Virtual Consumption, Sustainability & Human Well-Being

There is widespread consensus that present patterns of consumption could lead to the permanent impossibility of maintaining those patterns and, perhaps, the existence of the human race. While many patterns of consumption qualify as ‘sustainable’ there is one in particular that deserves greater attention: virtual consumption. We argue that virtual consumption — the experience of authentic consumptive experiences replicated by alternative means — has the potential to reduce the deleterious consequences of real consumption by redirecting some consumptive behavior from shifting material states to shifting information states

Whole-person Care Ministry: a Study of Discordant Attitudes at Loma Linda University Medical Center

Problem. The defining emphasis of Loma Linda University Medical Center is to “Continue the teaching and healing ministry of Jesus” and “Make man whole” through a whole-person care approach. This study aims to determine why a significant number of patients fail to establish rapport with their care providers resulting in less than desirable healing outcomes and longer hospital stays. Method. A Qualitative Research study was conducted with 12 interviewees to ascertain their insight of what comprised an excellent care partnership with their medical providers and, conversely, what constituted unacceptable care in their view. A representative balance of diversities in ethnicity, culture, age, gender, medical diagnosis and religion among the patient participants was achieved by selecting the first 12 former patients who agreed to contribute to the study. Results. Study participants confirmed that effective communication is the basis for the establishment of trust in the provider/patient relationship. They are more apt to comply with recommendations for treatment, experience greater satisfaction with their care and are less inclined to seek legal redress in the event that treatment is unsuccessful if a trusting and responsive relationship with their provider is achieved. Partnership rather than paternalism is their preferred model for the ideal doctor or care provider relationship. Conclusions. Care providers best connect with patients by engaging intentionally with them regarding their medical, emotional, social and spiritual needs. The additional time and effort invested in good communication pays dividends in securing patients’ cooperation and investment in their care. Patients do not appreciate condescension, apparent disinterest in them as persons or being treated just as a case or as a disease to be beaten. A physician or care provider that manifests approachability, listens well, follows up with what is learned and goes above and beyond the call of duty is seen as a valuable asset by the patient and the institution

Bayesian Hidden Topic Markov Models

Recent developments in topic modeling for text corpora have incorporated Markov models in the latent space to better learn contextual content. Known as the Hidden Topic Markov Model (HTMM), this natural extension of probabilistic mixture models relaxes the bag-of-words assumption of the foundational latent Dirichlet allocation topic model by allowing the discrete latent variables, or topics, to follow a special first-order Markov process. Parameter estimation is performed using an expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm with fixed dimensionality of the topic space (Gruber, Rosen-Zvi, and Weiss 2007). I fully derive the state space and EM algorithm for the HTMM. I then extend the Hidden Topic Markov Model (HTMM) into a fully Bayesian framework using a Gibbs sampler. The necessary full conditional distributions are derived and a Gibbs sampling algorithm proposed. I implement both the HTMM EM algorithm (Gruber, Rosen-Zvi, and Weiss 2007) and the HTMM Gibbs sampling algorithm in the R and C++ programming languages. The performance of both inferential algorithms is evaluated on twelve simulated data sets and on a collection of proceedings from the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS). The results suggest that the Gibbs sampling algorithm provides better recovery of the topic space than a combination of the EM and Viterbi algorithms. Parameter estimation is comparable using point estimates with both algorithms. The convergence of the Gibbs sampler is studied and is reliable for reasonably large data sets. Evaluation of both algorithms on the NIPS corpus suggests that the HTMM is better able to handle polysemy than LDA and provides coherent and contiguous topics. Predictive accuracy measured by perplexity is better on training and test documents using the HTMM than using LDA on the NIPS corpus. Introducing Markovian dynamics in topical space provides better topical segmentation of a corpus and increased predictive accuracy for unseen documents

The Effects of Patient Characteristics on Clinician’s Adherence to Preventive Practice Guidelines

ABSTRACT BACKGROUND: The existence of health disparities confirms that not all patients, regardless of differences in patient demographics, are provided quality healthcare (Agency of Health Care Research and Quality, 2003). Moreover, research suggests that health disparities may be present due to the inadequate delivery of medical services (S. Haist, J. Wilson, M. Lineberry, & C. Griffith, 2007; Van Ryn, Burgess, Malat, & Griffin, 2006). The differences in the delivery of care and services to ethnic minorities and those of low socioeconomic status warrant examining the role healthcare providers play in the causation of these health disparities (Smedley, Stith, & Nelson, 2003). OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the study is to identify differences in routine screening practices of Physician Assistants and determine if such differences are associated with patients’ race and socioeconomic status. DESIGN: One hundred and twelve (N = 112) practicing Physician Assistants (N = 142) in Kentucky were surveyed and randomly assigned to receive one of four clinical vignettes. The likelihood of offering different routine screening recommendations was examined based on patient race and socioeconomic status. MAIN MEASURES: We investigated the mean differences of selected preventative care recommendation options for vignette patients as a function of patient race and socioeconomic status. KEY RESULTS: A multivariate analysis revealed that the race of a patient had a statistically significant multivariate effect on differences in screening recommendation, (p =.017) for hypertension (HTN), p=.017, immunization, p=.002. Univariate analysis showed statistically significant differences, with the African American patient were significantly less likely to receive screening for hypertension (HTN), (M = 3.42), 95% CI [3.24, 3.59], or immunizations (M = 2.45), 95% CI [2.21, 2.69] when compared to Caucasian women (M = 3.71, 2.98), 95% CIs [3.55, 3.88], [2.76, 3.23], respectively. CONCULSION: The findings suggest that the race of the patient in the vignette influenced the likelihood of receiving screening recommendations. The findings show that care delivered by Physician Assistants (PAs), are a possible source of healthcare disparities between patients from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds and their Caucasian counterparts. Keywords: disparities, health education, race & ethnicity, socioeconomic, preventive car

The ecosystemic approach to changing chronic problem behaviour in primary schools

This thesis presents nine papers that consider the ecosystemic approach. The first five deal with a range of theoretical issues including the development of the approach and aspects relating to personality, phenomenological psychology and systems theory. These papers show that ecosystemics is part of the tradition of humanistic educational psychology and more particularly that it is closely related to the work of George Kelly and Carl Rogers. They also show that the approach is based on the phenomenological reduction, imaginative variation and aspects of phenomenological interpretation and on a systems theory which takes an interpretive frame of reference. Four further papers deal with two studies with teachers in Leicestershire that relate theory to practice. The first considers a small-scale study involving twelve primary teachers. The third and fourth relate to a larger study involving thirty-five teachers. The second paper in this group considers both studies from a Rogerian point of view. These papers demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach in primary schools, its impact on teachers and links with the person-centred approach

Solution-Based Synthesis of Nitride Fuels

The preliminary studies into the synthesis of actinide nitride fuels through a low temperature, liquid ammonia based synthesis route have been conducted on the uranium containing system, and there is good indication for the success of synthesizing uranium (III) nitride. The dissolution of iodine in ammonia is a rapid process, resulting in a pale green solution, which does not result in any observable oxidation of iodine. The cannula transfer of dissolved iodine into the reaction vessel containing U metal has been conducted with little to no residual iodine remaining in the original flask. The metal being used for these reactions has a noticeable brown/black oxide coating that prevents the formation of UI3 (NH3)x. Stirring of U metal fragments with dissolved iodine in ammonia for 24 hours revealed a thickening of the oxide coating, which presumably is a result of O2 or H2O contamination in the solvent. Procedures for cleaning the metal prior to the reaction are under development. Two measures are being taken in order to use the most purified solvent possible; the highest grade ammonia available is being obtained and several procedures are being developed to dry and deoxygenate the solvent. These actions should allow the reaction to proceed without formation of the boundary oxide layer between the two reactants

Essays in labor economics

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references.I addressed three questions in Labor Economics, using experimental and quasi-experimental variation to determine causality. In the first chapter, I ask whether playing longer in the NFL increases mortality in retirement. I compared players with very short careers with those with long careers. I also examined mortality for replacement players used briefly during the 1987 players' strike. I find that mortality is 15 percent higher for players with longer careers. This difference is even larger for positions with a high risk of injury. In the second chapter, we use a randomized experiment to evaluate the effects of academic achievement awards for first- and second-year college students studying at a Canadian commuter college. The award scheme offered linear cash incentives for course grades above 70. Awards were paid every term. Program participants also had access to peer advising by upperclassmen. Program engagement appears to have been high but overall treatment effects were small. The intervention increased the number of courses graded above 70 and points earned above 70 for second-year students, but generated no significant effect on overall GPA. Results are somewhat stronger for a subsample that correctly reproduced the program rules. In the third chapter, we examine two questions: (1) What is the value of receiving the first draft pick in the National Basketball Association?, and (2) Do teams lose intentionally to secure higher draft positions? We answer the first question by adjusting for the probability of winning the lottery using a propensity score methodology. The estimates indicate that winning the draft lottery increases attendance by 6 percentage points during the five-year period following the draft. Receiving the first pick is also associated with a small increase in win percentage. To answer the second question, we use a fixed-effects methodology that compares games in which a team can potentially change its lottery odds to games at the end of the season in which these odds are fixed. Since 1968, playoff-eliminated teams have seen around a 5 percentage point increase in win percentage once their lottery odds are fixed. This difference has ballooned above 10 percentage points in more recent years.by Tyler Williams.Ph.D