Digital Commons Network^™

Reduction Of Surgical Site Infections After Cesarean, Melissa Erickson Msn Ed, Bsn, Rnc-Mnn, Phn, Patricia Dumonceaux Msn, Phn, Cic

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To decrease cesarean surgical site infection (SSI) rates to less than the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) mean. By decreasing SSI rates, secondary goals included improving the patient experience, decreasing readmissions, and promoting bonding between the mother and newborn.

Making The Minimum Wage Work: An Examination Of The Economic Impact Of The Minimum Wage, Steve P. Calandrillo, Taylor Halperin

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With the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, Congress mandated a federal “living wage” in order to “maintain the minimum standard of living necessary for the health, efficiency, and general well-being of workers.” Advocates have long insisted that increases in the minimum wage result in a net gain to employees’ standard of living. Critics have countered that those gains come at the expense of higher prices and shrinking overall employment numbers, leaving a new class of potential workers out in the cold.

This Article synthesizes the empirical economic impact data from minimum wage increases over the past …

Contracting Correctness: A Rubric For Analyzing Morality Clauses, Patricia S. Abril, Nicholas Greene

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Morality clauses give a contracting party the right to terminate if the other party behaves badly or embarrassingly. A curious product of twentieth-century Hollywood, these contract clauses have traditionally been used to control the antics of entertainers and athletes. The current politically-sensitive historical moment, combined with the internet's ability to broadcast widely and permanently, has put everyone's off-duty speech, conduct, and reputation under the microscope. Media reports detailing people's digital falls from grace abound. For fear of negative association, businesses are more attuned than ever to the extracurricular acts of their agents and associates-and are increasingly binding them to morality …

Mind The Gap: An Initial Analysis Of The Transition Of A Second Level Curriculum Reform To Higher Education, Michael Carr, Fiona Faulkner, Cormac Breen, Mark Prendergast

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This article details an initial analysis of the transition of a second level curriculum reform to higher education in Ireland. The reform entitled ‘Project Maths’ involved changes to what second level students learn in mathematics, how they learn it, and how they are assessed. Changes were rolled out nationally on a phased basis in September 2010. Students who were taught and assessed through the new curriculum first entered third level education in September 2012. It is important that third level mathematics lecturers are aware of the changes to the curriculum since certain topics such as vectors and matrices are no …

Taxation, Debt And Relative Prices In The Long Run: The Irish Experience., Vahagn Galstyan, Adnan Velic

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This paper investigates the effects of public debt and distortionary labour taxation on the long-run behaviour of Irish relative non-traded goods prices. We highlight that higher public debt, acting through higher taxes, has an equivocal impact on the relative supply of non-traded goods and, correspondingly, relative prices. Our empirical analysis for Ireland suggests that taxes and public debt play significant roles in the long run, comoving negatively with the relative price of non-tradables. Accordingly, shifts in public debt and taxation bear implications for the country’s international price competitiveness.

The Patient Survey Programme: Transforming The Patient Experience In Irish Healthcare, Vivienne Byers, D. Fahey, C. Mullins, C. Roe

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For more than a decade, health policy in Ireland has pushed the centrality of the patient in the delivery and management of healthcare services, including the development of a National Strategy for Service User Involvement in the Health Service 2008–2013 (Health Service Executive, 2008). More recently, the need to provide a ‘patientcentred’ (Department of Health, 2012, 2013, 2014) or ‘person-centred’ (Department of Health, 2016) service has been a guiding principle of health policy documents. The National Service Plan 2017 (Health Service Executive, 2016) also outlines the importance of increasing the rates of service user engagement and feedback across the health …

The Different Stages Of Prpd Pattern For Negative Point To Plane Corona Driven By A Dc Voltage Containing A Ripple, Tobias Dezenzo, Thomas Betz, Andreas Schwarzbacher

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This paper presents the different patterns, which can be observed by means of a phase resolved partial discharge analysis, when a negative dc voltage is applied to a point to plane arrangement in air. The required phase relation is obtained due to the ripple being present on the dc voltage generated by a half-wave rectification. Phase resolved partial discharge patterns are given from corona onset to glow inception. Discharge pulses appearing at the test object are used to support physical explanations of the pattern occurrence. It is shown that five clearly identifiable patterns accompany the evolution of corona discharges when …

Subjective Usability, Mental Workload Assessments And Their Impact On Objective Human Performance, Luca Longo

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Self-reporting procedures and inspection methods have been largely employed in the fields of interaction and web-design for assessing the usability of interfaces. However, there seems to be a propensity to ignore features related to end-users or the context of application during the usability assessment procedure. This research proposes the adoption of the construct of mental workload as an additional aid to inform interaction and web-design. A user-study has been performed in the context of human-web interaction. The main objective was to explore the relationship between the perception of usability of the interfaces of three popular web-sites and the mental workload …

A Conceptual Framework For A Software Development Process Based On Computational Thinking, Catherine Higgins, Ciaran O'Leary, Orla Hanratty, Fredrick Mtenzi

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A software development process is a mechanism for problem solving to help software developers plan, design and structure the development of software to solve a problem. Without a process to guide the structured evolution of a solution, it is extremely likely that at least some aspect of the resulting software will be omitted or incorrectly implemented. Even though the importance of utilising a software process for solving problems is accepted in the business and academic communities, it is a topic that is addressed very lightly (if at all) in most freshman undergraduate computing courses with most courses focussing on programming …

Assessing Peer Review By Gauging The Fate Of Rejected Manuscripts: The Case Of The Journal Of Artificial Societies And Social Simulation, Niccolò Casnici, Francisco Grimaldo, Nigel Gilbert, Pierpaolo Dondio, Flaminio Squazzoni

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This paper investigates the fate of manuscripts that were rejected from JASSS-The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, the flagship journal of social simulation. We tracked 456 manuscripts that were rejected from 1997 to 2011 and traced their subsequent publication as journal articles, conference papers or working papers. We compared the impact factor of the publishing journal and the citations of those manuscripts that were eventually published against the yearly impact factor of JASSS and the number of citations achieved by the JASSS mean and top cited articles. Only 10% of the rejected manuscripts were eventually published in a …

Fingerprints And Miscarriages Of Justice: "Other" Types Of Error And A Post-Conviction Right To Database Searching, Simon A. Cole, Barry Scheck

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The article examines the role of fingerprint evidence in wrongful convictions and exonerations, focusing on errors beyond erroneous individualizations, such as missed exclusions and inconclusive results. It introduces a framework for categorizing fingerprint errors and advocates for increased access to post-conviction Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) searches to reduce miscarriages of justice. The authors argue that while DNA database searching is widely recognized as a tool for exonerations, fingerprint database searching remains underutilized despite its potential to uncover innocence. They propose expanding legal access to fingerprint evidence to align with the principles of truth, justice, and science.

A Geo-Statistical Investigation Of Agricultural And Infrastructural Risk Factors Associated With Primary Verotoxigenic E. Coli (Vtec) Infection In The Republic Of Ireland, 2008–2013, Paul Hynds, Jean O'Dwyer, Una B. Fallon, Coilín Oscar Óhaiseadha

Articles

Ireland reports the highest incidence of verotoxigenic Escherichia coli (VTEC) infection in Europe. This study investigated potential risk factors for confirmed sporadic and outbreak primary VTEC infections during 2008-2013. Overall, 989 VTEC infections including 521 serogroup O157 and 233 serogroup O26 were geo-referenced to 931 of 18488 census enumeration areas. The geographical distribution of human population, livestock, unregulated groundwater sources, domestic wastewater treatment systems (DWWTS) and a deprivation index were examined relative to notification of VTEC events in 524 of 6242 rural areas. Multivariate modelling identified three spatially derived variables associated with VTEC notification: private well usage (odds ratio (OR) …

Design-Based Research Mobile Gaming For Learning Jewish History, Tikkun Olam, And Civics, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

How can Design-Based Research (DBR) be used in the study of video games, religious literacy, and learning? DBR uses a variety of pragmatically selected mixed methods approaches to design learning interventions. Researchers, working with educators and learners, design and co-design learning artifacts and environments. They analyze those artifacts and environments as they are used by educators and learners, and then iterate based on mixed methods data analysis. DBR is suited for any "rich contextualized setting in which people have agency." (Hoadley 2013) such as formal or informal learning environments.

The case covered in this chapter is a mobile Augmented Reality …

To Be Or Not To Be T4: Evidence Of A Complex Evolutionary Pathway Of Head Structure And Assembly In Giant Salmonella Virus Spn3us, Bazla Ali, Maxim Desmond, Sara Mallory, Andrea Benitez, Larry J. Buckley, Susan T. Weintraub, Michael V. Osier, Lindsay W. Black, Julie A. Thomas

Articles

Giant Salmonella phage SPN3US has a 240-kb dsDNA genome and a large complex virion composed of many proteins for which the functions of most are undefined. We recently determined that SPN3US shares a core set of genes with related giant phages and sequenced and characterized 18 amber mutants to facilitate its use as a genetic model system. Notably, SPN3US and related giant phages contain a bolus of ejection proteins within their heads, including a multi-subunit virion RNA polymerase (vRNAP), that enter the host cell with the DNA during infection. In this study, we characterized the SPN3US virion using mass spectrometry …

Career Development And Personal Success Profile Of Students - Followers And Students - Potential Future Leaders: The Case Of Rit Croatia, Jasminka Samardzija, Joseph Kevin Walker, Vanda Bazdan

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This study examines the differences among students in terms of self-reported leadership characteristics. It was conducted among all three programs and four generations of undergraduates at RIT Croatia. The goal of this study is to determine the differences among students who report being more and less leadership prone (Potential Future Leaders and Followers, respectively) with regard to demographic characteristics, reported self reliance socialization pattern, college level and program choice, career focus attainment and development, and reported attitudes regarding the importance of specific personality traits in leadership, the importance of specific career development factors and success indicators. Research showed that generation …

Broad-Scale Redistribution Of Mrna Abundance And Transcriptional Machinery In Response To Growth Rate In Salmonella Enterica Serovar Typhimurium, Andrew D. S. Cameron, Shane Dillon, Carsten Kröger, Laurens Beran, Charles Dorman

Articles

We have investigated the connection between the four-dimensional architecture of the bacterial nucleoid and the organism's global gene expression programme. By localizing the transcription machinery and the transcriptional outputs across the genome of the model bacterium Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium at different stages of the growth cycle, a surprising disconnection between gene dosage and transcriptional output was revealed. During exponential growth, gene output occurred chiefly in the Ori (origin), Ter (terminus) and NSL (non-structured left) domains, whereas the Left macrodomain remained transcriptionally quiescent at all stages of growth. The apparently high transcriptional output in Ter was correlated with an enhanced …

Work Placement Reflective Assessments And Employability Enhanced Through Highlighting Graduate Attributes, Julie Dunne

Articles

This paper reports on a study which investigated the effect of activities to promote awareness of specific prioritised graduate attributes on the quality of reflection displayed in student work-placement reflective blog assessments. The focus of the paper is on the results from a thematic analysis of reflective writing assisted by NVivo software from a control and research group, using the a priori codes of ‘reflection’ and ‘graduate attributes’, as part of a Participatory Action Research study. The findings show an increase in reflection associated with graduate attributes in the research group compared to the control group. More importantly, there is …

Risk Registers: Structuring Data Collection To Develop Risk Intelligence, Maria Chiara Leva, Nora Balfe, B. Mcaleer, M. Rock

Articles

This paper presents the results of the development and implementation of a company-wide risk register, based on a clear set of data structures. A case study from an electricity generation company is presented and the process followed is described. The results of the case study indicated areas where the concept of risk registers could be extended to make better use of existing data and to support continuous improvement of risk management. Six key areas are discussed (1) aggregation of risks across the business, (2) supporting controls over mitigation measures, (3) improved estimation of event likelihood, (4) integrating with critical asset …

Facilitating Smart Haccp Strategies With Process Analytical Technology, Fintan Moran, Carl Sullivan, Kevin Keener, Patrick J. Cullen

Articles

The critical feature to any food management system, be it safety or quality focused, is timely and accurate product and process data. The HACCP framework is one of a systematic preventive approach that addresses hazards as a means of prevention rather than finished product inspection. The PAT initiative is a framework which also aims to change product assurance from end-product testing to preventive control through timely measurements of critical product and process parameters. The continued emergence of sensitive yet affordable sensors capable of direct measurement of biological, chemical and physical risks associated with foods during production, processing or over their …

Design Of A Compact, Fully-Autonomous 433 Mhz Tunable Antenna For Wearable Wireless Sensor Applications, John Buckley, Kevin Mccarthy, Domenico Gaetano, Loizos Loizou, Brendan O'Flynn, Cian O'Mathuna

Articles

The authors present the design of a tunable 433 MHz antenna that is tailored for wearable wireless sensor applications. This study first presents a detailed analysis of the measured impedance characteristics of a chosen antenna under test (AUT) in varying proximity to a human test subject. Instead of limiting the analysis to the head and hand only, this analysis measures the AUT impedance at varying distances from 11 different body positions. A novel antenna equivalent circuit model is then developed that enables both the free-space and total on-body AUT impedance variation to be rapidly computed using a circuit simulator instead …

Directional Modulation For Compact Devices, Adam Narbudowicz, Max Ammann, Dirk Heberling

Articles

A new directional modulation system which uses radiation pattern data for modulation encoding is proposed. The approach allows compact multiport antennas (e.g. MIMO capable antennas) to be used for directional modulation, replacing extensive arrays. The modulation weighting coefficients are calculated with a fixed, antenna specific equation, thus reducing computational complexity. The solution is intended to enhance privacy in small, battery-operated wireless devices, required for “Internet of Things” applications.

Multi-Band Antenna Array Based On Double Negative Metamaterial For Multi Automotive Applications, Mohd Jamlos, Abdulrahman Alqadami,, Imtiaz Islam, Ping Soh, Rizalman Mamat, Khairil Khairi, Adam Narbudowicz

Articles

Nowadays, the demand for antennas in wireless communication system for automotive applications is rising at a rapid rate [1, 2]. Their usage includes collision avoidance system (CAS), Vehicle-to-vehicle communications, pre-crash safety systems, Global Positioning Systems (GPS), tyre pressure monitoring system (TPMS), Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), etc. To enhance its effectiveness in these new applications, a small, multi-band, multi-functional antenna is required instead of conventional single band antennas [2, 3]. Such multifunctional antennas with favourable radiation characteristics are more practical in addressing modern antenna design requirements. However, the achievement of the above mentioned antenna’s features using conventional materials and structures …

How Adverse Outcome Pathways Can Aid The Development And Use Of Computational Prediction Models For Regulatory Toxicology, Clemens Wittwehr, Hristo Aladjov, Gerald Ankley, Hugh Byrne, Joop Deknecht

Articles

Efforts are underway to transform regulatory toxicology and chemical safety assessment from a largely empirical science based on direct observation of apical toxicity outcomes in whole organism toxicity tests to a predictive one in which outcomes and risk are inferred from accumulated mechanistic understanding. The adverse outcome pathway (AOP) framework provides a systematic approach for organizing knowledge that may support such inference. Likewise, computational models of biological systems at various scales provide another means and platform to integrate current biological understanding to facilitate inference and extrapolation. We argue that the systematic organization of knowledge into AOP frameworks can inform and …

The Taking Economy: Uber, Information, And Power, Ryan Calo, Alex Rosenblat

Articles

Sharing economy firms such as Uber and Airbnb facilitate trusted transactions between strangers on digital platforms. This creates economic and other value but raises concerns around racial bias, safety, and fairness to competitors and workers that legal scholarship has begun to address. Missing from the literature, however, is a fundamental critique of the sharing economy grounded in asymmetries of information and power.

This Essay, coauthored by a law professor and a technology ethnographer who studies work, labor, and technology, furnishes such a critique and proposes a meaningful response through updates to consumer protection law. Commercial firms have long used what …

Assessment Of Mental Workload: A Comparison Of Machine Learning Methods And Subjective Assessment Techniques, Karim Moustafa, Saturnino Luz, Luca Longo

Articles

Mental workload (MWL) measurement is a complex multidisciplinary research field. In the last 50 years of research endeavour, MWL measurement has mainly produced theory-driven models. Some of the reasons for justifying this trend includes the omnipresent uncertainty about how to define the construct of MWL and the limited use of datadriven research methodologies. This work presents novel research focused on the investigation of the capability of a selection of supervised Machine Learning (ML) classification techniques to produce data-driven computational models of MWL for the prediction of objective performance. These are then compared to two state-of-the-art subjective techniques for the assessment …

A Software Development Process For Freshman Undergraduate Students, Catherine Higgins, Fredrick Mtenzi, Ciaran O'Leary, Orla Hanratty, Claire Mcavinia

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This conceptual paper presents work which is part of an ongoing research project into the design of a software development process aimed at freshman, undergraduate computing students. The process of how to plan and develop a solution is a topic that is addressed very lightly in many freshman, undergraduate courses which can leave novices open to developing habit-forming, maladaptive cognitive practices. The conceptual software development process described in this paper has a learning process at its core which centres on declarative knowledge (in the form of threshold concepts) and procedural knowledge (in the form of computational thinking skills) scaffolding freshman …

Nano-Magnetic Resonance Imaging (Nano-Mri) Gives Personalized Medicine A New Perspective, Lorenzo Rosa, Jonathan Blackledge, Albert Boretti

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This paper reviews some of the major and most recent advances in nanoscale-magnetic resonance imaging (nano-MRI) for personalized medicine (PM). Nano-MRI may drastically expand the capabilities of the traditional magnetic resonance images (MRI), down to the nanometer scale and possibly, in the near future, at the atomic scale. Nano-MRI is potentially able to observe structures which cannot be seen using today’s molecular imaging, with sensitivities of many billions of times better than MRI as currently used in hospitals, for example. The paper briefly reports on the foremost research themes in nano-MRI.

Information Hiding With Data Diffusion Using Convolutional Encoding For Super-Encryption, Jonathan Blackledge, Paul Tobin, J. Myeza, C.M. Adolfo

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The unification of data encryption with information hiding methods continues to receive significant attention because of the importance of protecting encrypted information by making it covert. This is because one of the principal limitations in any cryptographic system is that encrypted data flags the potential importance of the data (i.e. the plaintext information that has been encrypted) possibly leading to the launch of an attack which may or may not be successful. Information hiding overcomes this limitation by making the data (which may be the plaintext or the encrypted plaintext) imperceptible, the security of the hidden information being compromised if …

Aphonic: Adaptive Thresholding For Noise Cancellation In Smart Mobile Environments, Ruairí De Fréin

Articles

We propose a signal-channel, adaptive threshold selection technique for binary mask construction, namely APHONIC, (AdaPtive tHreshOlding for NoIse Cancellation) for smart mobile environments. Using this mask, we introduce two noise cancellation techniques that perform robustly in the presence of real-world interfering signals that are typically encountered by mobile users: a violin busker, a subway and busy city square sounds. We demonstrate that when the power of the time-frequency components of the voice of a mobile user does not significantly overlap with the components of the interference signal, the threshold learning and noise cancellation techniques significantly improve the Signal-to-Interference Ratio (SIR) …

Characterization Of The Sub-Micrometer Hierarchy Levels In The Twist-Bend Nematic Phase With Nanometric Helices Via Photopolymerization: Explanation For The Sign Reversal In The Polar Response, Vitaly Panov, Sithara Sreenilayam, Yuri Panarin, Jagdish Vij, Chris Welch, Georg Mehl

Articles

Photopolymerization of a reactive mesogen mixed with a mesogenic dimer, shown to exhibit the twist-bend nematic phase (NTB), reveals the complex structure of the self-deformation patterns observed in planar cells. The polymerized reactive mesogen retains the structure formed by liquid crystalline molecules in the twist bend phase, thus enabling its observation by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Hierarchical ordering scales ranging from tens of nanometers to micrometers are imaged in detail. Submicron features, anticipated from earlier X-ray experiments, are visualized directly. In the self-deformation stripes formed in the NTB phase, the average director field is found tilted in …