New narratologies: an examination of the interplay between life, land, and story

The study of land and geographical place remains to be an important theoretical consideration in the field of Narratology studies. This thesis illustrates how land and geography play a role in the maintenance of traditional culture and narratives in the rural communities of DeKalb and Neshoba counties in Mississippi. The first chapter argues that memory through story can yield significant historical findings in narrative identity. It is here where the discussion on historiography, memory, and narrative introduces a cognitive narratological lens that helps structure the psychological processing of life stories and oral histories. Then, the issues of self and narration and narration as identity in normative practice are used to support the oral history argument. The theories of Paul Ricoeur, the theories of Hayden White, and the historical consciousness theories of French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs are discussed at length in an interdisciplinary manner. Chapter two expands on the discussion of geography’s role in the maintenance of the traditional culture and narratives of this region. Upon completion, this chapter shows that physical location is an imperative link to understanding narrative identity and should be included in the new narratological discourse. The results of the research indicate that there are various limitations of the research including power relations and institutional impact. The summary concludes with suggestions for the future trajectory of the field such as the inclusion of cultural geography

The Market for Financial Advisers

This paper discusses the market for financial advisers. Because many people are not financially sophisticated, the quality of financial advice is a retirement policy concern. Financial advisers provide a valuable service, and many provide unbiased advice. The United States Department of Labor has estimated that pension participants save billions of dollars a year in financial mistakes avoided due to financial advice. Financial advisers, however, provide many types of services, sometimes have conflicts of interest, and do not always have a fiduciary duty to provide advice in the best interest of the client. Some financial advisers engage in ’hat switching,’ interacting with the same clients as a fiduciary for some transactions, but without fiduciary responsibility for other transactions. Understanding the adviser’s sources of compensation, including third party compensation, will help identify conflicts of interest that may affect the quality of advice clients receive

Plant Management Systems of British Columbia\u27s First Peoples

This article provides an overview of the diverse plant resource management strategies of First Nations of British Columbia. Management practices range from relatively large-scale (geographically) and longterm activities – such as the use of fire to clear prairies and subalpine meadows – to very focused actions, such as the pruning of individual shrubs. We describe plant resource management practices and the diverse methods used to identify them, and focus on three case studies to augment this description. These case studies exemplify the range of plants and ecosystems that were managed as well as the combinations of strategies and outcomes encompassed within these systems. While we focus our review on coastal British Columbia, we recognize that these are practices that occurred throughout northwestern North America. We also recognize that plant management is nested within a larger continuum of management practices that encompassed terrestrial and aquatic animals and their ecosystems (Carpenter, Humchitt, and Eldridge 2000; Lepofsky and Caldwell in press; Thornton et al. 2010). We end this summary with a discussion of how traditional and “new” management approaches introduced by European newcomers were integrated into “moditional management systems,” and we identify some of the more recent trends in the study of Indigenous management systems. Finally, we focus on future prospects for traditional plant management as part of the contemporary movements towards ethnoecological restoration, cultural renewal, and enhanced food security for Indigenous peoples – a point explored more fully in the final section of this special issue

Imagining the Ideal Pension System: International Perspectives

Muir and Turner gather an international roster of pension experts who present what they think would be the ideal pension systems for their countries and why. Those countries include the United States, the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Poland, and Japan.https://research.upjohn.org/up_press/1228/thumbnail.jp

An analysis of rater effects in reviews of scientific manuscripts

In the peer review process used by scientific journals, ratings of manuscripts are obtained and used to make publication decisions. Though concerns have been raised about reviews given to scientific manuscripts, little has been done to address the effects of reviewer severity bias on decision making. In other settings, the methods of Generalizability Theory and Many-Facet Rasch Measurement often have been used to investigate and address such effects. The purpose of this study is to use Generalizability Theory and Many-Facet Rasch Measurement to examine the effects of reviewer severity on the ratings and decisions made during the peer review of scientific manuscripts. The merits of each method and their utility in this novel context also are assessed. Deidentified peer reviews (N = 635) that used a five-item rating scale were included in a two-facet, partially nested Generalizability Theory analysis and subsequent Decision Studies. Many-Facet Rasch Measurement analysis of the data produced reviewer severity measures and manuscript publishability measures corrected for reviewer severity. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was used to compare manuscript decision categories predicted by average raw scores and Many-Facet Rasch Measurement corrected scores. Reviewer severity rankings also were compared using raw and adjusted methods. The results of the Generalizability Theory analysis revealed that reviewers nested within manuscripts account for 35.48% of the variance in publishability scores. Manuscripts accounted for 12.21% of the total variance, and items accounted for 15.22% of the total variance. Decision Studies indicated that an unrealistic number of reviewers and items would be needed to increase the generalizability coefficient and index of dependability to acceptable levels and that other methods of improving reliability should be employed. When the average raw total score was used to predict manuscript decision category, the overall percentage of manuscripts that were correctly classified using the average raw total score was 55.15%. Using the manuscript publishability measure (theta), the percentage of manuscripts that were correctly classified when the publishability measure was used was 52.49%, suggesting differences in classification, if a manuscript publishability measures corrected for reviewer severity were used. The reviewers’ average raw ratings and the reviewers’ severity measures had a Spearman rank-order correlation of -0.6083, which demonstrates differences likely attributable to the adjustment for manuscript quality in the severity measure. These findings indicate that reviewers are inconsistent in their reviews of manuscripts. Reviewer severity bias can be addressed with Many-Facet Rasch Measurement adjustments, but additional reviewer training may be needed to improve the reliability of manuscript scores. Both Generalizability Theory and Many-Facet Rasch Measurement contributed to the findings of the study and to understanding reviewer behavior. These methods show potential for increasing the capacity for more fair and accurate rating methods in the peer review of scientific manuscripts

Exploring mathematical knowledge for teaching teachers: Supporting prospective elementary teachers’ relearning of mathematics

The growing number of studies on mathematics teacher educator knowledge have consistently argued that mathematics teacher educators require specialized knowledge in their work with prospective teachers (beyond the knowledge needed for teaching students), what researchers refer to as mathematical knowledge for teaching teachers. Drawing from existing research and aspects of our own work as mathematics teacher educators, we offer our own conceptualization of mathematical knowledge for teaching teachers and illustrate ways in which we as mathematics teacher educators use our own knowledge in teaching mathematics content to prospective teachers. We are particularly concerned with the knowledge mathematics teacher educators use to support prospective teachers’ relearning of mathematics, which involves prospective teachers ultimately reconstructing their previously developed knowledge of mathematics. We will illustrate ways in which we use various aspects of mathematical knowledge for teaching teachers to support prospective teachers’ relearning of mathematics through the lens of three different tasks of teaching. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our analysis for informing the growing knowledge base for mathematics teacher educators

Impact of date stamping on patient safety measurement in patients undergoing CABG: Experience with the AHRQ Patient Safety Indicators

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Patient Safety Indicators (PSIs) provide information on hospital risk-adjusted rates for potentially preventable adverse events. Although designed to work with routine administrative data, it is unknown whether the PSIs can accurately distinguish between complications and pre-existing conditions. The objective of this study is to examine whether the AHRQ PSIs accurately measure hospital complication rates, using the data with present-on-admission (POA) codes to distinguish between complications and pre-existing conditions</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Retrospective cohort study of patients undergoing isolated CABG surgery in California conducted using the 1998–2000 California State Inpatient Database. We calculated the positive predictive value of selected AHRQ PSIs using information from the POA as the gold standard, and the intra-class correlation coefficient to assess the level of agreement between the hospital risk-adjusted PSI rates with and without the information contained in the POA modifier.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The false positive error rate, defined as one minus the positive predictive value, was greater than or equal to 20% for four of the eight PSIs examined: decubitus ulcer, failure-to-rescue, postoperative physiologic and metabolic derangement, and postoperative pulmonary embolism or deep venous thrombosis. Pairwise comparison of the hospital risk-adjusted PSI rates, with and without POA information, demonstrated almost perfect agreement for five of the eight PSI's. For decubitus ulcer, failure-to-rescue, and postoperative pulmonary embolism or DVT, the intraclass-correlation coefficient ranged between 0.63 to 0.79.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>For some of the AHRQ Patient Safety Indicators, there are significant differences in the risk-adjusted rates of adverse events depending on whether the POA indicator is used to distinguish between pre-existing conditions and complications. The use of the POA indicator will increase the accuracy of the AHRQ PSIs as measures of adverse outcomes.</p