Genetic architecture of rainbow trout survival from egg to adult

Survival from birth to a reproductive adult is a challenge that only robust individuals resistant to a variety of mortality factors will overcome. To assess whether survival traits share genetic architecture throughout the life cycle, we estimated genetic correlations for survival within fingerling stage, and across egg, fingerling and grow-out stages in farmed rainbow trout. Genetic parameters of survival at three life cycle stages were estimated for 249 166 individuals originating from ten year classes of a pedigreed population. Despite being an important fitness component, survival traits harboured significant but modest amount of genetic variation (h2=0·07–0·27). Weak associations between survival during egg-fry and fingerling periods, between early and late fingerling periods (rG=0·30) and generally low genetic correlations between fingerling and grow-out survival (mean rG=0·06) suggested that life-stage specific survival traits are best regarded as separate traits. However, in the sub-set of data with detailed time of death records, positive genetic correlations between early and late fingerling survival (rG=0·89) showed that during certain years the best genotypes in the early period were also among the best in the late period. That survival across fingerling period can be genetically the same, trait was indicated also by only slightly higher heritability (h2=0·15) estimated with the survival analysis of time to death during fingerling period compared to the analysis treating fingerling survival as a binary character (h2=0·11). The results imply that (1) inherited resistance against unknown mortality factors exists, but (2) ranking of genotypes changes across life stages

Advancing research and researcher training by international research collaboration

This presentation will discuss current experiences of international research collaboration between European and USA partners in advancing care of cancer patients and their family caregivers. This session will highlight the importance of a longstanding program of research for knowledge development as well as impact on health policy and practice

Does transformational leadership of nurse managers change over time?: A longitudinal study

To find out the differences in nurse managers transformational leadership from the longitudinal viewpoint and examine the relationship between nurse managers transformational leadership and study years and nurses background variables

Patients\u27 involvement and trust in care-perceptions of cancer patients in outpatient clinic

Cancer is one of the biggest worldwide health questions. Due to the high quality care, treatment and prognosis of different cancer forms, more adult cancer patients recover from disease. To recover from cancer and live with it, patients need both high quality medical care and involvement and trust in care

Fathers’ emotional involvement with the neonate: impact of the umbilical cord cutting experience

Aims. This paper is a report on a study analysing the effect of the umbilical cord cutting experience on fathers’ emotional involvement with their infants. Background. Participation in childbirth offers an opportunity for father and mother to share the childbirth experience, so it is vital that midwives improve the fathers’ participation in this event. Design. A quasi-experimental study with a quantitative methodology was implemented. Methods. One hundred and five fathers were recruited as part of a convenience sample in a Maternity Public Hospital in a Metropolitan City in Portugal, between January and May of 2008. The Bonding Scale, the Portuguese version of the ‘Mother-to-Infant Bonding Scale’ was used to evaluate the fathers’ emotional involvement with the neonate at different moments: before childbirth, first day after childbirth and first month after childbirth. After childbirth, the fathers were divided into three separate groups depending on their umbilical cord cutting experience. Results. The results demonstrate that the emotional involvement between father and child tends to increase during the first days after childbirth and to decrease when evaluated 1 month after birth, for fathers who did not cut the umbilical cord. However, fathers who cut the umbilical cord demonstrate an improvement in emotional involvement 1 month later. Conclusion. Results suggest that the umbilical cord cutting experience benefits the father’s emotional involvement with the neonate, supporting the benefits of his participation and empowerment in childbirth

A Computation Model Quantifying Nurse Staffing to Care Needs

Session presented on: Wednesday, July 24, 2013: Purpose: The computational model for nurse staffing was innovated in the Nurse Staffing Management Development (NSMD) project as part of the B11 project designing a new building to the Kuopio University Hospital in Finland. Problems in existing facilities, decreasing nursing staff, and increasing demands of caring for an ageing population formed the background for the B11 project. The purpose of the NSMD project was to define nurse staffing needs in units that will move into the new building in 2015. Methods: Data consisted of information on 108 - 864 patient episodes (inpatient and outpatient visits, procedures or deliveries) and administrative information on 464 nurses. The data were collected in 15 units. The data on the patient episodes were used in determining care needs. The WHO\u27s Workload Indicators of Staffing Need (WISN) tool was applied in computing the available working time of nurses. Both subjects, the care needs and the nurse resources, were transformed into hours. The basic formula for the unit\u27s computational nurse staffing need was: [(need of care* acuity coefficient) / (available working time of nurses)]. The computational nurse staffing need was proportioned to the unit\u27s number of nurse vacancies. The ratio provided information on the usage level of nurse resources in care processes. Results: When the ratio was below 80 - 85 %, the unit\u27s nurse staffing was considered adequate, and when it was between 85 - 100 % it indicated a call for developing the processes. The units\u27 ratio of nurse staffing needs and vacancies varied between 43.7-107.3%. In all but one unit, there were enough nurses to carry out units\u27 scenarios in the new premises. Conclusion: The ratio of the computational nurse staffing need and vacancies does not in itself change anything, but it offers transparent and comparable information for planning, following up, and evaluating nurse staffing

Key factors for nurse leaders: What issues should be taken into account when developing nurses\u27 rewarding

Session presented on Friday, July 22, 2016: Reward strategy is a part of the human resources strategy and it is implemented as a management tool defined by organization with the help of a reward system (Armstrong 2006). Previous studies have shown the importance of developing nurses\u27 rewarding (von Bonsdorff 2011, Eneh et al. 2012, Kvist et al. 2013, Seitovirta et al. 2014). In fact, it has been shown that rewarding has significant and beneficial effects on nurses\u27 job satisfaction and commitment (Pasaron 2013, Morrison & Korol 2014). Nurse Leaders have an important role when design a successful reward system for nurses (Kurzman et al. 2011). Equitable and fair reward policy is realized when the views of the employee are taken into consideration (Miller et al. 2013). Purpose: The purpose of this presentation is to describe the issues, what Nurse Leaders should take into account when developing reward system for Registered Nurses. The research question is: How would Nurse Leaders develop the reward systems according to the RN perceptions? The study is a part of research project of RN rewarding in Finland. Methods: The participants were 30 RNs and they worked in one public special-, one primary- and in two different private health care organisations in Finland. The inclusion criteria were the following: registered nurse having been working at least three months in current organization. The data were collected in the years 2011 and 2014 by interviewing voluntary RNs of their perceptions of rewarding. The participants were two male and 28 female nurses between the ages of 27 to 63 and had from three months to 30 years of experience as RNs. The data were analyzed with qualitative content analysis. Issues of trustworthiness were carefully followed: reliability, confirmability, transferability and independence of the study are demonstrated in the accurate and thorough descriptions of the different phases. Results: Findings showed that reward system should be designed together with nursing staff. Co-operation between management and employees was presented by RNs. Nurse Leaders should ensure that there is a fair and equitable justification and yearly evaluation for rewarding. Viable reward criteria and alternative types of rewards were the suggestions to be taken into account in reward system. The criteria for rewarding should be clear and measurable. Additionally performance-based pay criteria should be revised to be lower. RNs suggested both individual and team rewards, freedom to choose the type of reward for instance money or free time or is the getting a reward public or not public. In addition, both financial and non-financial rewards are needed in reward system according to RNs\u27 experiences. Conclusion: In conclusion, rewards will also be relevant to the employee herself/himself, thus the information provided by the RNs is extremely valuable

Forecasting Electricity Prices and their volatilities using Unobserved Components.

The liberalization of electricity markets more than ten years ago in the vast majority of developed countries has introduced the need of modelling and forecasting electricity prices and volatilities, both in the short and long term. Thus, there is a need of providing methodology that is able to deal with the most important features of electricity price series, which are well known for presenting not only structure in conditional mean but also time-varying conditional variances. In this work we propose a new model, which allows to extract conditionally heteroskedastic common factors from the vector of electricity prices. These common factors are jointly estimated as well as their relationship with the original vector of series, and the dynamics affecting both their conditional mean and variance. The estimation of the model is carried out under the state-space formulation. The new model proposed is applied to extract seasonal common dynamic factors as well as common volatility factors for electricity prices and the estimation results are used to forecast electricity prices and their volatilities in the Spanish zone of the Iberian Market. Several simplified/alternative models are also considered as benchmarks to illustrate that the proposed approach is superior to all of them in terms of explanatory and predictive power

Pregnancy outcomes of overweight and obese women aged 35 years or older - A registry-based study in Finland

Objective: To compare pregnancy outcomes of overweight and obese pregnant women aged 35 years or older to women aged less than 35 years old. Methods: A registry-based study covering years 2004-2008 including data on women >= 35 years (N = 45,718) compared to those = 30). In multivariable modelling, the main outcome measures were preterm delivery ( Results: Maternal overweight and obesity along with advanced maternal age (AMA) significantly increased the risks of preterm delivery, preeclampsia, foetal death, LGA and Caesarean as compared to women of average weight aged = 35 years to normal weight women of the same age, the rates of preeclampsia, preterm delivery Conclusions: The risks were increased by maternal age >= 35 years and both obesity and overweight. The combined effect of AMA and either overweight or obesity appeared to be a high risk state particularly for stillbirth and preterm delivery. (C) 2015 Asian Oceanian Association for the Study of Obesity. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe