The Impact of an Immunization Training Certificate Program on the Perceived Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes of Pharmacy Students Toward Pharmacy-Based Immunizations

Objective: To assess the impact of a national immunization training certificate program on the perceived knowledge, skills and attitudes of pharmacy students toward pharmacy-based immunizations. Methods: The study design utilized a pre- and post- survey administered to pharmacy students before and after the American Pharmacists Association’s (APhA) Pharmacy-Based Immunization Delivery program. The primary outcome explored was a change in the perceived knowledge, skills, and attitudes of the pharmacy students. A five-point Likert scale (i.e. strongly agree = 5, strongly disagree = 1) was used for measuring the main outcomes, which was summated by adding the individual item scores in each section to form a composite score for each outcome. Results: The certificate training program resulted in a significant improvement in knowledge (38.5% increase in score, p\u3c0.001) and skills (34.5% increase in score, p\u3c0.001), but not attitudes (1% increase in score, p=0.210). Conclusions: The national immunization training certificate program had a positive impact on the perceived knowledge and skills of pharmacy students. However, no change was observed regarding students’ perceived attitudes toward pharmacy-based immunizations

The Effects of Deregulation on the Performance of Financial Institutions: The Case of Spanish Savings Banks

This paper examines the impact of regulatory reform on the performance of Spanish savings banks. To this end it uses panel data for the period 1986-1995 and a flexible variable profit function that incorporates time-varying technical efficiency. The focus is whether increased competition brought on by deregulation affected performance of banks over time. Bank performance, measured by the percentage change in profitability, ceteris paribus, is decomposed into technical change and change in technical efficiency both of which are defined in terms of the profit function. We also examine output technical efficiency, which is defined in terms of the production possibility frontier. Several alternative models with different specifications of technical efficiency are used to check robustness of the results. Empirical results show declining levels of output technical efficiency along with a significantly high rate of technical progress. In spite of declining technical efficiency during this period, we find evidence of an increasing trend in productivity growth

Impact of Decmedetomidine on Opioid and Benzodiazepine Dosing Requirements in Children.

Poster presented at: Annual Update on Pediatric Cardiovascular Disease; February 2008; Scottsdale Arizona

An Analysis of Harmonic Airloads Acting on Helicopter Rotor Blades

Rotary wing aircrafts in any flight conditions suffer from excessive vibration which makes the passengers feel uncomfortable and causes fatigue failure in the structure. The main sources of vibration are the rotor harmonic airloads which originate primarily from the rapid variation of flow around the blade due to the vortex wake. In this thesis, a mathematical model is developed for rotor blades to compute the harmonic airloads at rotor blades for two flight conditions vertical takeoff and landing, and forward flight. The sectional lift, drag, and pitching moment are computed at a radial blade station for both flight conditions. The lift at a particular radial station is computed considering trailing and shed vortices and summing over each blade. The results for airloads are obtained after considering zeroth, first, and second harmonics. The calculated results for airloads are compared to the experimental flight-test data

Governance of Ecosystem Services Across Scales in Bangladesh

Ecosystem services are governed and affected by different legal, institutional and policy frameworks. Hence, formal documented policies, regulations and statutes of Bangladesh are examined where relevant. This facilitates greater understanding of the influence that governance has on the accessibility to the benefits derived and how this might then affect livelihoods and well-being. A range of factors are found to determine effectiveness in terms of general adaptive governance principles, with coordination, enforcement and rigidity being important issues. In addition, policy development in crucial areas may not be supported by associated legal frameworks, undermining implementation. However, workable (and dynamic) combinations of primary and secondary legislation are both possible and desirable to achieve flexible policy instruments.<br/

Are we failing to protect threatened mangroves in the Sundarbans world heritage ecosystem?

The Sundarbans, the largest mangrove ecosystem in the world, is under threat from historical and future human exploitation and sea level rise. Limited scientific knowledge on the spatial ecology of the mangroves in this world heritage ecosystem has been a major impediment to conservation efforts. Here, for the first time, we report on habitat suitability analyses and spatial density maps for the four most prominent mangrove species - Heritiera fomes, Excoecaria agallocha, Ceriops decandra and Xylocarpus mekongensis. Globally endangered H. fomes abundances declined as salinity increased. Responses to nutrients, elevation, and stem density varied between species. H. fomes and X. mekongensis preferred upstream habitats. E. agallocha and C. decandra preferred down-stream and mid-stream habitats. Historical harvesting had negative influences on H. fomes, C. decandra and X. mekongensis abundances. The established protected area network does not support the most suitable habitats of these threatened species. We therefore recommend a reconfiguration of the network to include these suitable habitats and ensure their immediate protection. These novel habitat insights and spatial predictions can form the basis for future forest studies and spatial conservation planning, and have implications for more effective conservation of the Sundarbans mangroves and the many other species that rely on them

Optimization of helium extraction processes integrated with nitrogen removal units: A comparative study

Helium is regarded as a vital gas to various industries such as medicine, aircraft manufacturing, electronics and fiber optics fabrication. Currently, natural gas reserves are considered the only viable resource for this rare element. When processing (helium-rich) natural gas, helium is generally recovered in the most downstream stage in conjunction with the nitrogen rejection unit (NRU). The feed to this unit is a nitrogen rich stream, and the product is either crude helium (50–70 mol% purity) or purified helium (99.99 mol% purity). Currently, the cryogenic distillation method is a common technology for a crude helium extraction unit (HeXU). The alternative method for this purpose is a membrane gas separation system, which is successfully used in other applications. This study aims to propose an energy-integrated scheme for each of the two helium separation technologies with a single-column NRU and to evaluate and compare them for different applications. Matlab programming has been used to model the membrane system and incorporate it into Aspen Hysys, which is used to simulate the rest of the process flowsheet. Next, the energy consumption of the systems was optimized using the particle swarm optimization method. An economic analysis was adopted to compare the two technologies for different applications in order to suggest a comprehensive map for HeXU technology selection.acceptedVersion© 2019. This is the authors’ accepted and refereed manuscript to the article. Locked until 15.11.2020 due to copyright restrictions. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0

Optimal cryogenic processes for nitrogen rejection from natural gas

Nitrogen rejection processes are usually needed for two natural gas sources: sub-quality natural gas reserves and produced gas from enhanced oil/gas recovery technologies. The nitrogen content of natural gas in the former is usually constant during the project lifetime, but it varies from 5 to 70% during enhanced oil/gas recovery programs. This variation leads to different process flowsheets for nitrogen removal: single-column, double-column, three-column, and two-column processes. In order to determine which configuration is more suitable for a particular nitrogen content in a feed stream, we must minimize the energy requirement for each process. In this study, we merge all the four configurations into two categories: single-column and multi-column processes and then use the Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm to optimize process parameters for each process with the objective of energy consumption minimization. Finally, we use the exergy concept to analyze theoretically these different processes.acceptedVersion© 2018. This is the authors’ accepted and refereed manuscript to the article. Locked until 6 April 2020 due to copyright restrictions. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0