Shared Care, Elder and Family Member Skills Used to Manage Burden

Aim. The aim of this paper is to further develop the construct of Shared Care by comparing and contrasting it to related research, and to show how the construct can be used to guide research and practice. Background. While researchers have identified negative outcomes for family caregivers caused by providing care, less is known about positive aspects of family care for both members of a family dyad. Understanding family care relationships is important to nurses because family participation in the care of chronically ill elders is necessary to achieve optimal outcomes from nursing interventions. A previous naturalistic inquiry identified a new construct, Shared Care, which was used to describe a family care interaction that contributed to positive care outcomes. Methods. A literature review was carried out using the databases Medline, CINAHL, and Psych-info and the keywords home care, care receiver, disability, family, communication, decision-making and reciprocity. The results of the review were integrated to suggest how Shared Care could be used to study care difficulties and guide interventions. Results. The literature confirmed the importance of dyad relationships in family care. Shared Care extended previous conceptualizations of family care by capturing three critical components: communication, decision-making, and reciprocity. Shared Care provides a structure to expand the conceptualization of family care to include both members of a care dyad and account for positive and negative aspects of care. Conclusions. The extended view provided by the construct of Shared Care offers practitioners and scholars tools to use in the context of our ageing population to improve the effectiveness of family care relationships

Developmentally Informed Community Treatment for Adolescents with Problem Sexual Behavior

The sexual abuse of children often results in profound intrapersonal and interpersonal dysfunction or difficulties for the victims. In 2010, sexual assault was perpetrated upon more than 63,000 children in the United States, and in more than 35% of those incidents, adolescents were the perpetrators. Research suggests that adolescents with problem sexual behavior act from their own vulnerabilities. Understanding the developmental seeds and pathways that become etiological factors in the commission of sexual assaults against children is only one important step in a mission to protect them. The treatment that emerges from a comprehensive understanding of adaptive and maladaptive adolescent development and its behavioral expression provides a framework from which to address both the diverse and unique characteristics of these youth. This dissertation intends to contribute to the field of the treatment of adolescents with problem sexual behavior with an outpatient program design, theoretically rooted in the discipline of developmental psychopathology and aligned with the Ward & Beech Integrated Theory of Sexual Offending. A review of literature explores the discipline of developmental psychopathology, developmental neuroscience, adolescent development, and facets of the fields related to the study of problem sexual behavior, including characteristics of problem sexual behavior in adolescents, various risk factors and theories, and current treatment models. Together these foci will function as the groundwork for the program design. Implementation of the program could contribute to a reduction of recidivism for successful adolescent participants, and so also a reduction in incidences of children perpetrating assaultive, sexual acts upon other children, by providing tools to heal wounds, and promote growth, consolidation, competency and opportunities for adolescents to re-direct their developmental trajectories

Aurorasaurus:a citizen science platform for viewing and reporting the aurora

A new, citizen science based, aurora observing and reporting platform has been developed with the primary aim of collecting auroral observations made by the general public to further improve the modeling of the aurora. In addition, the real-time ability of this platform facilitates the combination of citizen science observations with auroral oval models to improve auroral visibility nowcasting. Aurorasaurus provides easily understandable aurora information, basic gamification, and real-time location-based notification of verified aurora activity to engage citizen scientists. The Aurorasaurus project is one of only a handful of space weather citizen science projects and can provide useful results for the space weather and citizen science communities. Early results are promising with over 2,000 registered users submitting over 1,000 aurora observations and verifying over 1,700 aurora sightings posted on Twitter

Forecasting environmental equity: Air quality responses to road user charging in Leeds, UK

Sustainable development requires that the goals of economic development, environmental protection and social justice are considered collectively when formulating development strategies. In the context of planning sustainable transport systems, trade-offs between the economy and the environment, and between the economy and social justice have received considerable attention. In contrast, much less attention has been paid to environmental equity, the trade-off between environmental and social justice goals, a significant omission given the growing attention to environmental justice by policy makers in the EU and elsewhere. In many countries, considerable effort has been made to develop clean transport systems by using, for example, technical, economic and planning instruments. However, little effort has been made to understand the distributive and environmental justice implications of these measures. This paper investigates the relationship between urban air quality (as NO2) and social deprivation for the city of Leeds, UK. Through application of a series of linked dynamic models of traffic simulation and assignment, vehicle emission, and pollutant dispersion, the environmental equity implications of a series of urban transport strategies, including road user cordon and distance based charging, road network development, and emission control, are assessed. Results indicate a significant degree of environmental inequity exists in Leeds. Analysis of the transport strategies indicates that this inequity will be reduced through natural fleet renewal, and, perhaps contrary to expectations, road user charging is also capable of promoting environmental equity. The environmental equity response is however, sensitive to road pricing scheme design

Magnetic properties of exactly solvable doubly decorated Ising-Heisenberg planar models

Applying the decoration-iteration procedure, we introduce a class of exactly solvable doubly decorated planar models consisting both of the Ising- and Heisenberg-type atoms. Exact solutions for the ground state, phase diagrams and basic physical quantities are derived and discussed. The detailed analysis of the relevant quantities suggests the existence of an interesting quantum antiferromagnetic phase in the system.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Physical Review

Polymorphism discovery and association analyses of the interferon genes in type 1 diabetes.

BACKGROUND: The aetiology of the autoimmune disease type 1 diabetes (T1D) involves many genetic and environmental factors. Evidence suggests that innate immune responses, including the action of interferons, may also play a role in the initiation and/or pathogenic process of autoimmunity. In the present report, we have adopted a linkage disequilibrium (LD) mapping approach to test for an association between T1D and three regions encompassing 13 interferon alpha (IFNA) genes, interferon omega-1 (IFNW1), interferon beta-1 (IFNB1), interferon gamma (IFNG) and the interferon consensus-sequence binding protein 1 (ICSBP1). RESULTS: We identified 238 variants, most, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), by sequencing IFNA, IFNB1, IFNW1 and ICSBP1, 98 of which where novel when compared to dbSNP build 124. We used polymorphisms identified in the SeattleSNP database for INFG. A set of tag SNPs was selected for each of the interferon and interferon-related genes to test for an association between T1D and this complex gene family. A total of 45 tag SNPs were selected and genotyped in a collection of 472 multiplex families. CONCLUSION: We have developed informative sets of SNPs for the interferon and interferon related genes. No statistical evidence of a major association between T1D and any of the interferon and interferon related genes tested was found.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

Support and Assessment for Fall Emergency Referrals (SAFER 1) trial protocol. Computerised on-scene decision support for emergency ambulance staff to assess and plan care for older people who have fallen: evaluation of costs and benefits using a pragmatic cluster randomised trial

Background: Many emergency ambulance calls are for older people who have fallen. As half of them are left at home, a community-based response may often be more appropriate than hospital attendance. The SAFER 1 trial will assess the costs and benefits of a new healthcare technology - hand-held computers with computerised clinical decision support (CCDS) software - to help paramedics decide who needs hospital attendance, and who can be safely left at home with referral to community falls services. Methods/Design: Pragmatic cluster randomised trial with a qualitative component. We shall allocate 72 paramedics ('clusters') at random between receiving the intervention and a control group delivering care as usual, of whom we expect 60 to complete the trial. Patients are eligible if they are aged 65 or older, live in the study area but not in residential care, and are attended by a study paramedic following an emergency call for a fall. Seven to 10 days after the index fall we shall offer patients the opportunity to opt out of further follow up. Continuing participants will receive questionnaires after one and 6 months, and we shall monitor their routine clinical data for 6 months. We shall interview 20 of these patients in depth. We shall conduct focus groups or semi-structured interviews with paramedics and other stakeholders. The primary outcome is the interval to the first subsequent reported fall (or death). We shall analyse this and other measures of outcome, process and cost by 'intention to treat'. We shall analyse qualitative data thematically. Discussion: Since the SAFER 1 trial received funding in August 2006, implementation has come to terms with ambulance service reorganisation and a new national electronic patient record in England. In response to these hurdles the research team has adapted the research design, including aspects of the intervention, to meet the needs of the ambulance services. In conclusion this complex emergency care trial will provide rigorous evidence on the clinical and cost effectiveness of CCDS for paramedics in the care of older people who have fallen

Transient deformation associated with explosive eruption measured at Masaya volcano (Nicaragua) using Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar

Deformation caused by processes within a volcanic conduit are localised, transient, and therefore challenging to measure. However, observations of such deformation are important because they provide insight into conditions preceding explosive activity, and are important for hazard assessment. Here, we present measurements of low magnitude, transient deformation covering an area of ∼4 km2 at Masaya volcano spanning a period of explosive eruptions (30th April - 17th May 2012). Radial uplift of duration 24 days and peak displacements of a few millimetres occurred in the month before the eruption, but switched to subsidence ∼27 days before the onset of the explosive eruption on 30th of April. Uplift resumed during, and continued for ∼16 days after the end of the explosive eruption period. We use a finite element modelling approach to investigate a range of possible source geometries for this deformation, and find that the changes in pressurisation of a conduit 450 m below the surface vent (radius 160 m and length 700 m), surrounded by a halo of brecciated material with a Young’s modulus of 15 GPa, gave a good fit to the InSAR displacements. We propose that the pre-eruptive deformation sequence at Masaya is likely to have been caused by the movement of magma through a constriction within the shallow conduit system. Although measuring displacements associated with conduit processes remains challenging, new high resolution InSAR datasets will increasingly allow the measurement of transient and lower magnitude deformation signals, improving the method’s applicability for observing transitions between volcanic activity characterised by an open and a closed conduit system

Measurement of Scintillation and Ionization Yield and Scintillation Pulse Shape from Nuclear Recoils in Liquid Argon

We have measured the scintillation and ionization yield of recoiling nuclei in liquid argon as a function of applied electric field by exposing a dual-phase liquid argon time projection chamber (LAr-TPC) to a low energy pulsed narrow band neutron beam produced at the Notre Dame Institute for Structure and Nuclear Astrophysics. Liquid scintillation counters were arranged to detect and identify neutrons scattered in the TPC and to select the energy of the recoiling nuclei. We report measurements of the scintillation yields for nuclear recoils with energies from 10.3 to 57.3 keV and for median applied electric fields from 0 to 970 V/cm. For the ionization yields, we report measurements from 16.9 to 57.3 keV and for electric fields from 96.4 to 486 V/cm. We also report the observation of an anticorrelation between scintillation and ionization from nuclear recoils, which is similar to the anticorrelation between scintillation and ionization from electron recoils. Assuming that the energy loss partitions into excitons and ion pairs from $^{83m}$Kr internal conversion electrons is comparable to that from $^{207}$Bi conversion electrons, we obtained the numbers of excitons ($N_{ex}$) and ion pairs ($N_i$) and their ratio ($N_{ex}/N_i$) produced by nuclear recoils from 16.9 to 57.3 keV. Motivated by arguments suggesting direction sensitivity in LAr-TPC signals due to columnar recombination, a comparison of the light and charge yield of recoils parallel and perpendicular to the applied electric field is presented for the first time.Comment: v2 to reflect published versio

Field and chirality effects on electrochemical charge transfer rates: Spin dependent electrochemistry

This work examines whether electrochemical redox reactions are sensitive to the electron spin orientation by examining the effects of magnetic field and molecular chirality on the charge transfer process. The working electrode is either a ferromagnetic nickel film or a nickel film that is coated with an ultrathin (5\u201330 nm) gold overlayer. The electrode is coated with a self-assembled monolayer that immobilizes a redox couple containing chiral molecular units, either the redox active dye toluidine blue O with a chiral cysteine linking unit or cytochrome c. By varying the direction of magnetization of the nickel, toward or away from the adsorbed layer, we demonstrate that the electrochemical current depends on the orientation of the electrons\u2019 spin. In the case of cytochrome c, the spin selectivity of the reduction is extremely high, namely, the reduction occurs mainly with electrons having their spin-aligned antiparallel to their velocity