Nurse-friendly nutritional screening for patient benefit

Screening for undernutrition is highly important and may reduce morbidity and mortality. The Minimal Eating Observation and Nutrition Form – Version II (MEONF-II) is a nutritional screening tool specifically developed for use by nurses. Here, we describe the translation, performance and appropriateness of the MEONF-II for the UK. Following translation from Swedish to British English, the user-friendliness and appropriateness of the British MEONF-II was tested by 29 registered nurses and final year student nurses on 266 hospital inpatients. The new British MEONF-II was perceived as highly user-friendly and appropriate. They found the MEONF-II to compare favourably to other similar tools in terms of preference, usefulness and helpfulness in providing good nutritional care. Dependency in activities and poorer subjective health were associated with a higher undernutrition risk. These findings support the appropriateness of the British MEONF-II version and suggest it may act as a user-friendly facilitator towards good nutritional nursing care

Equal Prices for Everybody? An Empirical Analysis of the Effects of Liberalization on Electricity Prices in Europe Using the Law of One Price

Directive 2003/54/EC of the European Commission set the ground for an integrated and liberalized electricity market in Europe. According to the law of one price the possibility for perfect arbitrage and the absence of trade restrictions lead to homogeneous goods being priced uniformly across countries. The aim of this study is to test whether the law of one price is applicable to the electricity market in Europe. Since the electricity market has some unique characteristics such as simultaneous production and consumption and very high set up cost for the needed infrastructure, the law of one price is expected to be violated. Hence, additional distinct market features that can help explain possible differences in electricity prices across Europe are identified. Utilizing primarily Eurostat data we specify three models that capture trade, cost and institutional factors. We then estimate these models separately for household and industrial price differentials using ordinary least squares regression techniques. The overall results show that geographical proximity is decisive in reducing price gaps. Additionally, for household customers the factors behind price gaps are income and price regulation differences as well as the level of mutual trade. For industrial customers similar levels of network tariffs as well as network unbundling decrease price differences. Moreover, we find a strong positive effect of liberalization and regional integration on industrial price divergence. Overall, there is a strong conformation that the LOOP is more applicable to electricity prices for industrial customers than for household customers

Almost spanning subgraphs of random graphs after adversarial edge removal

Let Delta>1 be a fixed integer. We show that the random graph G(n,p) with p>>(log n/n)^{1/Delta} is robust with respect to the containment of almost spanning bipartite graphs H with maximum degree Delta and sublinear bandwidth in the following sense: asymptotically almost surely, if an adversary deletes arbitrary edges in G(n,p) such that each vertex loses less than half of its neighbours, then the resulting graph still contains a copy of all such H.Comment: 46 pages, 6 figure

Slipping Through the Cracks: Receptivity of healthcare professionals to an electronic screening tool for human trafficking

Introduction: Human trafficking is the exploitation of an individual through force or coercion, for labor or services, including commercial sex. Healthcare providers are uniquely positioned to encounter trafficked people. Prior research has found a need for increased sensitivity in identifying trafficked persons in healthcare settings, and for provider education about the issue.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1227/thumbnail.jp