Stakeholder’s experiences of living and caring in technology-rich supported living environments for tenants living with dementia

From Springer Nature via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: received 2021-12-22, registration 2023-01-12, accepted 2023-01-12, pub-electronic 2023-02-01, online 2023-02-01, collection 2023-12Publication status: PublishedAcknowledgements: Acknowledgements: We would like to acknowledge the wider research team that worked within the TESA-DRI Project. We are grateful to our peer-researchers for their time and commitment to the TESA-DRI project. The project was funded by the Health and Social Care Research and Development Division Public Health Agency and Atlantic Philanthropies (COM/4955/14).Background: Technology innovation provides an opportunity to support the rising number of people living with dementia globally. The present study examines experiences of people who have dementia and live in technology enriched supported care models. Additionally, it explores caregiver’s attitudes towards technology use with the housing scheme. Methods: A qualitative research design was adopted, and eight housing schemes consented to take part in the study. A technology audit was undertaken in addition to participant interviews and caregiver survey. Seven peer researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with 22 people living with dementia. Interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. Informal and formal caregivers were invited to complete a survey to capture their attitudes towards technology use. A total of 20 informal and 31 formal caregiver surveys were returned. All surveys were input into Survey Monkey and downloaded into excel for analysis. Closed questions were analysed using descriptive statistics and open-ended questions were organised into themes and described descriptively. Results: The technology audit identified that technologies were in place from as early as 2002. Technology heterogeneity of, both passive and active devices, was found within the housing schemes. Technologies such as wearable devices were reportedly used according to need, and mobile phone use was widely adopted. The themes that developed out of the tenant interviews were: Attitudes and Engagement with Technology; Technology Enhancing Tenants Sense of Security; Seeking Support and Digital Literacy; and Technology Enabled Connection. A lack of awareness about living alongside technology was a major finding. Technologies enabled a sense of reassurance and facilitated connections with the wider community. The interaction with technology presented challenges, for example, remembering passwords, access to Wi-Fi and the identification of its use in an emergency. The caregiver survey reported a range of facilitators and barriers for the use of technology within care. Both types of caregivers held relatively similar views around the benefits of technology, however their views on issues such as privacy and consent varied. Safety was considered more important than right to privacy by family caregivers. Conclusions: The present study provides new insight into stakeholder’s experiences of living, working and caregiving alongside technology in supported living environments. As the generation of people living with dementia become more tech savvy, harnessing everyday technologies to support care could enable holistic care and support the transition through the care continuum. Advance care planning and technology assessments are at the very core of future technology provision. It is evident that a paternalistic attitudes towards technology use could impact the multitude of benefits technology can play in both health and leisure for people living with dementia and their caregivers.pubpu

The effect of exogenous corticosterone on West Nile virus infection in Northern Cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis)

The relationship between stress and disease is thought to be unambiguous: chronic stress induces immunosuppression, which likely increases the risk of infection. However, this link has not been firmly established in wild animals, particularly whether stress hormones affect host responses to zoonotic pathogens, which can be transmitted to domesticated animal, wildlife and human populations. Due to the dynamic effects of stress hormones on immune functions, stress hormones may make hosts better or poorer amplifying hosts for a pathogen contingent on context and the host species evaluated. Using an important zoonotic pathogen, West Nile virus (WNV) and a competent host, the Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis), we tested the effects of exogenous corticosterone on response to WNV infection. Corticosterone was administered at levels that individuals enduring chronic stressors (i.e., long-term inclement weather, food shortage, anthropogenic pollution) might experience in the wild. Corticosterone greatly impacted mortality: half of the corticosterone-implanted cardinals died between five - 11 days post-inoculation whereas only one of nine empty-implanted (control) birds died. No differences were found in viral titer between corticosterone- and empty-implanted birds. However, cardinals that survived infections had significantly higher average body temperatures during peak infection than individuals that died. In sum, this study indicates that elevated corticosterone could affect the survival of WNV-infected wild birds, suggesting that populations may be disproportionately at-risk to disease in stressful environments

The Ursinus Weekly, February 25, 1963

1962 Messiah recording delivered to White House by UC delegation • Young Republicans hear Staudinger on reapportionment • Changes sought in WSGA rules • Mayer tells audience communism\u27s faults • G. Dolman to speak at Methacton High seminar • Sears presents grant of $750 to Ursinus • 1962 Campus Chest begins next week • Half of students get financial aid • Dr. Creager author of 3 religious works • Sororities and fraternities pledge new members as Spring rushing ends • Spring Festival planning underway; Grace Folwell elected queen of court • Staiger gives lecture at Villanova seminar • Only 35 students donate blood • Drew\u27s Michalson gives lecture on existentialism • New parking regulations instituted in town • Staiger\u27s Disney-type films shown at Beardwood Chem meeting • Film offerings of high quality • Editorial: Those letters to the editor • Dr. F tosses pearls to swine • Greek gleanings • Error revealed in Weekly claim of publication year • Review of the Lantern by Gustavson\u27s 2 selves • Cagers edge Drew 66-64 for 3rd win, lose to Drexel 69-53 on Saturday • Matmen dump Lebanon Valley, suffer upset at PMC on Saturday • Track squad members join practice meet • Siebenson shows improvement • Mermaids splash to 3 victories • Netwomen defeat Wilson, Rosemonthttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/weekly/1288/thumbnail.jp

The Ursinus Weekly, March 18, 1963

Future of the United Nations topic of speaker Bohmrich in April • Pre-medicals see childbirth films • Stayer & Campbell representatives to all-state band • Chemistry profs to gather at UC for convention • UC students invited to attend banquet of local businessmen • Pettit appears at Controversy chat • Sharon Robbins named editor-in-chief of Weekly; Hunter, Peek, Garner selected as staff editors • Campus Chest drive extended for week • Navy information team to visit campus soon • Gordon lectures on archaeology in Forum program • Junior Prom slated for April 5 • Social Security agent to interview students • Carlton Dingman plans to attend University of Sweden next year • Young Republicans see film on parties • Montgomery County science fair to be held at UC later this month • Helfferich plans to attend Navy orientation cruise • Editorial: This is it! • Progress on freshman term papers in various stages in Rimby\u27s dorm • Letters to the editor • Student-faculty show Saturday termed success of high quality • Freedom to learn topic of PSEA film • Intramural wrestling tournament produces 5 champions from 5 teams • Baseball prospects are encouraging • Trackmen optimistic about Spring season • IM basketball title game tomorrow pits Maples against Leber-South • Netwomen finish season with loss to West Chesterhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/weekly/1291/thumbnail.jp

Controlling a Telescope Chopping Secondary Mirror Assembly Using a Signal Deconvolution Technique

We describe a technique for improving the response of a telescope chopping secondary mirror assembly by using a signal processing method based on the Lucy deconvolution technique. This technique is general and could be used for any systems, linear or non-linear, where the transfer function(s) can be measured with sufficient precision. We demonstrate how the method was implemented and show results obtained at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory using different chop throw amplitudes and frequencies. No intervention from the telescope user is needed besides the selection of the chop throw amplitude and frequency. All the calculations are done automatically once the appropriate command is issued from the user interface of the observatory's main computer.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figure

Spin Dynamics of the Magnetoresistive Pyrochlore Tl_2Mn_2O_7

Neutron scattering has been used to study the magnetic order and spin dynamics of the colossal magnetoresistive pyrochlore Tl_2Mn_2O_7. On cooling from the paramagnetic state, magnetic correlations develop and appear to diverge at T_C (123 K). In the ferromagnetic phase well defined spin waves are observed, with a gapless ($\Delta <0.04$ meV) dispersion relation E=Dq^{2} as expected for an ideal isotropic ferromagnet. As T approaches T_C from low T, the spin waves renormalize, but no significant central diffusive component to the fluctuation spectrum is observed in stark contrast to the La$_{1-x}$(Ca,Ba,Sr)$_x$MnO$_3$ system. These results argue strongly that the mechanism responsible for the magnetoresistive effect has a different origin in these two classes of materials.Comment: 4 pages (RevTex), 4 figures (encapsulated postscript), to be published in Phys. Rev. Let

Introduced and Native Congeners Use Different Resource Allocation Strategies to Maintain Performance During Infection

Hosts can manage parasitic infections using an array of tactics, which are likely to vary contingent on coevolutionary history between the host and the parasite. Here we asked whether coping ability of congeners that differ in host-parasite coevolutionary history differed in response to experimental infections with a coccidian parasite. House sparrows (Passer domesticus) and gray-headed sparrows (Passer griseus) are sympatric and ecologically similar, but house sparrows are recent colonizers of Kenya, the site of our comparison, whereas gray-headed sparrows are native. We evaluated three variables as barometers of infection coping ability: vertical flight, pectoral muscle size, and fat score. We also measured routing of a dose of 13C-labeled leucine, an essential amino acid, among tissues to compare resource allocation strategies in response to infection. We found that burden effects on performance were minimal in both species, but house sparrows maintained considerably higher burdens than gray-headed sparrows regardless of exposure. House sparrows also had more exogeneous leucine tracer in all tissues after 24 h, demonstrating a difference in the way the two species allocate or distribute resources. We argue that house sparrows may be maintaining larger resource reserves to mitigate costs associated with exposure and infection. Additionally, in response to increased parasite exposure, gray-headed sparrows had less leucine tracer in their spleens and more in their gonads, whereas house sparrows did not change allocation, perhaps indicating a trade-off that is not experienced by the introduced species

Quantitative mapping of chemical compositions with MRI using compressed sensing.

In this work, a magnetic resonance (MR) imaging method for accelerating the acquisition time of two dimensional concentration maps of different chemical species in mixtures by the use of compressed sensing (CS) is presented. Whilst 2D-concentration maps with a high spatial resolution are prohibitively time-consuming to acquire using full k-space sampling techniques, CS enables the reconstruction of quantitative concentration maps from sub-sampled k-space data. First, the method was tested by reconstructing simulated data. Then, the CS algorithm was used to reconstruct concentration maps of binary mixtures of 1,4-dioxane and cyclooctane in different samples with a field-of-view of 22mm and a spatial resolution of 344μm×344μm. Spiral based trajectories were used as sampling schemes. For the data acquisition, eight scans with slightly different trajectories were applied resulting in a total acquisition time of about 8min. In contrast, a conventional chemical shift imaging experiment at the same resolution would require about 17h. To get quantitative results, a careful weighting of the regularisation parameter (via the L-curve approach) or contrast-enhancing Bregman iterations are applied for the reconstruction of the concentration maps. Both approaches yield relative errors of the concentration map of less than 2mol-% without any calibration prior to the measurement. The accuracy of the reconstructed concentration maps deteriorates when the reconstruction model is biased by systematic errors such as large inhomogeneities in the static magnetic field. The presented method is a powerful tool for the fast acquisition of concentration maps that can provide valuable information for the investigation of many phenomena in chemical engineering applications.The authors thank for the financial support by the following grants: Microsoft Research Cambridge, and EPSRC (EP/K039318/1 and EP/K008218/1). Erik von Harbou was the recipient of a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmr.2015.09.01

Genetic and morphometric divergence of an invasive bird : the introduced house sparrow (Passer domesticus) in Brazil

Introduced species are interesting systems for the study of contemporary evolution in new environments because of their spatial and temporal scales. For this study we had three aims: (i) to determine how genetic diversity and genetic differentiation of introduced populations of the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) in Brazil varies with range expansion, (ii) to determine how genetic diversity and differentiation in Brazil compares to ancestral European populations; and (iii) to determine whether selection or genetic drift has been more influential on phenotypic divergence. We used six microsatellite markers to genotype six populations from Brazil and four populations from Europe. We found slightly reduced levels of genetic diversity in Brazilian compared to native European populations. However, among introduced populations of Brazil, we found no association between genetic diversity and time since introduction. Moreover, overall genetic differentiation among introduced populations was low indicating that the expansion took place from large populations in which genetic drift effects would likely have been weak. We found significant phenotypic divergence among sites in Brazil. Given the absence of a spatial genetic pattern, divergent selection and not genetic drift seems to be the main force behind most of the phenotypic divergence encountered. Unravelling whether microevolution (e.g., allele frequency change), phenotypic plasticity, or both mediated phenotypic divergence is challenging and will require experimental work (e.g., common garden experiments or breeding programs)