Premature Departure Research Articles

The Efficacy of a Programme Utilizing Digital Learning Technology in Fostering the Life Skills of Students with Learning Disabilities

The main aim of this research was to determine how the effectiveness of a programme that uses digital learning technology enhances the life skills of students who have learning disabilities. The research was conducted over a period of one month on a group of 32 students affiliated to educational institutions in the Governorate of Abha, Saudi Arabia. Sixteen individuals were assigned to each of an the experimental and a control group. The experimental group outperformed the control group on post-tests measuring social skills, independence skills, and emotional skills. There was no statistically significant disparity observed in the life skills scores between the experimental group and the control group at either the follow-up evaluation or the immediate post-intervention phase. The hypothesis posits that students' likelihood of experiencing sudden or premature departure decreases when they have the opportunity to practice and enhance their cognitive and practical abilities across various curriculum-defined situations.

Opinion Study on the Effects of School Dropouts among the Parents Meensurutty Village, Ariyalur District, Tamilnadu

Dropout rates are considered to be a great wastage in the education system, not only do many students leave school without acquiring basic skills, but their premature departure represents a significant waste of scarce education resources. A person who leaves school, college, or university before completing a qualification, or a person who lives in an unusual way: a high school/college dropout. He was a loner and a dropout. On an individual level, dropping out of school often leads to lower paying jobs and less job stability. This can lead to a cycle of poverty and difficulty making ends meet. In addition, dropouts are more likely to become involved in crime and to struggle with addiction. Parents and the community play a crucial role in preventing and addressing school dropouts. Their involvement and support are vital for creating a positive and conducive environment that promotes academic success and reduces the risk of students leaving school prematurely.

Toward a complete understanding of quasi-static bubble growth and departure

The distortion by gravity of a quasi-static bubble attached on an upward facing surface in a quiescent liquid is investigated. The contact angle evolution during the growth of such a bubble is studied, and the consequences on the motion of the contact line between the solid and the interface are discussed. From the initial case of a bubble attached to the rim of a nucleation site, the contact line can move inside the cavity for a highly wetting fluid, causing premature departure. For a higher wettability, the contact can either remain attached to the rim of the cavity or spread out of the cavity, depending on the cavity size and geometry. For the latter case, the bubble growth is investigated taking into account a contact angle hysteresis. Finally, a comprehensive map detailing various geometrical characteristics of bubbles is presented, ranging over several orders of magnitude of Bond numbers and normalized volumes. The map aims at being used as a tool for investigating bubble growth in a similar situation.

Continuous sound from a marine vibrator causes behavioural responses of free-ranging, spawning Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua)

Marine vibrators are a new technology being developed for seismic surveys. These devices can transmit continuous instead of impulsive sound and operate over a narrower frequency band and at lower peak pressure than airguns, which is assumed to reduce their environmental impacts. We exposed spawning Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) to sound produced by a prototype, but full-scale, marine vibrator, and monitored behavioural responses of tagged cod using acoustic telemetry. Fish were exposed to 10 × 3 h continuous sound treatments over a 4-day period using a randomised-block design. Sound exposure levels were comparable to airgun exposure experiments conducted previously with the same set-up ranging from ∼115 to 145 dB re 1 μPa2s during exposure. Telemetry data were used to assess 1) whether marine vibrator exposure displaced cod from the spawning ground, through estimation of residence and survival probabilities, and 2) fine-scale behavioural responses within the test site, namely swimming depth, activity levels, displacement, and home ranges. Forty-two spawning cod were tagged prior to the exposure, with 22 present during the exposure. All 22 tags were equipped with pressure sensors and ten of these additionally with accelerometers. While no premature departure from the spawning site was observed, cod reacted to the exposure by decreasing their activity levels (by up to 50%, SE = 7%) and increasing their swimming depth (by up to 2.5 m, SE = 1.0 m) within the test site during the exposure period. These behavioural responses varied by sex and time of day. Cod reactions to a marine vibrator may be more pronounced than reactions to airguns, possibly because continuous sound is more disturbing to fish than intermittent sound at the same exposure levels. However, given sample size limitations of the present study, further studies with continuous sound are necessary to fully understand its impact and biological significance.

Teachers seconded to continuing teacher education: professional development and the paradox of reaching proficiency

ABSTRACT In Ireland state funded support services provide Continuing Professional Development for teachers and school leaders. These services are staffed with teachers seconded from their schools on an annual basis for a maximum of five years. This study investigated the learning and experience of teachers seconded to a national support service, the Professional Development Service for Teachers and how this influences their post-secondment career. It employed qualitative interviews exploring this from the perspective of teachers previously seconded to the PDST. The theoretical framework was rooted in the field of career dynamics setting out three stages (Entry, Experience, Exit) navigated by teachers from entering the service through to their departure. This article focusses primarily on the study findings for the Experience stage while necessarily providing relevant insights from the Entry stage. Attention is drawn to the distinct role and identities of teachers seconded as ‘Continuing Teacher Educators’. Findings show that the learning they acquire is extensive while also revealing tensions in managing hybrid identities as teachers/teacher educators. Most notable are precarious tensions between the catalytic impact of secondment and the uncertain nature of its tenure. For most, this eventuates in a premature departure from the service to other careers, paradoxically having reached proficiency as teacher educators.

Acqui‐hires: Redeployment and retention of human capital post‐acquisition

AbstractResearch SummaryAcqui‐hires are now a prevalent strategic mechanism by which firms obtain talented human resources. They differ from traditional acquisitions in that they are always integrated and the focus is the people, not the product or service. Thus, how firms reconfigure through the redeployment and retention of acqui‐hired human resources during post‐acquisition integration is particularly critical. We find that when the acquired start‐up has disruptive (vs. nondisruptive) know‐how, the acqui‐hired team is preserved (vs. dispersed) and integrated as a whole into an acquirer's existing business unit, and also that the founder of the acquired start‐up is assigned to a high status position. Furthermore, we show that a lack of fit between acquired know‐how type and integration mode has a positive relationship with the premature exit of acqui‐hired founders.Managerial SummaryAcqui‐hires are a form of acquisitions in which the acquiring firm's goal is to obtain the talented human capital of the target firm. Our study addresses how the acqui‐hired team is integrated into the acquiring firm and what status position the acqui‐hired founder is given, post‐acquisition. Our results reveal that these depend on the type of know‐how being acquired; if the acqui‐hired know‐how is disruptive (versus not) then it is more likely that the team is preserved (versus dispersed) and the founder is given a high status position at the parent firm. Managers should be aware that a mismatch in integration—such as acqui‐hiring disruptive know‐how and not preserving the team in a business unit—can have negative implications such as the premature departure of the founder(s).

Morphology-Dictated Mechanism of Efficient Reaction Sites for Li2O2 Decomposition.

In the pursuit of a highly reversible lithium-oxygen (Li-O2) battery, control of reaction sites to maintain stable conversion between O2 and Li2O2 at the cathode side is imperatively desirable. However, the mechanism involving the reaction site during charging remains elusive, which, in turn, imposes challenges in recognition of the origin of overpotential. Herein, via combined investigations by in situ atomic force microscopy (AFM) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), we propose a universal morphology-dictated mechanism of efficient reaction sites for Li2O2 decomposition. It is found that Li2O2 deposits with different morphologies share similar localized conductivities, much higher than that reported for bulk Li2O2, enabling the reaction site not only at the electrode/Li2O2/electrolyte interface but also at the Li2O2/electrolyte interface. However, while the mass transport process is more enhanced at the former, the charge-transfer resistance at the latter is sensitively related to the surface structure and thus the reactivity of the Li2O2 deposit. Consequently, for compact disk-like deposits, the electrode/Li2O2/electrolyte interface serves as the dominant decomposition site, which causes premature departure of Li2O2 and loss of reversibility; on the contrary, for porous flower-like and film-like Li2O2 deposits bearing a larger surface area and richer surface-active structures, both the interfaces are efficient for decomposition without premature departure of the deposit so that the overpotential arises primarily from the sluggish oxidation kinetics and the decomposition is more reversible. The present work provides instructive insights into the understanding of the mechanism of reaction sites during the charge process, which offers guidance for the design of reversible Li-O2 batteries.

Psychometric attributes associated with attrition within a prison-based democratic therapeutic community

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the psychometric characteristics of male offenders who joined a democratic therapeutic community and their relationship to attrition.Design/methodology/approachResidents who left therapy prematurely during the assessment phase (N = 46) and residents who left therapy prematurely during core therapy (N = 202) were compared to residents who completed therapy (N = 52) on two psychometric measures: Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices and The Blame Attribution Inventory.FindingsA multinomial logistic regression analysis showed higher levels of external blame can predict attrition during therapy; those with higher levels of external attribution are significantly more likely to leave therapy prematurely, including both during the assessment phase and during core therapy. Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices score did not significantly predict whether an individual left therapy prematurely.Originality/valueSupport was found for existing research within the academic evidence base. The findings have both empirical and clinical utility, suggesting during the assessment phase of therapy, practitioners can identify residents that may require additional support to maintain engagement, minimising the potential for premature departure. The implications of the findings are discussed, with suggestions made for future research.

Determinants of departure to natal dispersal across an elevational gradient in a long-lived raptor species.

Attributes of natal habitat often affect early stages of natal dispersal. Thus, environmental gradients at mountain slopes are expected to result in gradients of dispersal behavior and to drive elevational differences in dispersal distances and settlement behavior. However, covariation of environmental factors across elevational gradients complicates the identification of mechanisms underlying the elevational patterns in dispersal behavior. Assuming a decreasing food availability with elevation,we conducted a food supplementation experiment of red kite (Milvus milvus) broods across an elevational gradient toward the upper range margin and we GPS-tagged nestlings to assess their start of dispersal. While considering timing of breeding and breeding density across elevation, this allowed disentangling effects of elevational food gradients from co-varying environmental gradients on the age at departure from the natal home range. We found an effect of food supplementation on age at departure, but no elevational gradient in the effect of food supplementation. Similarly, we found an effect of breeding density on departure age without an underlying elevational gradient. Supplementary-fed juveniles and females in high breeding densities departed at younger age than control juveniles and males in low breeding densities. We only found an elevational gradient in the timing of breeding. Late hatched juveniles, and thus individuals at high elevation, departed at earlier age compared to early hatched juveniles. We conclude that favorable natal food conditions, allow for a young departure age of juvenile red kites. We show that the elevational delay in breeding is compensated by premature departure resulting in an elevational gradient in departure age. Thus, elevational differences in dispersal behaviour likely arise due to climatic factors affecting timing of breeding. However, the results also suggest that spatial differences in food availability and breeding density affect dispersal behavior and that their large-scale gradients within the distributional range might result in differential natal dispersal patterns.

Implementing pathways to anesthesiology: Promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and success.

Implementing pathways to anesthesiology: Promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and success.

Theoretical study of the accumulation of mechanical mixtures in the engine lubrication system

The work in the field of oil obsolescence, theoretical identification of active additives contained in the oil as a benchmark for evaluating the main operational properties of oil, as well as a theoretical assessment of the properties of oil oxidation resistance and the resource of its active elements, depending on the intensity of the eating of engine details and the amount of elements. The sharply changing climate and high pollination conditions of the republic, a sharp increase in the amount of water and mechanical mixtures, which in turn can lead to a premature departure of motor oils used in it, such as viscosity, corrosion resistance, oxidation resistance, washing and other properties, and acceleration of engine eating. Due to the overload of the tractor, theoretically determined that mechanical mixtures and asphalt products containing oxidation products containing motor oil in the engine maintenance system increased by 1.2%.

Postgraduate training for psychiatric nurses: a bet for the future

Today, our care environment in the psychiatric setting requires solutions to the issues of the shortage of nurses, premature departures from the profession, adaptation of skills to the complexity of care, integration of academic knowledge and replacement of senior experts. Nursing care is an essential pillar for the care of patients in the psychiatric settings and it is therefore essential to offer conditions to this personnel to guarantee the quality of care, the succession of nurses and professional autonomy for the implementation of good practices. The creation of a Certificate in advanced studies within the University of Lausanne offering a demanding training alternating face-to-face and e-learning is one of the responses provided by the Care Departments of Romandie.

Detecting premature departure in online text-based counseling using logic-based pattern matching

BackgroundMore so than face-to-face counseling, users of online text-based services might drop out from a session before establishing a clear closure or expressing the intention to leave. Such premature departure may be indicative of heightened risk or dissatisfaction with the service or counselor. However, there is no systematic way to identify this understudied phenomenon. PurposeThis study has two objectives. First, we developed a set of rules and used logic-based pattern matching techniques to systematically identify premature departures in an online text-based counseling service. Second, we validated the importance of premature departure by examining its association with user satisfaction. We hypothesized that the users who rated the session as less helpful were more likely to have departed prematurely. MethodWe developed and tested a classification model using a sample of 575 human-annotated sessions from an online text-based counseling platform. We used 80% of the dataset to train and develop the model and 20% of the dataset to evaluate the model performance. We further applied the model to the full dataset (34,821 sessions). We compared user satisfaction between premature departure and completed sessions based on data from a post-session survey. ResultsThe resulting model achieved 97% and 92% F1 score in detecting premature departure cases in the training and test sets, respectively, suggesting it is highly consistent with the judgment of human coders. When applied to the full dataset, the model classified 15,150 (43.5%) sessions as premature departure and the remaining 19,671 (56.5%) as completed sessions. Completed cases (15.2%) were more likely to fill the post-chat survey than premature departure cases (4.0%). Premature departure was significantly associated with lower perceived helpfulness and effectiveness in distress reduction. ConclusionsThe model is the first that systematically and accurately identifies premature departure in online text-based counseling. It can be readily modified and transferred to other contexts for the purpose of risk mitigation and service evaluation and improvement.

Health-Related Quality of Life and Undergraduate Nursing Students: A Narrative Review

Background: Undergraduate nursing students are vulnerable to stressful university learning environments and poor working conditions in clinical rotations. This can result in students leaving nursing programs or abandoning the profession following graduation. As a result, the health-related quality of life of nursing students is an important indicator to monitor student quality of life adequacy. Preventing premature student nurses' departure from the profession is necessary to reduce the nursing shortage. Objective: To describe the body of knowledge about the health-related quality of life for undergraduate nursing students during their qualification process. Methods: This was a narrative review through a six-database search, including Cochrane, CINAHL, Pubmed, Medline, PsycINFO and Livivio, from between January 1990 and June 2018, with updates in the search followed until November 2019. To assess study quality, the STROBE checklist was used. Results: Eight studies were included in a narrative synthesis. All studies were of cross-sectional design, and none included follow-up procedures. Most of the studies recruited participants from nursing courses and only one study recruited students from a national register. Sample sizes ranged from 110 individuals to 4,033 participants in the register-based study. Common health-related dimensions evaluated included stress, social support, mental health, fatigue, quality of life, and drug abuse. Stress, the most commonly studied dimension, was associated with clinical placements, final exams, and non-prescribed drugs. Social support networks were positively associated with coping abilities and self-esteem. Conclusion: There is low-quality evidence of the impact of nursing courses upon student health-related dimensions (stress, self-esteem, health-related behaviors). Nurse educators should be aware of these associations and support routine screening of students and their health-related dimensions. Interventions, such as consultation and study redesign, might increase the level of health-related dimensions. Nursing schools should further collaborate to investigate these associations and tailored interventions to positively affect health-related dimensions in nursing students.

A mentoring programme to meet newly graduated nurses’ needs and give senior nurses a new career opportunity: A multiple-case study

AimTo evaluate the implementation of a multifaceted mentoring programme in a large university hospital and describe its value from the perspectives of newly graduated nurses, experienced nurses and the hospital organisation. BackgroundHealthcare organisations need long-term competence-planning strategies to retain nurses, prevent their premature departure from the profession and use their competencies. This paper reports a mentoring programme focused on supporting newly graduated nurse’ transition to practice and senior nurses’ professional development as supervisors. DesignA multiple-case study. MethodsWe performed 35 interviews with nurses, supervisors and nurse managers in the five units that implemented the programme, mapped the programme at the hospital level and extracted the nurses’ working hours. The interviews were analysed thematically using the theoretical lens of the head–heart–hand model to interpret the results. ResultsOf 46 units in the hospital, 14 had implemented one or several of the components in the mentoring programme. The programme corresponded to the newly graduated nurses’ needs, gave senior nurses a new career opportunity and contributed to an attractive workplace. The main theme, Giving new nurses confidence, experienced nurses a positive challenge and the organisation an opportunity to learn, reflects the value of the programme’s supervisory model to new and experienced nurses and to the organisation as a whole. ConclusionThe mentoring programme appeared to be a promising way to smooth the transition for newly graduated nurses. The experienced supervising nurses were key to the success of this complex programme, supporting the new nurses at the bedside and being available to respond to their questions and reflections. Embedding the supervisors in the units’ daily practice was necessary to the success of the different parts of the programme. Despite the strategic and well-designed implementation of this mentoring programme aimed to solve the everyday challenge of nurse shortages in the hospital, it was a challenge to implement it fully in all the units studied.

Comparison of the Demographics and Visit Characteristics of Patients Who Left the Pediatric Emergency Department Without Being Seen With Those Who Were Evaluated in the Emergency Department.

We compared those patients who left without being seen (LWBS) with those who stay for evaluation and determined which subsets were more likely to depart prematurely in the largest pediatric population studied to date. We retrospectively extracted data from the electronic medical records of all pediatric patients who visited the emergency department between January 1, 2013, and December 31, 2015. The demographics and visit characteristics were compared between patients who LWBS and those seen by a provider. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were used to determine the odds for premature departure of specific groups within the population. Of the 271,364 pediatric patients visiting the emergency department during the 3-year study period, 3835 (1.4%) LWBS by a provider. The mean age of those LWBS was younger, and the odds of leaving slightly decreased as the patient's age increased (odds ratio [OR], 0.98). Those triaged as having "nonurgent" medical conditions had a statistically significant increase in odds of premature departure when compared with those with "urgent" medical conditions (OR, 1.16). Patients arriving during the evening and overnight hours had a much greater odds of LWBS (OR, 6.7 and 7.3, respectively). Our findings demonstrated and confirmed that age, time of arrival, and acuity level upon presentation were predictors of patients leaving before evaluation. This can guide institutions with staffing and flow processes as they attempt to reduce LWBS rates but also raises further questions as to whether these subsets go forward to have worse clinical outcomes after leaving prematurely.

Psychosocial stress and musculoskeletal pain among senior workers from nine occupational groups: Cross-sectional findings from the SeniorWorkingLife study

IntroductionMaintaining good health with advancing age is increasingly important as most European countries experience an increase in retirement age. In order to decrease the risk of premature departure from the...

Early detection and treatment for bovine respiratory disease

Bovine respiratory disease (BRD) is a complex syndrome that can cause significant economic impact on farm through the immediate costs of treatment as well as long-term production losses, and increased risk of mortality or premature departure from the herd. The clinical signs and pathology are due in part to the host's response to inflammatory mediators that are produced in reaction to the presence of the pathogens. Variation in individual animals' responses to the sepsis associated with BRD result in the spectrum of clinical signs and disease severity observed on farm. The variation in clinical picture presents a diagnostic challenge for farmers and can negatively impact disease detection. The use of objective scoring systems for BRD can facilitate the detection and provide a means of monitoring disease at a herd or group level. While antimicrobials remain the mainstay of BRD treatment on farm, the use of a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID) alongside them has become commonplace, with the aim of promoting more rapid recovery via their analgesic, anti-inflammatory and antipyretic actions.

Performance Analysis of a Delay Constrained Data Offloading Scheme in an Integrated Cloud-Fog-Edge Computing System

The recent growth in intensive services and applications demand has triggered the functional integration of cloud computing with edge computing capabilities. One of the main goals is to allow a fast processing to tasks with strict real time constraints in order to lower the task dropping probability due to expiration of the associated deadlines. This paper deals with the performance evaluation and optimization of a three layers cloud-fog-edge computing infrastructure by resorting to the use of queueing theory results. In particular, a Markov queueing system model with reneging is proposed for the cloud subsystem, in order to consider the premature computation requests departure due to their deadline expiration. Furthermore, a computational resources allocation method is proposed with the aim at maximizing the social welfare metric, constrained to specific quality of service requirements. Finally, the proposed queueing theory analysis as well as of the computational resources allocation approach is validated by comparing the obtained analytical predictions with simulation results.

Workplace stress and discrimination effects on the physical and depressive symptoms of underrepresented minority faculty.

Evidence-based research and interventions to address systemic institutional racism have never been more urgent. Yet, underrepresented minority (URM) professionals in research institutions who primarily produce that evidence have remained abysmally low for decades. This unique study of URM university professors assesses factors-vocational strain, role overload, discrimination, coping strategies-that contribute to health and well-being, research productivity, and ultimately their retention in high impact research positions. We administered a web-based survey assessing demographics, workplace stressors, perceived discrimination, life events, coping strategies, and physical and depressive symptoms. Study participants include 404 faculty of whom 254 are African Americans, 99 are Mexican Americans, and 51 are Puerto Ricans. Hierarchical regression analyses were employed to assess the associations between workplace stress, coping strategies, and symptoms. Results show that perceived discrimination, vocational strain, role overload, and life events directly affected physical symptoms, with self-care (p < 0.001) moderating these effects. Vocational strain and life events had direct effects on depressive symptoms with self-care (p < 0.05) and social support (p < 0.001) moderating these effects. Findings inform health care providers and university leaders about work stress and health conditions that may explain early morbidity and premature departures of URM faculty, and proffer institutional interventions to retain these faculty.