Improving the Efficiency of Primary Care in Safety Net Clinics: San Mateo County's System Redesign

Outlines the impact of a countywide redesign of six primary care clinics - including the implementation of electronic health records, team-based care, chronic disease management, and advanced access scheduling - on quality of care and costs

Educating Caregivers in Assisted Living Facilities (ALFS) Who Care for People with Dementia

It is estimated that approximately 40-71% of residents living within assisted living facilities (ALFs) have a form of dementia or other cognitive impairment (Harris- Kojetin et al., 2016; Zimmerman, Sloana, & Reed, 2014). There is also evidence that suggests that caregivers working within ALFs have inadequate knowledge on how to care for a resident diagnosed with dementia (Hughes, Bagley, Reilly, Burns, & Challis, 2008; McKenzie, Teri, Pike, LaFazia, & Van Leynseele, 2012; Sharpp, Kayser-Jones, & Young, 2012; Zimmerman et al., 2014). The authors of this scholarly project created an instructional manual that can be used to train caregivers within ALFs to address the current gap in their knowledge. Methodology: The authors used the information gained from the literature review, information gathered through collaboration with faculty at the University of North Dakota’s Occupational Therapy Program, and information gathered after researching topics related to dementia to create the product. Product: The instructional manual was created using Knowles Andragogy Adult Learning Model (Knowles, Holton, & Swanson, 2012). The introduction to the manual includes information on how to apply the adult learning model throughout the educational sessions. The educational materials include three 2-hour PowerPoint slide shows that include information on what dementia is, how dementia impacts a resident’s life, an overview of the Cognitive Disabilities Reconsidered Model (CDRM) by Levy and Burns (2011), and different strategies the caregivers can use at each level of the CDRM to better care for residents diagnosed with dementia. The manual also includes an evaluation of learners’ knowledge by using a pre-test and post-test design. Finally, a small handout was created that contains important concepts that were discussed in the instructional materials so the learners can reference the information later if needed. It is intended for the instructional manual to be utilized by an occupational therapist who understands how to apply the adult learning theory and has adequate knowledge with the CDRM. The education material can be used to meet the continuing educational requirements within the state of Wyoming for ALF caregivers

Snowmelt

Ashley Palmer is a computer science and English double major at Louisiana Tech University. She wrote her first story at the age of 3 and hasn’t stopped since, currently working on edits for her own novel. When she’s not writing or working on schoolwork, one can find Ashley sketching and painting digitally, designing stage and concert lighting for her church, or hiking through the Ozarks at her grandparents’ cabin

“I never once thought of them” : retail workers in American department store fiction

This dissertation focuses on an understudied category of turn-of-the-century American literature: texts that feature department stores and primarily highlight the position of the service workers who staffed them. In composing narratives situated mostly on the workers’ side of the sales counter, I argue, authors attempted to address perceived problems with consumer culture. Drawing upon the historical contexts of Progressive politics and women’s rights movements, this dissertation seeks a fuller understanding of how turn-of-the-century writers depicted the retail worker, responded to injustices of capitalism, and shaped popular opinions about consumer culture. Chapter 1 analyzes popular fiction by Lurana Sheldon and Rupert Hughes to investigate the ways both authors depict hardships of department store labor and envision different possibilities for reform at these sites of consumption. I show that despite both authors’ sympathy for the plight of the shopgirl, they look to business owners and consumers rather than the suffering shopgirls themselves to mend the problems of capitalism. Chapter 2 turns to works of fiction that portray the shopgirl’s hard-won ascent to professionalism (in the position of buyer) as an ambivalent climb to middle management. Readings of realist writer Edna Ferber and popular fiction author Charles Klein suggest that, whereas a work of realism takes a more pragmatic approach to the limits of professional success, popular fiction often employs an idealized marriage plot to complete the protagonist’s ascent. Moving away from the realm of popular fiction, Chapter 3 examines two ambitious literary undertakings: Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900) and David Graham Phillips’ Susan Lenox (1917). Reading Carrie from the perspective of the shopgirl (and in comparison with Phillips’ Susan), I argue, can help us better appreciate the elisions and evasions that complicate the relationship Dreiser imagines between work and consumption. Moving briefly beyond 1920, a Coda considers Mary McCarthy’s The Group (1963) and Steve Martin’s Shopgirl (2000) to ask how we might better understand intersections of labor and consumption in our own moment. Finally, an Appendix provides an annotated bibliography that lists works of American department store fiction published between 1880-1920 as a resource for future scholarship.Englis

Characterizing the developmental heterogeneity of connectedness to school or work during the transition into adulthood

Prior research has focused on “disconnected youth,” often defined as individuals between 16 and 24 who are neither enrolled in school nor employed. This particular issue has gained attention, at least partially due to research that suggests that there are individual consequences such as worse health and lower income associated with precarious connections to school or work and societal consequences such as lost taxes and costs associated with public assistance, healthcare, and crime. However, most prior research has been cross-sectional and has defined connectedness to school or work as an either-or outcome. This conflicts with research on the transition into adulthood that suggests there are varied, individualized pathways in moving from adolescence into young adulthood. The purpose of this study was to characterize differences in the developmental trajectories of connectedness to school or work across the transition into adulthood. Two research questions were posed: (1) Are there individual differences in the developmental trajectories of being connected to school or work during the transition into adulthood? (2) What childhood factors are associated with individual differences in the developmental trajectories of being connected to school or work during the transition into adulthood? Latent variable mixture models were used to answer the first question. The sample included 2,027 individuals between the ages of 18 and 26 who participated in at least two waves of the Transition into Adulthood Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) between 2005 and 2015. The second question was answered using a subsample of 757 individuals from the original sample of 2,027 who had data from middle childhood (i.e., ages 8, 9 or 10) collected in either the 1997 or 2002 PSID Childhood Development Supplement interviews. Multinomial logistic regression examined childhood factors related to differences in the developmental trajectories identified in the first analytic phase. Based on model comparison fit statistics, examination of classification quality, and subjective evaluation of usefulness and interpretability, a four-class latent growth mixture model was selected to describe four qualitatively different developmental patterns of connectedness to school or work. Overall, findings implied that there is considerable heterogeneity in connectedness patterns across the transition into adulthood, with a substantial proportion of sample members experiencing sporadic connections to school or work across the transition into adulthood. Further, at least some middle childhood factors were related to differences in connectedness pathways during the transition into adulthood, even when controlling for young adult demographic factors. Future research is necessary to improve the conceptualization and measurement of this phenomenon, as well as research that examines how differences in the developmental trajectories of connectedness to school or work fit within the broader life course. These findings and future research may inform policies and programs that target supports to young people before and during the transition into adulthood

Does choice of drought index influence estimates of drought-induced rice losses in India?

Drought events have critical impacts on agricultural production yet there is little consensus on how these should be measured and defined, with implications for drought research and policy. We develop a flexible rainfall-temperature drought index that captures all dry events and we classify these as Type 1 (above-average cooling degree days) and Type 2 droughts (below-average cooling degree days). Applied to a panel dataset of Indian districts over 1966-2009, Type 2 droughts are found to have negative marginal impacts comparable to those of Type 1 droughts. Irrigation more effectively reduces Type 2 drought-induced yield losses than Type 1 yield losses. Over time, Type 1 drought losses have declined while Type 2 losses have risen. Estimates of average yield losses due to Type 1 droughts are reduced by up to 27 per cent when Type 2 droughts are omitted. The associated ex-post economic costs in terms of rice production are underestimated by up to 124 per cent

Threshold effects of extreme weather events on cereal yields in India

Climate change is driving a rise in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. Such events are characterised as thresholds beyond which cereal yields significantly change. We apply a threshold model to district-level data collected in India over 1966-2011 and objectively identify thresholds, measured by the Standardised Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index, before estimating their yield effects, for rice, wheat, maize, millet, sorghum and barley. Heterogeneous, crop-specific thresholds are identified for all crops except wheat. Thresholds are identified at normal climatic conditions but have smaller negative marginal effects than those of thresholds identified at dry conditions. The extent to which agro-ecological conditions and irrigation influence the location of thresholds and the size of their marginal effects varies by crop. Thresholds identified at dry climatic conditions severely reduce yield yet are rarely crossed; those at normal conditions moderately affect yield but are frequently crossed. A threshold’s total impact on production is found to be inverse to the severity of its marginal effect. Severe-effect thresholds have been crossed with increasing frequency over time, contributing to growth in the size of total impacts. Our results have welfare implications and have the potential to inform predictions about the impacts of extreme weather events

Improving nanopore read accuracy with the R2C2 method enables the sequencing of highly multiplexed full-length single-cell cDNA.

High-throughput short-read sequencing has revolutionized how transcriptomes are quantified and annotated. However, while Illumina short-read sequencers can be used to analyze entire transcriptomes down to the level of individual splicing events with great accuracy, they fall short of analyzing how these individual events are combined into complete RNA transcript isoforms. Because of this shortfall, long-distance information is required to complement short-read sequencing to analyze transcriptomes on the level of full-length RNA transcript isoforms. While long-read sequencing technology can provide this long-distance information, there are issues with both Pacific Biosciences (PacBio) and Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) long-read sequencing technologies that prevent their widespread adoption. Briefly, PacBio sequencers produce low numbers of reads with high accuracy, while ONT sequencers produce higher numbers of reads with lower accuracy. Here, we introduce and validate a long-read ONT-based sequencing method. At the same cost, our Rolling Circle Amplification to Concatemeric Consensus (R2C2) method generates more accurate reads of full-length RNA transcript isoforms than any other available long-read sequencing method. These reads can then be used to generate isoform-level transcriptomes for both genome annotation and differential expression analysis in bulk or single-cell samples

A Nutty Study: A Framing Analysis of the 2009 Salmonella Outbreak in Peanut Products

The purpose of this study was to examine television news coverage of the 2009 Salmonella outbreak in peanut products through the scope of framing theory. The aim of this research was to understand how the television news media frame agricultural, particularly food safety, messages. By employing a qualitative content analysis, researchers analyzed television news transcripts from ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC that aired during the peanut product recall. The frames found from this research were informational, anti-Peanut Corporation of America, and anti-FDA. The most commonly used sources were victims of Salmonella, politicians, and current and former FDA off icials. No agricultural frames were present, and the only agricultural organizations interviewed were one representative of the Georgia Department of Agriculture and Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack. The researchers concluded that sources did not appear to have a large impact on the way the news was covered for this study. The researchers also found a need for more scientific food safety information to be communicated to the national media