The impact of information and communication technology on family carers of older people and professionals in Sweden

Government policy in Sweden, as in other developed countries, pays increasing attention as to how best to support the family carers of older people. New and innovative means of support, such as information and communication technology, are emerging. This paper explores the perceived benefits of, and barriers to, information technology as a means of supporting family carers of older people. Following a brief overview of the care-giving literature, with particular reference to the Swedish context, interview and questionnaire data collected from 34 families who took part in the Swedish ACTION project are used to explore the role of user-friendly information and communication technology to inform and enable family carers of older people to exercise choice, to care more effectively and to work in partnership with professionals. Interview data from two groups of professionals that utilised ACTION are also examined to throw light on its potential benefits for both carers and professionals. Consideration is given to the barriers to using information technology, and to identifying those carers most likely to benefit. Areas for further development are the need for practitioners' education and a wider range of programmes to address carers' diverse needs. Clearly, lessons learned from the Swedish project have wider relevance, given that new forms of support are being developed in most technically advanced countries

Dynamics and stability of wind turbine generators

Synchronous and induction generators are considered. A comparison is made between wind turbines, steam, and hydro units. The unusual phenomena associated with wind turbines are emphasized. The general control requirements are discussed, as well as various schemes for torsional damping such as speed sensitive stabilizer and blade pitch control. Integration between adjacent wind turbines in a wind farm is also considered

Human immunodeficiency virus treatment-induced adipose tissue pathology and lipoatrophy: Prevalence and metabolic consequences

Lipoatrophy and metabolic complications of treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection may share common associations with adipose tissue pathology and inflammation. To investigate these relationships, we undertook a large-scale study of adipose tissue, body composition, and metabolic outcomes among HIV-infected adult men at a tertiary hospital HIV cohort during the period 2001-2007. Methods. Assessments included adipose biopsies (np211) for investigation of adipocyte mitochondrial DNA content, adipocytokine expression, and adipose macrophage content; and whole-body dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scans (np225) for objective body composition changes; 138 individuals contributed both biopsy and DEXA data. Results. Compared with 78 treatment-naive control subjects, 98 zidovudine recipients (48%) and 49 stavudine recipients (67%) had leg fat measures <10% threshold value. Adipose samples associated with current stavudine or zidovudine (np99) revealed significant adipocyte mitochondrial DNA depletion, adipose tissue macrophage infiltration, and elevated proinflammatory cytokine levels, compared with samples from control subjects and nonthymidine nucleoside reverse-transcriptase inhibitor (NRTI) recipients (all P<.05). Improvements in adipose pathology after NRTI switching (np21 longitudinal samples) correlated with increased preswitch adipose inflammation and less severe fat loss (both P<.05). Elevated ratios of total to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels and Homeostatic Metabolic Assessment scores correlated independently with lipoatrophy severity (P<.05) and increased body mass index (P<.05) in thymidine NRTI-experienced individuals. No effect of demographic or HIV-related variables, or HIV protease inhibitor therapy exposure was detected. Conclusions. Adipose tissue pathology and lipoatrophic fat loss are highly prevalent among recipients of stavudine- or zidovudine-based HIV treatment and are associated with adverse metabolic outcomes. Restoring adipose tissue health appears to be an important issue in the long-term treatment of this patient population

Lake Attitash Management Plan; 2010

Management Plan and Comprehensive Lake Inventory of Lake Attitash in Amesbury/ Merrimac, M

Spectral determinations for discrete sources with EGRET

The ability of the EGRET (Energetic Gamma-Ray Experimental Telescope) to determine the spectral parameters of point sources in 14-day exposures, as planned for the initial survey phase of the GRO (Gamma Ray Observatory) mission, is explored by numerical simulation. Results are given for both galactic and extragalactic objects as a function of source strength and for representative levels of diffuse background emission

Association between low 25(OH) vitamin D levels, antiretroviral therapy and metabolic profile in a cohort of treated ahd therapy naive HIV positive patients in Western Australia

See Attache

Compression of Martian atmosphere for production of oxygen

The compression of CO2 from the Martian atmosphere for production of O2 via an electrochemical cell is addressed. Design specifications call for an oxygen production rate of 10 kg per day and for compression of 50 times that mass of CO2. Those specifications require a compression rate of over 770 cfm at standard Martian temperature and pressure (SMTP). Much of the CO2 being compressed represents waste, unless it can be recycled. Recycling can reduce the volume of gas that must be compressed to 40 cfm at SMTP. That volume reduction represents significant mass savings in the compressor, heating equipment, filters, and energy source. Successful recycle of the gas requires separation of CO (produced in the electrochemical cell) from CO2, N2, and Ar found in the Martian atmosphere. That aspect was the focus of this work

Educational psychology at the millennium: an electronic analysis of doctoral programs

Students and professionals in both education and psychology need current information about doctoral training in educational psychology, because such closely related programs as school psychology, developmental psychology, and counseling psychology are competing with educational psychology for doctoral students and other resources. Moreover, because students and professionals are increasingly using the internet as their source of current information, the primary source of information used in this study was internet web sites for doctoral programs in educational psychology. This dissertation provides programmatic data on the current doctoral programs in educational psychology, including demographic features (e.g., number of programs, most popular degrees, degree titles, length of programs, location of programs, job market for graduates) and conceptual features (e.g., content areas, conceptual models, primary goals, degree of structure, level of scholarship, and innovative features of programs). Next, the dissertation provides a ranking of top programs in the field of educational psychology based on size of faculty, level of faculty scholarship, and innovativeness of the respective programs. Finally, exemplary program web sites were evaluated and ranked. Finally, this study was framed around the millennium, with purposes of being reflective about the history of educational psychology and predictive about future trends in graduate study in this area. This study found that a majority of educational psychology programs have web sites and are using the internet as a way of disseminating programmatic information. With respect to the demographic features of programs, the most popular degree offered was the Ph.D., and the most common location of educational psychology doctoral programs was colleges of education rather than departments of psychology. The average length of a doctoral program was 60 credit hours from a masters degree and 85 credit hours from the bachelors degree. The most popular program titles and content areas were learning, cognition, and development. The conceptual models of scholarly, practical, and scientist-practitioner were used in categorizing the goals, curricula, and job markets of the programs. The experimenter found that while a majority of programs described goals and curricula that reflected a scholarly emphasis, job markets had a scientist-practitioner emphasis. The structure of educational psychology doctoral programs, as represented in the web sites, generally provided an overview of requirements, but did not describe specific sequences of coursework or model programs to students. Also in regards to structure, the majority of programs described a process in which students and faculty together determined program objectives with some degree of flexibility in coursework. Innovative features were also analyzed across programs, showing that programs often described job opportunities that differed from university teaching and research and had content areas that differed from general areas of educational psychology. Programs were less likely to have such innovative features as program application (e.g., internship, practica, or other research to practice opportunities), instructional delivery systems, and innovative systems of research. Journal publications range for educational psychology faculty from .8 to 7.7, with the mean being 2.82 journal publications per faculty member from 1994-June 1999. Faculties\u27 publication citation ranges were 0 to 27, with the mean being 7.19 journal publications per faculty member from 1994-June 1999. A citation analysis revealed that educational psychologists are diverse in their publication sources and that core educational psychology journals account for less than ten percent of the total publications by educational psychologists. Also, core joumals of educational psychology were identified via publication frequencies among all identified educational psychology faculties. Programs were identified as exemplary educational psychology doctoral programs based on size of faculty, scholarly productivity, innovativeness, and composite ratings of doctoral programs. These rankings were then compared to prior rankings of prestigious educational psychology programs. The University of California at Los Angeles was rated as the most exemplary educational psychology doctoral program among the top ten universities identified. In addition, doctoral program web sites were evaluated on-line, and a top-ten list of exemplary web sites was generated. The rankings of web sites identified Brigham Young University and Indiana University as the most exemplary web sites in educational psychology. Top ten programs having exemplary web sites differed considerably from the top-ten exemplary programs based on faculty size, scholarly productivity, and innovativeness

Development, initial validation and reliability testing of a web-based, generic feline health-related quality of life instrument

Objectives: The objective of this study was to develop a valid, reliable web-based, generic feline health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL) questionnaire instrument to measure the affective impact of chronic disease. Methods: A large initial item pool, obtained through interviews with cat owners, was reduced using predetermined criteria, survey scores for relevance and clarity, and the ability of individual items to discriminate between healthy and sick cats when owners completed a prototype questionnaire. Using these data, factor analysis was used to derive a scoring algorithm and provide evidence for factorial validity. Validity was demonstrated further in a field trial using a ‘known groups’ approach (sick vs healthy cats will have a different HRQoL profile, and the HRQoL profile of cats will deteriorate as comorbidities increase). Test–retest reliability was assessed using intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC). Results: In total, 165 items were reduced to 20 and, on the basis of a factor analysis that explained 72.3% of the variation in scores input by 71 owners of 30 healthy and 41 sick cats using the prototype, these were allocated to three domains (vitality, comfort and emotional wellbeing [EWB]) with a scoring algorithm derived using item loadings. Subsequently, the owners of 36 healthy and 58 sick cats completed one or two (n = 48) assessments. Median scores (healthy vs sick) for all domains were significantly different (P &lt;0.001), 78% of cats were correctly classified as healthy or sick and for comorbidities the correlation coefficients were moderate (vitality 0.64; comfort 0.63; EWB 0.50). Test–retest reliability was good (ICC vitality 0.635; comfort 0.716; EWB 0.853). Conclusions and relevance: This study provides initial evidence for the validity and reliability of a novel HRQoL instrument to aid the assessment and management of chronic diseases of cats