What are we waiting for? [guest editorial]

The clinical education of Australia's aged care nurses can no longer be treated as the Cinderella of nursing's specialities. It is urgent that ways be agreed and measures taken to bring this branch of the profession, and residential aged care nursing in particular, into mainstream health care services. There should be no need to describe again the evolving shape of Australia's demographic profile between now and the middle of this century; and no need to prove here that the ageing bulge is already placing a severe strain on staffmg in the sector. A substantial percentage of the aged care nursing workforce is nearing retirement and the ratio of departures to recruits seems set to worsen at the same time as demand for high quality nursing care escalates. Important indicators - the number of the most highly dependent residents has doubled in the past seven years; compounding co-morbidities are increasingly common and an estimated 60-80% of residents in residential aged care facilities (RACFs) have a dementing illness - reveal the rapidly rising levels of frailty and dependency in the RACF population....

EXECUTIVE DEFICITS IN AMYOTROPHIC LATERAL SCLEROSIS: EXAMINING THE CONSEQUENCES OF SELF-REGULATORY IMPAIRMENT ON QUALITY OF LIFE

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that attacks the motor system and contributes to a range of cognitive and behavioral impairments (e.g., behavioral and emotional disinhibition, planning and problem solving difficulties, impulsivity, attention, and personality change). This executive dysfunction may contribute to selfregulatory impairment across several domains, including cognitive skills, thought processes, emotion regulation, interpersonal skills, and physiology, that may be crucial to the quality of life (QOL), or well being, of patients and their caregivers. Given the relentless course and prognosis of ALS, palliative treatments for ALS should target the full range of self-regulatory deficits. Thirty-seven patient-caregiver pairs completed questionnaires regarding the patients’ ability to regulate emotions, social behavior, and thought patterns. Patients also completed neuropsychological measures of executive functions and provided measures of glycosylated hemoglobin (A1c) and heart rate variability (HRV). Results suggest that SR and EF deficits exist on a continuum in ALS, such that some patients evidence adequate or superior ability to self-regulate while others evidence deficits. Patient- caregiver agreement about patients’ selfregulatory capacity across domains was generally weak to moderate. Patients perceived themselves to have less capacity for global regulation than caregivers perceived them to have, patients perceived less dyadic cohesion than caregivers, and patients perceived themselves to ruminate more than caregivers indicated. Overall, caregivers tended to perceive a more pervasive pattern of deficits compared to patients. Additionally, measures of SR and EF were not strongly inter-correlated in general, challenging the idea that SR in different domains depends on a common resource. Accordingly, correlations among measures of theoretically similar constructs (i.e., EF and SR) were small to moderate in magnitude and non-significant. With regard to physiological functioning, when patients had better regulated glucose (A1c), patients and caregivers perceived better global regulation. A similar pattern emerged with patient ratings, with higher baseline HRV linked to less emotional lability. Last, mixed results were obtained when predicting patient and caregiver QOL. Less rumination, less dyadic cohesion and more social anxiety were associated with higher QOL for patients. Caregivers’ QOL was not significantly related to their perceptions of patients’ self-regulatory capacity in any area

All about a line: The Sidney-Black Hills Trail\u27s impact on the cultural landscape of western Nebraska and South Dakota

When driving through western Nebraska and South Dakota, one can identify artifacts and signs of an earlier highway. In some places the wagon ruts and foundations of previous foundations are still visible; in other places the highway is represented through markers and signs erected by historically minded organizations. The presence of these signs, markers, and wagon ruts mark representations o f the Sidney-Black Hills Trail on the landscape. The presence o f the wagon ruts and settlement foundations mark a representation of the trail as it was and gives one a view of the real American West; a West that chronicles the Black Hills gold rush in 1874-1880. The presence o f the historical markers and signs, both private and governmental, may represent the Trail as it was, and is, in the Mythic West. This theory of the American W est and the Mythic W est is what I am exploring in my study of the cultural landscape o f the Sidney-Black Hills Trail. By comparing information from the National Register of Historic Places, the Nebraska and South Dakota Historic Markers programs, signs, and local resources to historic documents I find that the “West” and the “Mythic West” have merged, giving the impression that the present-day interpretations of the Trail are the historic interpretations of the Trail

Use Of Derivatives In The Airline Industry

This paper is about the use of derivatives such as futures and option used as hedging to reduce exposure to risk in the Airline Industry. The paper considers the way derivatives are used and undertakes primary research to determine whether there is a relationship between the use of derivatives, the level of profit, the level of liabilities and executive salaries. This paper uses regression analysis and a chi-squared test. The conclusion assesses the value of these tools to airlines

Autonomic nervous system functioning assessed during the Still-Face Paradigm: A meta-analysis and systematic review of methods, approach and findings.

Animal and human research suggests that the development of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) is particularly sensitive to early parenting experiences. The Still-Face Paradigm (SFP), one of the most widely used measures to assess infant reactivity and emotional competence, evokes infant self-regulatory responses to parental interaction and disengagement. This systematic review of 33 peer-reviewed studies identifies patterns of parasympathetic (PNS) and sympathetic (SNS) nervous system activity demonstrated by infants under one year of age during the SFP and describes findings within the context of sample demographic characteristics, study methodologies, and analyses conducted. A meta-analysis of a subset of 14 studies with sufficient available respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) data examined whether the SFP reliably elicited PNS withdrawal (RSA decrease) during parental disengagement or PNS recovery (RSA increase) during reunion, and whether results differed by socioeconomic status (SES). Across SES, the meta-analysis confirmed that RSA decreased during the still-face episode and increased during reunion. When studies were stratified by SES, low-SES or high-risk groups also showed RSA decreases during the still face episode but failed to show an increase in RSA during reunion. Few studies have examined SNS activity during the SFP to date, preventing conclusions in that domain. The review also identified multiple qualifications to patterns of SFP ANS findings, including those that differed by ethnicity, infant sex, parental sensitivity, and genetics. Strengths and weaknesses in the extant research that may explain some of the variation in findings across the literature are also discussed, and suggestions for strengthening future research are provided

Infracompetitive Privacy

One of the chief anticompetitive effects of modern business lies in antitrust’s blind spot. Platform-based companies (“platforms”) have innovated a business model whereby they offer consumers “free and low-priced services in exchange for their personal information. With this data, platforms can design products, target consumers, and sell such information to third parties. The problem is that platforms can inflict greater costs on users and markets in the form of lost privacy than efficiencies generated from their low prices. Consumers, as examples, spend billions of dollars annually to remedy privacy breaches and, alarmingly, participate unwittingly in experiments designed to manipulate their behaviors, compromising human agency. But because antitrust law uses consumer prices to measure welfare, platforms and privacy injuries have avoided antitrust scrutiny. We show that insufficient competition enables platforms to capture the economic benefits of data while externalizing the costs of protecting it. As we find, consumers demand privacy yet firms in monopolized markets have powerful incentives to shift the costs of protecting privacy onto society. To reduce the rate of privacy breaches, we show that increasing competition would 1) allow users to punish offending firms, 2) disseminate information about the true costs of privacy, and 3) introduce more secure services into the market. As such, because monopoly power encourages firms to disregard the privacy demands of users, antitrust must evolve to recognize that the costs of inadequate privacy can degrade consumer welfare more than artificially high prices

Interhemispheric comparison of atmospheric circulation features as evaluated from NIMBUS satellite data

Findings are presented for IRIS data from NIMBUS 3 in mapping the global ozone distribution. The seasonal and regional variations of ozone, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, reveal features that were not evident from the sparse ground-based ozone observation network in this hemisphere. A regression analysis was undertaken for temperature and height fields on radiance data. Spectrum analyses of upper wind data from the North American section and Australia were completed

Communication Scholarship and the Quest for Open Access

The advent of black, green, and gold open access publication models poses unique questions for scholars of communication. Plato’s (1956) classic critique of writing in the legend of Theuth and Thamus warned that the printed word “rolls about all over the place, falling into the hands of those who have no concern with it” (pp. 69–70). More than two 2 millennia later, scholars and administrators at all levels of the discipline face just such a phenomenon. As scholars of cyberspace debate whether “information wants to be free” (Levy, 2014), a communication perspective involves consideration of the importance of authorship and attribution amid an ever-shifting array of digital publishing options and subversions. The purpose of this study is to investigate the ongoing transformation of academic publishing by examining black, green, and gold open access models, the responses of the communication discipline, and ongoing questions surrounding the nature and extent of accessibility. As access options for research and publication continue to evolve, this study hopes to provide coordinates for administrators seeking to navigate questions concerning the what, how, and why of communication scholarship in a digital age

Levo-Tetrahydropalmatine Attenuates Cocaine Self-Administration under a Progressive-Ratio Schedule and Cocaine Discrimination in Rats

Levo-tetrahydropalmatine (l-THP) is an alkaloid found in many traditional Chinese herbal preparations and has a unique pharmacological profile that includes dopamine receptor antagonism. Previously we demonstrated that l-THP attenuates fixed-ratio (FR) cocaine self-administration (SA) and cocaine-induced reinstatement in rats at doses that do not alter food-reinforced responding. This study examined the effects of l-THP on cocaine and food SA under progressive-ratio (PR) schedules of reinforcement and the discriminative stimulus effects of cocaine. In adult male Sprague–Dawley rats self-administering cocaine (0.5 or 1.0 mg/kg/inf), l-THP significantly reduced breaking points at the 1.875, 3.75 and 7.5 mg/kg doses. l-THP also reduced the breaking point and response rate for PR SA of sucrose-sweetened food pellets, although the decrease was significant only at the 7.5 mg/kg l-THP dose. In rats trained to discriminate cocaine (10 mg/kg, ip) from saline, l-THP (1.875, 3.75 and 7.5 mg/kg) produced a rightward shift in the dose–response curve for cocaine generalization. During generalization testing, l-THP reduced response rate, but only at the 7.5 mg/kg dose. l-THP also prevented substitution of the dopamine D2/D3 receptor agonist, (±) 7-OH-DPAT, for cocaine suggesting a potential role for antagonism of D2 and/or D3 receptors in the effects of l-THP. These data further demonstrate that l-THP attenuates the reinforcing and subjective effects of cocaine at doses that do not produce marked motor effects and provide additional evidence that l-THP may have utility for the management of cocaine addiction

Wait for it . . . Delaying Instruction Improves Mathematics Problem Solving: A Classroom Study

Engaging learners in exploratory problem-solving activities prior to receiving instruction (i.e., explore-instruct approach) has been endorsed as an effective learning approach. However, it remains unclear whether this approach is feasible for elementary-school children in a classroom context. In two experiments, second-graders solved mathematical equivalence problems either before or after receiving brief conceptual instruction. In Experiment 1 (n = 41), the explore-instruct approach was less effective at supporting learning than an instruct-solve approach. However, it did not include a common, but often overlooked feature of an explore-instruct approach, which is provision of a knowledge-application activity after instruction. In Experiment 2 (n = 47), we included a knowledge-application activity by having all children check their answers on previously solved problems. The explore-instruct approach led to superior learning than an instruct-solve approach. Findings suggest promise for an explore-instruct approach, provided learners have the opportunity to apply knowledge from instruction