rosters. Consequently, many hospitals target lead-times of six weeks, a figure recommended for the UK National Health Service (NHS) in a recent governmental review. This contrasts with the minimum lead-time advocated by New South Wales Ministry of Health, which advises a shorter lead-time of two weeks. Using data from 77 hospital units, this paper explores this assumed relationship. Design Using data extracted from the e-rostering system of an NHS Acute Foundation Trust, this study uses linear regression analysis to explore the relationship between roster approval lead-time and temporary staff usage. The data were captured over a period of nine months from 15th February 2016 to 23rd October 2016, a total of 693 rosters. Results/Findings This research suggests that late roster approval may contribute to as much as 37% of temporary staff usage, while approval 4-6 weeks prior to the roster being worked reduces this to approximately 15%. However, this is only relevant under specific conditions. Importantly, this should be considered before mandating lead times across all units. Conclusions This research implies that the optimum approval lead-time lies between four to six weeks, however, given other challenges, achieving this in practice may prove difficult

Retarded dipole-dipole dispersion interaction potential for helium

The retarded dipole-dipole dispersion interaction potential in helium is evaluated from a set of very accurate effective dipole transition frequencies and oscillator strengths already obtained from a variational calculation. The asymptotic form changes from the inverse sixth to the inverse seventh power of the nuclear separation as the atoms move apart. Simple representations of the potential are given for use in scattering and structure calculations. © 1995 The American Physical Society

Stress Alters Rates and Types of Loss of Heterozygosity in Candida albicans

Genetic diversity is often generated during adaptation to stress, and in eukaryotes some of this diversity is thought to arise via recombination and reassortment of alleles during meiosis. Candida albicans, the most prevalent pathogen of humans, has no known meiotic cycle, and yet it is a heterozygous diploid that undergoes mitotic recombination during somatic growth. It has been shown that clinical isolates as well as strains passaged once through a mammalian host undergo increased levels of recombination. Here, we tested the hypothesis that stress conditions increase rates of mitotic recombination in C. albicans, which is measured as loss of heterozygosity (LOH) at specific loci. We show that LOH rates are elevated during in vitro exposure to oxidative stress, heat stress, and antifungal drugs. In addition, an increase in stress severity correlated well with increased LOH rates. LOH events can arise through local recombination, through homozygosis of longer tracts of chromosome arms, or by whole-chromosome homozygosis. Chromosome arm homozygosis was most prevalent in cultures grown under conventional lab conditions. Importantly, exposure to different stress conditions affected the levels of different types of LOH events, with oxidative stress causing increased recombination, while fluconazole and high temperature caused increases in events involving whole chromosomes. Thus, C. albicans generates increased amounts and different types of genetic diversity in response to a range of stress conditions, a process that we term “stress-induced LOH” that arises either by elevating rates of recombination and/or by increasing rates of chromosome missegregation

Delayed developmental changes in neonatal vocalizations correlates with variations in ventral medial hypothalamus and central amygdala development in the rodent infant: Effects of prenatal cocaine

While variations in neonatal distress vocalizations have long been shown to reflect the integrity of nervous system development following a wide range of prenatal and perinatal insults, a paucity of research has explored the neurobiological basis of these variations. To address this, virgin Sprague-Dawley rats were bred and divided into three groups: (1) untreated, (2) chronic-cocaine treated (30mg/kg/day, gestation days (GDs) 1–20); or (3) chronic-saline treated (2mg/kg/day, GDs 1–20). Pregnant dams were injected with Bromodeoxyuridine (10mg/kg) on GDs 13–15 to label proliferating cells in limbic regions of interest. Ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) were recorded on PNDs 1, 14, and 21, from one male and female pup per litter. Variations in acoustic properties of USVs following cocaine-exposure were age and sex-dependent including measures of total number, total duration and amplitude of USVs, and percent of USVs with at least one harmonic. Following USV testing brains were stained with standard fluorescent immunohistochemistry protocols and examined for variations in neuronal development and if variations were associated with acoustic characteristics. Limbic region developmental differences following cocaine-exposure were sex- and age-dependent with variations in the ventral medial hypothalamus and central amygdala correlating with variations in vocalizations on PND 14 and 21. Results suggest maturation of the ventral medial hypothalamus and central amygdala may provide the basis for variations in the sound and production of USVs. As vocalizations may serve as a neurobehavioral marker for nervous system integrity, understanding the neurobiological basis of neonatal vocalizations may provide the basis for early intervention strategies in high-risk infant populations

Political leadership and the politics of performance:France, Syria and the chemical weapons crisis of 2013

This article draws upon developments in UK research on political rhetoric and political performance in order to examine the incident in 2013 when French President François Hollande committed French forces to a US-led punitive strike against Syria, after the use of chemical weapons in a Damascus suburb on 21 August. The US-led retaliation did not take place. This article analyses Hollande's declaration on 27 July and his TV appearance on 15 September. His rhetoric and style are best understood as generic to the nature of the presidential office of the Fifth Republic. The article concludes by appraising how analysis of the French case contributes to the developing literature on rhetoric, celebrity and performance

Towards \u3csup\u3e26\u3c/sup\u3eNa via (d,p) with SHARC and TIGRESS and a novel zero-degree detector

Nucleon transfer experiments have in recent years begun to be exploited in the study of nuclei far from stability, using radioactive beams in inverse kinematics. New techniques are still being developed in order to perform these experiments. The present experiment is designed to study the odd-odd nucleus 26Na which has a high density of states and therefore requires gamma-ray detection to distinguish between them. The experiment employed an intense beam of up to 3×107 pps of 25Na at 5.0 MeV/nucleon from the ISAC-II facility at triumf. The new silicon array SHARC was used for the first time and was coupled to the segmented clover gamma-ray array TIGRESS. A novel thin plastic scintillator detector was employed at zero degrees to identify and reject reactions occurring on the carbon component of the (CD)2 target. The efficiency of the background rejection using this detector is described with respect to the proton and gamma-ray spectra from the (d,p) reaction. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd

A need for logical and consistent anatomical nomenclature for cutaneous nerves of the limbs

The system of anatomical nomenclature needs to be logical and consistent. However, variations in translation to English of the Latin and Greek terminology used in Nomina Anatomica and Terminologia Anatomica have led to some inconsistency in the nomenclature of cutaneous nerves in the limbs. An historical review of cutaneous nerve nomenclature reveals that there are two general naming conventions: one primarily American and one primarily British. The American convention presents cutaneous nerves of the limbs in the format “medial brachial cutaneous nerve,” while the British convention presents the same nerve as “medial cutaneous nerve of the arm,” thereby translating “brachii” to “of the arm.” If logically and consistently applied throughout the body, the British convention would rename the sural nerve to the “nerve of the calf,” the brachial artery would become the “artery of the arm,” the femoral nerve would be “nerve of the thigh,” and femur would be “bone of the thigh” or “thigh bone.” The British convention leads to many other nomenclatural inconsistencies, which would seem to make learning anatomy more difficult for the beginning student. In this era of contracting anatomy curricula, every effort should be made to keep anatomical nomenclature simple, logical, and consistent. Anat Sci Ed 2:126–134, 2009. © 2009 American Association of Anatomists.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/63079/1/90_ftp.pd

Shell evolution approaching the N=20 island of inversion : Structure of 26Na

The levels in 26Na with single particle character have been observed for the first time using the d(25Na, pγ) reaction at 5 MeV/nucleon. The measured excitation energies and the deduced spectroscopic factors are in good overall agreement with (0+1)hω shell model calculations performed in a complete spsdfp basis and incorporating a reduction in the N=20 gap. Notably, the 1p3/2 neutron configuration was found to play an enhanced role in the structure of the low-lying negative parity states in 26Na, compared to the isotone 28Al. Thus, the lowering of the 1p3/2 orbital relative to the 0f7/2 occurring in the neighbouring Z=10 and 12 nuclei - 25,27Ne and 27,29Mg - is seen also to occur at Z=11 and further strengthens the constraints on the modelling of the transition into the island of inversion