A phenomenological analysis of the experience of security and contentment for latency aged children in shared-time parenting arrangements

This study explored the lived experience of security and contentment, and their absence, for latency-aged children (aged 8-12) living in shared-time parenting arrangements following their parents' separation. A descriptive phenomenological methodology was utilized (Giorgi, 1985, 2009; Giorgi & Giorgi, 2003, 2008). Sixteen children living in shared-time were interviewed about their experiences of two phenomena: "feeling secure and content living in shared-time" and "not feeling secure and content living in shared-time." The eight richest protocols were selected for analysis. The two resultant general structures and their core constituents are presented, and individual variations discussed. Central to each phenomenon is the parent/s' capacity, or incapacity, to create and sustain a physical and emotional space in which the child feels secure and held in the mind, feels the arrangements are responsive to their needs, feels free to access the "absent" parent, and experiences integration between the two parental homes. Implications for phenomenological human science research are considered, including the use of descriptive phenomenology with children.

Estimating the intensity of ward admission and its effect on emergency department access block

Emergency department access block is an urgent problem faced by many public hospitals today. When access block occurs, patients in need of acute care cannot access inpatient wards within an optimal time frame. A widely held belief is that access block is the end product of a long causal chain, which involves poor discharge planning, insufficient bed capacity, and inadequate admission intensity to the wards. This paper studies the last link of the causal chain-the effect of admission intensity on access block, using data from a metropolitan hospital in Australia. We applied several modern statistical methods to analyze the data. First, we modeled the admission events as a nonhomogeneous Poisson process and estimated time-varying admission intensity with penalized regression splines. Next, we established a functional linear model to investigate the effect of the time-varying admission intensity on emergency department access block. Finally, we used functional principal component analysis to explore the variation in the daily time-varying admission intensities. The analyses suggest that improving admission practice during off-peak hours may have most impact on reducing the number of ED access blocks.

Night-time continence care in Australian residential aged care facilities: findings from a grounded theory study

BACKGROUND: Continence care commonly disrupts sleep in residential aged care facilities, however, little is known about what staff do when providing continence care, and the factors that inform their practice. AIMS: To describe nurses' and personal careworkers' beliefs and experiences of providing continence care at night in residential aged care facilities. METHODS/DESIGN: Eighteen nurses and personal careworkers were interviewed about continence care, and 24 hours of observations were conducted at night in two facilities. RESULTS/FINDINGS: Most residents were checked overnight. This practice was underpinned by staffs' concern that residents were intractably incontinent and at risk of pressure injuries. Staff believed pads protected and dignified residents. Decisions were also influenced by beliefs about limited staff-to-resident ratios. CONCLUSION: Night-time continence care should be audited to ensure decisions are based on residents' preferences, skin health, sleep/wake status, ability to move in bed, and the frequency, severity and type of residents' actual incontinence.

Robust finite-time consensus tracking algorithm for multirobot systems

This paper studies the finite-time consensus tracking control for multirobot systems. We prove that finite-time consensus tracking of multiagent systems can be achieved on the terminal sliding-mode surface. Also, we show that the proposed error function can be modified to achieve relative state deviation between agents. These results are then applied to the finite-time consensus tracking control of multirobot systems with input disturbances. Simulation results are presented to validate the analysis.

Clinical and economic burden of emergency department presentations for neutropenia following outpatient chemotherapy for cancer in Victoria, Australia

Objective. To examine the clinical characteristics and financial charges associated with treating adult cancer patients receiving chemotherapy in outpatient clinics who presented to the emergency department (ED) with neutropenia.
Design and Setting. A retrospective audit was conducted across two health services involving ED episodes and subsequent hospital admissions of patients who received chemotherapy through day oncology from January 1 to December 31, 2007 and presented to the ED with neutropenia. ED data were collected from the Victorian Emergency Minimum Dataset and charges were collected from Health Information Services. Descriptive and bivariate statistics were used to describe the patient and clinical characteristics and financial outcomes, and to explore associations between these factors.
Results. In total, 200 neutropenic episodes in 159 outpatients were seen in the ED over the survey period. The mean patient age was 56.6 years (standard deviation, 13.2 years) and 47.2% were male. Overall, 70.0% of ED episodes were triaged as Australasian Triage Scale 2 (emergency). The median ED wait time was 10 minutes and the median ED length of stay was 6.8 hours. The median charge for each ED episode was $764.08 Australian dollars. The total combined ED and inpatient charge per episode was in the range of $144.27-$174,732.68, with a median charge of $5,640.87.
Conclusions. This study provides important insights into the clinical and economic burden of neutropenia from both the ED and inpatient perspectives. Alternative treatment models, such as outpatient treatment, early discharge programs or prophylactic interventions to reduce the clinical and economic burden of neutropenia on our health system, must be explored.

Data replication approach with consistency guarantee for data grid

Data grids have been adopted by many scientific communities that need to share, access, transport, process, and manage geographically distributed large data collections. Data replication is one of the main mechanisms used in data grids whereby identical copies of data are generated and stored at various distributed sites to either improve data access performance or reliability or both. However, when data updates are allowed, it is a great challenge to simultaneously improve performance and reliability while ensuring data consistency of such huge and widely distributed data. In this paper, we address this problem. We propose a new quorum-based data replication protocol with the objectives of minimizing the data update cost, providing high availability and data consistency. We compare the proposed approach with two existing approaches using response time, data consistency, data availability, and communication costs. The results show that the proposed approach performs substantially better than the benchmark approaches.

Enhancing the interfacial properties of Quickstep{u2122} cured biocomposites

This research has enhanced the performance of natural fibre composites by optimisation of the cure cycle under Quickstep{u2122} process and treatment time under atmospheric pressure glow discharge plasma. The study has also utilised many characterization methods, theoretical models, and established surface-property relationship to manufacture composites with optimum strength and toughness.

Prevention of information harvesting in a cloud services environment

We consider a cloud data storage involving three entities, the cloud customer, the cloud business centre which provides services, and the cloud data storage centre. Data stored in the data storage centre comes from a variety of customers and some of these customers may compete with each other in the market place or may own data which comprises confidential information about their own clients. Cloud staff have access to data in the data storage centre which could be used to steal identities or to compromise cloud customers. In this paper, we provide an efficient method of data storage which prevents staff from accessing data which can be abused as described above. We also suggest a method of securing access to data which requires more than one staff member to access it at any given time. This ensures that, in case of a dispute, a staff member always has a witness to the fact that she accessed data.

Investigation of a prefetch model for low bandwidth networks

We investigate speculative prefetching under a model in which prefetching is neither aborted nor preempted by demand fetch but instead gets equal priority in network bandwidth utilisation. We argue that the non-abortive assumption is appropriate for wireless networks where bandwidth is low and latency is high, and the non-preemptive assumption is appropriate for Internet where prioritization is not always possible. This paper assumes the existence of an access model to provide some knowledge about future accesses and investigates analytically the performance of a prefetcher that utilises this knowledge. In mobile computing, because resources are severely constrained, performance prediction is as important as access prediction. For uniform retrieval time, we derive a theoretical limit of improvement in access time due to prefetching. This leads to the formulation of an optimal algorithrn for prefetching one access ahead. For non-uniform retrieval time, two different types of prefetching of multiple documents, namely mainline and branch prefetch, are evaluated against prefetch of single document. In mainline prefetch, the most probable sequence of future accesses is prefetched. In branch prefetch, a set of different alternatives for future accesses is prefetched. Under some conditions, mainline prefetch may give slight improvement in user-perceived access time over single prefetch with nominal extra retrieval cost, where retrieval cost is defined as the expected network time wasted in non-useful prefetch. Branch prefetch performs better than mainline prefetch but incurs more retrieval cost.

Change of school in early adolescence and adverse obesity-related dietary behavior: a longitudinal cohort study, Victoria, Australia, 2013-2014

INTRODUCTION: Environments that facilitate energy-dense, nutrient-poor diets are associated with childhood obesity. We examined the effect of a change of school environment on the prevalence of obesity and related dietary behavior in early adolescence. METHODS: Fifteen schools in Victoria, Australia, were recruited at random from the bottom 2 strata of a 5-level socioeconomic scale. In 9 schools, students in grade 6 primary school transitioned to different schools for grade 7 secondary school, whereas in 6 schools, students remained in the same school from grade 6 to grade 7. Time 1 measures were collected from students (N = 245) in grade 6 (aged 11-13 y). Time 2 data were collected from 243 (99%) of the original cohort in grade 7. Data collected were dietary recall self-reported by students via questionnaire, measured height and weight of students, and aspects of the school food environment via school staff survey. Comparative and mixed model regression analyses were conducted. RESULTS: Of 243 students, 63% (n = 152) changed schools from time 1 to time 2, with no significant difference in weight status. Students who changed schools reported an increase in purchases of after-school snack food, greater sweetened beverage intake, fewer fruit-and-vegetable classroom breaks, and less encouragement for healthy eating compared with students who remained in the same school. School staff surveys showed that more primary than secondary schools had written healthy canteen policies and fewer days of canteen or food services operation. CONCLUSION: A change of school environment has negative effects on children's obesity-related dietary behavior. Consistent policy is needed across school types to support healthy eating in school environments.