Parental Education to Increase the Rate of Flu Vaccination in Children Ages Six Months to 17 Years: A Quality Improvement Project

Background: Seasonal influenza is often considered by many to be a minor inconvenience that can result in temporary discomfort and loss of productivity. While most individuals who contract the flu will experience these outcomes, for high-risk groups including the elderly, pregnant women, and children, seasonal flu can be costly and deadly. For children who are eligible for the vaccine, consent to vaccinate must be provided by parents. Consequently, increasing vaccine uptake in children requires healthcare providers to work with parents and to educate them about the risks and benefits of vaccination. Because vaccination rates among children are often low, a quality improvement project to educate parents about vaccinating their children against influenza was constructed. Objective: Increasing vaccination uptake in these populations is viewed as an important foundation for reducing the disease and economic burden of seasonal influenza. Research Method: A quasi-experimental pre-/post-intervention approach was selected to evaluate changes in parental knowledge regarding flu vaccination before and after an educational program provided over the telephone. Conclusion: The results of the project indicate a significant increase in post-intervention knowledge that were statistically significant: p = 0.001. Based on the results, increased parental knowledge should lead to an increase in vaccination rates for children. Implications: When the results of this project are combined with current evidence on the topic, there is ample support for building practice change that would include parental education to increase knowledge and influenza vaccine uptake for children. Keywords: influenza, children, parental education, vaccine, quality improvemen

Dissection of Dependency A Crossdisciplinary Review

Life in the modern societies, principally in the Western world, has been demystified. This demystification process has caused the social structures like technology, to lose some of the charm they had during the early Industrialisation period. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become integral parts of our identity in the context of organizational and personal life; the dependence on technology blurs the line between real and virtual worlds. This paper attempts to bridge the gap in understanding our dependence on modern technology. An attempt has been made to dissect the humantechnology dependency to find out how technology is interpreted, it’s meaning in the modern world, and what are the working mechanisms that are feeding this dependency as it grows with the growth of ICTs. The paper concludes that there is neither a single source of dependency nor a root cause. Instead the answer lies deep within the mesh of social patterns and structure and how we interact with them. The dependency in question is much more a function of the properties people attribute to ICTs than of what an ICT can or cannot actually be made to do

How Aesthetic Engagement with IT is Shaping Digital Society: An Ethnographic Example

In this paper, we discuss an empirical example of the everyday aesthetics of engagement with information systems work practices. Drawing on an ethnographic study, we suggest that the information systems phenomena can be seen as a form of artwork in the practices of a new generation of IT professionals. Using the aesthetic ontology of art, an artwork is conceptualised as something that manifests, articulates, and reconfigures the human practices in a digital society. This paper is intended as an empirical contribution towards advancing the discussion of the aesthetics of engagement in the information systems literature

The nuclear translocation of insulin‐like growth factor receptor and its significance in cancer cell survival

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/155983/1/cbf3479.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/155983/2/cbf3479_am.pd

Translations

Original works by Akutagawa Ryunosuke and Yosa Buso

Examining the Van der Pol Oscillator: Stability and Bifurcation Analysis

In this paper, Van der pol equation has been analyzed for stability and bifurcation phenomena with and without forcing component. Analytical solution of the Van der pol equation using Method of Multiple Scales (MMS) is compared with numerical results obtained using MATLAB ode45 solver. Limit cycle analysis has been performed at increasing order of nonlinear damping term. Different scenarios of bifurcation have been studied with variation in control parameters

Effectiveness of Foreign Direct Investment on Economic Growth in Pakistan: A Policy Perspective Approach

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has significant impact on economic growth of developing countries like Pakistan for many decades. This paper has an objective to know the effects foreign direct investment on economic growth for the period from 1971-2012 by establishing empirical relation between business industries of primary, secondary and tertiary sector with FDI through Panel Cointegration and Granger Causality Framework for the specified period. The results show the significance of FDI and economic growth with proxies of GDP with the evidence of cointegration between these variables. The results also present long term causality between FDI and GDP while two-way causality if found under short run. Overall sectoral level, there is positively significance is identified between FDI and GDP. The policy Implications are also discussed in the paper showing that efficient and effective utilization of FDI.&nbsp

ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELD RESEARCH: INTERPRETING ONE\u27S ENTRANCE INTO THE FIELD AS THROWNNESS

The field is where an ethnographer does the fieldwork, yet a discussion of one´s entrance into the field is essentially overlooked in the IS research literature. This paper suggests that entrance into the field can be seen as a rite of passage into a practice world. Using phenomenological hermeneutics, we direct the focus to everyday being-in-the-world to develop a practical understanding of the field as a fusion of horizons where an ethnographer is thrown. The concept of thrownness suggests including one´s historicity and prejudices as one enters the field. We provide some empirical evidence from an ethnographic field study at a large scale IT services organization. This paper is intended as a contribution to the discussion about qualitative research methods in information systems

Fostering Work Engagement through State and Trait Trust: Evidence from Irish University Research Centres

The central aim of this research was to examine the impact of state and trait trust on employees’ levels of work engagement. More specifically, in this study, the three forms of state trust - trust in top management, trust in direct supervisor and trust in team members, as well as trait trust (trust propensity) - were hypothesised as antecedents of work engagement. Furthermore, it was proposed that organizational identification, affective commitment to the supervisor and team psychological safety will mediate the effects of trust in top management, trust in direct supervisor and trust in team members on work engagement respectively. Finally, the relationship of work engagement with a variety of work outcomes such as, in-role job performance, innovative work behaviour, feedback seeking, error communication and organizational commitment, as well as the mediating effects of learning goal orientation on these relationships were investigated. Using survey data from 152 research scientists, drawn from six university science research centres operating in Ireland, the hypotheses were tested through hierarchical multiple regression analyses. The results of this study showed that as hypothesised, organizational identification, affective commitment to the supervisor, and team psychological safety fully mediated the effects of trust in top management, trust in direct supervisor, and trust in team members on work engagement respectively. Moreover, the findings of this study indicated that trust propensity was also positively and significantly related to work engagement. Additionally, it was found that learning goal orientation partially mediated the effects of work engagement on in-role job performance, innovative work behaviour, feedback seeking and error communication, while it did not mediate the relationship between work engagement and organizational commitment. On the basis of these findings, recommendations were made for the management of research centres and for future research directions

Systems thinking in public health: a bibliographic contribution to a meta-narrative review.

BACKGROUND: Research across the formal, natural and social sciences has greatly expanded our knowledge about complex systems in recent decades, informing a broadly inclusive, cross-disciplinary conceptual framework referred to as Systems Thinking (ST). Its use in public health is rapidly increasing, although there remains a poor understanding of how these ideas have been imported, adapted and elaborated by public health research networks worldwide. METHOD: This review employed a mixed methods approach to narrate the development of ST in public health. Tabulated results from a literature search of the Web of Science Core Collection database were used to perform a bibliometric analysis and literature review. Annual publication counts and citation scores were used to analyse trends and identify popular and potential 'landmark' publications. Citation network and co-authorship network diagrams were analysed to identify groups of articles and researchers in various network roles. RESULTS: Our search string related to 763 publications. Filtering excluded 208 publications while citation tracing identified 2 texts. The final 557 publications were analysed, revealing a near-exponential growth in literature over recent years. Half of all articles were published after 2010 with almost a fifth (17.8%) published in 2014. Bibliographic analysis identified five distinct citation and co-authorship groups homophilous by common geography, research focus, inspiration or institutional affiliation. As a loosely related set of sciences, many public health researchers have developed different aspects of ST based on their underlying perspective. Early studies were inspired by Management-related literature, while later groups adopted a broadly inclusive understanding which incorporated related Systems sciences and approaches. CONCLUSION: ST is an increasingly popular subject of discussion within public health although its understanding and approaches remain unclear. Briefly tracing the introduction and development of these ideas and author groups in public health literature may provide clarity and opportunities for further learning, research and development