Health-Related Beliefs, Practices, and Experiences of Migrant Dominicans in the Northeastern United States

Purpose: This study aimed to discover and describe migrant Dominican cultural beliefs and practices related to health, the ways that migrant Dominicans take care of their health in their new environment, and their experience with professional health care in the Northeastern United States. Design: This descriptive qualitative study was guided by Leininger’s Theory of Culture Care Diversity and Universality and four-phase analysis method. The health-related beliefs, practices and experiences of a convenience sample of 15 self-identified adult Dominicans living in the United States for six months or more were explored in three focus groups, assisted by trained culturally appropriate interpreters. Findings: Data analysis of focus group transcripts and observations revealed four themes: (a) stress affects health and well-being, (b) family support and faith in God are essential for healing, and promoting health and well-being, (c) migrant Dominicans use both folk care and professional care to treat illness and promote healing, health, and well-being, and (d) perceptions about the quality of professional care are affected by access to care, cost, communication and expressions of caring practices. Discussion and Conclusion: Implications and recommendations for nursing practice, education and research are discussed. Design and implementation challenges from this study, and strategies used to bridge cultural and linguistic barriers, may guide others in planning research with similar populations

Localization Transition in Incommensurate non-Hermitian Systems

A class of one-dimensional lattice models with incommensurate complex potential $V(\theta)=2[\lambda_r cos(\theta)+i \lambda_i sin(\theta)]$ is found to exhibit localization transition at $|\lambda_r|+|\lambda_i|=1$. This transition from extended to localized states manifests in the behavior of the complex eigenspectum. In the extended phase, states with real eigenenergies have finite measure and this measure goes to zero in the localized phase. Furthermore, all extended states exhibit real spectrum provided $|\lambda_r| \ge |\lambda_i|$. Another novel feature of the system is the fact that the imaginary part of the spectrum is sensitive to the boundary conditions {\it only at the onset to localization}

Health-Related Beliefs, Practices, and Experiences of Migrant Dominicans in the Northeastern United States

Purpose: This study aimed to discover and describe migrant Dominican cultural beliefs and practices related to health, the ways that migrant Dominicans take care of their health in their new environment, and their experience with professional health care in the Northeastern United States. Design: This descriptive qualitative study was guided by Leininger’s Theory of Culture Care Diversity and Universality and four-phase analysis method. The health-related beliefs, practices and experiences of a convenience sample of 15 self-identified adult Dominicans living in the United States for six months or more were explored in three focus groups, assisted by trained culturally appropriate interpreters. Findings: Data analysis of focus group transcripts and observations revealed four themes: (a) stress affects health and well-being, (b) family support and faith in God are essential for healing, and promoting health and well-being, (c) migrant Dominicans use both folk care and professional care to treat illness and promote healing, health, and well-being, and (d) perceptions about the quality of professional care are affected by access to care, cost, communication and expressions of caring practices. Discussion and Conclusion: Implications and recommendations for nursing practice, education and research are discussed. Design and implementation challenges from this study, and strategies used to bridge cultural and linguistic barriers, may guide others in planning research with similar populations

On Link Estimation in Dense RPL Deployments

The Internet of Things vision foresees billions of devices to connect the physical world to the digital world. Sensing applications such as structural health monitoring, surveillance or smart buildings employ multi-hop wireless networks with high density to attain sufficient area coverage. Such applications need networking stacks and routing protocols that can scale with network size and density while remaining energy-efficient and lightweight. To this end, the IETF RoLL working group has designed the IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL). This paper discusses the problems of link quality estimation and neighbor management policies when it comes to handling high densities. We implement and evaluate different neighbor management policies and link probing techniques in Contiki’s RPL implementation. We report on our experience with a 100-node testbed with average 40-degree density. We show the sensitivity of high density routing with respect to cache sizes and routing metric initialization. Finally, we devise guidelines for design and implementation of density-scalable routing protocols

Promoting literacy during play by designing early childhood classroom environments

The purpose of this study is to explore the utilization of play activity in a kindergarten classroom to nurture children\u27s emerging literacy. First, a review of professional literature that supports such an instructional development project will be presented. Then, the implementation of a learning environment that integrates reading and writing with play experiences in literature-based thematic units will be described. In this project, the writer will extend play opportunities supported by literature experiences and related language activities

The Benziger Early Learning Assessment Test: A Study of Predictive Validity

This study examined the predictive power of a new screening test for pre-school and kindergarten youngsters, the Benziger Early Learning Assessment (BELA). It was hypothesized that the total score attained on the BELA would significantly correlate with selected measures of first grade achievement. Seventy-five white, middle-class students who had been involved in the norming population for the BELA were utilized in the study. The students had been administered the BELA during the spring of their kindergarten year. In January of their first grade year the final sample (N = 58) was administered the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT), and Ginn 360 Mastery Test levels were obtained. Results indicated that the correlations between the BELA and the criterion variables were significant. Findings suggest that although some of the correlations demonstrated in this study were quite low from a practical standpoint, the predictive power of the BELA is comparable to most measures that have been widely used and more heavily researched

The tall tale tradition and the teller : a biographical-contextual study of a storyteller, Robert Coffil of Blomidon, Nova Scotia

The tall tale has been extensively collected and studied in North America, yet this work has tended to focus on the tale Itself and on the tall tale heroes, men no longer living who are remembered by later generations as having been notable storytellers and whose first person stories of impossible exaggeration are now told in the third person by others. Rarely has the study of the tall tale focused on a living narrator or on the social context in whlch the tale is told. The intention of this thesis is to examine the tall tale and other personal experience narrative in terms of both text (i.e., the tale itself) and context (i.e., the social milieu of storytelling), with particular reference to one storyteller, Robert Coffil of Blonlidon, Nova Scotia. Thus, the tales .of Robert Coffil are included and analyzed, but so too is an extensive, orally recorded life history. Special attention is given to the complex interrelationships between Coffil's stories and storytelling and his world view, as reflected in the life history. -- The first section of this thesis (Chapters I-IV) consists mainly of an examination of the existing literature, both in the area of the tall tale and in the area of life history and biographical studies in folklore and anthropology. The second section is devoted to tape transcription of the collected material, and is divided into two parts. Chapter V, the life history, attempts a complete, chronological ordering of Coffil’s own account of his life with some guidelines as to the collection and presentation of such autobiographical material. Chapter VI consists of the more traditional collection of the tales themselves.. Variant tellings by Coffil of many of the sixty texts are included, and introductory sections and headhotes offer discussion of creativity and the sources of the stories, as well as comparative annotation. The final, section (Chapters VII-IX) is a unit of analysis and synthesis, in which the situations of storytelling are discussed and the aesthetic values of Coffil as a storyteller are considered. --This sense of an aesthetic is found to include an appreciation of both context --the appropriateness of tale to seating and, of course, to the teller himself —and text— that which in Coffll's eyes makes a good story. -- A final evaluation of the subject suggests that he will probably not become a tall tale hero to future generations in his community because of his lack of egocentricity as a storyteller and because of his successes at various occupations during his life as a sailor and vessel owner, a truck driver, a woodsman, a fisherman, and a ship's pilot. From a methodological point of view, this thesis suggests that a more complete understanding of performance-orlented genres of folklore is possible by the intensive study of the Individual in tradition

Sensor, Signal, and Imaging Informatics in 2017.

Objective To summarize significant contributions to sensor, signal, and imaging informatics literature published in 2017.Methods PubMed® and Web of Science® were searched to identify the scientific publications published in 2017 that addressed sensors, signals, and imaging in medical informatics. Fifteen papers were selected by consensus as candidate best papers. Each candidate article was reviewed by section editors and at least two other external reviewers. The final selection of the four best papers was conducted by the editorial board of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Yearbook.Results The selected papers of 2017 demonstrate the important scientific advances in management and analysis of sensor, signal, and imaging information.ConclusionThe growth of signal and imaging data and the increasing power of machine learning techniques have engendered new opportunities for research in medical informatics. This synopsis highlights cutting-edge contributions to the science of Sensor, Signal, and Imaging Informatics

NANOSCALE JOULE HEATING ALONG SILICON NANOWIRE AND ITS NANOSCALE HEATER APPLICATION

ABSTRACT In this paper, we present numerical and experimental studies on the nanoscale Joule heating along the single crystalline silicon nanowires. 50-100nm wide single crystalline silicon nanowires are heated via Joule heating by applying an electrical potential across them. Numerical simulation result predicts an extremely localized temperature field by resistive heating of silicon nanowire. We experimentally verified this highly localized heating of silicon nanowires by AFM imaging of localized thermal ablation of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) thin film. This result implies potential applications of silicon nanowires as nanoscale heaters for the generation of highly localized temperature fields INTRODUCTION Nanowires are wires with diameters in the nanometer range and high aspect ratio (length/width). Their lateral dimensions are usually constrained to 1 to a few 100's nm while the longitudinal dimensions are unconstrained. Because of their dimensions, they exhibit distinct electronic properties (eg. quantum confinement [1]), thermal properties (decreased thermal conductivity by boundary scattering [2]), etc. compared to the bulk materials. Due to these interesting properties, they are drawing a great attention in various fields including nanoscale electronic