Constancy and difference in the dimensions and elements of nursing practice, 1901-1981 : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of M.A. (Soc. Sci.) at Massey University

Irregular pagination: pgs 124 & 285 missingThis study presents a selective literature review in which the three components of modern nursing (practice, education and research) are identified. Consideration is given to the dimensions and elements of two of the components - nursing education and nursing practice and the relationship between these two components is investigated using the examination system of nursing education as the connective link. From the literature review presented in the first three chapters, the Nursing Education Examination. Practice Model (N.E.E.P.) has been derived for this project which examines the constancy and differences in the six stated dimensions of nursing practice and their associated elements along a time continuum from 1901 to 1981. The model is used to collect and collate the data elicited from the analysis of the five yearly sample of State Final examination papers and the identification of historical trends in the New Zealand Nursing Journal, relating to the six dimensions of nursing practice and their associated elements. This two pronged approach allowed the author to crosscheck the findings from the two data sources. In addition, changes in the composition of nursing practice are studied in one specific area; the nursing care of patients with accidental trauma. The following propositions were derived from the literature review presented in the first section of this study; 1. That the six dimensions of nursing practice (care, cure, protection, teaching, co-ordination and patient advocacy) will remain constant over time and different practice setings; 2. that the elements of each dimension will vary with time and with practice setting. The findings elicited from the analysis of surgical examination papers revealed that the three dimensions of care, cure and co-ordination occur in all the time periods investigated in this study. The same three dimensions of nursing practice are evident in at least 81% of the time periods in which questions relating to accidental trauma in the examination papers are found. Therefore these three dimensions can be said to form the "heart" of nursing practice over the years. Although fluctuations occur in the importance placed upon the dimensions, from 1961 increasing emphasis is found in all the dimensions except the cure dimension where a declining trend is demonstrated. It was found that constancy in all six dimensions of nursing practice is apparent from this time. An examination of the elements of nursing practice shows that although the three dimensions of nursing practice remain constant over the years, findings relating to the elements making up three dimensions indicate both constancy and differences. The five elements of nursing practice which make up the "core" elements of nursing practice are; general nursing care; reference to specific patients; functional status; treatments; and nurse interactions. References to these elements appear in each of the 17 time periods in the general analysis. Their importance in relation to the nursing of patients with accidental trauma is also evident. At the other extreme are the elements of sleep, blood pressure, and T.P.R. which appear in less than 3 of the 17 time periods. Reference to patient preferences/ interests are never found in the data elicited from the examination papers. Examination of accidental trauma findings reveals similar trends to the general results. From 1961 particularly the journal articles substantiate the findings elicited from the examination analysis. A brief discussion of the implications of the constancy and difference in the dimensions of nursing practice and their associated elements for nursing is included

Multilayer Complex Network Descriptors for Color-Texture Characterization

A new method based on complex networks is proposed for color-texture analysis. The proposal consists on modeling the image as a multilayer complex network where each color channel is a layer, and each pixel (in each color channel) is represented as a network vertex. The network dynamic evolution is accessed using a set of modeling parameters (radii and thresholds), and new characterization techniques are introduced to capt information regarding within and between color channel spatial interaction. An automatic and adaptive approach for threshold selection is also proposed. We conduct classification experiments on 5 well-known datasets: Vistex, Usptex, Outex13, CURet and MBT. Results among various literature methods are compared, including deep convolutional neural networks with pre-trained architectures. The proposed method presented the highest overall performance over the 5 datasets, with 97.7 of mean accuracy against 97.0 achieved by the ResNet convolutional neural network with 50 layers.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures and 4 table

How strongly do word reading times and lexical decision times correlate? Combining data from eye movement corpora and megastudies

We assess the amount of shared variance between three measures of visual word recognition latencies: eye movement latencies, lexical decision times and naming times. After partialling out the effects of word frequency and word length, two well-documented predictors of word recognition latencies, we see that 7-44% of the variance is uniquely shared between lexical decision times and naming times, depending on the frequency range of the words used. A similar analysis of eye movement latencies shows that the percentage of variance they uniquely share either with lexical decision times or with naming times is much lower. It is 5 – 17% for gaze durations and lexical decision times in studies with target words presented in neutral sentences, but drops to .2% for corpus studies in which eye movements to all words are analysed. Correlations between gaze durations and naming latencies are lower still. These findings suggest that processing times in isolated word processing and continuous text reading are affected by specific task demands and presentation format, and that lexical decision times and naming times are not very informative in predicting eye movement latencies in text reading once the effect of word frequency and word length are taken into account. The difference between controlled experiments and natural reading suggests that reading strategies and stimulus materials may determine the degree to which the immediacy-of-processing assumption and the eye-mind assumption apply. Fixation times are more likely to exclusively reflect the lexical processing of the currently fixated word in controlled studies with unpredictable target words rather than in natural reading of sentences or texts

A prototype system for observing the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation - scientific basis, measurement and risk mitigation strategies, and first results

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) carries up to one quarter of the global northward heat transport in the Subtropical North Atlantic. A system monitoring the strength of the MOC volume transport has been operating since April 2004. The core of this system is an array of moored sensors measuring density, bottom pressure and ocean currents. A strategy to mitigate risks of possible partial failures of the array is presented, relying on backup and complementary measurements. The MOC is decomposed into five components, making use of the continuous moored observations, and of cable measurements across the Straits of Florida, and wind stress data. The components compensate for each other, indicating that the system is working reliably. The year-long average strength of the MOC is 18.7±5.6 Sv, with wind-driven and density-inferred transports contributing equally to the variability. Numerical simulations suggest that the surprisingly fast density changes at the western boundary are partially linked to westward propagating planetary wave

Improved analyses of changes and uncertainties in sea surface temperature measured in situ sice the mid-nineteenth century: The HadSST2 dataset

A new flexible gridded dataset of sea surface temperature (SST) since 1850 is presented and its uncertainties are quantified. This analysis [the Second Hadley Centre Sea Surface Temperature dataset (HadSST2)] is based on data contained within the recently created International Comprehensive Ocean–Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) database and so is superior in geographical coverage to previous datasets and has smaller uncertainties. Issues arising when analyzing a database of observations measured from very different platforms and drawn from many different countries with different measurement practices are introduced. Improved bias corrections are applied to the data to account for changes in measurement conditions through time. A detailed analysis of uncertainties in these corrections is included by exploring assumptions made in their construction and producing multiple versions using a Monte Carlo method. An assessment of total uncertainty in each gridded average is obtained by combining these bias-correction-related uncertainties with those arising from measurement errors and undersampling of intragrid box variability. These are calculated by partitioning the variance in grid box averages between real and spurious variability. From month to month in individual grid boxes, sampling uncertainties tend to be most important (except in certain regions), but on large-scale averages bias-correction uncertainties are more dominant owing to their correlation between grid boxes. Changes in large-scale SST through time are assessed by two methods. The linear warming between 1850 and 2004 was 0.52° ± 0.19°C (95% confidence interval) for the globe, 0.59° ± 0.20°C for the Northern Hemisphere, and 0.46° ± 0.29°C for the Southern Hemisphere. Decadally filtered differences for these regions over this period were 0.67° ± 0.04°C, 0.71° ± 0.06°C, and 0.64° ± 0.07°C

The Elements of Effective Program Design: A Two-Level Analysis

Politics and Governance221-1