A comparative framework: how broadly applicable is a 'rigorous' critical junctures framework?

The paper tests Hogan and Doyle's (2007, 2008) framework for examining critical junctures. This framework sought to incorporate the concept of ideational change in understanding critical junctures. Until its development, frameworks utilized in identifying critical junctures were subjective, seeking only to identify crisis, and subsequent policy changes, arguing that one invariably led to the other, as both occurred around the same time. Hogan and Doyle (2007, 2008) hypothesized ideational change as an intermediating variable in their framework, determining if, and when, a crisis leads to radical policy change. Here we test this framework on cases similar to, but different from, those employed in developing the exemplar. This will enable us determine whether the framework's relegation of ideational change to a condition of crisis holds, or, if ideational change has more importance than is ascribed to it by this framework. This will also enable us determined if the framework itself is robust, and fit for the purposes it was designed to perform — identifying the nature of policy change

Prognostic markers in cancer: the evolution of evidence from single studies to meta-analysis, and beyond

In oncology, prognostic markers are clinical measures used to help elicit an individual patient's risk of a future outcome, such as recurrence of disease after primary treatment. They thus facilitate individual treatment choice and aid in patient counselling. Evidence-based results regarding prognostic markers are therefore very important to both clinicians and their patients. However, there is increasing awareness that prognostic marker studies have been neglected in the drive to improve medical research. Large protocol-driven, prospective studies are the ideal, with appropriate statistical analysis and clear, unbiased reporting of the methods used and the results obtained. Unfortunately, published prognostic studies rarely meet such standards, and systematic reviews and meta-analyses are often only able to draw attention to the paucity of good-quality evidence. We discuss how better-quality prognostic marker evidence can evolve over time from initial exploratory studies, to large protocol-driven primary studies, and then to meta-analysis or even beyond, to large prospectively planned pooled analyses and to the initiation of tumour banks. We highlight articles that facilitate each stage of this process, and that promote current guidelines aimed at improving the design, analysis, and reporting of prognostic marker research. We also outline why collaborative, multi-centre, and multi-disciplinary teams should be an essential part of future studies

The propensity to adopt evidence-based practice among physical therapists

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Many authors, as well as the American Physical Therapy Association, advocate that physical therapists adopt practice patterns based on research evidence, known as evidence-based practice (EBP). At the same time, physical therapists should be capable of integrating EBP within the day-to-day practice of physical therapy. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which personal characteristics and the characteristics of the social system in the workplace influence the propensity of physical therapists to adopt EBP.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The study used a 69 item mailed self-completion questionnaire. The questionnaire had four major sections. The first three sections were each drawn from a different theoretical framework and from different authors' work. The instrument was developed to capture the propensity of physical therapists to adopt EBP, characteristics of the social system in the workplace of physical therapists, personal characteristics of physical therapists, and selected demographic variables of physical therapists. The eligible population consisted of 3,897 physical therapists licensed by the state of Georgia in the United States of America. A random sample of 1320 potential participants was drawn.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>939 questionnaires were returned for a response rate of 73%. 831 of the participants' questionnaires were useable and became the basis for the study. There was a moderate association between desire for learning (<it>r </it>= .36, <it>r</it>²= .13), highest degree held (<it>r </it>= .29, <it>r</it>²= .08), practicality (<it>r </it>= .27, <it>r</it>²= .07) and nonconformity (<it>r </it>= .24, <it>r</it>²= .06) and the propensity to adopt EBP. A negative correlation was found between age, years licensed and percentage of time in direct patient care. The findings demonstrated that the best three variables for predicting the propensity to adopt EBP in physical therapy were: desire for learning, highest degree held, and practicality.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The study confirms there is no single factor to facilitate research evidence into day-to-day practice. Multiple practice change strategies will be needed to facilitate change in practice.</p

Telephone and face to face methods of assessment of veteran's community reintegration yield equivalent results

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Community Reintegration of Service Members (CRIS) is a new measure of community reintegration developed to measure veteran's participation in life roles. It consists of three sub-scales: Extent of Participation (Extent), Perceived Limitations with Participation (Perceived), and Satisfaction with Participation (Satisfaction). Testing of the CRIS measure to date has utilized in-person administration. Administration of the CRIS measure by telephone, if equivalent to in-person administration, would be desirable to lower cost and decrease administrative burden. The purpose of this study was to test the equivalence of telephone and in-person mode of CRIS administration.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A convenience sample of 102 subjects (76% male, 24% female, age mean = 49 years, standard deviation = 8.3) were randomly assigned to received either telephone interview at Visit 1 and in-person interview at Visit 2, or in-person interview at Visit 1 and telephone interview a Visit 2. Both Visits were conducted within one week. Intraclass correlation coefficients, ICC (2,1), were used to evaluate correspondence between modes for both item scores and summary scores. ANOVAs with mode order as a covariate were used to test for presence of an ordering effect.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>ICCs (95%CI) for the subscales were 0.92 (0.88-0.94) for Extent, 0.85 (0.80-0.90) for Perceived, and 0.89 (0.84-0.93) for Satisfaction. No ordering effect was observed.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Telephone administration of the CRIS measure yielded equivalent results to in-person administration. Telephone administration of the CRIS may enable lower costs of administration and greater adoption.</p

A Blessing and a Curse? Political Institutions in the Growth and Decay of Generalized Trust: A Cross-National Panel Analysis, 1980–2009

Despite decades of research on social capital, studies that explore the relationship between political institutions and generalized trust–a key element of social capital–across time are sparse. To address this issue, we use various cross-national public-opinion data sets including the World Values Survey and employ pooled time-series OLS regression and fixed- and random-effects estimation techniques on an unbalanced panel of 74 countries and 248 observations spread over a 29-year time period. With these data and methods, we investigate the impact of five political-institutional factors–legal property rights, market regulations, labor market regulations, universality of socioeconomic provisions, and power-sharing capacity–on generalized trust. We find that generalized trust increases monotonically with the quality of property rights institutions, that labor market regulations increase generalized trust, and that power-sharing capacity of the state decreases generalized trust. While generalized trust increases as the government regulation of credit, business, and economic markets decreases and as the universality of socioeconomic provisions increases, both effects appear to be more sensitive to the countries included and the modeling techniques employed than the other political-institutional factors. In short, we find that political institutions simultaneously promote and undermine generalized trust

Institutional trust and alcohol consumption in Sweden: The Swedish National Public Health Survey 2006

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Trust as a measure of social capital has been documented to be associated with health. Mediating factors for this association are not well investigated. Harmful alcohol consumption is believed to be one of the mediating factors. We hypothesized that low social capital defined as low institutional trust is associated with harmful alcohol consumption.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Data from the 2006 Swedish National Survey of Public Health were used for analyses. The total study population comprised a randomly selected representative sample of 26.305 men and 30.584 women aged 16–84 years. Harmful alcohol consumption was measured using a short version the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), developed and recommended by the World Health Organisation. Low institutional trust was defined based on trust in ten main welfare institutions in Sweden.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Independent of age, country of birth and socioeconomic circumstances, low institutional trust was associated with increased likelihood of harmful alcohol consumption (OR (men) = 1.52, 95% CI 1.34–1.70) and (OR (women) = 1.50, 95% CI 1.35–1.66). This association was marginally altered after adjustment for interpersonal trust.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Findings of the present study show that lack of trust in institutions is associated with increased likelihood of harmful alcohol consumption. We hope that findings in the present study will inspire similar studies in other contexts and contribute to more knowledge on the association between institutional trust and lifestyle patterns. This evidence may contribute to policies and strategies related to alcohol consumption.</p

Foundations of Black Hole Accretion Disk Theory

This review covers the main aspects of black hole accretion disk theory. We begin with the view that one of the main goals of the theory is to better understand the nature of black holes themselves. In this light we discuss how accretion disks might reveal some of the unique signatures of strong gravity: the event horizon, the innermost stable circular orbit, and the ergosphere. We then review, from a first-principles perspective, the physical processes at play in accretion disks. This leads us to the four primary accretion disk models that we review: Polish doughnuts (thick disks), Shakura-Sunyaev (thin) disks, slim disks, and advection-dominated accretion flows (ADAFs). After presenting the models we discuss issues of stability, oscillations, and jets. Following our review of the analytic work, we take a parallel approach in reviewing numerical studies of black hole accretion disks. We finish with a few select applications that highlight particular astrophysical applications: measurements of black hole mass and spin, black hole vs. neutron star accretion disks, black hole accretion disk spectral states, and quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs).Comment: 91 pages, 23 figures, final published version available at http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2013-

Assessing pathogenicity of MLH1 variants by co-expression of human MLH1 and PMS2 genes in yeast

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Loss of DNA mismatch repair (MMR) in humans, mainly due to mutations in the <it>hMLH1 </it>gene, is linked to hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC). Because not all <it>MLH1 </it>alterations result in loss of MMR function, accurate characterization of variants and their classification in terms of their effect on MMR function is essential for reliable genetic testing and effective treatment. To date, <it>in vivo </it>assays for functional characterization of <it>MLH1 </it>mutations performed in various model systems have used episomal expression of the modified MMR genes. We describe here a novel approach to determine accurately the functional significance of <it>hMLH1 </it>mutations <it>in vivo</it>, based on co-expression of human MLH1 and PMS2 in yeast cells.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Yeast <it>MLH1 </it>and <it>PMS1 </it>genes, whose protein products form the MutLα complex, were replaced by human orthologs directly on yeast chromosomes by homologous recombination, and the resulting MMR activity was tested.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The yeast strain co-expressing hMLH1 and hPMS2 exhibited the same mutation rate as the wild-type. Eight cancer-related <it>MLH1 </it>variants were introduced, using the same approach, into the prepared yeast model, and their effect on MMR function was determined. Five variants (A92P, S93G, I219V, K618R and K618T) were classified as non-pathogenic, whereas variants T117M, Y646C and R659Q were characterized as pathogenic.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Results of our <it>in vivo </it>yeast-based approach correlate well with clinical data in five out of seven hMLH1 variants and the described model was thus shown to be useful for functional characterization of <it>MLH1 </it>variants in cancer patients found throughout the entire coding region of the gene.</p

How Friendship Network Characteristics Influence Subjective Well-Being

This article explores how friendship network characteristics influence subjective well-being (SWB). Using data from the 2003 General Social Survey of Canada, three components of the friendship network are differentiated: number of friends, frequency of contact, and heterogeneity of friends. We argue that these characteristics shape SWB through the benefits they bring. Benefits considered are more social trust, less stress, better health, and more social support. Results confirm that higher frequency of contacts and higher number of friends, as well as lower heterogeneity of the friendship network are related to more social trust, less stress, and a better health. Frequency of contact and number of friends, as well as more heterogeneity of the friendship network increase the chance of receiving help from friends. With the exception of receiving help from friends, these benefits are in turn related to higher levels of SWB. Only the frequency of meeting friends face-to-face has a remaining positive direct influence on SWB