Water Quality Control and Management of Animal Wastes Through Culture with Selected Fishes

Research Report 151, Final Report, Project A-083-ILL, Agreement No. 14-34-001-8015Report issued on: April 1980Submitted to unspecified recipien

Performance indicators and health promition targets

This paper discusses the usefulness of performance indicators in health promotion. Health promotion and target-setting in health have both risen to the fore in the light of the Health of the Nation White Paper. This coupled with increasing pressure on all sectors of health care to demonstrate their “value-for-money” have meant that health promotion activities are being scrutinised as never before. Performance indicators have been one suggested means of ensuring movement towards Health of the Nation targets and value-for-money in health promotion. The paper outlines the uses to which performance indicators have been put elsewhere in the NHS and argues that they are unlikely to be directly transferrable to health promotion. Criteria for successful performance indicators in health promotion are outlined. However, it is doubtful whether these criteria will be fulfilled to any useful extent at present. The theory of health promotion is characterised by many different views of what is an appropriate outcome measure of any health promotion intervention and therefore what will be an appropriate performance indicator. Consensus in theory is needed before any consensus on what is most suitable to measure is reached. In addition, any outcomes from health promotion, by its very nature, are likely to become apparent only over long periods of time, if at all. This reduces the likelihood of attribution and the feasibility of assigning responsibility for meeting targets. Nonetheless, there is some scope for performance indicators in health promotion and their use as an internal management tool and as mechanisms for reaching external micro and macro level health-related targets is discussed. A collection of suggested macro performance indicators from the Health Education Authority are evaluated according to the criteria developed earlier. It is argued that at present these do not qualify as performance indicators, although they are certainly useful as monitoring tools. The paper concludes with priorities for further research in this area. Despite the emphasis on target-setting brought about by the Health of the Nation, knowledge and expertise in performance indicators for health promotion is lacking. This is a matter of urgent concern. There are many complex conceptual and practical problems which will influence the future role and choice of performance indicators in health promotion. These range from the fundamental, differing views about the definition of health education and health promotion, to the practical, a lack of knowledge at the community level about how to start looking for indicators, and the technical, a lack of clear responsibility for meeting macro-level targets.performance indicators, targets

Property in the Fifth Amendment: A Quest for Common Ground in the Maze of Regulatory Takings

In 1922, the Supreme Court embarked on its first decision to protect property owners from unbridled, uncompensated government regulation. Prior to Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, the courts applied the Just Compensation Clause of the Fifth Amendments only to \u27direct appropriation[s]\u27 of property ... or the functional equivalent of a \u27practical ouster of [the owner\u27s] possession.\u27 Mahon established that governmental regulation that affects an owner\u27s use of his land may constitute a taking under the Fifth Amendment. In Mahon, Justice Holmes recognized the need for constitutional limits on the government\u27s power to impair certain rights inherent in the ownership of property, especially when abolishing those rights has the same effect as appropriating or destroying the property itself. Justice Holmes understood that human nature gradually would lead government officials to qualify the rights of ownership under the guise of police power until, at last, private property disappeared.\u27 Without a check on their powers, officials may use regulation as an off-the-books method in lieu of taxation and compensation to achieve certain goals, particularly when funds are unavailable or when it appears that taxpayers will not support such a use of available funds. This abuse of the police power, Justice Holmes observed, amounts to petty larceny. The Just Compensation Clause of the Fifth Amendment provided the protection necessary to check this natural Hobbesian tendency.\u2

Working with Your Employees to Move Through Change Using Communication and Motivation: A Case Study

This thesis focuses on effecting change in a government agency by the use of communication, motivation through incentives, and other management tools. The United States Army Reserve Personnel Center (ARPERCEN) manages, trains, and mobilizes Army personnel. Its largest directorate is the Personnel Records Management Directorate, which houses the Accessions Division. At least 200,000 hard-copy personnel records pass through the Division for verification and processing in a typical year. Eighty percent of hard-copy records transferred to ARPERCEN were also transferred electronically; however all were band-processed as if new. This entire accessioning process was redundant and inefficient. Change was coming. The Reserve Database Maintenance System (RDMS) was created, allowing on-line real-time add, delete and update capabilities to the new database, Total Army Personnel Data.Base - Reserve. Could the author motivate the Accessions Division to become efficient under the new system? In July 1993, ARPERCEN top management stated RDMS would come online 1 November. The author decided to keep his staff informed of RDMS-related effects and to coordinate working-environment changes with union representatives. The author rejected the train-the-trainers approach top ARPERCEN management supported. His staff members were barely computer literate; he had no one qualified to conduct such training. The author created a worksheet showing data fields exactly as the data-entry screens. After two days of general keyboard training, employees brought records from their work areas, entered required codes on the worksheet, and entered data into the system exactly as would be do.ne during production mode. When RDMS was brought on-line, the Accessions Clerks were ready. The author used words of praise and MoonPies ® to motivate his staff until a monetary bonus plan could be designed and implemented. The Accessions Division reduced their backlog of records from 55,000 in April 1994 to 17,000 in July, an interval of just 90 days

Higher Education Governance in England: Governing Body Members' Perceptions of Their Roles and the Effectiveness of Their Governing Bodies

Much attention has been paid in recent years to issues associated with corporate governance and there have been significant changes and developments in the governance arrangements in the UK higher education sector. In this context, the research reported here explores the perceptions held by governing body members in English higher education institutions of the roles of their governing bodies. Governing body members’ perceptions of the effectiveness of their governing bodies are also considered. The research uses a series of case studies, involving the collection and analysis of data gathered in interviews with governing body members and senior staff in seven English higher education institutions. These data are used to explore the views of governing body members with regard to the roles and effectiveness of their governing bodies, and to compare their perceptions with external expectations. The predictions of governance theory with regard to the roles of boards and board members are also considered and compared to the lived experience of those roles as perceived by governing body members. The study reveals some degree of variability in the approaches to governance at different types of institution, but also many common features. The latter include marked differences between the roles undertaken by governing body members and the roles envisaged for them in formal guidance. Governing body members are shown to be content to delegate their responsibilities for educational character to academics. Effectiveness in higher education governance is revealed to be complex and multi-faceted. The particular importance to effectiveness of board processes and interaction between governing body members is demonstrated. It is shown that no single governance theory offers a full explanation for the described behaviour and approaches of governing body members, but that aspects of different theoretical positions offer useful explanatory insights when taken together

Unreasonable Reasonableness: Standardizing Procedural Norms of the ICC Through \u3cem\u3eAl Bashir\u3c/em\u3e

On March 4, 2009, the International Criminal Court issued its first ever arrest warrant against a sitting head of state, Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir. The warrant, issued in relation to the situation in the Darfur region of Sudan, was notable both for its inclusion of charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and for its exclusion of charges of genocide. On appeal, the decision not to include the genocide charges in the warrant was unanimously overruled for an error in law regarding the standard of proof utilized to determine the sufficiency of mens rea. The International Criminal Court is the only permanent international adjudicatory body tasked with the criminal adjudication of individuals accused of the most serious crimes of international concern. In overruling this decision, therefore, the International Criminal Court not only standardized the evidentiary thresholds for the prosecution of genocide charges in its Chambers, but at the same time distinguished itself among the growing field of international adjudicatory bodies

The Hidden Injuries Of Overloading \u27ADT

The most commonly stated definition of abstract data type (ADT) is that it is a domain of values and the operations over that domain. So, for example, a language\u27s built-in types, like int are seen to be ADTs. It is our opinion that a pure interpretation of this definition yields a semantics in which using an ADT is the same as using built-in types: the operations are side effect free and there is no concern over alias, shallow copy or synchronization problems. Unfortunately, the term abstract data type has over time been associated with at least three distinct meanings, and those incompatible definitions have often been conflated, causing confusion to students and textbook authors alike. We believe that this has resulted in a loss of appreciation for the value-based semantics of ADTs

Lexical characteristics of emotional narratives in schizophrenia : Relationships with symptoms, functioning, and social cognition

Previous research has suggested that complexity of speech, speech rate, use of emotion words, and use of pronouns are all potential indicators of important clinical components of schizophrenia, but little research has examined the relationships of these disturbances to cognitive variables impaired in schizophrenia, including social cognition. The current study examined these lexical differences to better characterize the cognitive substrates of speech disturbances in schizophrenia. Brief narratives of individuals with schizophrenia (n = 42) and non-clinical controls (n = 48) were compared according to their lexical characteristics, and these were examined for relationships to social cognition and real-world functioning. Significant differences between the groups were found in words per sentence (related to functioning, but not negative symptoms) as well as pronoun use (related to attributional style and theory of mind). Additionally, lexical characteristics effectively distinguished individuals with schizophrenia from non-clinical controls. Language disturbances in schizophrenia seem related to social cognition impairments and real-world functioning, and are a robust indicator of clinical status