Person-Centered Health Records

poster abstractCurrent Personal Health Records (PHRs) have been in existence for more than a decade. However, to date, they have not been able to attract the attention of mainstream patients. This limited widespread adoption may possibly be due to a lack of support of the users in efficiently and effectively managing their health records. The exiting PHRs seem to be even less useful to health care providers in support of their decision-making process. Most PHRs include an emergency profile which is entered by the user and can be accessed by emergency care providers. This information is useful and in critical situation may be the only information available to health care providers. However, the PHRs also often rely on the user to enter other health-related information instead of facilitating a user-friendly automated and personalized data integration model with external data sources. User-entered data can make health records lack reliability and render the underlying application difficult to manage for layman users. Furthermore, current PHRs are organized to facilitate data acquisition rather than based on ease of access and of management by mainstream users. In this paper, we propose a new architecture for PHRs that we believe can overcome the lack of personalization and data integration in current systems thereby leading to a more user-friendly PHR model that may be able to gain active mainstream engagement. The architecture of the proposed PHR is patient-centric and socially-driven. It allows the users to customize their health records and make these records more available to health care providers for tracking, review, and editing. The proposed system will also encourage large scale community engagement and participation in health related research

Growing Pains: Self-Efficacy Development in Resident Assistants

This qualitative study examined the perspectives of Resident Assistants’ (RAs) in terms of job responsibilities, the interplay between job tasks and self-efficacy, and mitigating factors that impact the RAs self-efficacy. Mastery experiences, verbal persuasions, and staff dynamic were perceived as the primary mitigating factors that positively and negatively impact a Resident Assistant’s self-efficacy. Although not shared by all the participants, other migrating factors included vicarious experiences and physiological/affective states. Student affairs professionals should focus on the impact of staff dynamic, the why and how tasks are completed, and placing a greater emphasis on recognizing the work of resident assistants. It is important to put more attention into supporting Resident Assistants and enhancing their self-efficacy as the role becomes more complex and demanding at institutions of higher learning

A Content Analysis of the Portrayals of Female Journalists Before and After the Second-Wave Feminist Movement

The purpose of this master\u27s thesis is to investigate the possibility of a correlation between the portrayals of female journalists portrayed in films before and after the second-wave feminist movement. The study uses real-world factors to compare the characteristics of the portrayals of the female journalists. Two coders viewed eight films to determine possible correlations in the following: relationships status, whether the characters had children, whether the sob sister persona was portrayed, and the characters\u27 career advancement (if any)

Aspen simulation of furfural and hydroxymethylfurfural production from biomass

Biomass field liquefaction is a concept where green biomass is chemically treated to produce organic liquids using small-scale equipment in the field. If liquefaction occurs as the crop is harvested, the energy requirements for growing the biomass can be charged to the crop as if the biomass were left in the field. The energy in the organic liquid product is available at the expense of the energy required by the process. A simplified process was simulated using ASPEN to assess the energy production feasibility. Acid catalyzed liquefaction of cellulose and hemicellulose solids produces furfural and hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF). The simulation assumed furfural from xylans and HMF from hexosans were the only organic products. Reaction rate was regressed from published data. Complete physical properties were estimated for HMF using group contribution methods (Marrero-Pardillo, critical properties; Benson, ideal gas heat capacity and standard heat of formation; UNIFAC, vapor-liquid-liquid equilibrium). Two figures of merit were determined over a range of process temperatures, residence times, and feed compositions (xylan, hexosan, and a mixture representative of corn stover). Maximum energy recovery ratio was nearly 2/3 and represents the ratio of combustion energy in the organic liquid product minus energy required for the reactor to biomass feed combustion energy. This value occurred at short residence time, desirable for field liquefaction. The product to process energy ratio is the ratio of the combustion energy in the organic liquid product to the process energy requirements. The 9:1 maximum occurred with low temperature and high conversion (long residence time). The value was greater than 7:1 for high temperature and conversion (short residence time), which compares favorably with the enzymatic ethanol biomass reported value of 2.61:1. --Abstract, page iii

What you see and what you are told: feedback does not diminish Action-Specific Perception

2016 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.The action-specific perception account claims that ability to act causes differences in perception of task relevant stimuli. Critics argue that a response bias occurs, not a difference in perception. Feedback has empirical support for affecting response biases and distinguishing between response biases and perceptual biases. Feedback was given during an action-specific perception paradigm to determine how much of the action-specific effect could be explained by response biases. Participants played a computer-based game of tennis. The ball moved across the screen at various speeds between the two anchor speeds on which they were previously trained. Ability to act was manipulated by varying the size of the paddle used to block the ball. After each blocking attempt, participants performed a speed judgment task. Participants typically report the ball as moving faster when using a small paddle than when they use a big paddle. In Experiment 1, participants completed pre-feedback, feedback, and post-feedback phases with interleaved paddle sizes. Paddle size had a significant effect on speed judgments in all three phases and did not diminish when feedback was given. It is possible that participants did not receive enough feedback and so in experiment 2 participants received feedback during the entire experiment. Again, feedback did not eliminate the effect of paddle size on speed judgments. Experiment 3 examined how much of the difference in reported speeds could be explained by response biases. False feedback was used to create a response bias opposing the effect of paddle size on speed. A multilevel linear regression suggests that while both feedback and action ability affects reported speed, in the final model there is no significant interaction between these variables. Results support the claim that action affects perception and is evidence against a primarily response bias account of action-specific effects

A Novel Conceptual Architecture for Person-Centered Health Records

Personal health records available to patients today suffer from multiple limitations, such as information fragmentation, a one-size-fits-all approach and a focus on data gathered over time and by institution rather than health conditions. This makes it difficult for patients to effectively manage their health, for these data to be enriched with relevant information from external sources and for clinicians to support them in that endeavor. We propose a novel conceptual architecture for person-centered health record information systems that transcends many of these limitations and capitalizes on the emerging trend of socially-driven information systems. Our proposed personal health record system is personalized on demand to the conditions of each individual patient; organized to facilitate the tracking and review of the patient's conditions; and able to support patient-community interactions, thereby promoting community engagement in scientific studies, facilitating preventive medicine, and accelerating the translation of research findings