Institutional Ethnography: Studying Institutions from the Margins

As new approaches to the development of knowledge emerge in the social sciences, there is a need to judge their appropriateness for use in social work research. Using criteria for assessing the goodness of fit between theories and social work values, this article evaluates institutional ethnography, a strategyfor studying institutions which is based on feminist standpoint theory. The author holds that the use of institutional ethnography in social work research is congruent with social work principles and effective in producing knowledge which can inform practice. Discussion of a study of Canadian social work education from the standpoint of gay men illustrates this argument. Implications for social work research and education are discussed

New Perspectives on Audience Activity: ‘Prosumption’ and Media Activism as Audience Practices

Until relatively recently, the subject of social relationships, constituted in and through audience practices, has been a minor part of audience research studies. This chapter explores how social relationships and forms of audience agency change and / or evolve, through the usage of both traditional and ‘new’ media. In a media environment where traditional and new media worlds collide, the potential of audience practices to rework, not only media-audience relationships, but also wider social relationships, is now an important research theme. Two key examples of mediated relationships between social actors in conditions brought about through transformations in media culture are considered. We look at the evolution of audience ‘prosumption’ or ‘produsage’ (Bruns 2007), as well as at audience ‘activism’ (de Jong, Shaw and Stammers 2005). These examples are identified as illustrating new dynamics of social interaction, which may have the potential to contribute to larger, integrative social networks that transcend the existing boundaries of the traditional concept of audience. Against the background of traditional approaches to social relationships in the context of audience studies, we examine in both case studies the respective roles of the technologies, the social actors and the emergent social relationships concerned

A GAMS/MPSGE implementation of the PET model

This paper describes a version of the Population-Economy-Technology (PET) model implemented in the GAMS/MPSGE programming language. The implementation of the model is comparable with the original fortran version of iPETS over a number of test cases. While a number of possible configurations exist for both model types, we demonstrate that there is a configuration that makes both implementations behave very similarly and the remaining difference can be traced to different implementations of dynamic agent behavior. This paper also serves as a methodological blueprint for model translation across different programming languages

The Grizzly, November 10, 1978

Physical Education Program To Change • Task Force Continues Recommendations • No Funds For Bomberger • Forum: High Strung • Hockey Not Safe • Staffer Clears Misinterpretation • Dining Service Transitions • Letters to the Editor • Portrait of the Professor: Gayle A. Byerly • For Whom The Walls Toil • Egdon Heath - A New Look For Monday Night • The Good Doctor Makes House Call To Protheatre • Eighteen Named to Who\u27s Who • Free V. D. Clinic • GM: Looking Good For \u2779 • Sports Profile: Keith Kemper • Thinclads Nab Third At MAC\u27s • Soccer Kicks Moravian • Bears Blast Dickinson • Gymnastics Get New Coach • Hockey Ends • Women\u27s B-Ball Preview • News in Brief: Senior Symposium Cancelled; Deans Attend State Conventionhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1006/thumbnail.jp

A Composite Metric for Benchmarking Site Performance in TAVR: Results from the STS/ACC TVT Registry

Background: Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) is a transformative therapy for aortic stenosis. Despite rapid improvements in technology and techniques, serious complications remain relatively common and are not well described by single outcome measures. The purpose of this study was to determine if there is site-level variation in TAVR outcomes in the United States using a novel 30-day composite measure. Methods: We performed a retrospective cohort study using data from the STS/ACC TVT Registry to develop a novel ranked composite performance measure that incorporates mortality and serious complications. The selection and rank order of the complications for the composite was determined by their adjusted association with 1-year outcomes. Sites whose risk-adjusted outcomes were significantly more or less frequent than the national average based on a 95% probability interval were classified as performing worse or better than expected. Results: The development cohort consisted of 52,561 patients who underwent TAVR between January 1, 2015 and December 31, 2017. Based on the associations with 1-year risk-adjusted mortality and health status, we identified four periprocedural complications to include in the composite risk model in addition to mortality. Ranked empirically according to severity, these included stroke, major, life-threatening or disabling bleeding, stage III acute kidney injury, and moderate or severe peri-valvular regurgitation. Based on these ranked outcomes, we found that there was significant site-level variation in quality of care in TAVR in the United States. Overall, better than expected site performance was observed in 25/301 (8%) of sites; performance as expected was observed in 242/301 sites (80%); and worse than expected performance was observed in 34/301 (11%) of sites. Thirty-day mortality, stroke, major, life-threatening or disabling bleeding, and moderate or severe peri-valvular leak were each substantially more common in sites with worse than expected performance as compared with other sites. There was good aggregate reliability of the model. Conclusions: There are substantial variations in the quality of TAVR care received in the United States, and 11% of sites were identified as providing care below the average level of performance. Further study is necessary to determine structural, process-related, and technical factors associated with high- and low-performing sites

The Grizzly, January 26, 1979

Campus Life Committee to Replace SFARC • Quad Fire Brought Quickly Under Control • The Fabulous Greaseband Presents...Rock \u27N\u27 Roll Revue Tonight • Christmas Thefts Hit Women\u27s Dorms • Four-One-Four Proposed • Integrated Dining: An Interesting Proposal • Low Attendance Attracts Attention • Letters to the Editor: No static at all?; Big-name concert • Roving Reporter: Alcohol policy • Ritter Gift • Class Skiing Trips: Coming Up • Billy Joel: Isn\u27t One Elton John Enough? • Grateful Dead Rocks Spectrum • Operatic Forum • Audio Corner: Receivers • Token Tolkien • Financial aid night to be held; Meistersingers on tour; New sports editor; Gift collection received; William J. Phillip prize endowed • USGA Elections Near • Bears Sink Below .500 • Cagers Capture Only One Of Six • Flying Fish • Grapplers Groping • Girl\u27s B-Ballhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1010/thumbnail.jp

Return to Fort Rock Cave: Assessing the Site\u27s Potential to Contribute to Ongoing Debates about how and when Humans Colonized the Great Basin

Oregon’s Fort Rock Cave is iconic in respect to both the archaeology of the northern Great Basin and the history of debate about when the Great Basin was colonized. In 1938, Luther Cressman recovered dozens of sagebrush bark sandals from beneath Mt. Mazama ash that were later radiocarbon dated to between 10,500 and 9350 cal B.P. In 1970, Stephen Bedwell reported finding lithic tools associated with a date of more than 15,000 cal B.P., a date dismissed as unreasonably old by most researchers. Now, with evidence of a nearly 15,000-year-old occupation at the nearby Paisley Five Mile Point Caves, we returned to Fort Rock Cave to evaluate the validity of Bedwell’s claim, assess the stratigraphic integrity of remaining deposits, and determine the potential for future work at the site. Here, we report the results of additional fieldwork at Fort Rock Cave undertaken in 2015 and 2016, which supports the early Holocene occupation, but does not confirm a pre–10,500 cal B.P. human presence

Spatio-temporal distribution of Spiroplasma infections in the tsetse fly (Glossina fuscipes fuscipes) in northern Uganda

Copyright: © 2019 Schneider et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Tsetse flies (Glossina spp.) are vectors of parasitic trypanosomes, which cause human (HAT) and animal African trypanosomiasis (AAT) in sub-Saharan Africa. In Uganda, Glossina fuscipes fuscipes (Gff) is the main vector of HAT, where it transmits Gambiense disease in the northwest and Rhodesiense disease in central, southeast and western regions. Endosymbionts can influence transmission efficiency of parasites through their insect vectors via conferring a protective effect against the parasite. It is known that the bacterium Spiroplasma is capable of protecting its Drosophila host from infection with a parasitic nematode. This endosymbiont can also impact its host\u27s population structure via altering host reproductive traits. Here, we used field collections across 26 different Gff sampling sites in northern and western Uganda to investigate the association of Spiroplasma with geographic origin, seasonal conditions, Gff genetic background and sex, and trypanosome infection status. We also investigated the influence of Spiroplasma on Gff vector competence to trypanosome infections under laboratory conditions. Generalized linear models (GLM) showed that Spiroplasma probability was correlated with the geographic origin of Gff host and with the season of collection, with higher prevalence found in flies within the Albert Nile (0.42 vs 0.16) and Achwa River (0.36 vs 0.08) watersheds and with higher prevalence detected in flies collected in the intermediate than wet season. In contrast, there was no significant correlation of Spiroplasma prevalence with Gff host genetic background or sex once geographic origin was accounted for in generalized linear models. Additionally, we found a potential negative correlation of Spiroplasma with trypanosome infection, with only 2% of Spiroplasma infected flies harboring trypanosome co-infections. We also found that in a laboratory line of Gff, parasitic trypanosomes are less likely to colonize the midgut in individuals that harbor Spiroplasma infection. These results indicate that Spiroplasma infections in tsetse may be maintained by not only maternal but also via horizontal transmission routes, and Spiroplasma infections may also have important effects on trypanosome transmission efficiency of the host tsetse. Potential functional effects of Spiroplasma infection in Gff could have impacts on vector control approaches to reduce trypanosome infections