Building Bridges between Literary Journalism and Alternative Ethnographic Forms: Opportunities and Challenges

Literary journalism bears much in common with autoethnography and public ethnography, thus offering opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration

The Works of Edna Staebler: Using Literary Journalism to Celebrate the Lives of Ordinary Canadians

Edna Staebler’s legacy as one of Canada’s early, mainstream literary journalists has been overshadowed by her later success as a cookbook writer and philanthropist. But her magazine profiles from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s deserve more recognition for their richly detailed narrative style and focus on ordinary Canadian families that lived in isolated communities or were members of marginalized cultural, ethic, and/or religious groups

Computer model of a domestic wood burning heater : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering in Chemical Technology at Massey University

Between April 2003 and April 2004 a project, funded by Technology New Zealand, was undertaken to develop a computer model of a wood burning heater for use at Applied Research Services Ltd. Applied Research Services Ltd is a science and engineering research company that specialises in the testing of wood burning heaters. The computer model will be owned by Applied Research Services Ltd and will be used to improve the design of their customers' heaters so that they may pass the particulate emissions and efficiency standards of AS/NZS 4013:1999. The computer model used the software program, Engineering Equation Solver as a platform to solve the model equations. EES was particularly easy to use and more emphasis was able to he placed on the actual modelling. The final model included over eight hundred variables and equations. It included radiant, convective and conductive heat flows, over thirty heat balances, Arrhenious based rate expressions and many empirical equations derived from experiments and data acquired at Applied Research Services Ltd. At the beginning of this project the objective was for the model to match the test results to within 10%. This has been met for the tests on the high airflow setting where the model error is 4% for flue temperature, 8% for heater output and 16% for flue oxygen. Unfortunately on low airflow setting, the model does not reach this target with model errors of 18% for flue temperature, 25% for heat output and 13% for flue temperature. The excellent results for the high flow setting are partially attributed to the use of calibration factors. The calibration factors model the processes in wood combustion that could not be modelled by this project, due to lack of time and resources. Some of these factors are the proportion of air that flows onto the charcoal ember bed or logs, radiation shape factor changes due to firebox geometry, convection heat transfer coefficients changing with turbulence. The calibration of the model only has to be completed once for each heater. The reason why the model does not work as well on low airflow setting is that with less airflow the proportion of air to the charcoal bed opposed to the logs would decrease, therefore decreasing the burn-rate. This model can he used to determine the changes to a heater's performance from changes to air inlet areas, insulation type and thickness, wetback size, baffle size, primary vs secondary air, air bypass ratio and door size. The model provides all the results that are obtained from an emissions test plus extra information such as the amount of excess air, smoke conversion in each combustion zone, flame temperatures and distribution of heat output. The smoke conversions for each combustion zone are particularly helpful in diagnosing where problems with the combustion occur. The reasons for incomplete combustion, lack of temperature or oxygen, can be found and fixed by increasing either insulation or air areas. The model can be used by Applied Research Services Ltd to improve heater designs. For the short term this will involve the author working as a part-time consultant. The project could be built on by another student by using CFD modelling for the sections of the wood burning process not modelled by this model and adding a graphical user interface to make the model easier to use

Conceptual Metaphors as Interpretive Tools in Qualitative Research: A Re-Examination of College Students’ Diversity Discussions

In this contribution to the growing literature on conceptual metaphor as a fruitful heuristic for qualitative analysis, the authors re-analyzed transcripts of college student discussions of problematic situations involving cultural diversity and interpersonal conflict. The authors show how they identified metaphorical linguistic expressions and from them derived three conceptual metaphors (life is a journey, the problem is a barrier/maze, and the self is divided) that in turn formed patterns or constellations of meanings in students’ problem-solving strategies. As an interpretive tool, conceptual metaphors link certain isolated individual metaphors to these larger patterns of meaning, including ideological frameworks readily available in US culture

Evaluation methodologies in multisector community change initiatives: The missing role of indigenous knowledge systems

Comprehensive or multisector community change initiatives (CCIs) represent a promising approach to address the overrepresentation of Indigenous children and families in Canada’s child welfare systems. However, such initiatives are difficult to establish and sustain – in part due to the difficulty of evaluating their impacts and outcomes using standardized Western evaluation methodologies. Consequently, over the past 20 years there have been extensive efforts to develop evaluation principles, methodologies, methods, and tools that are more able to illustrate the benefits of these kinds of initiatives. A systematic review of the CCI evaluation literature found that while many of these principles, methodologies, methods and tools show considerable promise, there has been limited attention to or incorporation of Indigenous ways of knowing or approaches to research with Indigenous peoples. This paper presents two examples of Indigenous led multisector community change initiatives to enhance Indigenous well-being and notes the importance of evaluating their impacts. It argues that collaborative research is needed with participants in Indigenous led multisector collaborations to advance knowledge of culturally relevant approaches to their evaluation

Building the basis for evidence based library and information practice

[Introduction]: With a total of 111 million annual visits, libraries are fundamental to Australia's social fabric and increasingly to its success as a national economy. In the current volatile economic climate however, Australia's libraries are being called upon to do more with less. This paper will present the findings of a project funded by the Australian Research Council that aimed to help Australia’s libraries to make tough decisions in an environment where there is competition for limited resources. The project established an empirical basis for evidence-based library and information practice (EBLIP). Simply stated, EBLIP is an approach to professional practice that is grounded in the use of research to gather evidence to inform the many decisions and problems that a practitioner must address. Methods: The project consisted of two sub-studies. The public library sub-study was conducted using ethnography. Over a 5-month period, a member of the research team travelled to a regional public library service on 15 occasions staying between 3 and 4 days on each visit. The researcher observed, interacted and became involved in the day-to-day activities of this library. These activities were recorded in a journal and added to the researcher’s insights and thoughts. Additionally, 12 face-to-face interviews with staff in positions ranging from the operational to the executive were conducted. The academic sub-study was conducted using Constructivist Grounded Theory. Semi-structured interviews were conducted either in person or via Skype, with 13 librarians from Queensland universities. Interviewees were in a diverse array of roles, from liaison librarian to manager and library director. Results: The public library sub-study found that the following key aspects depicted the experience of EBLIP in a public library: leadership, culture, learning, context, collaboration and second nature. In the academic library sub-study six categories were constructed which describes librarians’ experiences of evidence-based practice as: empowering, intuiting, affirming, connecting, noticing and impacting. Conclusions: The project findings help extend the current but limited empirically derived understanding of EBLIP. This project has identified and articulated several key aspects that need attention if EBLIP is to be developed as an approach to professional practice. These key aspects will be of interest to LIS educators, professional associations, employers and practitioners

Development and delivery of an exercise programme for falls prevention: the Prevention of Falls Injury Trial (PreFIT)

This paper describes the development and implementation of an exercise intervention to prevent falls within The Prevention of Fall Injury Trial (PreFIT), which is a large multi-centred randomised controlled trial based in the UK National Health Service (NHS).Using the template for intervention description and replication (TIDieR) checklist, to describe the rationale and processes for treatment selection and delivery of the PreFIT exercise intervention.Based on the results of a validated falls and balance survey, participants were eligible for the exercise intervention if they were at moderate or high risk of falling.Intervention development was informed using the current evidence base, published guidelines, and pre-existing surveys of clinical practice, a pilot study and consensus work with therapists and practitioners. The exercise programme targets lower limb strength and balance, which are known, modifiable risk factors for falling. Treatment was individually tailored and progressive, with seven recommended contacts over a six-month period. Clinical Trials Registry (ISCTRN 71002650)

Simple, Fast and Accurate Implementation of the Diffusion Approximation Algorithm for Stochastic Ion Channels with Multiple States

The phenomena that emerge from the interaction of the stochastic opening and closing of ion channels (channel noise) with the non-linear neural dynamics are essential to our understanding of the operation of the nervous system. The effects that channel noise can have on neural dynamics are generally studied using numerical simulations of stochastic models. Algorithms based on discrete Markov Chains (MC) seem to be the most reliable and trustworthy, but even optimized algorithms come with a non-negligible computational cost. Diffusion Approximation (DA) methods use Stochastic Differential Equations (SDE) to approximate the behavior of a number of MCs, considerably speeding up simulation times. However, model comparisons have suggested that DA methods did not lead to the same results as in MC modeling in terms of channel noise statistics and effects on excitability. Recently, it was shown that the difference arose because MCs were modeled with coupled activation subunits, while the DA was modeled using uncoupled activation subunits. Implementations of DA with coupled subunits, in the context of a specific kinetic scheme, yielded similar results to MC. However, it remained unclear how to generalize these implementations to different kinetic schemes, or whether they were faster than MC algorithms. Additionally, a steady state approximation was used for the stochastic terms, which, as we show here, can introduce significant inaccuracies. We derived the SDE explicitly for any given ion channel kinetic scheme. The resulting generic equations were surprisingly simple and interpretable - allowing an easy and efficient DA implementation. The algorithm was tested in a voltage clamp simulation and in two different current clamp simulations, yielding the same results as MC modeling. Also, the simulation efficiency of this DA method demonstrated considerable superiority over MC methods.Comment: 32 text pages, 10 figures, 1 supplementary text + figur

Catheter‐related Infection and Septicemia: Impact of Seasonality and Modifiable Practices from the DOPPS

Hemodialysis (HD) catheter‐related infection (CRI) and septicemia contribute to adverse outcomes. The impact of seasonality and prophylactic dialysis practices during high‐risk periods remain unexplored. This multicenter study analyzed DOPPS data from 12,122 HD patients (from 442 facilities) to determine the association between seasonally related climatic variables and CRI and septicemia. Climatic variables were determined by linkage to National Climatic Data Center of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data. Catheter care protocols were examined to determine if they could mitigate infection risk during high‐risk seasons. Survival models were used to estimate the adjusted hazard ratio (AHR) of septicemia by season and by facility catheter dressing protocol. The overall catheter‐related septicemia rate was 0.47 per 1000 catheter days. It varied by season, with an AHR for summer of 1.46 (95% CI: 1.19–1.80) compared with winter. Septicemia was associated with temperature (AHR = 1.07; 95% CI: 1.02–1.13; p  < 0.001). Dressing protocols using chlorhexidine (AHR of septicemia = 0.55; 95% CI: 0.39–0.78) were associated with fewest episodes of CRI or septicemia. Higher catheter‐related septicemia in summer may be due to seasonal conditions (e.g., heat, perspiration) that facilitate bacterial growth and compromise protective measures. Extra vigilance and use of chlorhexidine‐based dressing protocols may provide prophylaxis against CRI and septicemia.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/102686/1/sdi12141.pd