Thinking critically about the occurrence of widespread participation in poor nursing care

AimA discussion of how Arendt's work can be productively re-contextualized to provide a critical analysis of the occurrence of widespread participation in poor nursing care and what the implications of this are for the providers of nursing education.BackgroundWhile the recent participation of nurses in healthcare failings, such as that detailed in the Francis report, has been universally condemned, there has been an absence of critical analyses in the literature that attempt to understand the occurrence of such widespread participation in poor nursing care. This is a significant omission in so far as such analyses will form an integral part of the strategy to limit the occurrence of such widespread participation of nurses in future healthcare failings.DesignDiscussion paper.Data sourcesArendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil and Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture. In addition, a literature search was conducted and articles published in English relating to the terms care, compassion, ethics, judgement and thinking between 2004–2014 were included.Implications for nursingIt is anticipated that this discussion will stimulate further critical debate about the role of Arendt's work for an understanding of the occurrence of poor nursing care, and encouraging additional detailed analyses of the widespread participation of nurses in healthcare failings more generally.ConclusionThis article provides a challenging analysis of the widespread participation of nurses in poor care and discusses the opportunities confronting the providers of nursing education in limiting future healthcare failings

THE LANGUAGE OF CORPORATE ENVIRONMENTAL DISCLOSURE: A RESEARCH NOTE

We investigate different language techniques used in corporate environmental disclosures and test whether the impression management (see Neu et al., 1998) hypothesis holds when disclosures are measured as such. We argue that the way information is presented (i.e., the language and verbal tone of narratives) in environmental disclosure is equally or perhaps more important than its amount or thematic content, and that such narrative choice is not neutral to firm environmental performance. We use a computer-based measurement approach to evaluate the extent of language bias contained in corporate environmental disclosures for a cross-sectional sample of U.S. firms' 10-K reports. This study contributes to the social and environmental literature by (1) systematically analyzing the language used in environmental disclosures, (2) examining whether corporations attempt to manage impressions by writing such disclosures, and (3) further exploring the characteristics of impression management.Environmental disclosure; language tone; impression management

Fiscal federalism : dimensions of tax reform in developing countries

The authors propose four economic principles for use in deciding taxing responsibilities for various levels of government. These are: 1) efficiency of the internal common market - for efficiency in internal common market, taxes on mobile factors and tradable goods should either be assigned to the national government or coordinated among subnational governments; 2) national equity - progressive redistributive taxes ought to be assigned to the level of government having responsibility for redistribution, usually the national government. Subnational governments could levy supplementary flat rates on the federal tax base; 3) administrative costs - to minimize collection, administration, and compliance costs, a tax should be assigned to the level likely to be best informed about its base. This suggests assigning real property taxation to local governments and corporate income taxation to the national government; and 4) fiscal need - to ensure accountability, revenue means should be matched as closely as possible to revenue needs. Thus tax instruments intended to further specific policy objectives should be assigned to the level of government having the responsibility for such a service. Thus progressive redistributive taxes, stabilization instruments, and resource rent taxes would be suitable for assignment to national government; while tolls on intermunicipal roads are suitably assigned to state governments. Some resource taxes, such as royalties and fees and severance taxes on production and/or output, are designed to cover costs of local service provision and could be assigned to subnational governments. In addition, subnational governments could also impose taxes to discourage local environmental degradation. In countries with a federal level VAT, it may be too cumbersome to have subnational sales taxes. In such circumstances, the fiscal need criterion would suggest allowing subnational governments access to taxes which are traditionally regarded as suitable for national administration, such as personal income taxes. The authors also stress the importance of tax harmonization and coordination in preserving internal common market, reducing collection and compliance costs and helping to achieve national equity objectives and suggest methods of achieving such coordination vertically (between the federal and subnational governments) and horizontally (among subnational governments).Municipal Financial Management,Public Sector Economics&Finance,National Governance,Banks&Banking Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies

The reform of fiscal systems in developing and emerging market economies : a federalism perspective

The authors review experiences with fiscal federalism in industrial countries and present a framework for a reform of fiscal systems in developing and transition economies. They indicate how the benefits of decentralized decisionmaking in a federal system can be achieved in a manner consistent with the objectives of national efficiency and equity. The following are their suggestions. Decentralization can be made compatible with national objectives through conditional grants, regulation, or coordinated decisionmaking. The federal government should assume primary responsibility for providing national public goods and services, for efficiency of the internal common market, for redistributive equity, for external relations, and for macroeconomic policy. State governments should be responsible for subnational public goods and services, for the delivery of quasi-private goods and services, (such as education, health, and social insurance), for fiscal equity among municipalities, and for overseeing local government decisionmaking. Local governments should be responsible for purely local services. Where jurisdiction for a public service is shared, the roles of the various levels of government should be clarified. Accountability should be hierarchical, with the federal government responsible for overall policy and standards, and lower levels of government with the actual delivery of services and infrastructure. In some cases, asymmetric decentralization may be the preferred option, especially where jurisdictions differ greatly in size and population. Efficiency and equity must be considered in assigning taxes. Efficiency considerations suggest centralizing taxes applied on more mobile bases (such as taxes on capital income and on trade). Equity considerations suggest centralizing progressive income taxes and transfers to persons as well as taxes on wealth and wealth transfer and on resource rents. States could use excise taxes or general sales taxes if levied on a single-stage basis; if a multistage sales tax is used, it is best administered centrally. States could also obtain revenues from piggy-backing on the federal income tax provided a harmonized system is maintained. Municipalities should use property taxes, user fees, and licenses. Tax and expenditures assignment must be supplemented by a system of fiscal transfers, both because the desirability of greater decentralization of expenditures than of taxes will give rise to fiscal imbalances and because transfers are a necessary instrument for achieving efficiency and equity in a decentralized federation. In a decentralized federation, fiscal inefficiencies and fiscal inequities will occur because states will not deliver comparable sets of services at comparable tax rates. Eliminating these differential net fiscal benefits requires a set of equalizing unconditional transfers, possibly combined with a more general revenue-sharing scheme. Matching conditional grants are useful for internalizing the spillover of benefits from state public spending to residents of neighboring states. More important is the use of federal-state conditional grants as a means for the federal government to achieve national efficiency and equity objectives while allowing public service delivery to be decentralized. In transition economies, framework laws on property rights, corporate legal ownership and control bankruptcy, and financial accounting and control are not fully developed. This should be a high priority. The lack of local administrative experience, institutions, and competence should not be used as an excuse for not decentralizing responsibilities. If necessary, transitional funding and training should be provided.National Governance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform

Constructing a gazebo: supporting teamwork in a tightly coupled, distributed task in virtual reality

Many tasks require teamwork. Team members may work concurrently, but there must be some occasions of coming together. Collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) allow distributed teams to come together across distance to share a task. Studies of CVE systems have tended to focus on the sense of presence or copresence with other people. They have avoided studying close interaction between us-ers, such as the shared manipulation of objects, because CVEs suffer from inherent network delays and often have cumbersome user interfaces. Little is known about the ef-fectiveness of collaboration in tasks requiring various forms of object sharing and, in particular, the concurrent manipu-lation of objects. This paper investigates the effectiveness of supporting teamwork among a geographically distributed group in a task that requires the shared manipulation of objects. To complete the task, users must share objects through con-current manipulation of both the same and distinct at-tributes. The effectiveness of teamwork is measured in terms of time taken to achieve each step, as well as the impression of users. The effect of interface is examined by comparing various combinations of walk-in cubic immersive projection technology (IPT) displays and desktop devices

A study of event traffic during the shared manipulation of objects within a collaborative virtual environment

Event management must balance consistency and responsiveness above the requirements of shared object interaction within a Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE) system. An understanding of the event traffic during collaborative tasks helps in the design of all aspects of a CVE system. The application, user activity, the display interface, and the network resources, all play a part in determining the characteristics of event management. Linked cubic displays lend themselves well to supporting natural social human communication between remote users. To allow users to communicate naturally and subconsciously, continuous and detailed tracking is necessary. This, however, is hard to balance with the real-time consistency constraints of general shared object interaction. This paper aims to explain these issues through a detailed examination of event traffic produced by a typical CVE, using both immersive and desktop displays, while supporting a variety of collaborative activities. We analyze event traffic during a highly collaborative task requiring various forms of shared object manipulation, including the concurrent manipulation of a shared object. Event sources are categorized and the influence of the form of object sharing as well as the display device interface are detailed. With the presented findings the paper wishes to aid the design of future systems

Not All Effects Are Created Equal: A Rejoinder To Sawilowsky

In the continuing debate over the use and utility of effect sizes, more discussion often helps to both clarify and syncretize methodological views. Here, further defense is given of Roberts & Henson (2002) in terms of measuring bias in Cohen’s d, and a rejoinder to Sawilowsky (2003) is presented

A Data Cube Extraction Pipeline for a Coronagraphic Integral Field Spectrograph

Project 1640 is a high contrast near-infrared instrument probing the vicinities of nearby stars through the unique combination of an integral field spectrograph with a Lyot coronagraph and a high-order adaptive optics system. The extraordinary data reduction demands, similar those which several new exoplanet imaging instruments will face in the near future, have been met by the novel software algorithms described herein. The Project 1640 Data Cube Extraction Pipeline (PCXP) automates the translation of 3.8*10^4 closely packed, coarsely sampled spectra to a data cube. We implement a robust empirical model of the spectrograph focal plane geometry to register the detector image at sub-pixel precision, and map the cube extraction. We demonstrate our ability to accurately retrieve source spectra based on an observation of Saturn's moon Titan.Comment: 35 pages, 15 figures; accepted for publication in PAS

Children can control the expression of masculinity and femininity through the voice

Pre-pubertal boys and girls speak with acoustically different voices despite the absence of a clear anatomical dimorphism in the vocal apparatus, suggesting that a strong component of the expression of gender through the voice is behavioural. Initial evidence for this hypothesis was found in a previous study showing that they can alter their voice to sound like a boy or like a girl. However, whether children can spontaneously modulate these voice components within their own gender in order to vary the expression of their masculinity and femininity remained to be investigated. Here, seventy-two English-speaking children aged 6 to 10 were asked to give voice to child characters varying in masculine and feminine stereotypicality to investigate whether primary school children spontaneously adjust their voices sex-related cues in the voice – fundamental frequency (F0) and formant spacing (ΔF) – along gender stereotypical lines. Boys and girls masculinised their voice, by lowering F0 and ΔF, when impersonating stereotypically masculine child characters of the same sex. Girls and older boys also feminised their voice, by raising their F0 and ΔF, when impersonating stereotypically feminine same-sex child characters. These findings reveal that children have some knowledge of the sexually dimorphic acoustic cues underlying the expression of gender, and are capable of controlling them to modulate gender-related attributes, paving the way for the use of the voice as an implicit, objective measure of the development of gender stereotypes and behaviour