Māori social workers' experiences of the collision of their personal, professional and cultural worlds

Reamer (2013a) states that the most difficult ethical dilemmas happen for social workers when their personal and professional worlds conflict. Māori social workers (kaimahi) often live and work in the same area as their whānau, hapū and iwi and there is a high chance that members of their whānau will come through the organisation that they work for. This is when kaimahi will experience a collision (tukia) of their personal, professional and cultural worlds. It is the domain where the three different systems have to interact – a professional system, a whānau system, and a cultural system. This research study interviewed seven kaimahi who had experienced tukia and explored their encounter of tukia. Kaupapa Māori underpins this research, and pūrakau has been utilised to connect the research to Māori worldviews, however the research framework is guided by the Pā Harakeke. Pā Harakeke is often used as a metaphor for whānau and a model for protection of children, whānau structure and well-being. The harakeke sits well in this research as the focus is on the well-being of kaimahi Māori – caring for the carers, helping the helpers and healing the healers. Hence the kaimahi represents the rito (baby centre shoot) of the harakeke, needing nurture, help and support. A key finding from this study reveals that collision is a complex area that requires careful navigation by the kaimahi experiencing the collision, as well as the organisation that the kaimahi works for. It is imperative that social workers and managers discuss and plan for collision as opposed to waiting until it happens, and organisations should have policies and protocols in place for working with whānau. This research has also developed a definition and construction of what collision is in the social services and kaimahi have imparted words of wisdom (Ngā Kupu Taonga) so that others experiencing collision may find a way forward. These include: Take care of the ‘self’, get good support from whānau and mahi, talk about the hard stuff, get good supervision, come back to reality and smell the manuka (be grounded), and the collision can ultimately be a growth experience that will have a positive impact on kaimahi practice

A review of mentorship measurement tools

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. Objectives: To review mentorship measurement tools in various fields to inform nursing educators on selection, application, and developing of mentoring instruments. Design: A literature review informed by PRISMA 2009 guidelines. Data Sources: Six databases: CINHAL, Medline, PsycINFO, Academic Search Premier, ERIC, Business premier resource. Review Methods: Search terms and strategies used: mentor* N3 (behav* or skill? or role? or activit? or function* or relation*) and (scale or tool or instrument or questionnaire or inventory). The time limiter was set from January 1985 to June 2015. Extracted data were content of instruments, samples, psychometrics, theoretical framework, and utility. An integrative review method was used. Results: Twenty-eight papers linked to 22 scales were located, seven from business and industry, 11 from education, 3 from health science, and 1 focused on research mentoring. Mentorship measurement was pioneered by business with a universally accepted theoretical framework, i.e. career function and psychosocial function, and the trend of scale development is developing: from focusing on the positive side of mentorship shifting to negative mentoring experiences and challenges. Nursing educators mainly used instruments from business to assess mentorship among nursing teachers. In education and nursing, measurement has taken to a more specialised focus: researchers in different contexts have developed scales to measure different specific aspects of mentorship. Most tools show psychometric evidence of content homogeneity and construct validity but lack more comprehensive and advanced tests. Conclusion: Mentorship is widely used and conceptualised differently in different fields and is less mature in nursing than in business. Measurement of mentorship is heading to a more specialised and comprehensive process. Business and education provided measurement tools to nursing educators to assess mentorship among staff, but a robust instrument to measure nursing students' mentorship is needed

Evaluation of the Water Footprint of Beef Cattle Production in Nebraska

Data were compiled on feed usage to model the amount of water needed to produce beef in typical Nebraska production systems. Production systems where cows were wintered on corn residue utilized 18% less water than systems utilizing native range as a wintering source, because of water allocations. Therefore, the water footprint (gallons of water required to produce one pound of boneless meat) was decreased by 18%. In addition, increasing the dietary inclusion of distillers grains from 0% to 40% decreased the water footprint in the finishing phase by 29%, again based on water allocation. Utilizing corn residue and distillers grains in Nebraska beef cattle systems decreases the overall water footprint of production. Additionally, the water footprint of the systems analyzed was 80% green water as rain, minimizing the environmental impact of beef production on freshwater use and ecological water balance

An exploration of the structure of mentors' behavior in nursing education using exploratory factor analysis and Mokken scale analysis

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. Background: To understand nursing students' expectation from their mentors and assess mentors' performance, a scale of mentors' behavior was developed based on literature review and focus group in China. Objectives: This study aims to explore the structure of mentors' behavior. Design: A cross-sectional survey. Setting: Data were collected from nursing students in three hospitals in southwest China in 2014. Participant: A total of 669 pre-registered nursing students in their final year clinical learning participated in this study. Methods: Exploratory factor analysis and Mokken scale analysis was employed to explore the structure and hierarchical property of mentors' behavior. Results: Three dimensions (professional development, facilitating learning and psychosocial support) were identified by factor analysis and confirmed by Mokken scaling analysis. The three sub-scales showed internal consistency reliability from 87% to 91%, and moderate to strong precision in ordering students' expectation about mentors' behavior and a small Mokken scale showing hierarchy was identified. Conclusion: Some insight into the structure of mentoring in nursing education has been obtained and a scale which could be used in the study of mentoring and in the preparation of mentors has been developed

Statistical Interparticle Potential of an Ideal Gas of Non-Abelian Anyons

We determine and study the statistical interparticle potential of an ideal system of non-Abelian Chern-Simons (NACS) particles, comparing our results with the corresponding results of an ideal gas of Abelian anyons. In the Abelian case, the statistical potential depends on the statistical parameter and it has a "quasi-bosonic" behaviour for statistical parameter in the range (0,1/2) (non-monotonic with a minimum) and a "quasi-fermionic" behaviour for statistical parameter in the range (1/2,1) (monotonically decreasing without a minimum). In the non-Abelian case the behavior of the statistical potential depends on the Chern- Simons coupling and the isospin quantum number: as a function of these two parameters, a phase diagram with quasi-bosonic, quasi-fermionic and bosonic-like regions is obtained and investigated. Finally, using the obtained expression for the statistical potential, we compute the second virial coefficient of the NACS gas, which correctly reproduces the results available in literature.Comment: 21 pages, 4 color figure

57 second oscillations in Nova Centauri 1986 (V842 Cen)

High speed photometry in 2008 shows that the light curve of V842 Cen possesses a coherent modulation at 56.825 s, with sidebands at 56.598 s and 57.054 s. These have appeared since this nova remnant was observed in 2000 and 2002. We deduce that the dominant signal is the rotation period of the white dwarf primary and the sidebands are caused by reprocessing from a surface moving with an orbital period of 3.94 h. Thus V842 Cen is an intermediate polar (IP) of the DQ Herculis subclass, is the fastest rotating white dwarf among the IPs and is the third fastest known in a cataclysmic variable. As in other IPs we see no dwarf nova oscillations, but there are often quasi-periodic oscillations in the range 350 - 1500 s. There is a strong brightness modulation with a period of 3.78 h, which we attribute to negative superhumps, and there is an even stronger signal at 2.886 h which is of unknown origin but is probably a further example of that seen in GW Lib and some other systems. We used the Swift satellite to observe V842 Cen in the ultra-violet and in X-rays, although no periodic modulation was detected in the short observations. The X-ray luminosity of this object appears to be much lower than that of other IPs in which the accretion region is directly visible.Comment: 6 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

In-flight calibration and verification of the Planck-LFI instrument

In this paper we discuss the Planck-LFI in-flight calibration campaign. After a brief overview of the ground test campaigns, we describe in detail the calibration and performance verification (CPV) phase, carried out in space during and just after the cool-down of LFI. We discuss in detail the functionality verification, the tuning of the front-end and warm electronics, the preliminary performance assessment and the thermal susceptibility tests. The logic, sequence, goals and results of the in-flight tests are discussed. All the calibration activities were successfully carried out and the instrument response was comparable to the one observed on ground. For some channels the in-flight tuning activity allowed us to improve significantly the noise performance.Comment: Long technical paper on Planck LFI in flight calibration campaign: 109 pages in this (not final) version, 100 page in the final JINST versio

FIGS -- Faint Infrared Grism Survey: Description and Data Reduction

The Faint Infrared Grism Survey (FIGS) is a deep Hubble Space Telescope (HST) WFC3/IR (Wide Field Camera 3 Infrared) slitless spectroscopic survey of four deep fields. Two fields are located in the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey-North (GOODS-N) area and two fields are located in the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey-South (GOODS-S) area. One of the southern fields selected is the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Each of these four fields were observed using the WFC3/G102 grism (0.8$\mu m$-1.15$\mu m$ continuous coverage) with a total exposure time of 40 orbits (~ 100 kilo-seconds) per field. This reaches a 3 sigma continuum depth of ~26 AB magnitudes and probes emission lines to $\approx 10^{-17}\ erg\ s^{-1} \ cm^{-2}$. This paper details the four FIGS fields and the overall observational strategy of the project. A detailed description of the Simulation Based Extraction (SBE) method used to extract and combine over 10000 spectra of over 2000 distinct sources brighter than m_F105W=26.5 mag is provided. High fidelity simulations of the observations is shown to significantly improve the background subtraction process, the spectral contamination estimates, and the final flux calibration. This allows for the combination of multiple spectra to produce a final high quality, deep, 1D-spectra for each object in the survey.Comment: 21 Pages. 17 Figures. To appear in Ap

\u201cGive, but Give until It Hurts\u201d: The Modulatory Role of Trait Emotional Intelligence on the Motivation to Help

Two studies investigated the effect of trait Emotional Intelligence (trait EI) on people\u2019s moti- vation to help. In Study 1, we developed a new computer-based paradigm that tested partic- ipants\u2019 motivation to help by measuring their performance on a task in which they could gain a hypothetical amount of money to help children in need. Crucially, we manipulated partici- pants\u2019 perceived efficacy by informing them that they had been either able to save the chil- dren (positive feedback) or unable to save the children (negative feedback). We measured trait EI using the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire\u2013Short Form (TEIQue-SF) and assessed participants\u2019 affective reactions during the experiment using the PANAS-X. Results showed that high and low trait EI participants performed differently after the presen- tation of feedback on their ineffectiveness in helping others in need. Both groups showed increasing negative affective states during the experiment when the feedback was negative; however, high trait EI participants better managed their affective reactions, modulating the impact of their emotions on performance and maintaining a high level of motivation to help. In Study 2, we used a similar computerized task and tested a control situation to explore the effect of trait EI on participants\u2019 behavior when facing failure or success in a scenario unre- lated to helping others in need. No effect of feedback emerged on participants\u2019 emotional states in the second study. Taken together our results show that trait EI influences the impact of success and failure on behavior only in affect-rich situation like those in which people are asked to help others in need