Mental Health of Caregiving Grandparents

Purpose/Aims: The purpose of the study was to assess the mental health of custodial grandparents as compared with part-time caregiving grandparents. Rationale/Conceptual Basis/Background: Increasingly, grandparents are stepping up to help raise their grandchildren due to the high demand on parents to hold two or more jobs, single parents who work outside the home, increasing divorce rates, along with problems resulting from substance abuse and/or child neglect and abuse. Of the mental health stressors reported by caregiving grandparents, relationships with their adult children, issues of being totally responsible for raising another family at an increased age, and legal issues predominate. Previous research indicates that grandparents raising their grandchildren may have lower levels of mental health than non-caregiving grandparents. Little is known however how the mental health of custodial caregivers compares with that of part-time caregivers, especially among rural populations. Pender’s Health Promotion Model served as the conceptual framework for the study. Methods: A comparative descriptive pilot study was conducted with a convenience sample of 11 caregiving grandparents residing in a frontier county in Idaho. The sample included five grandfathers and six grandmothers with a mean age of 60.5 years (range = 46-75). Six grandparents were full-time custodial caregivers and five were part-time caregivers for their grandchildren. The SF-36 Health Survey was administered and the norm-based mental component score used to assess mental health status. Non-parametric statistics were used to compare the groups due to the small sample size. Results: The norm-based mental health scores for the total sample ranged from 45.2 to 60.2 with a mean of 53.6. The mean score for custodial grandparents was 50.8 compared with 56.9 for part-time caregivers. This difference was not statistically significant. Implications: These findings suggest that full-time custodial and part-time caregiving grandparents have similar levels of mental health. The fact that mean mental health scores for both groups were slightly above the norm is important to note. This conflicts with previous research indicating lower mental health levels among caregiving grandparents and among rural adults in general. This finding may suggest that caregiving may actually support mental health among frontier grandparents. This study was limited by the small sample size, and further research with larger samples is indicated to more fully assess the mental health of grandparent caregivers to guide future nursing intervention. Funded by the Jody DeMeyer Endowment at Boise State University, Department of Nursing

Ammonia emissions from deciduous forest after leaf fall

The understanding of biochemical feedback mechanisms in the climate system is lacking knowledge in relation to bi-directional ammonia (NH3) exchange between natural ecosystems and the atmosphere. We therefore study the atmospheric NH3 fluxes during a 25-day period during autumn 2010 (21 October to 15 November) for the Danish beech forest Lille Bøgeskov to address the hypothesis that NH3 emissions occur from deciduous forests in relation to leaf fall. This is accomplished by using observations of vegetation status, NH3 fluxes and model calculations. Vegetation status was observed using plant area index (PAI) and leaf area index (LAI). NH3 fluxes were measured using the relaxed eddy accumulation (REA) method. The REA-based NH3 concentrations were compared to NH3 denuder measurements. Model calculations of the atmospheric NH3 concentration were obtained with the Danish Ammonia MOdelling System (DAMOS). The relative contribution from the forest components to the atmospheric NH3 flux was assessed using a simple two-layer bi-directional canopy compensation point model. A total of 57.7% of the fluxes measured showed emission and 19.5% showed deposition. A clear tendency of the flux going from deposition of −0.25 ± 0.30 μg NH3-N m−2 s−1 to emission of up to 0.67 ± 0.28 μg NH3-N m−2 s−1 throughout the measurement period was found. In the leaf fall period (23 October to 8 November), an increase in the atmospheric NH3 concentrations was related to the increasing forest NH3 flux. Following leaf fall, the magnitude and temporal structure of the measured NH3 emission fluxes could be adequately reproduced with the bi-directional resistance model; it suggested the forest ground layer (soil and litter) to be the main contributing component to the NH3 emissions. The modelled concentration from DAMOS fits well the measured concentrations before leaf fall, but during and after leaf fall, the modelled concentrations are too low. The results indicate that the missing contribution to atmospheric NH3 concentration from vegetative surfaces related to leaf fall are of a relatively large magnitude. We therefore conclude that emissions from deciduous forests are important to include in model calculations of atmospheric NH3 for forest ecosystems. Finally, diurnal variations in the measured NH3 concentrations were related to meteorological conditions, forest phenology and the spatial distribution of local anthropogenic NH3 sources. This suggests that an accurate description of ammonia fluxes over forest ecosystems requires a dynamic description of atmospheric and vegetation processes

Internationalisation and English medium teaching in higher education : Comparing Denmark and Sweden

Intemationalisation presents a challenge to higher education at many levels. For many universities, it is a process that has been considered synonymous with teacher and student mobility. Mobility is indeed an important part of this process and in some places the ultimate test of intemationalisation but changes also influence curriculum development. The focus on teaching and learning in an intercultural environment, particularly on language instruction and competence is not without prerequisites and stimulates debate about the degree of accommodation made between local and global needs within academic disciplines.\ud This study looks at two national contexts, Denmark and Sweden, which represent similar but different aspects of higher education in the Nordic countries. Both have languages which are little used beyond their national boundaries. The cross-institutional quantitative comparative analysis tests hypotheses about the impact of intemationalisation policy on the availability of English taught courses and conversely that of English medium teaching on intemationalisation. The study uses university organisational settings, policies and activities to determine if there is a causal relationship between policies of intemationalisation and an increase in English medium teaching in higher education. The study is a two-phase, sequential mixed methods approach where the focus group is directors of studies at Danish and Swedish university campuses. \ud Findings from the study show that while the university profiles of Denmark and Sweden are similar, the two countries differ in having policies of intemationalisation and providing English language taught programmes at undergraduate and graduate levels. At a time when efforts to increase English medium teaching in European institutions are moving through various response stages, the Nordic perspective shows that while intemationalisation policy is not a pre-requisite for English medium instruction, practice is significantly influenced by national level explanations. \ud Key words: internationalisation, higher education, policy, curriculum, English medium teaching \u

Technologies de l’information, productivité et croissance des entreprises : résultats basés sur de nouvelles microdonnées internationales

La relation entre les technologies de l’information (TI), la productivité et la croissance économique a été établie au niveau agrégé. Cependant, les mécanismes par lesquels l’effet se manifeste au niveau de l’entreprise restent à préciser. Les organismes statistiques ont élaboré des indicateurs de l’aptitude des entreprises à utiliser les technologies de l’information (p. ex. l’infrastructure des technologies de l’information, la diffusion de technologies particulières) et certains indicateurs de l’utilisation réelle (p. ex. buts et fréquence d’utilisation). L’étape suivante consiste à produire des estimations de l’impact de l’utilisation des technologies de l’information. Une étude menée récemment par l’OCDE visait à résoudre cette question en utilisant des données agrégées pour les pays membres de l’OCDE, ainsi que des microdonnées pour l’Allemagne et les États‑Unis. Une deuxième phase de l’étude de l’OCDE consistera en une série de projets, regroupant deux ou trois pays, réalisée au moyen de nouvelles microdonnées obtenues récemment pour une douzaine de pays environ. Le présent article décrit l’un de ces projets, destiné à évaluer l’effet des technologies de l’information au Danemark, au Japon et aux États‑Unis. Chacun de ces pays a recueilli récemment de nouvelles données sur l’utilisation des technologies de l’information au niveau de l’entreprise et procédé à l’analyse préliminaire de celles-ci. En outre, chaque pays se distingue des autres par sa structure de marché et sa structure institutionnelle. La prochaine phase du projet consistera à élaborer des estimations de l’effet de l’utilisation des technologies de l’information fondées sur ces nouvelles microdonnées, ainsi qu’à émettre et à tester des hypothèses qui tiennent compte des différences entre les structures de marché et les structures institutionnelles de ces pays.A positive relationship between information technology (IT), productivity, and growth has been established at the aggregate level. What remain unclear are the mechanisms through which the effect operates at the level of specific businesses. Statistical agencies have developed indicators of businesses’ readiness to use IT (e.g. the IT infrastructure, diffusion of specific technologies), and some indicators on actual usage (e.g., purposes, frequency of use). The next phase is using those data to develop estimates of the impact of IT use. A recent study addressed this question using aggregate data for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, and micro data (data for specific businesses) for Germany and the U.S. A second phase of that study envisions a series of two- and three-country studies making use of newly available micro data for roughly a dozen countries. This paper outlines one such study, a three-country project addressing the impact of IT use in Denmark, Japan, and the U.S. Each country recently collected new data at the level of specific businesses on the use of IT by businesses, and has conducted preliminary analyses of its own data. Each country also has different underlying market and institutional structures. The findings presented here are preliminary. They show that network information technology has a significant impact on labour productivity growth in United States. The next phase of this project will develop estimates of the impact of IT use based on these new micro data, developing and testing hypotheses that acknowledge differences among the countries in market and institutional structures

Let’s Make a Connection: Understanding How Physically Interactive Technology Is Taking the Virtual to the Physical

This study offers initial research on Physically Interactive Technology (PIT). Findings of this research reveal how people made sense of PIT, how the ways people understand PIT reveal presence due to physical interaction, and how PIT challenges the definition of online interaction. Current and past literature on social presence theory and social cues theory provide a rationale for how “present” a person can be during online interaction via Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC). Current research states CMC is used in many contexts because of the beneficial ways it allows individuals to feel face to face. However, within this literature, scholars tend to treat CMC as the transmission of messages in a virtual space. PIT, however, extends the ways we think about CMC because it focuses on physical interaction and participation within reality. To explore the ways participants react to and understand the novel ability to physically interact via CMC, I engaged in twenty-one semi-structured qualitative interviews and participant observation of individuals’ use of PIT. By analyzing the data using principles of grounded theory, I found three key findings. First, participants made sense of PIT as “cool” by means of its ability to control objects within a real environmental, resulting in personal connections. Second, there were generational differences in technical use and understanding of PIT. Lastly, women and men made sense of PIT differently in terms of possible applications. Overall, participants seemed to reflect a heightened sense of social presence because PIT provided an ability to recognize context cues, and physically engage in another environment, allowing an interaction more similar to face to face. These findings imply that PIT is breaching a new boundary of online interaction and changing CMC into active interaction instead of a transmission of messages