Making it in America: How Charles Dickens and His Cunning Manager George Dolby Made Millions from a Performance Tour of The United States, 1867-1868

Charles Dickens embarked on a profitable journey to the United States in 1867, when he was the most famous writer in the world. He gave seventy-six public readings, in eighteen cities. Dickens and his manager, George Dolby, devised the tour to cash in on his popularity, and Dickens earned the equivalent of more than three million dollars. They created a persona of Dickens beyond the literary luminary he already was, with the help of the impresario, P.T. Barnum. Dickens became the first British celebrity to profit from paid readings in the United States. This research thesis asks how Dickens earned a fortune from his performance tour

Collaborating for Professional Development

Collaborations in higher education often focus on creating opportunities to promote student learning and development (Brower & Inkelas, 2010; Jacoby, 1999; Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, Whitt,& Associates, 2010). While student learning is the chief concern of institutions of higher education, institutional leaders should also focus on the professional development of personnel, namely faculty and student affairs administrators, who are responsible for student learning in the classroom and co-curriculum. Institutional leaders can use professional development to transform the historically insular work of academic and student affairs into a collaborative enterprise

Connectivity of Markoff mod-p graphs and maximal divisors

Markoff mod-$p$ graphs are conjectured to be connected for all primes $p$. In this paper, we use results of Chen and Bourgain, Gamburd, and Sarnak to confirm the conjecture for all $p > 3.448\cdot10^{392}$. We also provide a method that quickly verifies connectivity for many primes below this bound. In our study of Markoff mod-$p$ graphs we introduce the notion of \emph{maximal divisors} of a number. We prove sharp asymptotic and explicit upper bounds on the number of maximal divisors, which ultimately improves the Markoff graph $p$-bound by roughly 140 orders of magnitude as compared with an approach using all divisors

Qualitative extension of the EC′ Zone Diagram to a molecular catalyst for a multi-electron, multi-substrate electrochemical reaction

Traverse the EC′ Zone Diagram with a molecular H 2 -evolving electrocatalyst through systematic variation of the acid p K a , scan rate, acid concentration and catalyst concentration

A spirit of generosity: philanthropy in the Scotch Whisky Industry

Recent literature on philanthropy and business has focused on the return of capital to businesses and entrepreneurs from giving. In this paper, we show how historical context impacts the motivations and organizational forms created over time in philanthropic giving that effect and affect such returns. We do this through the prism of the changing ownership structures in the Scotch whisky industry in the twentieth century using an institutional theory lens. In doing so, we capture the story of three sisters who inherited a Scotch whisky business in the 1940s and transformed it into a hybrid philanthropic-commercial vehicle that remains in operation today. We present an extended theoretical model illustrating the interplay of context, motivation, and organizational structure over time on exchanges of capital in entrepreneurial philanthropy

Clinical consequences of a miscalibrated digoxin immunoassay

A routine audit revealed that the analytical method used to measure digoxin concentrations by our statewide pathology provider in 2009 was underestimating digoxin concentrations by 10%. The assay was recalibrated by the manufacturer in 2010, but clinical outcomes of the underestimation were never measured. This is a pilot study to describe the prescribing behavior around out-of-range digoxin concentrations and to assess whether miscalibrated digoxin immunoassays contribute to clinically relevant effects, as measured by inappropriate alterations in digoxin doses.About 30,000 digoxin concentrations across the State Hospital system were obtained in 2 periods before and after recalibration of the digoxin assay. Digoxin concentration means were calculated and compared and were statistically significantly different. Subsequently, a single-centered retrospective review of 50 randomly chosen charts was undertaken to study the clinical implications of the underestimated concentrations.Mean digoxin concentrations for 2009 and 2011 were significantly different by 8.8% (confidence interval, 7.0%-10.6%). After recalculating the 2009 concentrations to their "corrected" values, there was a 16% increase in the number of concentrations within the range when compared with the 2011 concentrations (41.48% versus 48.04%). However, overall, this did not cause unnecessary dose changes in patients who were "borderline" or outside the therapeutic range when compared with controls (P = 0.10). The majority of decisions were based on the clinical impression rather than concentration alone (85.1% versus 14.9%), even when the concentration was outside the "therapeutic range."Although recalculating digoxin concentrations measured during 2009 to their corrected values produced a significant change in concentration and values inside and outside the range, this does not seem to have had an influence on patient treatment. Rather, clinicians tended to use the clinical impression to dose digoxin

Session 1 - Vocational Education and Training: basics for teaching and research in Vocational Education and Training at universities

This session highlights the basics of Vocational Education and Training (VET). Each university has its own characteristics. The contributions seek to encourage various forms of VET. Challenges for universities and other institutions are emphasised. The contributions help draw conclusions for the Further structuring of VET in Sub-Saharan Africa. Other country-specific articles from the session concentrate on the characteristics and orientation of VET systems, thereby helping create an overall picture of the status of VET in all participating countries. The participants endeavored to analyze the current situation of VET in Sub-Saharan Africa by exploring the character and individual design of the current VET systems in the participating countries

Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors and Physical Fitness in Volunteer Firefighters

International Journal of Exercise Science 12(2): 764-776, 2019. Forty-seven percent of volunteer firefighter line of duty deaths are caused by cardiovascular events. Aggressive cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factor reduction and improved physical fitness could reduce CVD mortality within this population. We assessed CVD risk factors and physical fitness in a large cohort of volunteer firefighters to help establish a health and fitness profile of this population, which may serve as evidence for the need to initiate programs aimed at reducing morbidity and mortality caused by CVD in the volunteer fire service. Seventy-four male volunteer firefighters were assessed for eight CVD risk factors and anthropometric characteristics. Physical fitness was assessed via push-ups, sit-ups, and the YMCA step test. Sixty-eight percent of the firefighters had two or more CVD risk factors. The sample was considered obese via body fat percentage (25.3 ± 5.7%), 27% were hypertensive, 30% had hypercholesterolemia, and 46% were sedentary. The average number of sit-ups performed was 27.3 ± 10.5, which was ranked in the 25thpercentile. The average heart rate after the YMCA step test was 160.2 ± 14.6 bpm, which was ranked very poor. The number of CVD risk factors and poor physical fitness in this cohort of volunteer firefighters was noteworthy. Most volunteer firefighters in our sample were at elevated risk for CVD and had inadequate physical fitness. This evidence conveys the need to initiate physical activity and nutrition outreach programs, led by health and fitness professionals, aimed at reducing firefighter morbidity and mortality within the volunteer fire service

Can the collective intentions of individual professionals within healthcare teams predict the team's performance : developing methods and theory

Background: Within implementation research, using theory-based approaches to understanding the behaviours of healthcare professionals and the quality of care that they reflect and designing interventions to change them is being promoted. However, such approaches lead to a new range of methodological and theoretical challenges pre-eminent among which are how to appropriately relate predictors of individual's behaviour to measures of the behaviour of healthcare professionals .The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between the theory of planned behaviour proximal predictors of behaviour (intention and perceived behavioural control, or PBC) and practice level behaviour. This was done in the context of two clinical behaviours – statin prescription and foot examination – in the management of patients with diabetes mellitus in primary care. Scores for the predictor variables were aggregated over healthcare professionals using four methods: simple mean of all primary care team members' intention scores; highest intention score combined with PBC of the highest intender in the team; highest intention score combined with the highest PBC score in the team; the scores (on both constructs) of the team member identified as having primary responsibility for the clinical behaviour. Methods: Scores on theory-based cognitive variables were collected by postal questionnaire survey from a sample of primary care doctors and nurses from northeast England and the Netherlands. Data on two clinical behaviours were patient reported, and collected by postal questionnaire survey. Planned analyses explored the predictive value of various aggregations of intention and PBC in explaining variance in the behavioural data. Results: Across the two countries and two behaviours, responses were received from 37 to 78% of healthcare professionals in 57 to 93% practices; 51% (UK) and 69% (Netherlands) of patients surveyed responded. None of the aggregations of cognitions predicted statin prescription. The highest intention in the team (irrespective of PBC) was a significant predictor of foot examination Conclusion: These approaches to aggregating individually-administered measures may be a methodological advance of theoretical importance. Using simple means of individual-level measures to explain team-level behaviours is neither theoretically plausible nor empirically supported; the highest intention was both predictive and plausible. In studies aiming to understand the behaviours of teams of healthcare professionals in managing chronic diseases, some sort of aggregation of measures from individuals is necessary. This is not simply a methodological point, but a necessary step in advancing the theoretical and practical understanding of the processes that lead to implementation of clinical behaviours within healthcare teams

AAPM medical physics practice guideline 3.b.: Levels of supervision for medical physicists in clinical training

The American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) is a nonprofit professional society whose primary purposes are to advance the science, education and professional practice of medical physics. The AAPM has more than 8,000 members and is the principal organization of medical physicists in the United States. The AAPM will periodically define new practice guidelines for medical physics practice to help advance the science of medical physics and to improve the quality of service to patients throughout the United States. Existing medical physics practice guidelines will be reviewed for the purpose of revision or renewal, as appropriate, on their fifth anniversary or sooner. Each medical physics practice guideline represents a policy statement by the AAPM, has undergone a thorough consensus process in which it has been subjected to extensive review, and requires the approval of the Professional Council. The medical physics practice guidelines recognize that the safe and effective use of diagnostic and therapeutic radiology requires specific training, skills, and techniques, as described in each document. Reproduction or modification of the published practice guidelines and technical standards by those entities not providing these services is not authorized. The following terms are used in the AAPM practice guidelines: (1) Must and Must Not: Used to indicate that adherence to the recommendation is considered necessary to conform to this practice guideline. (2) Should and Should Not: Used to indicate a prudent practice to which exceptions may occasionally be made in appropriate circumstances