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International Journal (international + journal)
Selected AbstractsThe journal Communications in Numerical Methods in Engineering with Biomedical Applications becomes the International Journal for Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering (IJNMBE) from 1st January 2010INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL AND ANALYTICAL METHODS IN GEOMECHANICS, Issue 16 2009Perumal Nithiarasu Editor Abstract Communications in Numerical Methods in Engineering, founded by Roland W. Lewis in 1985, will change its title to the ,International Journal for Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering' and has a revised Aims and Scope. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] The journal Communications in Numerical Methods in Engineering with Biomedical Applications becomes the International Journal for Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering (IJNMBE) from 1st January 2010INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL METHODS IN BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, Issue 11 2009Perumal Nithiarasu Editor Abstract Communications in Numerical Methods in Engineering, founded by Roland W. Lewis in 1985, will change its title to the ,International Journal for Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering' and has a revised Aims and Scope. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Instationary aeroelastic computation of yacht sailsINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL METHODS IN ENGINEERING, Issue 8 2001Heinrich Schoop Abstract Effective schemes exist to calculate aerodynamic forces for thin bodies and structural dynamics of flexible membranes. The fluid dynamic of thin wings in a irrotational flow leads to the lifting surface theory. Neglecting the inertia of the membrane the structural dynamics are solved by the non-linear (FEM). But the interaction of flexible membranes and an irrotational flow causes problems due to the different nature of the mathematical equations. On the one hand, there is a partial differential equation for the structural dynamics and on the other hand, there is a singular integral equation for the aerodynamics. The numerical discretization scheme has to fit these different types of equation. Our work introduces a new interaction scheme to couple the singular integral equation of the lifting surface theory with the non-linear FEM of the membrane static. The fundamental examinations, showed by Schoop et al. (International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering 1998; 41: 217,219), are applied to realistic sail geometries and the aerodynamics is extended to instationary flow conditions. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] International Journal of Andrology: New Editorial TeamINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ANDROLOGY, Issue 1 2010Ewa Rajpert-De Meyts Editor-in-Chief No abstract is available for this article. [source] Churches that enhance spirituality and wellbeing,INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDIES, Issue 2 2010Robert B. Ellsworth Abstract From examining thousands of surveys from 174 congregations, we earlier identified 29 aspects of ministry with strong links to spiritual and emotional wellbeing and increased the number of people coming (Ellsworth & Ellsworth, International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 6(1), 46,60, 2009). This paper explores what happened when church leaders strengthened these aspects. In examining over 12,000 surveys from 37 congregations that surveyed twice, we discovered that 20 of the 29 aspects had a major impact on changing more lives and attracting more people. This paper identifies and discusses the 20 ministry essentials that actually helped congregations experience higher levels of emotional wellbeing, spiritual growth, and/or attracted more people. We also explore the question; can congregant's emotional wellbeing impact people in the larger community? Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Gene expression profiling of 30 cancer cell lines predicts resistance towards 11 anticancer drugs at clinically achieved concentrationsINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CANCER, Issue 7 2006Balazs Györffy Abstract Cancer patients with tumors of similar grading, staging and histogenesis can have markedly different treatment responses to different chemotherapy agents. So far, individual markers have failed to correctly predict resistance against anticancer agents. We tested 30 cancer cell lines for sensitivity to 5-fluorouracil, cisplatin, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, etoposide, methotrexate, mitomycin C, mitoxantrone, paclitaxel, topotecan and vinblastine at drug concentrations that can be systemically achieved in patients. The resistance index was determined to designate the cell lines as sensitive or resistant, and then, the subset of resistant vs. sensitive cell lines for each drug was compared. Gene expression signatures for all cell lines were obtained by interrogating Affymetrix U133A arrays. Prediction Analysis of Microarrays was applied for feature selection. An individual prediction profile for the resistance against each chemotherapy agent was constructed, containing 42,297 genes. The overall accuracy of the predictions in a leave-one-out cross validation was 86%. A list of the top 67 multidrug resistance candidate genes that were associated with the resistance against at least 4 anticancer agents was identified. Moreover, the differential expressions of 46 selected genes were also measured by quantitative RT-PCR using a TaqMan micro fluidic card system. As a single gene can be correlated with resistance against several agents, associations with resistance were detected all together for 76 genes and resistance phenotypes, respectively. This study focuses on the resistance at the in vivo concentrations, making future clinical cancer response prediction feasible. The TaqMan-validated gene expression patterns provide new gene candidates for multidrug resistance. Supplementary material for this article can be found on the International Journal of Cancer website at http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jpages/0020-7136/suppmat. © 2005 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Erratum to Yamanoshita et al., "DHPLC is superior to SSCP in screening p53 mutations in esophageal cancer tissues."INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CANCER, Issue 6 2005Int J Cancer 2005; 114(1):7 The original article to which this Erratum refers was published in International Journal of Cancer (2005) 114(1) 74,79DOI: 10.1002/ijc.20712 [source] Liggins et al.: ,Serologic detection of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma-associated antigens.' Int J Cancer 2004; 110:563,569INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CANCER, Issue 6 2004Article first published online: 17 MAY 200 The original article to which this Erratum refers was published in International Journal of Cancer (2004) 110(3) 563,569 DOI: 10.1002/ijc.20170 [source] Z+ fading memory and extensions of input,output mapsINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CIRCUIT THEORY AND APPLICATIONS, Issue 4 2001Irwin W. Sandberg Abstract An Erratum for this article has been published in the International Journal of Circuit Theory and Applications 30(4) 2002, 179. Much is known about time-invariant non-linear systems with inputs and outputs defined on Z+ that possess approximately-finite memory. For example, under mild additional conditions, they can be approximated arbitrarily well by the maps of certain interesting simple structures. An important fact that gives meaning to results concerning such systems is that the approximately-finite-memory condition is known to be often met. Here we consider the known proposition that if a causal time-invariant discrete-time input,output map H has fading memory on a set of bounded functions defined on all of the integers Z, then H can be approximated arbitrarily well by a finite Volterra series operator. We show that in a certain sense, involving the existence of extensions of system maps, this result too has wide applicability. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Ranking the AR4 climate models over the Murray-Darling Basin using stimulated maximum temperature, minimum temperature and precipitation C. C. Maxino, B. J. McAvaney, A. J. Pitman and S. E. Perkins.INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY, Issue 7 2008International Journal of Climatology The original article to which this Erratum refers was published in International Journal of Climatology; 2007. [source] International Journal of Climatology, volume 26, issue 10 ,impact of global warming on ENSO variability using the coupled GISS GCM/ZC model' by T. Eichler, D. Rind and S. Zebiak, pages 1283,1314, 2006INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY, Issue 12 2006Eichler T. The original article to which this Erratum refers was published in Journal of Climatology 26 (10) 2006, 1283,1314. [source] Antarctic climate change during the last 50 yearsINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY, Issue 3 2005John Turner Abstract An erratum has been published for this article in International Journal of Climatology 25 (8) 2005, 1147,1148. The Reference Antarctic Data for Environmental Research (READER) project data set of monthly mean Antarctic near-surface temperature, mean sea-level pressure (MSLP) and wind speed has been used to investigate trends in these quantities over the last 50 years for 19 stations with long records. Eleven of these had warming trends and seven had cooling trends in their annual data (one station had too little data to allow an annual trend to be computed), indicating the spatial complexity of change that has occurred across the Antarctic in recent decades. The Antarctic Peninsula has experienced a major warming over the last 50 years, with temperatures at Faraday/Vernadsky station having increased at a rate of 0.56 °C decade,1 over the year and 1.09 °C decade,1 during the winter; both figures are statistically significant at less than the 5% level. Overlapping 30 year trends of annual mean temperatures indicate that, at all but two of the 10 coastal stations for which trends could be computed back to 1961, the warming trend was greater (or the cooling trend less) during the 1961,90 period compared with 1971,2000. All the continental stations for which MSLP data were available show negative trends in the annual mean pressures over the full length of their records, which we attribute to the trend in recent decades towards the Southern Hemisphere annular mode (SAM) being in its high-index state. Except for Halley, where the trends are constant, the MSLP trends for all stations on the Antarctic continent for 1971,2000 were more negative than for 1961,90. All but two of the coastal stations have recorded increasing mean wind speeds over recent decades, which is also consistent with the change in the nature of the SAM. Copyright © 2005 Royal Meteorological Society [source] The recent Sahel drought is realINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY, Issue 11 2004Aiguo Dai Abstract Using station rainfall data extracted from two comprehensive data sets, we show that large decreasing rainfall trends were widespread in the Sahel (10,20°N and 18°W,20°E) from the late 1950s to the late 1980s. Thereafter, Sahel rainfall has recovered somewhat through 2003, although the drought conditions have not ended in the region. These results confirm the findings of many previous studies. We also found that large multi-year oscillations appear to be more frequent and extreme after the late 1980s than previously. Analyses of Sahel regional rainfall time series derived from a fixed subset of stations and from all available stations show that the decreasing trend in Sahel rainfall is not an artifact of changing station networks. The rainfall model used by Chappell and Agnew (2004 International Journal of Climatology24: 547,554) is incorrect and their modelled rainfall time series is totally unrepresentative of Sahel average rainfall. Their conclusion about the Sahel rainfall trends being an artifact of changing station locations is emphatically wrong and their speculative statements about the implications of their results for other studies and other regions of the world are completely unfounded. Copyright © 2004 Royal Meteorological Society [source] Two decades of urban climate research: a review of turbulence, exchanges of energy and water, and the urban heat islandINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY, Issue 1 2003A. John Arnfield Abstract Progress in urban climatology over the two decades since the first publication of the International Journal of Climatology is reviewed. It is emphasized that urban climatology during this period has benefited from conceptual advances made in microclimatology and boundary-layer climatology in general. The role of scale, heterogeneity, dynamic source areas for turbulent fluxes and the complexity introduced by the roughness sublayer over the tall, rigid roughness elements of cities is described. The diversity of urban heat islands, depending on the medium sensed and the sensing technique, is explained. The review focuses on two areas within urban climatology. First, it assesses advances in the study of selected urban climatic processes relating to urban atmospheric turbulence (including surface roughness) and exchange processes for energy and water, at scales of consideration ranging from individual facets of the urban environment, through streets and city blocks to neighbourhoods. Second, it explores the literature on the urban temperature field. The state of knowledge about urban heat islands around 1980 is described and work since then is assessed in terms of similarities to and contrasts with that situation. Finally, the main advances are summarized and recommendations for urban climate work in the future are made. Copyright © 2003 Royal Meteorological Society. [source] The spatial and temporal behaviour of the lower stratospheric temperature over the Southern Hemisphere: the MSU view.INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY, Issue 4 2001Part II: spatial behaviour Abstract Monthly lower stratosphere temperature anomalies in a layer centred about 70 hPa, from the MSU data set are analysed for the period 1979,1997. T-mode approach principal component analysis (PCA) is used in order to obtain the leading spatial anomaly patterns and their sequences of occurrence throughout the period under study. Five principal components (PCs) are significantly different from the spatial distribution of noisy data. The patterns given by the PC scores represent ten typical spatial anomaly patterns: five correspond to the direct mode, that is to say anomaly fields with the same sign as the PC score patterns, and five have the opposite sign. The first three PCs represent simple spatial temperature anomaly distributions, with zonal wave 0 to wave 2 wave structures. The following significant PCs, orders four and five, display a more complex spatial behaviour, with wave 3 wave structures. The first two PC's frequency distribution in time, given by the PC loadings time series, do not show noticeable changes throughout the period analysed. The remaining three PCs show changes in their frequency of occurrence that might be associated with the negative trends in the lower stratosphere temperature, as well as to the other different features observed in the real temperature anomaly time series for the grid points in the Southern Hemisphere. The latter are studied with the PCA in the S-mode approach in the companion paper (Compagnucci et al., 2001. International Journal of Climatology21: 419,437). Copyright © 2001 Royal Meteorological Society [source] International Journal of Consumer Studies: decade review (1997,2006)INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSUMER STUDIES, Issue 1 2007Sue L.T. McGregor Dr First page of article [source] International Journal of Consumer Studies CALL FOR PAPERS Globalization and consumer/family welfare special issue , September 2003INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSUMER STUDIES, Issue 2 2002Article first published online: 8 NOV 200 No abstract is available for this article. [source] International Journal of Consumer Studies CALL FOR PAPERS Empowering the Consumer in the 21st Century , Wednesday 9 July 2003INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSUMER STUDIES, Issue 2 2002Article first published online: 8 NOV 200 No abstract is available for this article. [source] International Journal of Eating Disorders: Statistical formatting requirements and reporting guidelinesINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EATING DISORDERS, Issue 3 2009Cynthia M. Bulik PhD No abstract is available for this article. [source] Incidence of severe anorexia nervosa in Switzerland: 40 years of developmentINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EATING DISORDERS, Issue 3 2004Gabriella Milos Abstract Objective The current study examined the development of the incidence of severe anorexia nervosa with five sampling periods covering the years 1956,1995 in a geographically defined region of Switzerland. Method Applying the same methodology as in the earlier sampling periods, the medical records of all hospitals of the canton of Zurich were screened manually for first-time hospitalizations of female anorexia nervosa patients during the years 1993,1995. Incidence rates were compared with the previous sampling period (1956,1985). Results The incidence rate of severe anorexia nervosa in the total population and the rate in the population at risk (females 12,25 years old) did not differ significantly from the incidence rates of 1983,1985. Discussion The incidence of severe anorexia nervosa in the canton of Zurich rose significantly during the 1960s and 1970s. Since then, the incidence appears to have reached a plateau. © 2004 by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Eat Disord 35: 250,258, 2004. An erratum to this article is published in International Journal of Eating Disorders (2004) 36(1) 118,119. [source] A feasibility study of using thermal energy storage in a conventional air-conditioning systemINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENERGY RESEARCH, Issue 11 2004M. M. Hussain Abstract An Erratum has been published for this article in International Journal of Energy Research 2004; 28 (13): 1213. This paper deals with the simulation of thermal energy storage (TES) system for HVAC applications. TES is considered to be one of the most preferred demand side management technologies for shifting cooling electrical demand from peak daytime hours to off peak night hours. TES is incorporated into the conventional HVAC system to store cooling capacity by chilling ethylene glycol, which is used as a storage medium. The thermodynamic performance is assessed using exergy and energy analyses. The effects of various parameters such as ambient temperature, cooling load, and mass of storage are studied on the performance of the TES. A full storage cycle, with charging, storing and discharging stages, is considered. In addition, energy and exergy analysis of the TES is carried out for system design and optimization. The temperature in the storage is found to be as low as 6.4°C after 1 day of charging without load for a mass of 250 000 kg. It is found that COP of the HVAC system increases with the decrease of storage temperature. Energy efficiency of the TES is found to be 80% for all the mass flow rate of the discharging fluid, whereas exergy efficiency varies from 14 to 0.5%. This is in fact due to the irreversibilities in a TES process destroy a significant amount of the input exergy, and the TES exergy efficiencies therefore become always lower than the corresponding energy efficiencies. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Systematic review of interventions in the management of overweight and obese children which include a dietary componentINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EVIDENCE BASED HEALTHCARE, Issue 1 2007Clare E Collins PhD BSc Dip Nutr Diet Dip Clin Epi APD Background, The prevalence of overweight and obesity in children and adolescents is increasing at an alarming rate around the world and prevention has become a key public health objective. Treatment and management of those already overweight and obese must be aligned with the best available evidence on effectiveness, if the risk of obesity-related morbidity and mortality is yet be reduced. Diet plays a pivotal role in successful treatment of obesity but to date, there is limited evidence on which to base practice. Objectives, To identify and present the best available evidence on the optimal dietetic treatment and management of children and adolescent who are overweight or obese. Search strategy, Published English language literature was searched using the electronic databases CINAHL, MEDLINE, PRE-MEDLINE, DARE, COCHRANE, EMBASE, AUSTROM, Current Concepts and Dissertation Abstracts. The databases were limited to English Language from 1975 until 2003. Government reports from the UK, USA and Australian were also searched and a hand search performed for the Journal of the Dietitians Association of Australia, International Journal of Obesity and the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics and the bibliographies of retrieved articles. Selection criteria, (i) Interventions that evaluated the effectiveness of nutrition or dietary interventions to treat or manage overweight and obesity; (ii) Children aged less than 18 years; and (iii) Participants were defined as overweight or obese by relative weight or a measure of body weight status, studies that reported body weight per se were excluded. Data collection and analysis, An experienced professional librarian searched the databases, and two trained research assistants independently identified studies for retrieval and assessed each article for inclusion. The included studies were critically appraised for methodological quality by two people independently. Data were extracted from the appropriate articles and when a discrepancy arose, a third party would arbitrate. Main results, There were 116 articles that met the inclusion criteria. While 49 articles described randomised controlled trials, they arose from 37 separate studies. There were 67 non-randomised trials. Meta-analyses were performed on eight studies that included both a dietary intervention component and an adequate control group and on four studies that had follow-up data. There was a high degree of heterogeneity between studies and this made comparisons between studies problematic. Interventions that include diet therapy generally result in significant weight loss, at least in the short term. Many studies were poorly designed and had no or only minimal follow up. The details of the dietary intervention were often inadequately described and dietary outcomes rarely reported, making repetition of the studies difficult. Reviewers' conclusions, There is an urgent need for high quality studies investigating the optimal dietary approach to management of paediatric overweight and obesity. These studies require adequate follow up to ascertain if weight loss can be sustained in the long term. Details of the dietary prescription, adherence to the dietary intervention and diet-specific outcomes need to be reported in order to inform best practice. [source] Developing clinical leaders in Australian aged care homesINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EVIDENCE BASED HEALTHCARE, Issue 1 2006Alan Pearson RN PhD FRCNA FAAG FRCN Abstract The role of clinical leadership in implementing evidence based practice is increasingly recognised in the health and social care fields. This paper briefly reviews the literature on clinical leadership and evidence-based practice in aged care and describes the established of an aged care clinical fellowship program in Australia. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the reports of four aged care clinical fellows reported elsewhere in this issue of the International Journal of Evidence-Based Healthcare. [source] International Journal of Experimental Pathology moves online for submission and peer reviewINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PATHOLOGY, Issue 2 2004David Katz No abstract is available for this article. [source] Peripheral blood vs. bone marrow for molecular monitoring of BCR-ABL1 levels in chronic myelogenous leukemia, a retrospective analysis in allogeneic bone marrow recipientsINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LABORATORY HEMATOLOGY, Issue 4 2010A. BALLESTRERO Summary Molecular monitoring of the BCR-ABL1 transcript in chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) using quantitative real-time PCR (RQ-PCR) can be performed using either bone marrow (BM) or peripheral blood (PB). However, a recent report by Stock et al. [International Journal of Oncology 28 (2006) 1099] questioned the reliability of PB samples for BCR-ABL1 detection as performed by RQ-PCR. We report a study on 114 CML patients who received allogeneic stem cell transplantation (ASCT), and who were monitored by RQ-PCR using paired samples of BM and PB: the total number of determinations was 428, with a median follow-up after transplant of 8 years. BCR-ABL1 transcript was undetectable or <0.1%, in 106 (49.57%) and 62 (29%) paired determinations, respectively. BCR-ABL1 was >0.1% in 36 (16.8%) paired determinations and was discordant in 10 (4.7%). Agreement between PB and BM results was quantified by the kappa test (k = 0.85; 95% CI 0.76,0.94). This study shows that BCR-ABL1 RQ-PCR monitoring of CML patients after ASCT with PB is concordant with BM in 95.3% of cases, and thus may be used to monitor the disease. This may be relevant when discussing both quality of life issues and the need for post-transplant monitoring with the patient. [source] EQAS for peripheral blood morphology in Spain: a 6-year experienceINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LABORATORY HEMATOLOGY, Issue 6 2008G. GUTIÉRREZ Summary The Spanish haematology external quality assessment scheme (EQAS), established in 1984, is run by the Spanish Haematology and Haemotherapy Association (AEHH) [Quality Assurance in Health Care 3 (1991) 75] and functions to evaluate the quality and reproducibility of the assessment of diagnostic samples by clinical laboratories. The Hospital Clinic of the University of Barcelona (HCB) serves as the EQAS Coordination Centre and follows the guidelines established by the International Committee for Standardization in Haematology [Annali dell'Istituto superiore di Sanità 31 (1995) 95; International Journal of Hematology 68 (1998) 45]. During the period 2001,2006, replicates of 25 different blood films were sent to 604 EQAS participants for cell morphology evaluation. Some patient details corresponding to the samples were disclosed, such us age, sex, haemoglobin value and white blood cell count. The participants were asked to select up to four significant morphology features using a coding list, provided by the Coordination Centre, which included significant morphological alterations that appear in haematopoietic cells. For each survey, individual results were assessed against the morphological reference results (MRR) established by the Cytology Group of the AEHH (,true' answers). This paper describes the organization of the 6-year-long study and the evaluation of laboratory performance for blood smear interpretation by the Spanish haematology EQAS. Different performance levels were detected relative to the laboratory category. Laboratories providing services to hospitalized patients showed higher performances compared with laboratories providing services to nonhospitalized patients. Pathological lymphoid cells were the most difficult to identify by the participants. To improve the results in EQAS peripheral blood morphology, the development of specific cytology educational trainings is discussed. [source] TLM for diffusion: consistent first time step.INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NUMERICAL MODELLING: ELECTRONIC NETWORKS, DEVICES AND FIELDS, Issue 3 2002Two-dimensional case Abstract In initializing a transmission line matrix (TLM) diffusion model it is necessary to consider both initial concentration (temperature) and initial flow. As usual, only one of them is given; an auxiliary formula is necessary to calculate the distribution for the first time step. It has been shown that the standard formula may introduce additional numerical errors (International Journal of Numerical Modelling: Electronic Networks, Devices and Fields 1993; 6:135; International Journal of Numerical Modelling: Electronic Networks, Devices and Fields 1993; 6:161) and that these errors can persist over many time steps. In this paper, we show how an initial modification to the normal TLM algorithm can remove such errors, and we demonstrate the method by applying it to a two-dimensional TLM heat diffusion model for a copper plate. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Symptom burden in inflammatory bowel disease: Rethinking conceptual and theoretical underpinningsINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NURSING PRACTICE, Issue 5 2010Dawn Farrell BSC RGN Farrell D, Savage E. International Journal of Nursing Practice 2010; 16: 437,442 Symptom burden in inflammatory bowel disease: Rethinking conceptual and theoretical underpinnings Symptom control is fundamental to the nursing management of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). However, symptom control can be problematic for individuals with IBD, which could result in symptom burden. Symptom burden is an evolving concept in the discipline of nursing and to date little is known about how the defining characteristics of this concept have been applied to symptom research in IBD. In this discussion paper, the concept of symptom burden and the theory of unpleasant symptoms are explored as a basis for understanding symptom research in IBD. This is followed by a critical examination of previous symptom research in IBD. Our conclusion is that there is a need to rethink conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of symptom burden when researching IBD to take account of its defining characteristics, namely symptom severity, frequency and duration, quality and distress. Research knowledge on these defining characteristics will be important to inform nursing assessment of symptom burden in clinical practice. [source] Demands of immigration among Chinese immigrant nursesINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NURSING PRACTICE, Issue 5 2010Amy X Ma DNP APRN-BC FNP Ma AX, Quinn Griffin MT, Capitulo KL, Fitzpatrick JJ. International Journal of Nursing Practice 2010; 16: 443,453 Demands of immigration among Chinese immigrant nurses The purpose of this study was to identify the demands of immigration among Chinese nurses that have immigrated to the USA. The relationship between the demands of immigration and length of stay in the USA was investigated also. A descriptive correlational study design was used. A convenience sample of 128 nurses was recruited. A self-administered survey was conducted using the demands of immigration scale developed by Aroian, along with a demographic questionnaire. The results showed Chinese immigrant nurses have high demands of immigration. There were significant negative relationships between the demands of immigration and length of stay in the USA. Immigration demands decreased as length of stay increased but remained high even for those who had been in the USA for > 5 years. This information is vital to health-care agencies designing and implementing adaptation programmes targeting these demands to facilitate Chinese nurses' adaptation process. [source] The first Australian nurse practitioner census: A protocol to guide standardized collection of information about an emergent professional groupINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NURSING PRACTICE, Issue 5 2010Sandy Middleton RN PhD Middleton S, Gardner G, Gardner A, Della P, Gibb M, Millar L. International Journal of Nursing Practice 2010; 16: 517,524 The first Australian nurse practitioner census: A protocol to guide standardized collection of information about an emergent professional group Internationally, collection of reliable data on new and evolving health-care roles is crucial. We describe a protocol for design and administration of a national census of an emergent health-care role, namely nurse practitioners in Australia using databases held by regulatory authorities. A questionnaire was developed to obtain data on the role and scope of practice of Australian nurse practitioners. Our tool comprised five sections and included a total of 56 questions, using 28existing items from the National Nursing and Midwifery Labour Force Census and nine items recommended in the Nurse Practitioner Workforce Planning Minimum Data Set. Australian Nurse Registering Authorities (n = 6) distributed the survey on our behalf. This paper outlines our instrument and methods. The survey was administered to 238 authorized Australian nurse practitioners (85% response rate). Rigorous collection of standardized items will ensure health policy is informed by reliable and valid data. We will re-administer the survey 2 years following the first survey to measure change over time. 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