Prevention of overt motion sickness by incremental exposure to otherwise highly stressful Coriolis accelerations

Preventing motion sickness by gradual increasing exposure to Coriolis acceleratio

Employers’ responses to the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa: Revisiting the evidence

Do employers have a role to play to support people living with HIV? The literature on sub-Saharan Africa points to the existence of a positive business case that sees firms as incentivised to provide HIV-related services to HIV positive workers4. However, the evidence is narrow and incomplete, with the business case holding for a limited number of formal sector skilled workers, leaving out the majority of people living with HIV. If employers are to play a role, policy makers need to create conducive conditions for positive responses, in addition to – not in replacement of – strengthening public health care systems

What should learning designers learn?

There is widespread interest in employing designers who focus on learning, performance and education technology in many industries at a global level. In Australia, learning designers are in demand in Education, Corporate Training, Finance, Charity, Non-Government Sectors, and also in Start-Ups and Entrepreneurial arenas. This demand is despite the fact that the role of the Learning Designer is incredibly varied, contextually-based, and also unclear to many employers - and students! This suggests that there is currently an opportunity for learning designers and academics who deliver learning design content to define what it means to be a learning designer. This paper presents an Australian case study which uses design-based research methods in a pre-production mode to identify the key principles that informed the development of a course of study (what others may refer to as a program). How those principles were operationalised within the course design and more are discussed in an effort to reposition understandings of knowledge, skills and abilities for this field

Acceptance and commitment therapy delivered in a dyad after a severe traumatic brain injury: a feasibility study

Objective: There is a high prevalence of complex psychological distress after a traumatic brain injury but limited evidence of effective interventions. We examined the feasibility of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy after a severe traumatic brain injury using the criteria, investigating a therapeutic effect, and reviewing the acceptability of measures, treatment protocol, and delivery method (in a dyad of two clients and a therapist). Method: Two male outpatients with severe traumatic brain injury and associated psychological distress jointly engaged in a seven session treatment program based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy principles. Pre- and post-treatment measures of mood, psychological flexibility, and participation were taken in addition to weekly measures. Results: The intervention showed a therapeutic effect with one participant, and appeared to be acceptable for both participants with regard to program content, measures, and delivery mode by in a dyad. One participant showed both significant clinical and reliable change across several outcome measures including measures of mood and psychological flexibility. The second participant did not show a reduction in psychological inflexibility, but did show a significant drop in negative affect. Significant changes pre- to post-treatment for measures of participation were not indicated. Qualitatively, both participants engaged in committed action set in accordance with their values. Conclusions: This study suggests that Acceptance and Commitment Therapy may be feasible to be delivered in a dyad with individuals who have a severe traumatic brain injury. A further test of its potential efficacy in a phase II clinical trial is recommended

Treatment adherence

Angela has been spending a fair bit of time with Sam in recent months. She is a 29-year-old single mother with one child. She studies part-time at the local university and has managed to maintain acceptable grades. She has bipolar disorder that has been well managed with medication, in different combinations at different pOints in her illness. However, over the last month she has intermittently missed doses and is consequently becoming unwell. It is puzzling that she is missing doses because she is very attached to her child and last time she stopped medication her daughter was placed in care. The following information was obtained from her in order to undertake a functional analysis. Financially, Angela was managing well on her supporting parent benefit and the maintenance paid by the father of her child. However, her former partner was sent to jail 3 months ago and the maintenance money he was sending her dried up. As a consequence, she started falling behind in some bills about 8 weeks ago. She has told you that this worries her. On top of this, her daughter started experiencing stomach aches last week and is cranky most of the time. Angela has said that she thinks that her daughter may be lactose intolerant and believes that her local GP did not take her concerns about her daughter\u27s distress seriously enough when she took her to see him 10 days ago. Since becoming involved with Sam, Angela has struggled to keep a routine for her and her daughter and she says she forgets her medication from time to time. Sometimes Angela loses interest in sex and she thinks that her medication might reduce her libido. Angela has never received much help from her family because they don\u27t agree with her diagnosis. He father says that she is just an attention getter and that she puts it on. He says that is why she cut herself when she was a teenager. Her father states that if she just stopped \u27boozing\u27 she wouldn\u27t be so down and need the medication. Angela disagrees, stating that she has been drinking to help her sleep for years and is drinking no more or less now. Nonetheless, Angela has tried to cut down on her alcohol use over the last month and this has interfered with her sleep

Using Analytics To Challenge Conventional Baseball Wisdom

Baseball, like most other sports, has a set of tenets that began early and have survived virtually unquestioned.  Modern analytics gives us an opportunity to examine some of these long-held tenets to see if they were founded on solid evidence.  This research examines some common baseball wisdom through an initial study utilizing simulation.  In particular, the profiles of several baseball teams are constructed and various factors are examined by simulating ten baseball seasons under various configurations with the different teams. Contrary to conventional wisdom, a batting order where high-average hitters bat third in a lineup and the team’s best power hitter bats cleanup (fourth), for example, does not necessarily generate the most runs per game over the long run.  Moreover, high-average hitters with less power can generate more runs per game than power hitters with lesser averages.  Finally, it appears that hitters who perform well with runners in scoring position are more influential in helping their team score more runs than even more powerful or higher average hitters who do not produce as frequently in such cases.  Players with lower star profiles, but who rise to the occasion with runners in scoring position, can often be purchased by baseball clubs that have a more constrained payroll; teams that are less well-off financially may thus purchase or trade for these hitters and still field a team with a competitive level of high run production

Nutrition support practices in critically ill head-injured patients: a global perspective

Background: Critical illness following head injury is associated with a hypermetabolic state but there are insufficient epidemiological data describing acute nutrition delivery to this group of patients. Furthermore, there is little information describing relationships between nutrition and clinical outcomes in this population. Methods: We undertook an analysis of observational data, collected prospectively as part of International Nutrition Surveys 2007-2013, and extracted data obtained from critically ill patients with head trauma. Our objective was to describe global nutrition support practices in the first 12 days of hospital admission after head trauma, and to explore relationships between energy and protein intake and clinical outcomes. Data are presented as mean (SD), median (IQR), or percentages. Results: Data for 1045 patients from 341 ICUs were analyzed. The age of patients was 44.5 (19.7) years, 78 % were male, and median ICU length of stay was 13.1 (IQR 7.9-21.6) days. Most patients (94 %) were enterally fed but received only 58 % of estimated energy and 53 % of estimated protein requirements. Patients from an ICU with a feeding protocol had greater energy and protein intakes (p <0.001, 0.002 respectively) and were more likely to survive (OR 0.65; 95 % CI 0.42-0.99; p = 0.043) than those without. Energy or protein intakes were not associated with mortality. However, a greater energy and protein deficit was associated with longer times until discharge alive from both ICU and hospital (all p <0.001). Conclusion: Nutritional deficits are commonplace in critically ill head-injured patients and these deficits are associated with a delay to discharge alive.Lee-anne S. Chapple, Marianne J. Chapman, Kylie Lange, Adam M. Deane and Daren K. Heylan

OPTIMASI BIAYA DISTRIBUSI MATERIAL DENGAN METODE NWC (NORTH WEST CORNER) (STUDI KASUS : PEMBANGUNAN GEDUNG LABORATORIUM FAKULTAS TEKNIK UNIVERSITAS SAM RATULANGI)

Proses pendistribusian material merupakan salah satu aspek yang sangat penting untuk direncanakan, karena akan sangat berpengaruh terhadap efisiensi biaya proyek secara keseluruhan. Meningkatnya biaya proyek seringkali diakibatkan oleh proses pendistribusian material yang tidak optimal. Hal ini dapat terjadi terutama jika pekerjaan yang sedang ditangani terdiri dari beberapa proyek yang membutuhkan material dalam jumlah yang besar, dimana satu lokasi pengambilan material saja tidak akan mampu untuk mencukupi seluruh kebutuhan yang ada.Perbedaan jarak antara sejumlah sumber dengan lokasi-lokasi proyek yang ada ditambah perbedaan harga material di setiap sumber menyebabkan pihak pelaksana proyek harus menentukan suatu cara untuk mendapatkan material yang dibutuhkan dengan biaya distribusi minimum. Untuk itu diperlukan adanya metode yang dapat mengoptimalkan biaya distribusi material dari pemasalahan ini, seperti Metode North West Corner.Dari hasil pengolahan data menunjukkan bahwa dengan menggunakan Metode North West Corner, pada kasus yang ditinjau, didapatkan biaya distribusi bahan material untuk Semen sebesar Rp. 2.146.155.000,00; Pasir sebesar Rp. 123.331.214,20; dan Kerikil sebesar Rp. 698.879.141,20. Kata kunci: Optimasi, efisiensi, biaya, distribusi, material, proyek, Metode North West Corne

A close-pair binary in a distant triple supermassive black-hole system

Galaxies are believed to evolve through merging, which should lead to multiple supermassive black holes in some. There are four known triple black hole systems, with the closest pair being 2.4 kiloparsecs apart (the third component is more distant at 3 kiloparsecs), which is far from the gravitational sphere of influence of a black hole with mass $\sim$10$^9$ M$_\odot$ (about 100 parsecs). Previous searches for compact black hole systems concluded that they were rare, with the tightest binary system having a separation of 7 parsecs. Here we report observations of a triple black hole system at redshift z=0.39, with the closest pair separated by $\sim$140 parsecs. The presence of the tight pair is imprinted onto the properties of the large-scale radio jets, as a rotationally-symmetric helical modulation, which provides a useful way to search for other tight pairs without needing extremely high resolution observations. As we found this tight pair after searching only six galaxies, we conclude that tight pairs are more common than hitherto believed, which is an important observational constraint for low-frequency gravitational wave experiments.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figures. Published online by Nature on 25 June 2014. Extremely minor differences with published version exis