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Conventional Practice (conventional + practice)
Selected AbstractsAn evaluation of nursing practice models in the context of the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic in Hong Kong: a preliminary studyJOURNAL OF CLINICAL NURSING, Issue 6 2006Engle Angela Chan PhD Aim and objective., Like other health-care workers, Hong Kong nurses had their professional knowledge and skills seriously challenged during the SARS outbreak. Could current nursing practices support the care of SARS or SARS-like patients in the future? If not, alternative practices would be needed. Providing a preliminary understanding, this paper compares the conventional with different nursing delivery models in a simulated SARS ward and focuses on nurses' efficiency, infection control practices and views of the two models. Design and methods., This study was conducted in three phases. First, a baseline understanding of nursing practices was achieved through four workflow observations. In an eight-hour day, four research assistants observed nursing activities in the medical and fever wards. These data were used in the second phase to construct two sets of clinical vignettes, pertaining to SARS patient care in both conventional and alternative practice models. These scripts were discussed with nine nurses of various ranks from the hospital under study for their expert validation and input. In the third phase, nurse participants and patient actors enacted the vignettes in a simulated setting. Video-taped observations and four nurse participant interviews were employed. Observational data were analysed through descriptive statistics and independent t -tests. Textual data were coded and categorized for common meanings. Results., Conventional practice from the findings consisted of cubicle and named nurse nursing. While the former reflected modified team and functional nursing, it did not confine patient care within a cubicle as suggested by its name. The latter depicted a modified primary nursing approach in a team, with delegation of care. Preliminary findings concerning infection control and nurse satisfaction revealed that the alternative model had an advantage over the conventional. Relevance to clinical practice., This study findings lay the foundation for clinical trials, which would evaluate the significance of patient-care quality, cost-effectiveness and better human resource management by restructuring current nursing practices. [source] Mobile Construction Supply Chain Management Using PDA and Bar CodesCOMPUTER-AIDED CIVIL AND INFRASTRUCTURE ENGINEERING, Issue 4 2005H. Ping Tserng However, extending the construction project control system to job sites is not considered efficient because using notebooks in a harsh environment like a construction site is not particularly a conventional practice. Meanwhile, paper-based documents of the site processes are ineffective and cannot get the quick response from the office and project control center. Integrating promising information technologies such as personal digital assistants (PDA), bar code scanning, and data entry mechanisms, can be extremely useful in improving the effectiveness and convenience of information flow in construction supply chain control systems. Bar code scanning is appropriate for several construction applications, providing cost savings through increased speed and accuracy of data entry. This article demonstrates the effectiveness of a bar-code-enabled PDA application, called the mobile construction supply chain management (M-ConSCM) System, that responds efficiently and enhances the information flow between offices and sites in a construction supply chain environment. The advantage of the M-ConSCM system lies not only in improving the efficiency of work for on-site engineers, but also providing the Kanban-like visual control system for project participants to control the whole project. Moreover, this article presents a generic system architecture and its implementation. [source] Optimization and validation of a chromatographic method for the simultaneous quantification of six bioactive compounds in Rhizoma et Radix Polygoni CuspidatiJOURNAL OF PHARMACY AND PHARMACOLOGY: AN INTERNATI ONAL JOURNAL OF PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCE, Issue 1 2008Guangsheng Qian ABSTRACT A reverse-phase HPLC method was developed for simultaneous quantification of six bioactive compounds in Rhizoma et Radix Polygoni Cuspidati. These compounds , polydatin (1), resveratrol (2), rhein (3), emodin (4), chrysophanol (5) and physcion (6) , were analysed from 24 authentic samples of the herb using UV HPLC. Based on the UV absorption characteristics of the six compounds, absorption wavelengths of 306 nm were chosen to quantify compounds 1 and 2, and 290 nm for compounds 3,6. A reliable and reproducible quantitative HPLC method for analysing authentic samples of Rhizoma et Radix Polygoni Cuspidati from different cultivation regions was developed. The results showed that the concentration of compound 1 in samples from Sichuan was almost 2-fold higher than that of samples acquired in Guangxi. Furthermore, compounds 3 and 5 were not found in all the samples tested. Thus, instead of using polydatin (1) and emodin (4) as markers for quality assessment, as in conventional practice, these findings show that compounds 2 and 6 are more suited to act as marker compounds for a more specific assessment of the quality of this herb. [source] On-farm management practices to minimise off-site movement of pesticides from furrow irrigationPEST MANAGEMENT SCIENCE (FORMERLY: PESTICIDE SCIENCE), Issue 10 2006Danielle P Oliver Abstract Off-site movement of pesticides from furrow-irrigated agriculture has been a concern in the Ord River Irrigation Area, Western Australia. This paper reports on the effectiveness of incorporation of pesticides by cultivator or power harrows before irrigating, and spraying pesticides only onto beds to minimise off-site transport. Incorporation of pesticides by power harrows prior to irrigation was found to be more effective in decreasing the off-site transport of a more strongly sorbed pesticide, endosulfan. The average load of total endosulfan (, + , + sulfate) decreased by 74% (P < 0.01) from 11.41 g ha,1 from the conventionally treated bays to 2.96 g ha,1 from the incorporated irrigation bays. The total average load of atrazine leaving the irrigation bays was decreased by 81% (P < 0.05) from 87.82 g ha,1 under the conventional practice of spraying the whole field to 16.95 g ha,1 by spraying the beds only. A reduction of 52% in total average load of metolachlor was observed following incorporation with power harrows, but this was not significant. Incorporation by cultivator or by power harrows decreased the total load of atrazine or metolachlor leaving the irrigation bays over the whole irrigation period, but these treatments were not shown to be statistically significant, which may have been due to the limited number of field replicates. Incorporation of strongly sorbed pesticides (e.g. endosulfan) prior to irrigation significantly decreased the off-site transport of these pesticides in a furrow irrigation system and may be a useful practice to minimise off-site transport of other similar pesticides. Minimising off-site transport of weakly sorbed pesticides (e.g. atrazine and metolachlor) from a furrow irrigation system is more difficult. The nature of furrow irrigation makes it highly conducive to pesticide transport, particularly of weakly sorbed pesticides, and further work is needed to develop strategies to minimise the movement of this group of pesticides to water bodies. Copyright © 2006 Society of Chemical Industry [source] Novel Process Windows , Gate to Maximizing Process Intensification via Flow ChemistryCHEMICAL ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY (CET), Issue 11 2009V. Hessel Abstract Driven by the economics of scale, the size of reaction vessels as the major processing apparatus of the chemical industry has became bigger and bigger [1, 2]. Consequently, the efforts for ensuring mixing and heat transfer have also increased, as these are scale dependent. This has brought vessel operation to (partly severe) technical limits, especially when controlling harsh conditions, e.g., due to large heat releases. Accordingly, processing at a very large scale has resulted in taming of the chemistry involved in order to slow it down to a technically controllable level. Therefore, reaction paths that already turned out too aggressive at the laboratory scale are automatically excluded for later scale-up, which constitutes a common everyday confinement in exploiting chemical transformations. Organic chemists are barely conscious that even the small-scale laboratory protocols in their textbooks contain many slow, disciplined chemical reactions. Operations such as adding a reactant drop by drop in a large diluted solvent volume have become second nature, but are not intrinsic to the good engineering of chemical reactions. These are intrinsic to the chemical apparatus used in the past. In contrast, today's process intensification [3,12] and the new flow-chemistry reactors on the micro- and milli-scale [13,39] allow such limitations to be overcome, and thus, enable a complete, ab-initio type rethinking of the processes themselves. In this way, space-time yields and the productivity of the reactor can be increased by orders of magnitude and other dramatic performance step changes can be achieved. A hand-in-hand design of the reactors and process re-thinking is required to enable chemistry rather than subduing chemistry around the reactor [40]. This often leads to making use of process conditions far from conventional practice, under harsh environments, a procedure named here as Novel Process Windows. [source] THE EFFICIENCY OF SEQUESTERING CARBON IN AGRICULTURAL SOILSCONTEMPORARY ECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 2 2001GR Pautsch Agricultural tillage practices are important human-induced activities that can alter carbon emissions from agricultural soils and have the potential to contribute significantly to reductions in greenhouse gas emission (Lal et al., The Potential of U.S. Cropland, 1998). This research investigates the expected costs of sequestering carbon in agricultural soils under different subsidy and market-based policies. Using detailed National Resources Inventory data, we estimate the probability that farmers adopt conservation tillage practices based on a variety of exogenous characteristics and profit from conventional practices. These estimates are used with physical models of carbon sequestration to estimate the subsidy costs of achieving increased carbon sequestration with alternative subsidy schemes. [source] Play, games, and the development of collective intentionalityNEW DIRECTIONS FOR CHILD & ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT, Issue 115 2007Hannes Rakoczy Playing games, particularly pretense games, is one of the areas where young children first enter into collective, conventional practices. This chapter reviews recent empirical data in support of this claim and explores the idea that games present a cradle for children's growing into societal and institutional life more generally. [source] | |||||||||||||