A Review of the Literature on Self-Care Children: A Need for Empirical Studies

The term self-care child\u27\u27 refers to a young child who returns from school and remains at home unsupervised for an indefinite period until the parents arrive from work, or one who is alone before school in the mornings. In this paper, the emotional functioning, social functioning, and academic performance of self-care children were compared to adult-supervised children. Also, programs designed for self-care children were examined. When examining the current literature on the self-care child regarding loneliness, anxiety and behavior problems, susceptibility to peer pressure, sexuality, social functioning, and academic performance, no significant differences were found between self-care and adult-supervised children. Much of the current literature, however, lacks consistency in quality. Empirical studies, with proven measures, need to be conducted before any definite conclusions are made about self-care children

A Review of the Literature on Self-Care Children: A Need for Empirical Studies

The term self-care child\u27\u27 refers to a young child who returns from school and remains at home unsupervised for an indefinite period until the parents arrive from work, or one who is alone before school in the mornings. In this paper, the emotional functioning, social functioning, and academic performance of self-care children were compared to adult-supervised children. Also, programs designed for self-care children were examined. When examining the current literature on the self-care child regarding loneliness, anxiety and behavior problems, susceptibility to peer pressure, sexuality, social functioning, and academic performance, no significant differences were found between self-care and adult-supervised children. Much of the current literature, however, lacks consistency in quality. Empirical studies, with proven measures, need to be conducted before any definite conclusions are made about self-care children

A Retrospective Comparative Analysis of a CMS Nursing Home Compare Five-Star Quality Measure: Are We Improving Care?

This paper is a retrospective analysis of the pre- and post-implementation of a CMS quality measure designed for its Nursing Home Compare Five-Star Quality Rating System. The measure, Percentage of short-stay residents who have had an outpatient emergency room visit (Medicare claims-based) introduced in 2016, was added due to the increasing rates of resident transfers to acute-care facilities. The skilled nursing facility’s performance outcomes of this measure will determine payment by CMS as part of the new skilled nursing facility value-based purchasing program (SNF VBP), which is set to be implemented in 2019. Methods: Information found in the Skilled Nursing Facility records within the Medicare 5% national sample data set comprised the data for the study. Time frames for the applicable data were from January through December of 2015 and January through December 2016. Data was selected for all nursing home residents with a nursing home stay of 30 days or less (short-stay residents). Results: A total of 126,098 patients were examined within the dataset, 63,546 discharges were included for 2015 and 62,552 discharges for 2016. A total of 39,275 patients were transferred from a SNF to the hospital with 20,248 (31.86%) transferred in the pre-quality measure implementation year, and 19,027 (30.42%) in the post quality improvement year. The percent of patients who were transferred to a hospital declined from 31.9% in 2015 to 30.4% in 2016. Conclusion: The rate of transfer of short-stay SNF residents was reduced in the post-quality measure implementation year 2016. It is unknown if the reduction in transfers was a direct result of the implementation of the quality measure or due to other causes. Answering this question warrants the need for future research

A Review of the Literature on Self-Care Children: A Need for Empirical Studies

The term self-care child\u27\u27 refers to a young child who returns from school and remains at home unsupervised for an indefinite period until the parents arrive from work, or one who is alone before school in the mornings. In this paper, the emotional functioning, social functioning, and academic performance of self-care children were compared to adult-supervised children. Also, programs designed for self-care children were examined. When examining the current literature on the self-care child regarding loneliness, anxiety and behavior problems, susceptibility to peer pressure, sexuality, social functioning, and academic performance, no significant differences were found between self-care and adult-supervised children. Much of the current literature, however, lacks consistency in quality. Empirical studies, with proven measures, need to be conducted before any definite conclusions are made about self-care children

The effects of exercise to promote quality of life in individuals with traumatic brain injuries: a systematic review

© 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. Objective: To systematically review the effects of exercise interventions that may enhance quality of life (QOL) in individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Methods: A systematic search was conducted using five databases up to April 2018. Studies were included if QOL was quantified following an exercise programme for people with a TBI. Methodological quality was assessed using a validated scoring checklist. Two independent reviewers assessed study inclusion and methodological quality. Results: Thirteen studies met the inclusion criteria (seven RCTs, six non-RCTs). The median total scores for the quality assessment tool were 26.1 (RCTs), and 21.3 (non-RCTs), out of 33. Eight out of the 13 studies reported improved QOL following an exercise programme. The duration of the interventions varied from 8-12weeks. The most common programmes involved moderate to vigorous exercise; with a frequency and duration of 3–5 times/week for 30–60minutes. Conclusion: Due to the diversity of the exercise training interventions, heterogeneity of patient characteristics, multitude of QOL instruments and outcome domains assessed, it was not possible to draw any definitive conclusion about the effectiveness of exercise interventions. However, this review identified positive trends to enhance various aspects of QOL measured using a range of assessment tools

Impacts of an Ammonia Leak on the Cabin Atmosphere of the International Space Station

Toxic chemical release into the cabin atmosphere is one of the three major emergency scenarios identified on the International Space Station (ISS). The release of anhydrous ammonia, the coolant used in the U.S. On-orbit Segment (USOS) External Active Thermal Control Subsystem (EATCS), into the ISS cabin atmosphere is one of the most serious toxic chemical release cases identified on board ISS. The USOS Thermal Control System (TCS) includes an Internal Thermal Control Subsystem (ITCS) water loop and an EATCS ammonia loop that transfer heat at the interface heat exchanger (IFHX). Failure modes exist that could cause a breach within the IFHX. This breach would result in high pressure ammonia from the EATCS flowing into the lower pressure ITCS water loop. As the pressure builds in the ITCS loop, it is likely that the gas trap, which has the lowest maximum design pressure within the ITCS, would burst and cause ammonia to enter the ISS atmosphere. It is crucial to first characterize the release of ammonia into the ISS atmosphere in order to develop methods to properly mitigate the environmental risk. This paper will document the methods used to characterize an ammonia leak into the ISS cabin atmosphere. A mathematical model of the leak was first developed in order to define the flow of ammonia into the ISS cabin atmosphere based on a series of IFHX rupture cases. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods were then used to model the dispersion of the ammonia throughout the ISS cabin and determine localized effects and ventilation effects on the dispersion of ammonia. Lastly, the capabilities of the current on-orbit systems to remove ammonia were reviewed and scrubbing rates of the ISS systems were defined based on the ammonia release models. With this full characterization of the release of ammonia from the USOS TCS, an appropriate mitigation strategy that includes crew and system emergency response procedures, personal protection equipment use, and atmosphere monitoring and scrubbing hardware can be established

Di-Isocyanate Crosslinked Aerogels with 1, 6-Bis (Trimethoxysilyl) Hexane Incorporated in Silica Backbone

Silica aerogels are desirable materials for many applications that take advantage of their light weight and low thermal conductivity. Addition of a conformal polymer coating which bonds with the amine decorated surface of the silica network improves the strength of the aerogels by as much as 200 times. Even with vast improvement in strength they still tend to undergo brittle failure due to the rigid silica backbone. We hope to increase the flexibility and elastic recovery of the silica based aerogel by altering the silica back-bone by incorporation of more flexible hexane links. To this end, we investigated the use of 1,6-bis(trimethoxysilyl)hexane (BTMSH), a polysilsesquioxane precursor3, as an additional co-reactant to prepare silica gels which were subsequently cross-linked with di-isocyanate. Previously, this approach of adding flexibility by BTMSH incorporation was demonstrated with styrene cross-linked aerogels. In our study, we varied silane concentration, mol % of silicon from BTMSH and di-isocyanate concentration by weight percent to attempt to optimize both the flexibility and the strength of the aerogels