School based youth health nurses and attrition : the reasons for moving on

Like the UK, Australia has a number of school nursing models and programmes. The School Based Youth Health Nurse Program (SBYHNP) is a new and unique model of school nursing in Queensland, Australia. The SBYHNP represents a philosophical and structural shift from traditional school nursing programmes. The purpose of this qualitative case study is to explore the reasons School Based Youth Health Nurses (SBYHN) leave school nursing. Sixteen in-depth interviews were conducted with participants who practiced as SBYHN and left the SBYHNP. This case study reveals six themes: The politics’: Navigating the organisational divide, 'Unconditional positive regard’: Surviving without team cohesion, 'Absolutely exhausted’: Maintaining physical and emotional strength, ‘Definitely geographical’: Managing the tyranny of time and distance, ‘If things fell into place’: Thinking about what could have been, and ‘A stepping stone’: Moving on to the next nursing position. This case study suggests nurses considering school nursing as a specialty should seek opportunity to understand this complex role, ensure realistic expectations and ndertake relevant qualifications. This approach may secure the investment made by nurses and schools and create demand for a highly sort after position.

Building macroscale models from microscale probabilistic models : a general probabilistic approach for nonlinear diffusion and multispecies phenomena

A discrete agent-based model on a periodic lattice of arbitrary dimension is considered. Agents move to nearest-neighbor sites by a motility mechanism accounting for general interactions, which may include volume exclusion. The partial differential equation describing the average occupancy of the agent population is derived systematically. A diffusion equation arises for all types of interactions and is nonlinear except for the simplest interactions. In addition, multiple species of interacting subpopulations give rise to an advection-diffusion equation for each subpopulation. This work extends and generalizes previous specific results, providing a construction method for determining the transport coefficients in terms of a single conditional transition probability, which depends on the occupancy of sites in an influence region. These coefficients characterize the diffusion of agents in a crowded environment in biological and physical processes.

Correlations and volatility spillovers across commodity and stock markets: Linking energies, food, and gold

This paper employs a VAR-GARCH model to investigate the return links and volatility transmission between the S&P 500 and commodity price indices for energy, food, gold and beverages over the turbulent period from 2000 to 2011. Understanding the price behavior of commodity prices and the volatility transmission mechanism between these markets and the stock exchanges are crucial for each participant, including governments, traders, portfolio managers, consumers, and producers. For return and volatility spillover, the results show significant transmission among the S&P 500 and commodity markets. The past shocks and volatility of the S&P 500 strongly influenced the oil and gold markets. This study finds that the highest conditional correlations are between the S&P 500 and gold index and the S&P 500 and WTI index. We also analyze the optimal weights and hedge ratios for commodities/S&P 500 portfolio holdings using the estimates for each index. Overall, our findings illustrate several important implications for portfolio hedgers for making optimal portfolio allocations, engaging in risk management and forecasting future volatility in equity and commodity markets. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.

Eccentric hamstring strength and hamstring injury risk in Australian footballers

Purpose Is eccentric hamstring strength and between limb imbalance in eccentric strength, measured during the Nordic hamstring exercise, a risk factor for hamstring strain injury (HSI)? Methods Elite Australian footballers (n=210) from five different teams participated. Eccentric hamstring strength during the Nordic was taken at the commencement and conclusion of preseason training and in season. Injury history and demographic data were also collected. Reports on prospectively occurring HSIs were completed by team medical staff. Relative risk (RR) was determined for univariate data and logistic regression was employed for multivariate data. Results Twenty-eight HSIs were recorded. Eccentric hamstring strength below 256N at the start of preseason and 279N at the end of preseason increased risk of future HSI 2.7 (relative risk, 2.7; 95% confidence interval, 1.3 to 5.5; p = 0.006) and 4.3 fold (relative risk, 4.3; 95% confidence interval, 1.7 to 11.0; p = 0.002) respectively. Between limb imbalance in strength of greater than 10% did not increase the risk of future HSI. Univariate analysis did not reveal a significantly greater relative risk for future HSI in athletes who had sustained a lower limb injury of any kind within the last 12 months. Logistic regression revealed interactions between both athlete age and history of HSI with eccentric hamstring strength, whereby the likelihood of future HSI in older athletes or athletes with a history of HSI was reduced if an athlete had high levels of eccentric strength. Conclusion Low levels of eccentric hamstring strength increased the risk of future HSI. Interaction effects suggest that the additional risk of future HSI associated with advancing age or previous injury was mitigated by higher levels of eccentric hamstring strength.

Event interval analysis: Why do processes take time?

Through the application of process mining, valuable evidence-based insights can be obtained about business processes in organisations. As a result the field has seen an increased uptake in recent years as evidenced by success stories and increased tool support. However, despite this impact, current performance analysis capabilities remain somewhat limited in the context of information-poor event logs. For example, natural daily and weekly patterns are not considered. In this paper a new framework for analysing event logs is defined which is based on the concept of event gap. The framework allows for a systematic approach to sophisticated performance-related analysis of event logs containing varying degrees of information. The paper formalises a range of event gap types and then presents an implementation as well as an evaluation of the proposed approach.

Facial emotion modulates the neural mechanisms responsible for short interval time perception

Emotionally arousing events can distort our sense of time. We used mixed block/event-related fMRI design to establish the neural basis for this effect. Nineteen participants were asked to judge whether angry, happy and neutral facial expressions that varied in duration (from 400 to 1,600 ms) were closer in duration to either a short or long duration they learnt previously. Time was overestimated for both angry and happy expressions compared to neutral expressions. For faces presented for 700 ms, facial emotion modulated activity in regions of the timing network Wiener et al. (NeuroImage 49(2):1728–1740, 2010) namely the right supplementary motor area (SMA) and the junction of the right inferior frontal gyrus and anterior insula (IFG/AI). Reaction times were slowest when faces were displayed for 700 ms indicating increased decision making difficulty. Taken together with existing electrophysiological evidence Ng et al. (Neuroscience, doi: 10.3389/fnint.2011.00077, 2011), the effects are consistent with the idea that facial emotion moderates temporal decision making and that the right SMA and right IFG/AI are key neural structures responsible for this effect.