Undetected Blooms in Prince William Sound: Using Multiple Techniques to Elucidate the Base of the Summer Food Web

© 2015, Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation. Prince William Sound supports many commercially and culturally important species. The phytoplankton community dynamics which support and sustain the high biomass and diversity of this ecosystem are largely unknown. The aim of this study was to describe the phytoplankton community composition during the summer, the time at which this system supports many additional migrants and commercially important fisheries. Phytoplankton community composition (pigments), dissolved nutrients, Secchi depth, total and particulate organic carbon and nitrogen, and export to deep water were measured during the summers of 2008–2010. In addition, natural abundance stable isotopes (δ13C and δ15N) of particulate organic matter (POM) and faunal samples were measured in 2010. The analysis of the phytoplankton community composition using multivariate statistics showed that changes over the summer were driven by changes in the proportion of the dominant groups: diatoms, dinoflagellates, cyanobacteria, cryptophytes, chlorophytes, and prasinophytes. These changes were driven by changes in nutrients including an organic nitrogen source, phosphate, and silica and correspond to shifts in particulate concentrations. A consistent pattern was observed each year: a large Noctiluca sp. bloom in June concurrent with low nutrients, low diversity, and high particulate organic carbon (POC) concentrations was followed by a shift in the phytoplankton community to a more diverse smaller size class community in July and equilibrating in August. This annual summer bloom could be an important contributor to the energy and nutrient inputs at the base of the regional marine food web

Quality of life in patients with gastric cancer: translation and psychometric evaluation of the Iranian version of EORTC QLQ-STO22

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Disease and treatment related events, can adversely affect the quality of life of patients with cancer. The purpose of this study was to translate and validate a gastric cancer specific health related quality of life questionnaire (EORTC QLQ-STO22) for Iranian patients suffering from gastric cancer.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Forward-backward procedure was applied to translate the English language version of the EORTC QLQ-STO22 into Persian (Iranian language). Then, the questionnaire and the EORTC core quality of life instrument (QLQ-C30) were administered to a sample of patients with confirmed diagnosis of gastric cancer. All patients filled in questionnaires before and after one month of treatment. Patients were divided into two groups based on intension of treatment (curative vs. palliative). Reliability and validity of the module was tested by internal consistency and known group comparisons, respectively.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In all, 105 patients were entered into the study. Cronbach's alpha for multi-item scales (to test reliability) ranged from 0.54 to 0.87. The questionnaire discriminated well between clinically distinct subgroups of patients both before and after treatment lending support to its convergent and clinical validity.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Overall, the Iranian version of the EORTC QLQ-STO22 demonstrated a good reliability and clinical validity to support its use in combination with core questionnaire in outcome studies of gastric cancer in Iran. However, using the QLQ-STO22 in a wide range of Iranian patients with gastric cancer should allow further confirmation for its psychometric properties.</p

The Role of Individual Variables, Organizational Variables and Moral Intensity Dimensions in Libyan Management Accountants’ Ethical Decision Making

This study investigates the association of a broad set of variables with the ethical decision making of management accountants in Libya. Adopting a cross-sectional methodology, a questionnaire including four different ethical scenarios was used to gather data from 229 participants. For each scenario, ethical decision making was examined in terms of the recognition, judgment and intention stages of Rest’s model. A significant relationship was found between ethical recognition and ethical judgment and also between ethical judgment and ethical intention, but ethical recognition did not significantly predict ethical intention—thus providing support for Rest’s model. Organizational variables, age and educational level yielded few significant results. The lack of significance for codes of ethics might reflect their relative lack of development in Libya, in which case Libyan companies should pay attention to their content and how they are supported, especially in the light of the under-development of the accounting profession in Libya. Few significant results were also found for gender, but where they were found, males showed more ethical characteristics than females. This unusual result reinforces the dangers of gender stereotyping in business. Personal moral philosophy and moral intensity dimensions were generally found to be significant predictors of the three stages of ethical decision making studied. One implication of this is to give more attention to ethics in accounting education, making the connections between accounting practice and (in Libya) Islam. Overall, this study not only adds to the available empirical evidence on factors affecting ethical decision making, notably examining three stages of Rest’s model, but also offers rare insights into the ethical views of practising management accountants and provides a benchmark for future studies of ethical decision making in Muslim majority countries and other parts of the developing world

Distorted Cognitive Processing in Youth: The Structure of Negative Cognitive Errors and Their Associations with Anxiety

The Children’s Negative Cognitive Error Questionnaire (CNCEQ) is commonly used to measure four errors in young people’s thinking, but research has failed to support the factorial validity of the measure. The primary objective of the present study was to examine the factor structure of a refined and extended version of the CNCEQ. Revision of the CNCEQ involved the exclusion of items rated as contaminated, and the addition of items measuring cognitive errors closely associated with anxiety (‘threat conclusion’ and ‘underestimation of the ability to cope’). A secondary objective was to determine the relation between the negative cognitive errors and anxiety. Principal component analysis of data from 481 children and adolescents indicated five distinct negative cognitive error subscales labeled ‘underestimation of the ability to cope’, ‘personalizing without mind reading’, ‘selective abstraction’, ‘overgeneralizing’, and ‘mind reading’ which contained the new ‘threat conclusion’ items. Confirmatory factor analysis in an independent sample of 295 children and adolescents yielded further support for the five-factor solution. All cognitive errors except ‘selective abstraction’ were correlated with anxiety. Multiple regression analysis indicated that the strongest predictors of anxiety were the two subscales containing new items, namely ‘underestimation of the ability to cope’ and ‘mind reading’. The results are discussed with respect to further development of the instrument so as to advance the assessment of distorted cognitive processing in young people with internalizing symptoms

Measuring the impact of cancer: a comparison of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and breast cancer survivors

Introduction Self-report instruments such as the Impact of Cancer (IOC) are designed to measure quality of life (QOL) impacts that cancer survivors attribute to their cancer experience. Generalizability of QOL findings across dis-tinct diagnostic categories of survivors is untested. W

Development and testing of the Measure of Innovation-Specific Implementation Intentions (MISII) using Rasch measurement theory

© 2018 The Author(s). Background: Implementation is proposed to be a multiphase, multilevel process. After a period of exploration, an adoption decision is made, typically at the upper management or policy level. Nevertheless, movement through each of the subsequent phases of the implementation process involves clinicians or providers at the individual level to adopt the innovation and then change their behavior to use/deliver the innovation. Multiple behavioral change theories propose that intentions are a critical determinant of implementation behavior. However, there is a need for the development and testing of pragmatic measures of providers' intentions to use a specific innovation or evidence-based practice (EBP). Methods: Nine items were developed to assess providers' intentions to use a specific innovation or EBP. Motivational interviewing was the EBP in the study. Items were administered, as part of larger survey, to 179 providers across 38 substance use disorder treatment (SUDT) programs within five agencies in California, USA. Rasch analysis was conducted using RUMM2030 software to assess the items, their overall fit to the Rasch model, the response scale used, individual item fit, differential item functioning (DIF), and person separation. Results: Following a stepwise process, the scale was reduced from nine items to three items to increase the feasibility and acceptability of the scale while maintaining suitable psychometric properties. The three-item unidimensional scale showed good person separation (PSI =.872), no disordering of thresholds, and no evidence of uniform or non-uniform DIF. Rasch analysis supported the viability of the scale as a measure of implementation intentions. Conclusions: The Measure of Innovation-Specific Implementation Intentions (MISII) is a sound measure of providers' intentions to use a specific innovation or EBP. Future evaluation of convergent, divergent, and predictive validity are needed. The study also demonstrates the value of Rasch analysis for testing the psychometric properties of pragmatic implementation measures

Barriers to women entrepreneurship. Different methods, different results?

Building on research by Akehurst et al. (Serv Ind J 32:2489-2505, 2012), this study analysed internal and external factors in women entrepreneurship and linked these factors to the barriers that women face when starting businesses. To do so, two contrasting statistical techniques were used: PLS and QCA. After analysing results from each of these techniques, we observed that family duties and difficulties in obtaining financing (both internal and external) were the main factors related to barriers faced by women entrepreneurs