Does lowering a fever >101F in children improve clinical outcomes?

Treating fever significantly increases comfort, activity, feeding, and fluid intake and decreases the patient's temperature compared with placebo (strength of recommendation (SOR): A, multiple randomized controlled trials [RCTs]). It doesn't shorten or prolong the overall duration of illness or reduce the recurrence of febrile seizures (SOR: A, multiple RCTs). In patients with varicella, reducing fever prolongs the time it takes for lesions to crust, but doesn't appear to cause group A streptococcal necrotizing fasciitis (SOR: B, multiple prospective cohorts)

Chittenden County Child Care Providers & Conflict Implementing Sick Child Guidelines

Introduction: Nationwide, 61% of children under age five are enrolled in a form of non-parental care. Problems arise when a child becomes sick and is not able toattend daycare or has to be sent home. Parents must either miss work to care for their child or find someone else to care for them. Since there is stress surrounding taking time off, and because the criteria used to exclude children from child care can be ambiguous, parents may feel that their child doesn’t need to be sent home. Each child care provider has to set up exclusion criteria that meet state licensing requirements. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) developed exclusion guidelines specifically for childcare settings in 2006, but most daycare providers and pediatricians are unaware of its existence. Conflicts occur when there are differences in opinion on the child’s health status between the child care provider and the parents or the child’s pediatrician.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1023/thumbnail.jp

The Wess-Zumino Consistency Condition For p-Form Gauge Theories

The general solution of the antifield-independent Wess-Zumino consistency condition is worked out for models involving exterior form gauge fields of arbitrary degree. We consider both the free theory and theories with Chapline-Manton couplings. Our approach relies on solving the full set of descent equations by starting from the last element down ("bottom").Comment: latex 2.09, 46 pages, no figures, requires multibox style, available at ftp://ftp.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex209/contrib/misc/multibox.sty -- misquotes in references correcte

Estimating above ground net biomass change in tropical and subtropical forests: refinement of IPCC default values using forest plot data

As countries advance in greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting for climate change mitigation, consistent estimates of above ground biomass (AGB) net change are needed for the tropics and subtropics. Countries with limited forest monitoring capabilities rely on 2006 IPCC default AGB net change values, which are averages per ecological zone, per continent. These previous defaults come from single studies, provide no uncertainty indications, and aggregate old secondary forests and old-growth forests. In this study, we update these default values using forest plot data. In comparison with previous estimates, new values include data published from 2006 onwards, are derived from multiple sites per global ecological zone, provide measures of variation, and divide forests >20 years old into older secondary forests and old-growth forests. We compiled 176 AGB chronosequences in secondary forests and AGB net change rates from 536 permanent plots in old-growth and managed or logged forests. In this dataset, across all continents and ecozones, AGB net change rates in younger secondary forests (go years) are higher than rates in older secondary (>20 years and ≤100 years) forests and managed or logged forests, which in turn are higher than rates in old-growth forests (> 100 years). Data availability is highest for North and South America, followed by Asia then Africa. We provide a rigorous and traceable refinement of the IPCC 2006 AGB net change default rates, identify which areas in the tropics and subtropics require more research on AGB change, and reflect on possibilities for improvement as more data becomes available

Banning Noncompetes in Virginia

The past decade has seen a nationwide wave of reform in noncompete law, specifically the limitation of noncompete agreements. Since 2016, ten states—including Virginia in 2020— banned the use of noncompete agreements against certain “lowwage” employees. In order to stay ahead of this curve and ensure Virginia remains and grows as one of the top states to do business, this Article suggests that Virginia—like its neighbor, the District of Columbia, initially did in 2021—pass a complete ban of all noncompete agreements in the employment context. Such a ban would make Virginia a lucrative destination for entrepreneurs and startups by maximizing the job and employee market and keeping the best business opportunities for employers and employees alike in-state. The Article forecasts this effect by examining the rise of California’s Silicon Valley, where employee noncompete agreements are banned, and the converse decline of innovation in Michigan since 1985, when the state accidentally repealed its noncompete ban. Virginia would specifically benefit from a ban of employee noncompetes because its current noncompete law is inadequate. This Article argues that Virginia courts’ longstanding three-prong test weighing legitimate business interest, undue hardship, and public policy is dangerously unpredictable—so much so that the Supreme Court of Virginia once upheld and struck down the exact same noncompete agreement in two different cases—resulting in legal guesswork and unfair bargaining power between employer and employee. This Article also suggests that Virginia’s 2020 “low wage” ban insufficiently addresses the issues at hand and even further adds to the burden of deciphering the law. While some may claim employee noncompete agreements are necessary to protect legitimate business interests and advance the freedom of contract, this Article responds that such business interests are already adequately protected by other, less problematic provisions—namely, confidentiality and nonsolicitation agreements—and that the freedom of contract is not any less valuable than the freedom of trade, which employee noncompete agreements severely restrain. Finally, this Article proposes model legislation to aid the Virginia General Assembly, and other jurisdictions who may follow suit, in passing such a ban

Pirate Tales from the Deep [Web]: An Exploration of Online Copyright Infringement in the Digital Age

Technology has seen a boom over the last few decades, making innovative leaps that border on science fiction. With the most recent technological leap came a new frontier of intellectual property and birthed a new class of criminal: the cyber-pirate. This Article discusses cyber-piracy and its interactions and implications for modern United States copyright law. The Article explains how copyright law, unprepared for the boom, struggled to adapt as courts reconciled the widely physical perceptions of copyright with the digital information being transferred between billions of users instantaneously. The Article also explores how cyber-piracy has made, and continues to make, its mark on copyright enforcement through political movements that vie for reduced copyright protections and support elusive distribution platforms that are nearly impossible to shut down permanently. As technology continues to surge forward, and 3D printers become increasingly available to consumers, copyright law will have to account for a new field of works that may need to be protected in the face of rising political turmoil

Quantitative Global Heat Transfer in a Mach-6 Quiet Tunnel

This project developed quantitative methods for obtaining heat transfer from temperature sensitive paint (TSP) measurements in the Mach-6 quiet tunnel at Purdue, which is a Ludwieg tube with a downstream valve, moderately-short flow duration and low levels of heat transfer. Previous difficulties with inferring heat transfer from TSP in the Mach-6 quiet tunnel were traced to (1) the large transient heat transfer that occurs during the unusually long tunnel startup and shutdown, (2) the non-uniform thickness of the insulating coating, (3) inconsistencies and imperfections in the painting process and (4) the low levels of heat transfer observed on slender models at typical stagnation temperatures near 430K. Repeated measurements were conducted on 7 degree-half-angle sharp circular cones at zero angle of attack in order to evaluate the techniques, isolate the problems and identify solutions. An attempt at developing a two-color TSP method is also summarized

Processes, contexts, and rationale for disinvestment: a protocol for a critical interpretive synthesis

Background: Practical solutions are needed to support the appropriate use of available health system resources as countries are continually pressured to ‘do more with less’ in health care. Increasingly, health systems and organizations are exploring the reassessment of possibly obsolete, inefficient, or ineffective health system resources and potentially redirecting funds to those that are more effective and efficient. Such processes are often referred to as ‘disinvestment’. Our objective is to gain further understanding about: 1) whether how and under what conditions health systems decide to pursue disinvestment; 2) how health systems have chosen to undertake disinvestment; and 3) how health systems have implemented their disinvestment approach. Methods/Design We will use a critical interpretive synthesis (CIS) approach, to develop a theoretical framework based on insights drawn from a range of relevant sources. We will conduct systematic searches of databases as well as purposive searches to identify literature to fill conceptual gaps that may emerge during our inductive process of synthesis and analysis. Two independent reviewers will assess search results for relevance and conceptually map included references. We will include all empirical and non-empirical articles that focus on disinvestment at a system level. We will then extract key findings from a purposive sample of articles using frameworks related to government agendas, policy development and implementation, and health system contextual factors and then synthesize and integrate the findings to develop a framework about our core areas of interest. Lastly, we will convene a stakeholder dialogue with Canadian and international policymakers and other stakeholders to solicit targeted feedback about the framework (e.g., by identifying any gaps in the literature that we may want to revisit before finalizing it) and deliberating about barriers for developing and implementing approaches to disinvestment, strategies to address these barriers and about next steps that could be taken by different constituencies. Discussion Disinvestment is an emerging field and there is a need for evidence to inform the prioritization, development, and implementation of strategies in different contexts. Our CIS and the framework developed through it will support the actions of those involved in the prioritization, development, and implementation of disinvestment initiatives. Systematic review registration PROSPERO CRD42014013204 Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/2046-4053-3-143) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Pirate Tales from the Deep [Web]: An Exploration of Online Copyright Infringement in the Digital Age

Technology has seen a boom over the last few decades, making innovative leaps that border on science fiction. With the most recent technological leap came a new frontier of intellectual property and birthed a new class of criminal: the cyber-pirate. This Article discusses cyber-piracy and its interactions and implications for modern United States copyright law. The Article explains how copyright law, unprepared for the boom, struggled to adapt as courts reconciled the widely physical perceptions of copyright with the digital information being transferred between billions of users instantaneously. The Article also explores how cyber-piracy has made, and continues to make, its mark on copyright enforcement through political movements that vie for reduced copyright protections and support elusive distribution platforms that are nearly impossible to shut down permanently. As technology continues to surge forward, and 3D printers become increasingly available to consumers, copyright law will have to account for a new field of works that may need to be protected in the face of rising political turmoil