Transition to adult services for children and young people with palliative care needs: a systematic review.

Objective: To evaluate the evidence on the transition process from child to adult services for young people with palliative care needs. Design: Systematic review Setting: Child and adult services and interface between healthcare providers. Patients: Young people aged 13 to 24 years with palliative care conditions in the process of transition. Main outcome measures: Young people and their families’ experiences of transition, the process of transition between services and its impact on continuity of care, and models of good practice. Results: 92 studies included. Papers on transition services were of variable quality when applied to palliative care contexts. Most focused on common life threatening and life limiting conditions. No standardised transition programme identified and most guidelines used to develop transition services were not evidence based. Most studies on transition programmes were predominantly condition-specific (e.g. cystic fibrosis, cancer) services. Cystic fibrosis services offered high quality transition with the most robust empirical evaluation. There were differing condition-dependent viewpoints on when transition should occur but agreement on major principles guiding transition planning and probable barriers. There was evidence of poor continuity between child and adult providers with most originating from within child settings. Conclusions: Palliative care was not, in itself, a useful concept for locating transition-related evidence. It is not possible to evaluate the merits of the various transition models for palliative care contexts, or their effects on continuity of care, as there are no long-term outcome data to measure their effectiveness. Use of validated outcome measures would facilitate research and service development

Experiments with Distributed Theatre

The Tempest was probably the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is unlikely that he would contemplate it being performed 400 years later, and

Distributed Theatre: Connecting (with) Remote Audiences

In September 2014, Miracle Theatre performed “the Tempest” simultaneously at two different locations to two separate audiences. Both audiences were linked together using an advanced video system, where several cameras captured the play. This is just one example of the radical shift in performing arts, where small theatre companies can use the Internet and a range of digital tools for reaching a wider remote audience. During the last years, we have explored how tele-presence has an effect on the performing arts, on the artists, and on the audiences. This p

Technology Estimating: A Process to Determine the Cost and Schedule of Space Technology Research and Development

NASA is investing in new technologies that include 14 primary technology roadmap areas, and aeronautics. Understanding the cost for research and development of these technologies and the time it takes to increase the maturity of the technology is important to the support of the ongoing and future NASA missions. Overall, technology estimating may help provide guidance to technology investment strategies to help improve evaluation of technology affordability, and aid in decision support. The research provides a summary of the framework development of a Technology Estimating process where four technology roadmap areas were selected to be studied. The framework includes definition of terms, discussion for narrowing the focus from 14 NASA Technology Roadmap areas to four, and further refinement to include technologies, TRL range of 2 to 6. Included in this paper is a discussion to address the evaluation of 20 unique technology parameters that were initially identified, evaluated and then subsequently reduced for use in characterizing these technologies. A discussion of data acquisition effort and criteria established for data quality are provided. The findings obtained during the research included gaps identified, and a description of a spreadsheet-based estimating tool initiated as a part of the Technology Estimating process

Lattice results for the decay constant of heavy-light vector mesons

We compute the leptonic decay constants of heavy-light vector mesons in the quenched approximation. The reliability of lattice computations for heavy quarks is checked by comparing the ratio of vector to pseudoscalar decay constant with the prediction of Heavy Quark Effective Theory in the limit of infinitely heavy quark mass. Good agreement is found. We then calculate the decay constant ratio for B mesons: $f_{B^*}/f_B= 1.01(0.01)(^{+0.04}_{-0.01})$. We also quote quenched $f_{B^*}=177(6)(17)$ MeV.Comment: 11 pages, 3 postscript figs., revtex; two references adde

Transition to adult services for children and young people with pallative care needs: systematic review

Objective: To evaluate the evidence on the transition process from child to adult services for young people with palliative care needs. Design: Systematic review Setting: Child and adult services and interface between healthcare providers. Patients: Young people aged 13 to 24 years with palliative care conditions in the process of transition. Main outcome measures: Young people and their families’ experiences of transition, the process of transition between services and its impact on continuity of care, and models of good practice. Results: 92 studies included. Papers on transition services were of variable quality when applied to palliative care contexts. Most focused on common life threatening and life limiting conditions. No standardised transition programme identified and most guidelines used to develop transition services were not evidence based. Most studies on transition programmes were predominantly condition-specific (e.g. cystic fibrosis, cancer) services. Cystic fibrosis services offered high quality transition with the most robust empirical evaluation. There were differing condition-dependent viewpoints on when transition should occur but agreement on major principles guiding transition planning and probable barriers. There was evidence of poor continuity between child and adult providers with most originating from within child settings. Conclusions: Palliative care was not, in itself, a useful concept for locating transition-related evidence. It is not possible to evaluate the merits of the various transition models for palliative care contexts, or their effects on continuity of care, as there are no long-term outcome data to measure their effectiveness. Use of validated outcome measures would facilitate research and service development

Virtual Machine Support for Many-Core Architectures: Decoupling Abstract from Concrete Concurrency Models

The upcoming many-core architectures require software developers to exploit concurrency to utilize available computational power. Today's high-level language virtual machines (VMs), which are a cornerstone of software development, do not provide sufficient abstraction for concurrency concepts. We analyze concrete and abstract concurrency models and identify the challenges they impose for VMs. To provide sufficient concurrency support in VMs, we propose to integrate concurrency operations into VM instruction sets. Since there will always be VMs optimized for special purposes, our goal is to develop a methodology to design instruction sets with concurrency support. Therefore, we also propose a list of trade-offs that have to be investigated to advise the design of such instruction sets. As a first experiment, we implemented one instruction set extension for shared memory and one for non-shared memory concurrency. From our experimental results, we derived a list of requirements for a full-grown experimental environment for further research

Sheep Updates 2005 - Part 7

This session covers eight papers from different authors: POSTERS 1. Sulpher in wool and its implications for fleece weight and sheep health, SM Liu, AC Schlink, JR Williams, CSIRO Livestock Industries Wembley WA, ME Dowling,JCGreef, Department of Agriculture Western Australia. 2. Stubbles for sheep: a reality check, Roy Butler, Keith Croker, Department of Agriculture Western Australia. 3. Genetic benchmarking using artificial insemination, LC Butler, JC Greeff, Department of Agriculture Western Australia. 4. The potential lambing performances of ewes in mixed age flocks, Kieth Croker, Department of Agriculture Western Australia, Rob Davidson, WAMMCO International, formally University of Western Australia, Ken Hart, Department of Agriculture Western Australia,Doug Harrington Cowcher Farms Narrogin, Mario D\u27Antuono, Department of Agriculture Western Australia. 5. National Livestock Identification System (Sheep) in Western Australia, Julian Gardner, Department of Agriculture Western Australia. DISPLAYS - TOOLS 6. To Feed or Not to Feed - I Only Hamlet had the Calculator!, Geoff Duddy, Livestock Officer(Sheep & Wool) Yanco. 7. WormBoss - a national Australian computer-based sheep worm control tool, RG Woodgate, Department of Agriculture Western Australia, A LeFeuvre, Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries, and Genie Pty Ltd, Warwick Qld, A Bailey, Department of Primary Industries, Water and Environment, Kings Meadow Tas, RB Besier, Department of Agriculture Western Australia, N. Campbell, Department of Primary Industries Victoria, Attwood Vic, I Carmichael, South Australian Research and Development Institute, Glenside SA, S. Love, NSW Department of Primary Industries, Armidale NSW. 8. \u27Eye in the sky\u27 takes guesswork out of farmers pasture decisions, Richard Stovold, Department of Land Informatio

Cargo Cults in Information Systems Development: a Definition and an Analytical Framework

Organizations today adopt agile information systems development methods (ISDM), but many do not succeed with the adoption process and in achieving desired results. Systems developers sometimes fail in efficient use of ISDM, often due to a lack of understanding the fundamental intentions of the chosen method. In many cases organizations simply imitate the behavior of others without really understanding why. This conceptual paper defines this phenomenon as an ISDM cargo cult behavior and proposes an analytical framework to identify such situations. The concept of cargo cults originally comes from the field of social anthropology and has been used to explain irrational, ritualistic imitation of certain behavior. By defining and introducing the concept in the field of information systems development we provide a diagnostic tool to better understand one of the reasons why ISDM adoption sometimes fail