Contributes an exegesis, submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Presents the contents and an introduction of the exegesis. Positions the research by ...placing the present investigation in the context of the author’s previous work. Outlines the contemporary artistic context in which this thesis exists. Details the methods employed in the first phase of the research, and the use of traditional knowledge to form the Lala-Vā model framework. Source: National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, licensed by the Department of Internal Affairs for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
Background:
Tailoring implementation strategies and adapting treatments to better fit the local context may improve their effectiveness. However, there is a dearth of valid, reliable, pragmatic ...measures that allow for the prospective tracking of strategies and adaptations according to reporting recommendations. This study describes the development and pilot testing of three tools to be designed to serve this purpose.
Methods:
Measure development was informed by two systematic reviews of the literature (implementation strategies and treatment adaptation). The three resulting tools vary with respect to the degree of structure (brainstorming log = low, activity log = moderate, detailed tracking log = high). To prospectively track treatment adaptations and implementation strategies, three stakeholder groups (treatment developer, implementation practitioners, and mental health providers) were randomly assigned one tool per week through an anonymous web-based survey for 12 weeks and incentivized to participate. Three established implementation outcome measures, the Acceptability of Intervention Measure, Intervention Appropriateness Measure, and Feasibility of Intervention Measure, were used to assess the tools. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to gather more nuanced information from stakeholders regarding their perceptions of the tools and the tracking process.
Results:
The three tracking tools demonstrated moderate to good acceptability, appropriateness, and feasibility; the activity log was deemed the most feasible of the three tools. Implementation practitioners rated the tools the highest of the three stakeholder groups. The tools took an average of 15 min or less to complete.
Conclusion:
This study sought to fill methodological gaps that prevent stakeholders and researchers from discerning which strategies are most important to deploy for promoting implementation and sustainment of evidence-based practices. These tools would allow researchers and practitioners to track whether activities were treatment adaptations or implementation strategies and what barrier(s) each targets. These tools could inform prospective tailoring of implementation strategies and treatment adaptations, which would promote scale out and spread.
Plain Language Summary
Strategies to support the implementation of evidence-based practices may be more successful if they are carefully customized based on local factors. Evidence-based practices themselves may be thoughtfully changed to better meet the needs of the settings and recipients. This study reports on a pilot study that aimed to create various types of tools to help individuals involved in implementation efforts track the actions they take to modify and implement interventions. These tools allow individuals to track the types of activities they are involved in, when the activities occurred, who was involved in the implementation efforts, and the reasons or rationale for the actions. The three tools in this study used a combination of open-ended and forced-response questions to test how the type of data recorded changed. Participants generally found the tools quick and easy to use and helpful in planning the delivery of an evidence-based practice. Most participants wanted more training in implementation science terminology and how to complete the tracking tools. Participating mental health providers would have liked more opportunities to review the data collected from the tools with their supervisors to use the data to improve the delivery of the evidence-based practice. These tools can help researchers, providers, and staff involved in implementation efforts to better understand what actions are needed to improve implementation success. Future research should address gaps identified in this study, such as the need to involve more participants in the tool development process.
Laboratory life Latour, Bruno; Latour, Bruno; Woolgar, Steve
1986., 20130404, 2013, 1986, 2013-04-04
eBook
This highly original work presents laboratory science in a deliberately skeptical way: as an anthropological approach to the culture of the scientist. Drawing on recent work in literary criticism, ...the authors study how the social world of the laboratory produces papers and other "texts,"' and how the scientific vision of reality becomes that set of statements considered, for the time being, too expensive to change. The book is based on field work done by Bruno Latour in Roger Guillemin's laboratory at the Salk Institute and provides an important link between the sociology of modern sciences and laboratory studies in the history of science.
Working together Poteete, Amy R; Janssen, Marco A; Ostrom, Elinor
2010., 20100412, 2010, 2010-04-12, 20100101
eBook
Advances in the social sciences have emerged through a variety of research methods: field-based research, laboratory and field experiments, and agent-based models. However, which research method or ...approach is best suited to a particular inquiry is frequently debated and discussed.Working Togetherexamines how different methods have promoted various theoretical developments related to collective action and the commons, and demonstrates the importance of cross-fertilization involving multimethod research across traditional boundaries. The authors look at why cross-fertilization is difficult to achieve, and they show ways to overcome these challenges through collaboration.
The authors provide numerous examples of collaborative, multimethod research related to collective action and the commons. They examine the pros and cons of case studies, meta-analyses, large-N field research, experiments and modeling, and empirically grounded agent-based models, and they consider how these methods contribute to research on collective action for the management of natural resources. Using their findings, the authors outline a revised theory of collective action that includes three elements: individual decision making, microsituational conditions, and features of the broader social-ecological context.
Acknowledging the academic incentives that influence and constrain how research is conducted,Working Togetherreworks the theory of collective action and offers practical solutions for researchers and students across a spectrum of disciplines.
"Providing a comprehensive approach to cognitive interviewing in the field of survey methodology, Cognitive Interviewing Methodology delivers a clear guide that draws upon modern, cutting-edge ...research from a variety of fields. Each chapter begins by summarizing the prevailing paradigms that currently dominate the field of cognitive interviewing. Then underlying theoretical foundations are presented, which supplies readers with the necessary background to understand newly-evolving techniques in the field. The theories lead into developed and practiced methods by leading practitioners, researchers, and/or academics. Finally, the edited guide lays out the limitations of cognitive interviewing studies and explores the benefits of cognitive interviewing with other methodological approaches."--
•A comprehensively guided survey on most relevant state-of-the-art CWW methodologies.•Serve as a detailed outline for researchers interested in working or applying CWW to their research.•Substantial ...helpers that provide the utility and properties of CWW methodologies.
Human beings have an inherent capability to use linguistic information (LI) seamlessly even though it is vague and imprecise. Computing with Words (CWW) was proposed to impart computing systems with this capability of human beings. The interest in the field of CWW is evident from a number of publications on various CWW methodologies. These methodologies use different ways to model the semantics of the LI. However, to the best of our knowledge, the literature on these methodologies is mostly scattered and does not give an interested researcher a comprehensive but gentle guide about the notion and utility of these methodologies. Hence, to introduce the foundations and state-of-the-art CWW methodologies, we provide a concise but a wide-ranging coverage of them in a simple and easy to understand manner. We feel that the simplicity with which we give a high-quality review and introduction to the CWW methodologies is very useful for investigators or especially those embarking on the use of CWW for the first time. We also provide future research directions to build upon for the interested and motivated researchers.
BACKGROUND: Sub-national figures providing information about the wealth of the population are useful in defining the spatial distribution of both economic activity and poverty within any given ...country. Furthermore, since several health indicators such as life expectancy are highly correlated with household welfare, sub-national figures allow for the estimation of the distribution of these health indicators within countries when direct measurement is difficult.We have developed methods that utilize spatially distributed information, including night-time light imagery and population to model the distribution of income per capita, as a proxy for wealth, at the country and sub-national level to support the estimation of the distribution of correlated health indicators. RESULTS: A first set of analysis are performed in order to propose a new global model for the prediction of income per capita at the country level. A second set of analysis is then confirming the possibility to transfer the country level approach to the sub-national level on a country by country basis before underlining the difficulties to create a global or regional models for the extrapolation of sub-national figures when no country data set exists. CONCLUSIONS: The methods described provide promising results for the extrapolation of national and sub-national income per capita figures. These results are then discussed in order to evaluate if the proposed methods could not represent an alternative approach for the generation of consistent country specific and/or global poverty maps disaggregated to some sub-national level.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Objectives The European Union (EU) strategy for health and safety at work underlines the need to reduce the incidence of occupational diseases (OD), but European statistics to evaluate this common ...goal are scarce. We aim to estimate and compare changes in incidence over time for occupational asthma, contact dermatitis, noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL), carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) and upper limb musculoskeletal disorders across 10 European countries. Methods OD surveillance systems that potentially reflected nationally representative trends in incidence within Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and the UK provided data. Case counts were analysed using a negative binomial regression model with year as the main covariate. Many systems collected data from networks of 'centres', requiring the use of a multilevel negative binomial model. Some models made allowance for changes in compensation or reporting rules. Results Reports of contact dermatitis and asthma, conditions with shorter time between exposure to causal substances and OD, were consistently declining with only a few exceptions. For OD with physical causal exposures there was more variation between countries. Reported NIHL was increasing in Belgium, Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands and decreasing elsewhere. Trends in CTS and upper limb musculoskeletal disorders varied widely within and between countries. Conclusions This is the first direct comparison of trends in OD within Europe and is consistent with a positive impact of European initiatives addressing exposures relevant to asthma and contact dermatitis. Taking a more flexible approach allowed comparisons of surveillance data between and within countries without harmonisation of data collection methods.
Geometric morphometric methods of capturing information about curves or outlines of organismal structures may be used in conjunction with canonical variates analysis (CVA) to assign specimens to ...groups or populations based on their shapes. This methodological paper examines approaches to optimizing the classification of specimens based on their outlines. This study examines the performance of four approaches to the mathematical representation of outlines and two different approaches to curve measurement as applied to a collection of feather outlines. A new approach to the dimension reduction necessary to carry out a CVA on this type of outline data with modest sample sizes is also presented, and its performance is compared to two other approaches to dimension reduction.
Two semi-landmark-based methods, bending energy alignment and perpendicular projection, are shown to produce roughly equal rates of classification, as do elliptical Fourier methods and the extended eigenshape method of outline measurement. Rates of classification were not highly dependent on the number of points used to represent a curve or the manner in which those points were acquired. The new approach to dimensionality reduction, which utilizes a variable number of principal component (PC) axes, produced higher cross-validation assignment rates than either the standard approach of using a fixed number of PC axes or a partial least squares method.
Classification of specimens based on feather shape was not highly dependent of the details of the method used to capture shape information. The choice of dimensionality reduction approach was more of a factor, and the cross validation rate of assignment may be optimized using the variable number of PC axes method presented herein.
Skeletal muscles are composed of a heterogeneous collection of fiber types with different physiological adaption in response to a stimulus and disease-related conditions. Each fiber has a specific ...molecular expression of myosin heavy chain molecules (MyHC). So far, MyHCs are currently the best marker proteins for characterization of individual fiber types, and several proteome profiling studies have helped to dissect the molecular signature of whole muscles and individual fibers.
Herein, we describe a mass spectrometric workflow to measure skeletal muscle fiber type-specific proteomes. To bypass the limited quantities of protein in single fibers, we developed a Proteomics high-throughput fiber typing (ProFiT) approach enabling profiling of MyHC in single fibers. Aliquots of protein extracts from separated muscle fibers were subjected to capillary LC-MS gradients to profile MyHC isoforms in a 96-well format. Muscle fibers with the same MyHC protein expression were pooled and subjected to proteomic, pulsed-SILAC, and phosphoproteomic analysis.
Our fiber type-specific quantitative proteome analysis confirmed the distribution of fiber types in the soleus muscle, substantiates metabolic adaptions in oxidative and glycolytic fibers, and highlighted significant differences between the proteomes of type IIb fibers from different muscle groups, including a differential expression of desmin and actinin-3. A detailed map of the Lys-6 incorporation rates in muscle fibers showed an increased turnover of slow fibers compared to fast fibers. In addition, labeling of mitochondrial respiratory chain complexes revealed a broad range of Lys-6 incorporation rates, depending on the localization of the subunits within distinct complexes.
Overall, the ProFiT approach provides a versatile tool to rapidly characterize muscle fibers and obtain fiber-specific proteomes for different muscle groups.
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