The Usability and Acceptability of an Electronic Clinical Decision Support Tool for Antibiotic Selection for Common Pediatric Infections in Outpatient Rural Healthcare Clinics

The purpose of this project was to determine the potential role, usability and acceptability of an electronic clinical decision support tool (ECDST) for optimizing antibiotic prescribing practices for pediatric patients in outpatient rural healthcare clinics. Providers working with pediatric patients at Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas were asked to use the ECDST to complete two case studies. Following completion of the case studies, participants completed two standardized surveys regarding usability and mental workload of the ECDST. The ECDST used in this project was found to require a low mental demand, have a high usability value, and was accepted as a potential tool for clinical practice by the majority of the providers who used it

"Hey, Can You Add Captions?": The Critical Infrastructuring Practices of Neurodiverse People on TikTok

Accessibility efforts, how we can make the world usable and useful to as many people as possible, have explicitly focused on how we can support and allow for the autonomy and independence of people with disabilities, neurotypes, chronic conditions, and older adults. Despite these efforts, not all technology is designed or implemented to support everyone's needs. Recently, a community-organized push by creators and general users of TikTok urged the platform to add accessibility features, such as closed captioning to user-generated content, allowing more people to use the platform with greater ease. Our work focuses on an understudied population -- people with ADHD and those who experience similar challenges -- exploring the creative practices people from this community engage in, focusing on the kinds of accessibility they create through their creative work. Through an interview study exploring the experiences of creatives on TikTok, we find that creatives engage in critical infrastructuring -- a process of bottom-up (re)design -- to make the platform more accessible despite the challenges the platform presents to them as creators. We present these critical infrastructuring practices through the themes of: creating and augmenting video editing infrastructures and creating and augmenting video captioning infrastructures. We reflect on the introduction of a top-down infrastructure - the implementation of an auto-captioning feature - shifts the critical infrastructure practices of content creators. Through their infrastructuring, creatives revised sociotechnical capabilities of TikTok to support their own needs as well as the broader needs of the TikTok community. We discuss how the routine of infrastructuring accessibility is actually best conceptualized as incidental care work. We further highlight how accessibility is an evolving sociotechnical construct, and forward the concept of contextual accessibility.Comment: To be published in: Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. CSCW '2

Prevention of Harmful Algal Blooms by the Mitigation of Phosphorus Nutrient Loading via Filtration by Steel Wool and Activated Carbon

Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) are a devastating ecological and economic consequence of the abundance of nutrient-rich agricultural runoff entering aquatic ecosystems (Baker et al. 2014). Bio-available phosphorus from synthetic fertilizers is one of the major nutrients contributing to this global issue. Previous studies indicated that dissolved phosphorus can be removed from an aqueous environment when passed through a composite mixture of granular steel wool particles and activated carbon (Erickson, Gulliver, and Weiss, 2007). In this project, we conducted experiments using higher quality concentration measurements to determine what grades of steel wool (SW-0000, SW-000, SW-00) and types of activated carbon (granulated - GAC, powdered - PAC, extruded - EAC) and in what combinations are most effective at removing phosphorus. Additionally, the production of iron-oxide byproducts was monitored as a characteristic of filter longevity. The feasibility of scaling up the proportions of materials was also assessed to determine the safety, health, and environmental regulations of filter implementation as well as to produce an economic analysis and design matrix. It was determined that a combination of GAC and SW-0000, would be the best choice of filter media due to its ability to uptake phosphorus, cost, and ability to trap carbon dust. From the experimental and existing data, a prototype filtration device was designed and analyzed regarding the materials needed, longevity, regulation, cost, and potential future implementation in the Maumee River and the Cuyahoga River

Being on-call: an exploration of the experiences of doctors and significant others

Previous research has not compared proximal and distal doctors’ subjective evaluations of their on-call experiences and there is a dearth of evidence on the impact of being on-call on doctors’ personal lives. The aim of this thesis was to explore on-call doctors (i.e. proximal and distal) and significant others’ (SOs) perceptions of their experiences when they or their partners are on-call. The thesis also sought to uncover the meaning of being on-call for the participants’ family and social lives. Consistent with qualitative methodology, 25 semi structured interviews were conducted with 18 Trinbagonian doctors who worked on-call and seven Trinbagonian SOs whose partners worked on-call. Thematic analysis was used to search for commonalities in the meaning of the experience between and within the groups. The findings revealed that the participants were ambivalent in their perceptions of their on-call experience (i.e. it could not be classified as either favourable or unfavourable). Themes centred on the doctors’ acceptance of their on-call duties despite describing their experience as tiring, stressful and dangerous. They also emphasised SOs’ perceptions of their partners’ on-call as no longer an issue. Nevertheless, it was a source of distraction and they remained concerned about their partners’ safety when responding to call-outs. Being on-call also had implications for how the doctors and SOs managed their intimate and parent-child relationships and the extent to which they engaged in non-work activities. These implications differed according to on-call category and gender - the latter of which was indicative of the reproduction of wider Trinbagonian gendered ideologies within social structures. The study suggests that strategies geared towards improving the on-call experience of doctors should reflect distinctions in the on-call experiences of proximal and distal doctors and role expectations of men and women doctors. It should also incorporate the experiences of those who live with them

Prevention of Harmful Algal Blooms by the Mitigation of Phosphorus Nutrient Loading via Filtration by Steel Wool and Activated Carbon

Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) are a devastating ecological and economic consequence of the abundance of nutrient-rich agricultural runoff entering aquatic ecosystems (Baker et al. 2014). Bioavailable phosphorus from synthetic fertilizers is one of the major nutrients contributing to this global issue. Preliminary studies indicate that dissolved phosphorus can be removed from an aqueous environment when passed through a composite mixture of granular steel wool particles and activated carbon (Erickson, Gulliver, and Weiss (2007). Further research was conducted using higher quality concentration measurements to determine what grades of steel wool (0000, 000, 00) and types of activated carbon (GAC, PAC, EAC) and in what combinations are most effective at removing phosphorus, and to determine longevity of filter materials in terms of percent phosphorus removed over time, and percent iron-oxide byproducts produced over time. The feasibility of scaling up the proportions of materials was also assessed to determine the safety, health, and environmental regulations of filter implementation as well as to produce an economic analysis and design matrix. From the experimental and existing data, a prototypical filtration device was designed and analyzed with regard for materials needed, longevity, regulation, cost, and potential future implementation in two Ohio locations: the Maumee River and the Cuyahoga River

Big Five Aspect Personalty Scales and Social Anxiety Severity in a Nonpsychiatric Sample

Personality can be explored hierarchically with higher- and lower-order factors. Recent research suggests the personality hierarchy is comprised of higher-order Big Five traits with two lower-order factors per Big Five trait, termed aspects. There is a lack of research examining the relationship between these lower-order aspects and social anxiety (SA) severity. To better understand these relationships, 443 university undergraduate students (72.2% female; mean age = 20.48, SD = 4.64) completed the Big Five Aspects Scale (BFAS) and the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory- 23 (SPAI-23), and were retained following exclusionary criteria. Path analysis, covarying for sex, age, and general anxiety severity, was used to examine the relationship between social anxiety severity and the 10 aspect scores from the BFAS (i.e., volatility, withdrawal, compassion, politeness, industriousness, orderliness, enthusiasm, assertiveness, intelligence, openness). Significant relationships with SA severity were found for withdrawal (positive), orderliness (positive), enthusiasm (negative), and assertiveness (negative). Findings suggest that a unique pattern of lower-order personality is associated with SA severity. Further research is needed to clarify whether personality profiles differ according to diagnostic versus dimensional social anxiety

Thermal stability of cytokines : A review

Background: The role of cytokines in various disease states is a burgeoning field of academic study and clinical application, however there are no consensus documents on how certain cytokines should be stored prior to quantification. This information is especially of interest to researchers assembling a biobank or clinicians who have to transport specimens to a different location in order to be tested. Objective: To review the literature and synthesize prior findings on cytokine storage and freeze/thaw stability. Design: We searched PubMed for articles related to cytokine storage stability. All articles were analyzed for cytokines studied, source of reported cytokine concentration (i.e., human whole blood or serum, concentrations from other species or bodily sources were excluded), and reported statistical results. Results: We identified and synthesized results of 23 peer-reviewed articles which published data on the storage and freeze/thaw stability of 33 different cytokines and chemokines. Conclusion: There is a wide variety of reported cytokine storage and freeze/thaw stability. Interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor alpha are the most widely studied cytokines in regard to temperature stability. In a few cytokines, a clear consensus can be reached as to storage safety at particular temperatures, but in most, more research needs to be done and we advise the clinician or researcher to use caution in interpreting cytokine concentration results after a long period of storage or several freeze/thaw cycles.Peer reviewe

The expression of possession in Wumpurrorni English, Tennant Creek

We discuss the expression of possession in Wumpurrami English (WE), a variety spoken in the Tennant Creek area of the Northern Territory. We illustrate this from a data-set of 319 utterances containing possessive constructions (drawn from 14 video-recordings of conversations between care-givers and children). We show how the WE constructions relate to those of the source languages, Warumungu, Standard Australian English (SAE), and the Creole that developed in northern Australia late in the nineteenth century. The interaction between these sources in the development of WE is complex. Three notable features are examined: the use of a possessor clitic whose form is taken from Warumungu, but whose syntactic behaviour is taken from the SAE Genitive clitic, the use of a post-nominal possessor as in Warumungu, and the extension of the possessor clitic to the possession of inalienable things such as body-parts. A body-part possessor construction appears with a wider range of verbs than in standard Australian English, but narrower than that in traditional Warumungu. We show the wide variation in the use of possessive constructions, and suggest that relevant factors are the speaker's age, code-switching, and the context of use

Bookeater and other love stories

The characters who inhabit Bookeater and Other Love Stories have little in common with each other. Their stories are not interconnected. However, they do share an almost overwhelming desire to connect, to unite with someone--or something--in order to stave off loneliness. These stories explore the ways in which desire inevitably inspires selfish and destructive behavior. These characters are willing to lie, cheat, steal, and (almost) kill in their desperate attempts to win and keep the people--and objects--they love."--Abstract from author supplied metadata

"It's not as easy as saying, 'just get them to eat more veggies'": Exploring healthy eating in residential care in Australia

Young people living in residential out-of-home care (henceforth OoHC) are at increased risk of becoming overweight or obese. Currently, recognition of the everyday mechanisms that might be contributing to excess weight for children and young people in this setting is limited. The aim of this study was to better understand the barriers and complexities involved in the provision of a ‘healthy’ food environment in residential OoHC. Heightening awareness of these factors and how they might compromise a young person's physical health, will inform the development, refinement and evaluation of more sensitive and tailored weight-related interventions for this population. The paper presents a nuanced picture of the complexity of everyday food routines in residential care, and illustrates the ways in which food is ‘done’ in care; how food can be both symbolic of care but also used to exercise control; the way in which food can be used to create a ‘family-like’ environment; and the impact of traumatic experiences in childhood on subsequent behaviours and overall functioning in relation to food. It is argued that a health agenda designed for a mainstream population ignores the very complex relationship that children in residential OoHC may have with food. It is recommended that future intervention approaches account for personal food biographies, trauma and children's social backgrounds and how these are implicated in everyday practices and interactions around food