Analysis and study of hospital communication via social media from the patient perspective

Currently, the online interaction between citizens and hospitals is poor, as users believe that there are shortcomings that could be improved. This study analyzes patients’ opinions of the online communication strategies of hospitals in Spain. Therefore, a mixed-method is proposed. Firstly, a qualitative analysis through a focus-group was carried out, so around twenty representatives of national, regional and local patients’ associations were brought together. Secondly, the research is supplemented with a content assessment of the Twitter activity of the most influential hospitals in Spain. The results reveal that the general public appreciate hospitals’ communication potential through social media, although they are generally unaware of how it works. The group says that, apart from the lack of interaction, they find it hard to understand certain messages, and some publications give a biased picture. In order to improve communication, patients and relatives are demanding that their perspective be taken into consideration in the messages issued to enhance the quality of life and well-being of society

Mellem klima og udvikling En postkolonial undersøgelse af et klimapolitisk Grønland

Denne artikel undersøger Grønlands afvisning af den internationale klimaaftale indgået på COP21 i Paris, 2015. Igennem en analyse af grønlandske debatter om klimaaftalen, argumenterer artiklen for, at en afvisning af klimaaftalen ikke skal forstås ud fra en vestlig forståelsesramme om modernitet. Tværtimod er afvisningen et udtryk for en selvstændiggørende proces, der aktivt italesætter og afvikler et ensidigt modernitetsnarrativ. Derved tilføjer artiklen en vigtig postkolonial vinkel i en debat, der overvejende er domineret af et vestligt perspektiv om klima og udvikling

Bridging the gap: increasing collaboration between research mentors and career development educators for PhD and postdoctoral training success

National reports and funding mandates have called for trainee-centered PhD and postdoctoral training and the need to support diverse career outcomes. As a result, career and professional development (CPD) resources have expanded at several institutions. Despite the growth of innovative and impactful CPD resources, access to and awareness of resources have been inconsistent and inequitable for graduate and postdoctoral trainees. In the current model, core education occurs in two unconnected ways: faculty research mentors provide scientific competencies training, while CPD educators provide transferable competencies training, which is separate from the curriculum and optional at most institutions. Research mentors are influential in supporting trainee engagement with CPD programs; however, most are either unaware of the rapidly growing opportunities or may not see the direct benefit to scientific development and productivity. Due to this disconnect, some trainees can be inadvertently distanced from CPD resources, leading to more inequities among groups. To bridge this gap, here we propose a realignment of the current model via a set of practical and collaborative solutions providing benefit to all stakeholders. With greater awareness and collaboration, research mentors and CPD educators can complement each other’s expertise to better support trainee experiences and outcomes

Survival curves of bacteria with public health significance irradiated in crabmeat and in Hartsell's broth

Gamma irradiation survival curves of Salmonella enteriditis, Salmonella paratyphi A, Salmonella cholerasuis, Salmonella pullorum and Streptococcus pyogenes were determined in crabmeat and in Hartsell's broth. The survival pattern of Staphylococcus aureus in crabmeat was also determined. A "tailing off" was found in the survival patterns of Salmonella paratyphi A, Salmonella pullorum, Salmonella enteriditis and Staphylococcus aureus when they were irradiated in crabmeat, but was not found when these organisms (excluding Staphylococcus aureus) were irradiated in Hartsell's broth. However, Salmonella cholerasuis and Streptococcus pyogenes showed a definite "tailing off" in the broth while only weakly, if any, in the crabmeat. A comparison was made of the gamma irradiation recovery of Salmonella cholerasuis in crabmeat assayed immediately following irradiation to that assayed after the crabmeat had been held seven days at 4°C. The refrigerated samples showed lower survival. Staphylococcus aureus white mutants were observed at 1.0 Mrad and higher doses. Three mutants were isolated for further investigations. These mutants were stable and gave varied coagulase and hemolytic tests. In an examination of one mutant, no greater resistance to irradiation than parent culture was found

Batch and median neural gas

Neural Gas (NG) constitutes a very robust clustering algorithm given euclidian data which does not suffer from the problem of local minima like simple vector quantization, or topological restrictions like the self-organizing map. Based on the cost function of NG, we introduce a batch variant of NG which shows much faster convergence and which can be interpreted as an optimization of the cost function by the Newton method. This formulation has the additional benefit that, based on the notion of the generalized median in analogy to Median SOM, a variant for non-vectorial proximity data can be introduced. We prove convergence of batch and median versions of NG, SOM, and k-means in a unified formulation, and we investigate the behavior of the algorithms in several experiments.Comment: In Special Issue after WSOM 05 Conference, 5-8 september, 2005, Pari

Using stakeholder insights to enhance engagement in PhD professional development

There is increasing awareness of the need for pre- and post-doctoral professional development and career guidance, however many academic institutions are only beginning to build out these functional roles. As a graduate career educator, accessing vast silos and resources at a university and with industry-partners can be daunting, yet collaboration and network development are crucial to the success of any career and professional development office. To better inform and direct these efforts, forty-five stakeholders external and internal to academic institutions were identified and interviewed to gather perspectives on topics critical to career development offices. Using a stakeholder engagement visualization tool developed by the authors, strengths and weaknesses can be assessed. General themes from interviews with internal and external stakeholders are discussed to provide various stakeholder subgroup perspectives to help prepare for successful interactions. Benefits include increased engagement and opportunities to collaborate, and to build or expand graduate career development offices

Non-disjunction of chromosome 13

We performed a molecular study with 21 microsatellites on a sample of 82 trisomy 13 conceptuses, the largest number of cases studied to date. The parental origin was determined in every case and in 89% the extra chromosome 13 was of maternal origin with an almost equal number of maternal MI and MII errors. The latter finding is unique among human autosomal trisomies, where maternal MI (trisomies 15, 16, 21, 22) or MII (trisomy 18) errors dominate. Of the nine paternally derived cases five were of MII origin but none arose from MI errors. There was some evidence for elevated maternal age in cases with maternal meiotic origin for liveborn infants. Maternal and paternal ages were elevated in cases with paternal meiotic origin. This is in contrast to results from a similar study of non-disjunction of trisomy 21 where paternal but not maternal age was elevated. We find clear evidence for reduced recombination in both maternal MI and MII errors and the former is associated with a significant number of tetrads (33%) that are nullichiasmate, which do not appear to be a feature of normal chromosome 13 meiosis. This study supports the evidence for subtle chromosome-specific influences on the mechanisms that determine non-disjunction of human chromosomes, consistent with the diversity of findings for other trisomie