Effectiveness of a Delirium Prevention Initiative on an Inpatient Neuroscience Unit

The MIND project is an Interprofessional Evidence-based Clinical Scholar project aimed at delirium prevention for acute care neuroscience patients. The MIND Project stands for Meeting the Inpatient Needs of Delirium and included three objectives. The first objective was to increase nurses’ knowledge of delirium prevention and improve their confidence in identifying delirium. The second was to design a volunteer program to assist health care staff in preventing delirium. The third objective was to establish an ongoing monitoring approach for ensuring continued improvement in preventing delirium

Correlation of thyroid hormone measurements with thyroid stimulating hormone stimulation test results in radioiodine-treated cats.

BACKGROUND: Iatrogenic hypothyroidism can develop after radioiodine-I131 (RAI) treatment of hyperthyroid cats and can be diagnosed using the thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) stimulation test. OBJECTIVES: To assess the effect of noncritical illness on TSH stimulation test results in euthyroid and RAI-treated cats. To assess the correlation of low total-thyroxine (tT4), low free-thyroxine (fT4), and high TSH concentrations with TSH stimulation test results. ANIMALS: Thirty-three euthyroid adult cats and 118 client-owned cats previously treated with RAI. METHODS: Total-thyroxine, fT4, and TSH were measured, and a TSH stimulation test was performed in all cats. Euthyroid control cats were divided into apparently healthy and noncritical illness groups. RAI-treated cats were divided into RAI-hypothyroid (after-stimulation tT4 ≤ 1.5 μg/dL), RAI-euthyroid (after-stimulation tT4 ≥ 2.3 μg/dL OR after-stimulation tT4 1.5-2.3 μg/dL and before : after tT4 ratio > 1.5), and RAI-equivocal (after stimulation tT4 1.5-2.3 μg/dL and tT4 ratio < 1.5) groups. RESULTS: Noncritical illness did not significantly affect the tT4 following TSH stimulation in euthyroid (P = .38) or RAI-treated cats (P = .54). There were 21 cats in the RAI-equivocal group. Twenty-two (85%) RAI-hypothyroid cats (n = 26) and 10/71 (14%) of RAI-euthyroid cats had high TSH (≥0.3 ng/mL). Twenty-three (88%) RAI-hypothyroid cats had low fT4 (<0.70 ng/dL). Of the 5 (7%) RAI-euthyroid cats with low fT4, only one also had high TSH. Only 5/26 (19%) RAI-hypothyroid cats had tT4 below the laboratory reference interval (<0.78 μg/dL). CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE: The veterinary-specific chemiluminescent fT4 immunoassay and canine-specific TSH immunoassay can be used to aid in the diagnosis of iatrogenic hypothyroidism in cats

Multidisciplinary Approaches: A Management Core for Applied Managment and Decision Science

The new management core curriculum was launched at South Dakota State University in 2012 designed for programs at the institution affiliated with decision sciences, applied management and economics. A task force of business and industry leaders working with faculty developed a set of key competencies for graduates from management-related programs. Based on those competencies, an ad hoc group of multidisciplinary faculty in the Colleges of Engineering, Agriculture and Biological Sciences, Education and Human Sciences, and Arts and Sciences designated a four-course sequence named the Management Core to address key elements of the competencies. The undergraduate Operations Management program, housed in the College of Engineering, is preparing for accreditation under ABET – Applied Sciences Accreditation Commission (ASAC) and has adopted the management core. The competencies developed by the external task force are reflected in the program educational outcomes. Department faculty accomplishes data collection on student outcomes and continuous improvement. Our challenge has been in working with departments in other colleges to design and execute an assessment plan for the courses in the Core that will meet divergent accreditation requirements. Philosophical differences on assessment, concerns about additional work to collect and organize outcome data, and faculty governance have been points of departure. To address these issues, a multidisciplinary Division of Economics and Management was formed which includes a Faculty Advisory Committee empowered to develop a framework for cross-disciplinary collaboration in course delivery and assessment. In recent weeks, engineering faculty have conducted workshops on outcome assessment and continuous improvement based on the ABET model for faculty in other colleges. This has produced better understanding of the assessment process and the value in well-designed outcome measures. This paper provides insight on the challenges and rewards of multidisciplinary curriculum development framed against ABET-ASAC accreditation requirements

What Information Propagates among the Public when an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is Initiated? A theory-driven approach

Since the popularity of blockchain-based cryptocurrency investments has increased among the public, people have directly purchased cryptocurrency through the cryptocurrency market or joined initial coin offering (ICO) projects. This research explores what informational cues are captured before, during, and after ICO projects that can be considered as signals and a fulfillment of information asymmetry. We adopted two theoretical underpinnings to achieve our research goal - agency and signaling theory. Using information from Twitter, we selected the best-performing ICO project based on the highest return on investment (ROI). Then, we extracted 5,085 tweets related to the selected ICO project. Tweets are categorized by pre-ICO, during and post-ICO, by topic, and dispersion. Analyzing the tweets, we found multiple categories of informational cues for each ICO project. Implications and limitations are discussed