Two Poems

Poetry by Dan MacIsaa

A study of patients discharged improved who returned for further treatment to the Veterans Administration Mental Hygiene Clinic.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit

Mandatory severance pay : its coverage and effects in Peru

In Peru, as in many other developing countries, employers have the legal obligation to compensate workers who are dismissed through no fault of their own. Is this an efficient mechanism for providing income support to the unemployed? The authors seek an answer to this question, using individual records from a household survey with a panel structure. Relying on five coverage indicators, they show that roughly one in five workers in the private sector, and one in three wage earners in the private sector, is legally entitled to severance pay. Coverage is more prevalent among wealthier workers. Results based on several empirical strategies suggest that workers"pay"for their entitlement to severance pay through lower wages. Consumption among unemployed workers who receive severance pay is 20 to 30 percent greater than among those who do not. Consumption among these workers is actually higher than consumption among employed workers, suggesting that mandatory severance pay is overgenerous in Peru.Public Health Promotion,Labor Policies,Social Protections&Assistance,Wages, Compensation&Benefits,Environmental Economics&Policies,Wages, Compensation&Benefits,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Social Protections&Assistance,Inequality

Medicare\u27s August Rule: Necessary Step Toward Minimizing Federal Spending or Overbroad Decision Leading to Higher Malpractice Costs?

Recently, the federal agency that administers Medicare decided that, beginning in 2008, Medicare will no longer pay for certain patient conditions acquired in the hospital that are deemed preventable. Patient safety advocates support this pronouncement because it gives health care providers an additional reason to avoid the occurrence of these conditions. Some physicians, however, believe that the decision was too overbroad because of its inclusion of certain infections and bedsores that are not always preventable for all patients. Because some conditions involved are not preventable, the occurrence of a condition should be presented in the same manner as other evidence in a malpractice case, through expert testimony

Maximizing library presence while minimizing online maintenance

Paper presented at the Computer Supported Education Conference of 2011, in Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands. The conference website is at http://www.csedu.org/This paper presents challenges and opportunities for an academic library to increasing its presence in an online learning management system (LMS). Successful examples from Athabasca University, Canada’s Open University will highlight the benefits of a collaborative team approach to course development and LMS software applications. This case study demonstrates how an academic library can participate fully as an active partner in the learning process. Specific focus is given to the seamless access for students from the LMS to licensed electronic resources.Athabasca University Library and the Academic and Professional Development Fund of Athabasca Universit

What a librarian can bring to your open online course development team.

This paper was written as the detailed research behind a poster presentation made to EDUCAUSE Annual Conference 2012, November 6-9 in Denver. The poster featured a librarian sticking out from a team of tall young players on a wooden gym court. The poster title and tag line was, “Want a faster, smarter team? Add a librarian.” The central photo played into the potential biases of the viewer, by creating the visual pun of the female librarian in a sleeveless dress, pearl necklace and iPad standing short amongst a tall uniformed male sports team. She sticks out from the team. At first glance she doesn’t seem to belong. The purpose of the piece is to encourage the audience to consider working with a team player who might not have been on their list of first round draft picks.need to add abstractA & PD Fund, Athabasca Universit

Magnetic history dependence of metastable states in systems with dipolar interactions

We present the results of a Monte Carlo simulation of the ground state and magnetic relaxation of a model of a thin film consisting on a two-dimensional square lattice of Heisenberg spins with perpendicular anisotropy K, exchange J and long-range dipolar interactions g. We have studied the ground state configurations of this system for a wide range of the interaction parameters J/g, K/g by means of the simulated annealing procedure, showing that the model is able to reproduce the different magnetic configurations found in real samples. We have found the existence of a certain range of K/g, J/g values for which in-plane and out-of-plane configurations are quasi-degenerated in energy. We show that when a system in this region of parameters is perturbed by an external force that is subsequently removed different kinds of ordering may be induced depending on the followed procedure. In particular, simulations of relaxations from saturation under an a.c. demagnetizing field or in zero field are in qualitative agreement with recent experiments on epitaxial and granular alloy thin films, which show a wide variety of magnetic patterns depending on their magnetic history.Comment: Invited paper to 3rd EuroConference on Magnetic Properties of Fine Nanoparticles, Barcelona, October 99. To be published in JMMM (References included 22-Dec-1999

Searching for stable fullerenes in space with computational chemistry

We report a computational study of the stability and infrared (IR) vibrational spectra of neutral and singly ionised fullerene cages containing between 44 and 70 carbon atoms. The stability is characterised in terms of the standard enthalpy of formation per CC bond, the HOMO-LUMO gap, and the energy required to eliminate a C$_2$ fragment. We compare the simulated IR spectra of these fullerene species to the observed emission spectra of several planetary nebulae (Tc 1, SMP SMC 16, and SMP LMC 56) where strong C$_{60}$ emission has been detected. Although we could not conclusively identify fullerenes other than C$_{60}$ and C$_{70}$, our results point to the possible presence of smaller (44, 50, and 56-atom) cages in those astronomical objects. Observational confirmation of our prediction should become possible when the James Webb Space Telescope comes online.Comment: 11 pages, 13 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication on MNRA

Use of a 3-item short-form version of the Barthel Index for use in stroke: systematic review and external validation

Background and Purpose—There may be a potential to reduce the number of items assessed in the Barthel Index (BI), and shortened versions of the BI have been described. We sought to collate all existing short-form BI (SF-BI) and perform a comparative validation using clinical trial data. Methods—We performed a systematic review across multidisciplinary electronic databases to find all published SF-BI. Our validation used the VISTA (Virtual International Stroke Trials Archive) resource. We describe concurrent validity (agreement of each SF-BI with BI), convergent and divergent validity (agreement of each SF-BI with other outcome measures available in the data set), predictive validity (association of prognostic factors with SF-BI outcomes), and content validity (item correlation and exploratory factor analyses). Results—From 3546 titles, we found 8 articles describing 6 differing SF-BI. Using acute trial data (n=8852), internal reliability suggested redundancy in BI (Cronbach α, 0.96). Each SF-BI demonstrated a strong correlation with BI, modified Rankin Scale, National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (all ρ≥0.83; P<0.001). Using rehabilitation trial data (n=332), SF-BI demonstrated modest correlation with quality of life measures Stroke Impact Scale and 5 domain EuroQOL (ρ≥0.50, P<0.001). Prespecified prognostic factors were associated with SF-BI outcomes (all P<0.001). Our factor analysis described a 3 factor structure, and item reduction suggested an optimal 3-item SF-BI comprising bladder control, transfer, and mobility items in keeping with 1 of the 3-item SF-BI previously described in the literature. Conclusions—There is redundancy in the original BI; we have demonstrated internal and external validity of a 3-item SF-BI that should be simple to use