Nurses\u27 Perceptions of Structural Empowerment: A Practice Review Process Pilot

Nurses are professionally and morally obliged to monitor and evaluate nursing practice via active participation in review mechanisms that are designed to promote patient safety and care delivery, thereby improving patient care quality (American Nurses Association [ANA], 1988, 2001, 2004; O\u27Rourke, 2006). The purpose of this Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) project was to develop, pilot, and evaluate a nurse practice review process with frontline nurses within Fresno Heart & Surgical Hospital (FHSH), a small specialty hospital, affiliated with Community Medical Centers (CMC) in Fresno, California. A nurse practice algorithm was subsequently developed and structural empowerment was assessed with the Conditions of Work Effectiveness Questionnaire-II (CWEQ-II) (Laschinger, Finegan, Shamian, & Wilk, 2001). While there was a small sample size, the DNP project evaluation demonstrated that frontline nurses want to participate in improvement activities within the facility and believed the nurse practice review algorithm would effectively monitor and evaluate nursing practice

Anomalous velocity distributions in active Brownian suspensions

Large scale simulations and analytical theory have been combined to obtain the non-equilibrium velocity distribution, $f(v)$, of randomly accelerated particles in suspension. The simulations are based on an event-driven algorithm, generalised to include friction. They reveal strongly anomalous but largely universal distributions which are independent of volume fraction and collision processes, which suggests a one-particle model should capture all the essential features. We have formulated this one-particle model and solved it analytically in the limit of strong damping, where we find that $f(v)$ decays as $1/v$ for multiple decades, eventually crossing over to a Gaussian decay for the largest velocities. Many particle simulations and numerical solution of the one-particle model agree for all values of the damping.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Alternaria in food: Ecophysiology, mycotoxin production and toxicology

Alternaria species are common saprophytes or pathogens of a wide range of plants pre- and post-harvest. This review considers the relative importance of Alternaria species, their ecology, competitiveness, production of mycotoxins and the prevalence of the predominant mycotoxins in different food products. The available toxicity data on these toxins and the potential future impacts of Alternaria species and their toxicity in food products pre- and post-harvest are discussed. The growth of Alternaria species is influenced by interacting abiotic factors, especially water activity (a w ), temperature and pH. The boundary conditions which allow growth and toxin production have been identified in relation to different matrices including cereal grain, sorghum, cottonseed, tomato, and soya beans. The competitiveness of Alternaria species is related to their water stress tolerance, hydrolytic enzyme production and ability to produce mycotoxins. The relationship between A. tenuissima and other phyllosphere fungi has been examined and the relative competitiveness determined using both an Index of Dominance (I D ) and the Niche Overlap Index (NOI) based on carbon-utilisation patterns. The toxicology of some of the Alternaria mycotoxins have been studied; however, some data are still lacking. The isolation of Alternaria toxins in different food products including processed products is reviewed. The future implications of Alternaria colonization/infection and the role of their mycotoxins in food production chains pre- and post-harvest are discussed

Numerical Simulations of Bouncing Jets

Bouncing jets are fascinating phenomenons occurring under certain conditions when a jet impinges on a free surface. This effect is observed when the fluid is Newtonian and the jet falls in a bath undergoing a solid motion. It occurs also for non-Newtonian fluids when the jets falls in a vessel at rest containing the same fluid. We investigate numerically the impact of the experimental setting and the rheological properties of the fluid on the onset of the bouncing phenomenon. Our investigations show that the occurrence of a thin lubricating layer of air separating the jet and the rest of the liquid is a key factor for the bouncing of the jet to happen. The numerical technique that is used consists of a projection method for the Navier-Stokes system coupled with a level set formulation for the representation of the interface. The space approximation is done with adaptive finite elements. Adaptive refinement is shown to be very important to capture the thin layer of air that is responsible for the bouncing

Transitions and crossover phenomena in fully frustrated XY systems

We study the two-dimensional fully frustrated XY (FFXY) model and two related models, a discretization of the Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson Hamiltonian for the critical modes of the FFXY model and a coupled Ising-XY model, by means of Monte Carlo simulations on square lattices L x L, L=O(10^3). We show that their phase diagram is characterized by two very close chiral and spin transitions, at T_ch > T_sp respectively, of the Ising and Kosterlitz-Thouless type. At T_ch the Ising regime sets in only after a preasymptotic regime, which appears universal to some extent. The approach is nonmonotonic for most observables, with a wide region controlled by an effective exponent nu_eff=0.8.Comment: 9 page

Work and taxes: allocation of time in OECD countries

Policymakers devote a great deal of attention to short-run fluctuations in the labor market. Central banks monitor indicators of labor market tightness in the conduct of monetary policy due to the potential implications for inflation. And fiscal authorities are concerned with the budget consequences of fluctuations in the labor market because they affect both revenues and expenditure programs. More generally, these fluctuations may be associated with significant losses in welfare. ; This article stems from a striking empirical observation about long-run variations in labor market outcomes: Long-run changes in total hours of work in OECD countries exceed the variation of hours worked over the business cycle in a representative country (say, the United States) by almost an order of magnitude. If understanding changes in hours of work of the magnitude of business cycle fluctuations is an important policy concern, then understanding the sources of these trend differences is also crucial. Surprisingly, the academic and policy debates have focused on the business cycle movements in the labor market, almost ignoring low frequency changes. ; Lee Ohanian, Andrea Raffo, and Richard Rogerson describe the steep decline in average hours worked and the large variation across countries in the magnitude of this decline. Next, they find that changes in labor taxes account for a large share of the trend differences. Finally, they find that countries with high tax rates devote less time to market work, but more time to home activities, such as cooking and cleaning. Moreover, this reallocation of time from market work to home work is much stronger for females than for males.Taxation ; Labor market ; Hours of labor

Long-Term Changes in Labor Supply and Taxes: Evidence from OECD Countries, 1956-2004

We document large differences in trend changes in hours worked across OECD countries over the period 1956-2004. We then assess the extent to which these changes are consistent with the intratemporal first order condition from the neoclassical growth model. We find large and trending deviations from this condition, and that the model can account for virtually none of the changes in hours worked. We then extend the model to incorporate observed changes in taxes. Our findings suggest that taxes can account for much of the variation in hours worked both over time and across countries.