Home Health Aides

Home health aides typically work for certified home health or hospice agencies that receive government funding and therefore must comply with extensive regulations. This means that home health aides must work under the direct supervision of a medical professional, usually a nurse. The aides keep records of services performed and of clients\u27 condition and progress. They report changes in the client\u27s condition to the supervisor or case manager. Aides also work with therapists and other medical staff

On the determination of micromorphic material constants from properties of the constituents

Determination of micromorphic material constants from elastic properties of constituent

Cultured epithelial autografts in the management of burn injuries: a review of the literature

Introduction. The management of large burn victims has significantly improved in the last decades. Specifically autologous cultured keratinocytes (CEA) overcame the problem of limited donor sites in severely burned patients. Several studies testing CEA's in their burn centers give mixed results on the general outcomes of burn patients. Methods. A review of publications with a minimum of 15 patients per study using CEA for the management of severe burn injury from 1989 until 2011 were recruited by using an online database including Medline, Pub Med and the archives of the medical library of the CHUV in Lausanne. Results. 18 studies with a total of 977 patients were included into this review. Most of the studies did not specify if CEA's were grafted alone or in combination with split thickness skin grafts (STSG) although most of the patients seemed to have received both methodologies in reviewed studies. The mean TBSA per study ranged from 33% to 78% in patients that were grafted with CEA's. Here no common minimum TBSA making a patient eligible for CEA grafting could be found. The definition of the "take rate" is not standardized and varied largely from 26% to 73%. Mortality and hospitalization time could not be shown to correlate with CEA use in all of the studies. As late complications, some authors described the fragility of the CEA regenerated skin. Conclusion. Since the healing of large burn victims demands for a variety of different surgical and non-surgical treatment strategies and the final outcome mainly depends on the burned surface as well as the general health condition of the patient, no definitive conclusion could be drawn from the use of CEA's of reviewed studies. From our own experience, we know that selected patients significantly profit from CEA grafts although cost efficiency or the reduction of mortality cannot be demonstrated on this particular cases

Detection and characterisation of Complement protein activity in bovine milk by bactericidal sequestration assay

Susan Maye is in receipt of a Teagasc Walsh Fellowship. Financial support by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is gratefully acknowledged.Copyright © Proprietors of Journal of Dairy Research 2015 (Institute of Food Research and the Hannah Research Institute)peer-reviewedWhile the Complement protein system in human milk is well characterised, there is little information on its presence and activity in bovine milk. Complement forms part of the innate immune system, hence the importance of its contribution during milk ingestion to the overall defences of the neonate. A bactericidal sequestration assay, featuring a Complement sensitive strain, Escherichia coli 0111, originally used to characterise Complement activity in human milk was successfully applied to freshly drawn bovine milk samples, thus, providing an opportunity to compare Complement activities in both human and bovine milks. Although not identical in response, the levels of Complement activity in bovine milk were found to be closely comparable with that of human milk. Differential counts of Esch. coli 0111 after 2 h incubation were 6·20 and 6·06 log CFU/ml, for raw bovine and human milks, respectively – the lower value representing a stronger Complement response. Exposing bovine milk to a range of thermal treatments e.g. 42, 45, 65, 72, 85 or 95 °C for 10 min, progressively inhibited Complement activity by increasing temperature, thus confirming the heat labile nature of this immune protein system. Low level Complement activity was found, however, in 65 and 72 °C heat treated samples and in retailed pasteurised milk which highlights the outer limit to which high temperature, short time (HTST) industrial thermal processes should be applied if retention of activity is a priority. Concentration of Complement in the fat phase was evident following cream separation, and this was also reflected in the further loss of activity recorded in low fat variants of retailed pasteurised milk. Laboratory-based churning of the cream during simulated buttermaking generated an aqueous (buttermilk) phase with higher levels of Complement activity than the fat phase, thus pointing to a likely association with the milk fat globule membrane (MFGM) layer.Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marin

Disruptive events in high-density cellular networks

Stochastic geometry models are used to study wireless networks, particularly cellular phone networks, but most of the research focuses on the typical user, often ignoring atypical events, which can be highly disruptive and of interest to network operators. We examine atypical events when a unexpected large proportion of users are disconnected or connected by proposing a hybrid approach based on ray launching simulation and point process theory. This work is motivated by recent results using large deviations theory applied to the signal-to-interference ratio. This theory provides a tool for the stochastic analysis of atypical but disruptive events, particularly when the density of transmitters is high. For a section of a European city, we introduce a new stochastic model of a single network cell that uses ray launching data generated with the open source RaLaNS package, giving deterministic path loss values. We collect statistics on the fraction of (dis)connected users in the uplink, and observe that the probability of an unexpected large proportion of disconnected users decreases exponentially when the transmitter density increases. This observation implies that denser networks become more stable in the sense that the probability of the fraction of (dis)connected users deviating from its mean, is exponentially small. We also empirically obtain and illustrate the density of users for network configurations in the disruptive event, which highlights the fact that such bottleneck behaviour not only stems from too many users at the cell boundary, but also from the near-far effect of many users in the immediate vicinity of the base station. We discuss the implications of these findings and outline possible future research directions.Comment: 8 pages, 11 figure

Strangers in the shadows – an exploration of the ‘Irish Boarding Houses’ in 1950s Leicester as heterotopic spaces

Existing research regarding the Irish immigration experience in England tends to focus on the push and pull factors which promoted the search for a better life ‘across the water’ (Garrett, 2000; Ryan, 2008) or the specific mental and physical health experienced by the Irish resident in England (Aspinall, 2002; Raftery et al., 1990). This paper adopts a different stance. Using Foucault’s concept of heterotopias (Foucault, 1986; 1994;) as a heuristic, the paper focuses on the ‘boarding houses’ of Leicester, England in the 1950s and 1960s in which many Irish men lived upon their arrival in England. Drawing on Irish men’s oral histories, I consider how these quintessential properties may be construed as worlds within worlds, placeless places and nonhomes. The spatial and other strategies deployed by the landlords/ladies as a means of disciplining and controlling the lodgers are exposed. The paper also explores how the distinctive vernacular landscapes of the boarding houses were laden with multiple juxtapositions, including the interface between materialism and maternalism and productive/non-productive labour. The distinctive existentialist form of temporality evoked by men’s stories of boarding house life suggests that the passage of time was accumulated but never recorded

Diverse characteristics of UK organic direct marketing chains

In the past few years, organic direct sales in the UK have grown rapidly. Direct sales are assumed to have short or distinct marketing chains from farm gate to consumer. This paper begins by outlining some current problems with the widely accepted defi nition of organic direct sales and charts some of their diverse characteristics. It goes on to argue that the mix of organic direct and multi-farm direct sales is so diverse that a greater clarification of terms is necessary in order to progress consumer, policy and research understanding

Symposium introduction - ethics and sustainable agri-food governance: appraisal and new directions

© Springer Nature B.V. 2019This Symposium contributes to a theoretical and methodological discussion on the role of ethics and responsibility in the governance of agri-food systems, as drivers for transitions towards sustainability. The papers in the Symposium are the outcomes of a collective reflection that was initiated at the European Society for Rural Sociology (ESRS) 2017 congress, within the Working Group on Ethics and sustainable agri-food governance. The session examined how ethics and ethical values drive change in the agri-food system, and how they increasingly evolve and influence food system governance. Building on the outcomes of the ESRS Working Group, the collection of papers in this Symposium fosters and deepens the discussion on the role of ethics in food systems, ranging across different food system actors, activities and contexts and presents new theoretical and methodological frameworks to understand the construction of more ethical agri-food systems.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio