Modeling the adoption and use of social media by nonprofit organizations

This study examines what drives organizational adoption and use of social media through a model built around four key factors - strategy, capacity, governance, and environment. Using Twitter, Facebook, and other data on 100 large US nonprofit organizations, the model is employed to examine the determinants of three key facets of social media utilization: 1) adoption, 2) frequency of use, and 3) dialogue. We find that organizational strategies, capacities, governance features, and external pressures all play a part in these social media adoption and utilization outcomes. Through its integrated, multi-disciplinary theoretical perspective, this study thus helps foster understanding of which types of organizations are able and willing to adopt and juggle multiple social media accounts, to use those accounts to communicate more frequently with their external publics, and to build relationships with those publics through the sending of dialogic messages.Comment: Seungahn Nah and Gregory D. Saxton. (in press). Modeling the adoption and use of social media by nonprofit organizations. New Media & Society, forthcomin

Emergency ambulance service involvement with residential care homes in the support of older people with dementia : an observational study

© 2014 Amador et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.BACKGROUND: Older people resident in care homes have a limited life expectancy and approximately two-thirds have limited mental capacity. Despite initiatives to reduce unplanned hospital admissions for this population, little is known about the involvement of emergency services in supporting residents in these settings.METHODS: This paper reports on a longitudinal study that tracked the involvement of emergency ambulance personnel in the support of older people with dementia, resident in care homes with no on-site nursing providing personal care only. 133 residents with dementia across 6 care homes in the East of England were tracked for a year. The paper examines the frequency and reasons for emergency ambulance call-outs, outcomes and factors associated with emergency ambulance service use. RESULTS: 56% of residents used ambulance services. Less than half (43%) of all call-outs resulted in an unscheduled admission to hospital. In addition to trauma following a following a fall in the home, results suggest that at least a reasonable proportion of ambulance contacts are for ambulatory care sensitive conditions. An emergency ambulance is not likely to be called for older rather than younger residents or for women more than men. Length of residence does not influence use of emergency ambulance services among older people with dementia. Contact with primary care services and admission route into the care home were both significantly associated with emergency ambulance service use. The odds of using emergency ambulance services for residents admitted from a relative's home were 90% lower than the odds of using emergency ambulance services for residents admitted from their own home. CONCLUSIONS: Emergency service involvement with this vulnerable population merits further examination. Future research on emergency ambulance service use by older people with dementia in care homes, should account for important contextual factors, namely, presence or absence of on-site nursing, GP involvement, and access to residents' family, alongside resident health characteristics.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Why Are Male Social Relationships Complex in the Doubtful Sound Bottlenose Dolphin Population?

Copyright 2008 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Implementation of the 2017 Berlin Concussion in Sport Group Consensus Statement in contact and collision sports: a joint position statement from 11 national and international sports organisations.

The 2017 Berlin Concussion in Sport Group Consensus Statement provides a global summary of best practice in concussion prevention, diagnosis and management, underpinned by systematic reviews and expert consensus. Due to their different settings and rules, individual sports need to adapt concussion guidelines according to their specific regulatory environment. At the same time, consistent application of the Berlin Consensus Statement's themes across sporting codes is likely to facilitate superior and uniform diagnosis and management, improve concussion education and highlight collaborative research opportunities. This document summarises the approaches discussed by medical representatives from the governing bodies of 10 different contact and collision sports in Dublin, Ireland in July 2017. Those sports are: American football, Australian football, basketball, cricket, equestrian sports, football/soccer, ice hockey, rugby league, rugby union and skiing. This document had been endorsed by 11 sport governing bodies/national federations at the time of being published

Observation of associated near-side and away-side long-range correlations in √sNN=5.02 TeV proton-lead collisions with the ATLAS detector

Two-particle correlations in relative azimuthal angle (Δϕ) and pseudorapidity (Δη) are measured in √sNN=5.02  TeV p+Pb collisions using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The measurements are performed using approximately 1  μb-1 of data as a function of transverse momentum (pT) and the transverse energy (ΣETPb) summed over 3.1<η<4.9 in the direction of the Pb beam. The correlation function, constructed from charged particles, exhibits a long-range (2<|Δη|<5) “near-side” (Δϕ∼0) correlation that grows rapidly with increasing ΣETPb. A long-range “away-side” (Δϕ∼π) correlation, obtained by subtracting the expected contributions from recoiling dijets and other sources estimated using events with small ΣETPb, is found to match the near-side correlation in magnitude, shape (in Δη and Δϕ) and ΣETPb dependence. The resultant Δϕ correlation is approximately symmetric about π/2, and is consistent with a dominant cos⁡2Δϕ modulation for all ΣETPb ranges and particle pT

Molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the evolution of form and function in the amniote jaw.

The amniote jaw complex is a remarkable amalgamation of derivatives from distinct embryonic cell lineages. During development, the cells in these lineages experience concerted movements, migrations, and signaling interactions that take them from their initial origins to their final destinations and imbue their derivatives with aspects of form including their axial orientation, anatomical identity, size, and shape. Perturbations along the way can produce defects and disease, but also generate the variation necessary for jaw evolution and adaptation. We focus on molecular and cellular mechanisms that regulate form in the amniote jaw complex, and that enable structural and functional integration. Special emphasis is placed on the role of cranial neural crest mesenchyme (NCM) during the species-specific patterning of bone, cartilage, tendon, muscle, and other jaw tissues. We also address the effects of biomechanical forces during jaw development and discuss ways in which certain molecular and cellular responses add adaptive and evolutionary plasticity to jaw morphology. Overall, we highlight how variation in molecular and cellular programs can promote the phenomenal diversity and functional morphology achieved during amniote jaw evolution or lead to the range of jaw defects and disease that affect the human condition

Dietary Supplementation with Soluble Plantain Non-Starch Polysaccharides Inhibits Intestinal Invasion of Salmonella Typhimurium in the Chicken

Soluble fibres (non-starch polysaccharides, NSP) from edible plants but particularly plantain banana (Musa spp.), have been shown in vitro and ex vivo to prevent various enteric pathogens from adhering to, or translocating across, the human intestinal epithelium, a property that we have termed contrabiotic. Here we report that dietary plantain fibre prevents invasion of the chicken intestinal mucosa by Salmonella. In vivo experiments were performed with chicks fed from hatch on a pellet diet containing soluble plantain NSP (0 to 200 mg/d) and orally infected with S.Typhimurium 4/74 at 8 d of age. Birds were sacrificed 3, 6 and 10 d post-infection. Bacteria were enumerated from liver, spleen and caecal contents. In vitro studies were performed using chicken caecal crypts and porcine intestinal epithelial cells infected with Salmonella enterica serovars following pre-treatment separately with soluble plantain NSP and acidic or neutral polysaccharide fractions of plantain NSP, each compared with saline vehicle. Bacterial adherence and invasion were assessed by gentamicin protection assay. In vivo dietary supplementation with plantain NSP 50 mg/d reduced invasion by S.Typhimurium, as reflected by viable bacterial counts from splenic tissue, by 98.9% (95% CI, 98.1–99.7; P<0.0001). In vitro studies confirmed that plantain NSP (5–10 mg/ml) inhibited adhesion of S.Typhimurium 4/74 to a porcine epithelial cell-line (73% mean inhibition (95% CI, 64–81); P<0.001) and to primary chick caecal crypts (82% mean inhibition (95% CI, 75–90); P<0.001). Adherence inhibition was shown to be mediated via an effect on the epithelial cells and Ussing chamber experiments with ex-vivo human ileal mucosa showed that this effect was associated with increased short circuit current but no change in electrical resistance. The inhibitory activity of plantain NSP lay mainly within the acidic/pectic (homogalacturonan-rich) component. Supplementation of chick feed with plantain NSP was well tolerated and shows promise as a simple approach for reducing invasive salmonellosis

Observation of the Baryonic Flavor-Changing Neutral Current Decay Lambda_b -> Lambda mu+ mu-

We report the first observation of the baryonic flavor-changing neutral current decay Lambda_b -> Lambda mu+ mu- with 24 signal events and a statistical significance of 5.8 Gaussian standard deviations. This measurement uses ppbar collisions data sample corresponding to 6.8fb-1 at sqrt{s}=1.96TeV collected by the CDF II detector at the Tevatron collider. The total and differential branching ratios for Lambda_b -> Lambda mu+ mu- are measured. We find B(Lambda_b -> Lambda mu+ mu-) = [1.73+-0.42(stat)+-0.55(syst)] x 10^{-6}. We also report the first measurement of the differential branching ratio of B_s -> phi mu+ mu- using 49 signal events. In addition, we report branching ratios for B+ -> K+ mu+ mu-, B0 -> K0 mu+ mu-, and B -> K*(892) mu+ mu- decays.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, 4 tables. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let