University of North Dakota Physical Therapy Alumni Preferences for a Transitional Doctorate of Physical Therapy Degree

The purposes of this study are to assess whether University of North Dakota Physical Therapy (UND-PT) graduates desire a transitional Doctorate of Physical Therapy (t-DPT) degree and to determine their preferences regarding this proposed educational program. The survey was sent to 1136 alumni of the UND-PT program spanning from its first graduating class in 1970 to the class of 2002. It consisted of 8 demographic questions and 12 questions regarding areas such as curriculum content, program implementation, and personal views about the Doctorate of Physical Therapy degree. Frequencies for all responses were determined. The respondent data were also analyzed for variation across the demographic groups based on the type of physical therapy degree held, the respondents\u27 American Physical Therapy Association (APT A) membership status, the respondents\u27 primary work position and setting, the number of years of experience, the number of continuing education hours within the past year, and the level of exposure of the DPT degree. Open-ended narrative comments were also analyzed in order to obtain a general idea of alumni\u27s attitudes and feelings toward a t-DPT degree. There were 635 surveys returned for a response rate of 58%. Of these respondents, 67% were female and 32% were male. Eighty-three percent of the respondents are between the ages of 26 and 50. Forty-nine percent held a Master\u27s degree with 9% of respondents earning degrees beyond the MPT level. Fifty-four percent of alumni are currently APTA members. Respondents are employed in 43 of 50 states with a large number (46%) employed in either North Dakota or Minnesota. The majority of alumni are staff physical therapists (62%) working in outpatient/private practice settings (49%) treating mostly the orthopaedic population. Forty percent of respondents are interested in obtaining a t-DPT degree from the University of North Dakota. Respondents indicate online instruction is their preferred mode of delivery (69%). Sixty-one percent of respondents ranked weekend-only classes as their first or second choice. The alumni identify Specialty Physical Therapy, Research/Evidence Based Practice, and Business Management/ Administration as the desired areas of curriculum content. Respondents also indicated family obligations, lack of interest, and time away from work as the potential obstacles preventing them from completing the t-DPT degree. In conjunction with the narrative comments, alumni seem to be unclear about the differences between the t-DPT degree, the advanced clinical doctorate degree, and the clinical specialist certification. The information from this survey will be used by the UND-PT Department to form a t-DPT program which will attempt to correspond with its alumni\u27s needs. Current program content is subject to change and will take into account the results of this scholarly project

Social media in emergency management:Twitter as a tool for communicating risks to the public

One of the main challenges of emergency management lies in communicating risks to the public. On some occasions, risk communicators might seek to increase awareness over emerging risks, while on others the aim might be to avoid escalation of public reactions. Social media accounts offer an opportunity to rapidly distribute critical information and in doing so to mitigate the impact of emergencies by influencing public reactions. This article draws on theories of risk and emergency communication in order to consider the impact of Twitter as a tool for communicating risks to the public. We analyse 10,020 Twitter messages posted by the official accounts of UK local government authorities (councils) in the context of two major emergencies: the heavy snow of December 2010 and the riots of August 2011. Twitter was used in a variety of ways to communicate and manage associated risks including messages to provide official updates, encourage protective behaviour, increase awareness and guide public attention to mitigating actions. We discuss the importance of social media as means of increasing confidence in emergency management institutions

Design of Heat-Activated Reversible Integral Attachments for Product-Embedded Disassembly

Disassembly is a fundamental process needed for component reuse and material recycling in all assembled products. Integral attachments, also known as snap" fits, are favored fastening means in design for assembly (DFA) methodologies, but are not necessarily a favored choice for design for disassembly. Several prototype designs of a new class of integral attachments are presented, where the snapped joints can be disengaged by the application of localized heat sources. The design problem of reversible integral attachments is posed as the optimization of compliant mechanisms actuated with localized thermal expansion of materials. The Homogenization Design Method is utilized to obtain an optimal structural topology that realizes a desired deformation of snapped features for joint release. The obtained optimal topologies are simplified to enhance the manufacturability for the conventional injection molding technologies. Results of the example designs are verified by finite element analysesPeer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/87259/4/Saitou101.pd

Synthetic Governance

Although securities regulation is distinct from corporate governance, the two fields have considerable substantive overlap. By increasing the transparency and efficiency of the capital markets, securities regulation can also enhance the capacity of those markets to discipline governance decisions. The importance of market discipline is heightened by the increasingly vocal debate over what constitutes “good” corporate governance. Securities product innovation offers new tools to address this debate. The rise of index-based investing provides a market-based mechanism for selecting among governance options and evaluating their effects. Through the creation of bespoke governance index funds, asset managers can create indexes that correspond to investors’ governance preferences. We argue that this “synthetic governance” offers a way to gather evidence on the economic impact of corporate governance by providing a market-based tool for evaluating the relationship between corporate governance and stock returns. We illustrate the potential of synthetic governance by creating a new governance-based index, the Dual Index, which selects portfolio companies on the basis of a dual class voting structure and comparing its performance to various benchmarks. We further modify the Dual Index by implementing synthetic sunsets to highlight the value creation of dual class companies in their early years and provide evidence on the appropriate length of a time-based sunset provision. Finally, we expand our analysis of synthetic governance with a second index—the Split Index—which tests the effect of separating the positions of CEO and Chairman of the Board. We conclude that synthetic governance demonstrates the ability of securities market innovation to discipline corporate governance

Back to the future? The role of temporal focus for mapping time onto space

Do we conceptualise the future as being behind us or in front of us? While this question has traditionally been investigated through the lens of spatiotemporal metaphors, new impetus was recently provided by the Temporal-Focus Hypothesis (de la Fuente et al., 2014, Psych Sci). This hypothesis holds that the mapping of temporal concepts onto the front-back axis is determined by an individual’s temporal focus, which varies as a function of culture, age, and short-term attention shifts. Here, we instead show that participants map the future on to a frontal position, regardless of cultural background and short-term shifts. However, one factor that does influence temporal mappings is age, such that older participants are more likely to map the future as behind than younger participants. These findings suggest that aging may be a major determinant of space-time mappings, and that additional data need to be collected before concluding that culture or short-term attention do influence space-time mappings

A Bandwidth Sharing Approach to Improve Licensed Spectrum Utilization

The spectrum of deployed wireless cellular communication systems is found to be under-utilized, even though licensed spectrum is at a premium. To efficiently utilize the bandwidth left unused in a cellular system, which we denote as the primary system (PRI), we design a system with an ad hoc overlay network, which we denote as the secondary system (SEC). The basic design principle is that the SEC operates in a nonintrusive manner and does not interact with the PRI. We develop the AS-MAC, an Ad hoc SEC Medium Access Control protocol to enable the interoperation of the PRI-SEC system. We address a number of technical challenges pertinent to this networking environment, and evaluate AS-MAC. Our performance evaluation results show that, in a single-hop ASN, the AS-MAC transparently utilizes 75% of the bandwidth left unused by the PRI, while, in multi-hop ASNs, due to spatial reuse, the AS-MAC can utilize up to 180% of the idle PRI resources

Synthetic Governance

Although securities regulation is distinct from corporate governance, the two fields have considerable substantive overlap. By increasing the transparency and efficiency of the capital markets, securities regulation can also enhance the capacity of those markets to discipline governance decisions. The importance of market discipline is heightened by the increasingly vocal debate over what constitutes “good” corporate governance. Securities product innovation offers new tools to address this debate. The rise of index-based investing provides a market-based mechanism for selecting among governance options and evaluating their effects. Through the creation of bespoke governance index funds, asset managers can create indexes that correspond to investors’ governance preferences. We argue that this “synthetic governance” offers a way to gather evidence on the economic impact of corporate governance by providing a market-based tool for evaluating the relationship between corporate governance and stock returns. We illustrate the potential of synthetic governance by creating a new governance-based index, the Dual Index, which selects portfolio companies on the basis of a dual class voting structure and comparing its performance to various benchmarks. We further modify the Dual Index by implementing synthetic sunsets to highlight the value creation of dual class companies in their early years and provide evidence on the appropriate length of a time-based sunset provision. Finally, we expand our analysis of synthetic governance with a second index—the Split Index—which tests the effect of separating the positions of CEO and chairman of the board. We conclude that synthetic governance demonstrates the ability of securities market innovation to discipline corporate governance

Manganese concentrations in soil and settled dust in an area with historic ferroalloy production

Ferroalloy production can release a number of metals into the environment, of which manganese (Mn) is of major concern. Other elements include lead, iron, zinc, copper, chromium, and cadmium. Manganese exposure derived from settled dust and suspended aerosols can cause a variety of adverse neurological effects to chronically exposed individuals. To better estimate the current levels of exposure, this study quantified metal levels in dust collected inside homes (n=85), outside homes (n=81), in attics (n=6), and in surface soil (n=252) in an area with historic ferroalloy production. Metals contained in indoor and outdoor dust samples were quantified using inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy while attic and soil measurements were made with a XRF instrument. Mean Mn concentrations in soil (4600 μg/g) and indoor dust (870 μg/g) collected within 0.5 km of a plant exceeded levels previously found in suburban and urban areas, but did decrease outside 1.0 km to the upper end of background concentrations. Mn concentrations in attic dust were approximately 120 times larger than other indoor dust levels, consistent with historical emissions that yielded high airborne concentrations in the region. Considering the potential health effects that are associated with chronic manganese inhalation and ingestion exposure, remediation of soil near the plants and frequent, on-going hygiene indoors may decrease residential exposure and the likelihood of adverse health effects

Health and environmental consequences of the world trade center disaster.

The attack on the World Trade Center (WTC) created an acute environmental disaster of enormous magnitude. This study characterizes the environmental exposures resulting from destruction of the WTC and assesses their effects on health. Methods include ambient air sampling; analyses of outdoor and indoor settled dust; high-altitude imaging and modeling of the atmospheric plume; inhalation studies of WTC dust in mice; and clinical examinations, community surveys, and prospective epidemiologic studies of exposed populations. WTC dust was found to consist predominantly (95%) of coarse particles and contained pulverized cement, glass fibers, asbestos, lead, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and polychlorinated furans and dioxins. Airborne particulate levels were highest immediately after the attack and declined thereafter. Particulate levels decreased sharply with distance from the WTC. Dust pH was highly alkaline (pH 9.0-11.0). Mice exposed to WTC dust showed only moderate pulmonary inflammation but marked bronchial hyperreactivity. Evaluation of 10,116 firefighters showed exposure-related increases in cough and bronchial hyperreactivity. Evaluation of 183 cleanup workers showed new-onset cough (33%), wheeze (18%), and phlegm production (24%). Increased frequency of new-onset cough, wheeze, and shortness of breath were also observed in community residents. Follow-up of 182 pregnant women who were either inside or near the WTC on 11 September showed a 2-fold increase in small-for-gestational-age (SGA) infants. In summary, environmental exposures after the WTC disaster were associated with significant adverse effects on health. The high alkalinity of WTC dust produced bronchial hyperreactivity, persistent cough, and increased risk of asthma. Plausible causes of the observed increase in SGA infants include maternal exposures to PAH and particulates. Future risk of mesothelioma may be increased, particularly among workers and volunteers exposed occupationally to asbestos. Continuing follow-up of all exposed populations is required to document the long-term consequences of the disaster

A CAPTCHA model based on visual psychophysics: Using the brain to distinguish between human users and automated computer bots

Demand for the use of online services such as free emails, social networks, and online polling is increasing at an exponential rate. Due to this, online service providers and retailers feel pressurised to satisfy the multitude of end-user expectations. Meanwhile, automated computer robots (known as “bots”) are targeting online retailers and service providers by acting as human users and providing false information in order to abuse their service provisioning. CAPTCHA is a set of challenge/response protocol, which was introduced to protect online retailers and service providers from misuse and automated computer attacks. Text-based CAPTCHAs are the most popular form, and are used by most online service providers to differentiate between the human users and bots. However, the vast majority of text-based CAPTCHAs have been broken using the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) techniques and thus, reinforces the need for developing a secure and robust CAPTCHA model. Security and usability are the two fundamental issues that pose a trade-off in the design of a CAPTCHA; a hard CAPTCHA model could also be difficult for human users to resolve, which affects its usability, and vice versa. The model developed in this study uses the unsurpassed abilities of the Human Visual System (HVS) to superimpose and integrate complex information presented in individual frames, using the mechanism of trans-saccadic memory. In this context, the model integrates in its design the concept of persistence of vision, which enables humans to see the world in a continuous fashion. Preliminary results from the proposed model based on this technique are encouraging. To ensure the usability of the proposed CAPTCHA model, we set the threshold for the ORO parameter at 40%. This ensured that our CAPTCHA strings would be recognised by human observers at a rate of over 99% (or as close to 100% as is realistic). In turn, when examining the robustness of our VICAP model to computer programme attacks, we can observe that for the traditional case of OCR recognition, based on a single-frame scenario, the Computer Recognition Success Rate (CRSR) was about 0%, while in the case of a multi-frame scenario, the CRSR could increase to up to 50%