Background
Direct support professionals (DSPs) support people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in activities of daily living. DSPs may experience both contentment and struggles with ...their work. As agencies grapple with their recruitment and retention, understanding DSPs' holistic work experience is important. The Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) scale assesses multiple domains of work experiences (i.e. compassion satisfaction, burnout and secondary traumatic stress). Despite extensive use across helping professions, the ProQOL is largely absent from DSP research.
Method
This study examined the factor structure of the ProQOL with DSPs. Using secondary data from 495 DSPs, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to determine if the original three‐factor structure holds for this population.
Results
We confirmed the factorial validity of the ProQOL with the three‐factor solution. In the validation process, some modifications were suggested to the model, which also improved the scale reliability.
Conclusions
The current study provides initial evidence of the factorial validity of the ProQOL when used with DSPs, as well as recommendations for subsequent improvements and future research.
•Pest control is modeled as an asymmetric public goods game among farmers.•The farmers’ costs do not necessarily increase with how much the future is valued.•An increase in the number of farmers can ...sometimes undermine pest prevention.•The farmer at the greatest risk pays a disproportionate amount of cost.
Cooperation in a public goods game has been studied extensively to find the conditions for sustaining the commons, yet the effect of asymmetry between agents has been explored very little. Here we study a game theoretic model of cooperation for pest control among farmers. In our simple model, each farmer has a paddy of the same size arranged adjacently on a line. A pest outbreak occurs at an abandoned paddy at one end of the line, directly threatening the frontier farmer adjacent to it. Each farmer pays a cost of his or her choice to an agricultural collective, and the total sum held by the collective is used for pest control, with success probability increasing with the sum. Because the farmers’ incentives depend on their distance from the pest outbreak, our model is an asymmetric public goods game. We derive each farmer’s cost strategy at the Nash equilibrium. We find that asymmetry among farmers leads to a few unexpected outcomes. The individual costs at the equilibrium do not necessarily increase with how much the future is valued but rather show threshold behavior. Moreover, an increase in the number of farmers can sometimes paradoxically undermine pest prevention. A comparison with a symmetric public goods game model reveals that the farmer at the greatest risk pays a disproportionate amount of cost in the asymmetric game, making the use of agricultural lands less sustainable.
In a previous study, the AC loss characteristics of each layer of a high-temperature superconducting (HTS) AC cable were experimentally investigated 1-3. Based on these data, we modeled the AC loss ...in a superconducting cable by considering the maxi-mum and minimum values of the loss. A comparison between this model and the experimental data showed good agreement. Hence, it is possible to estimate AC loss under electromagnetic conditions in a high-temperature superconducting cable. This model makes it possible to determine the losses of each layer in the superconducting cable and to design the minimum AC loss load of the superconducting cable. This model estimates the AC losses of a three-layer twisted HTS cable.
To identify factors influencing place of death among home palliative care patients with advanced cancer, focusing on the timing of referrals from hospital to home care settings.
A cross-sectional ...nationwide questionnaire survey was conducted on home palliative care patients at 1000 randomly selected home care agencies in Japan. A total of 568 responses were analyzed (effective response rate, 69%).
Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that (i) predischarge health care supports in hospital (e.g. early referral 8 days or more before discharge; clear explanation by hospital staffs to patients and families regarding discharge to live and die at home) and (ii) postdischarge health care supports after transferring home care (e.g. signing a 24-h support insurance contract of network between primary physician and nurse as a home palliative care team; primary nurse consultation with primary physician >3 times during the first week after discharge) have an effect on place of death among home palliative care patients.
An early and carefully coordinated referral support system for smooth discharge by hospital staffs as well as intensive and highly qualified support just after discharge by the home care team would help to increase the number of patients who could die at home.
Background
Polymyositis/dermatomyositis (PM/DM) is an autoimmune disease that is sometimes complicated with rapidly progressive interstitial lung disease (RPILD). However, serum and lung biomarkers ...that can predict RPILD development remain unclear.
Objectives
To determine potential serum and lung biomarkers that can predict RPILD development in patients with PM/DM‐ILD.
Methods
In total, 49 patients with PM/DM‐ILD were enrolled. We measured the serum levels of 41 cytokines/chemokines, ferritin and anti‐MDA5 antibody, compared them between the RPILD (n = 23) and non‐RPILD (n = 26) groups, and ranked them by their importance through random forest analysis. To distinguish the two groups, we determined biomarker combinations by logistic regression analysis. We also measured the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) levels of 41 cytokines/chemokines. Using immunohistochemistry, we examined IL‐15 expression in lung tissues. The IL‐15 production was also investigated using A549 and BEAS‐2B cells.
Results
The RPILD group had significantly higher IL‐15, IL‐1RA, IL‐6, CXCL10, VCAM‐1, anti‐MDA5 antibody and ferritin serum levels than the non‐RPILD group, but it had a significantly low CCL22 level. Meanwhile, anti‐MDA5 antibody, IL‐15, CXCL8, CCL22, IL‐1RA and ferritin were the best combination to distinguish the two groups. IL‐15 and CCL22 were also predictive marker for RPILD development in anti‐MDA5 antibody‐positive patients. Additionally, the RPILD group had significantly high IL‐15 levels in BALF. The lung tissues expressed IL‐15, which increased after cytokine stimulation in the A549 cells.
Conclusion
This study identified a combination of biomarkers predicting PM/DM‐RPILD progression, and IL‐15 is an important cytokine for predicting RPILD development and reflecting ILD severity.
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