CEO summit. Building the new health care delivery alliance, Part III. Roundtable discussion

In cooperation with McManis Associates, Hospitals & Health Networks recently convened a CEO summit on physician/hospital integration activities. In the third report of a three-part series on the summit, leading health care executives discuss investor capital needs, strategic information management needs, and the management competencies required for capitated managed care success.     

Linking workplace and homeplace: Relations between the nature of adults' work and their parenting behaviors.

A total of 188 employed mothers and fathers and their 5–7 yr-old child participated in a study of the relations between the nature of adults' work and their parenting attitudes and behaviors (a line of research influenced by both socialization and stress perspectives). In general, positive features of work (i.e., complexity of work with people, challenge, and stimulation) tended to be associated with both self-report and observational measures of developmentally sound parenting (e.g., less harsh discipline, more warmth and responsiveness). Interaction effects indicated that gender of parent and child further condition these relations. Analyses partially support the interpretation that conditions of work influence parenting through their effect on mood but also suggest that certain conditions of work may directly socialize behavior in the parental role (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Plasma viral RNA load predicts disease progression in accelerated feline immunodeficiency virus infection

Viral RNA load has been shown to indicate disease stage and predict the rapidity of disease progression in human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1)-infected individuals. We had previously demonstrated that feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) RNA levels in plasma correlate with disease stage in infected cats. Here we expand upon those observations by demonstrating that plasma virus load is 1 to 2 logs higher in cats with rapidly progressive FIV disease than in long-term survivors. Differences in plasma FIV RNA levels are evident by 1 to 2 weeks after infection and are consistent throughout infection. We also evaluated humoral immune responses in FIV-infected cats for correlation with survival times. Total anti-FIV antibody titers did not differ between cats with rapidly progressive FIV disease and long-term survivors. These findings indicate that virus replication plays an important role in FIV disease progression, as it does in HIV-1 disease progression. The parallels in virus loads and disease progressions between HIV-1 and FIV support the idea that the accelerated disease model is well suited for the study of therapeutic agents directed at reducing lentiviral replication.     

Influence of vasopressin and amiloride on shunt pathways of frog skin

Studies were done to determine the influence of vasopressin and amiloride on the sodium backflux of nonedge-damaged frog skin. As before, the bidirectional fluxes of sodium appeared to be limited primarily to the active transport pathways of control skins. When the skins were treated with vasopressin, the sodium backflux was increased selectively (over that of sucrose) and more so than was expected for the active transportpathway alone. In control skins, amiloride had no effect on the flux of the shunt pathway. However, with vasopressin-treated skins, amiloride at 10(-6) M decreased the sodium backflux of the shunt pathway to levels observed previously for the control skins. These observations are compatible with the idea that the shunt pathway may in part be cellular and in part extracellular. When the changes in open-circuit voltage and shunt resistance caused by vasopressin and amiloride (as determined from the I-V relationships) were examined, the data were also found to be compatible with the idea that vasopressin exerted an influence on the shunt pathway of the frog skin, and this effect of vasopressin could be reversed by amiloride.     

Using the Curriculum Vita to Study the Career Paths of Scientists and Engineers: An Exploratory Assessment

In this paper we assess the utility of the curriculum vita (CV) as a data source for examining the career paths of scientists and engineers. CVs were obtained in response to an email message sent to researchers working in the areas of biotechnology and microelectronics. In addition, a number of CVs were obtained "passively" from a search of the Internet. We discuss the methodological issues and problems of this data collection strategy and the results from an exploratory analysis using OLS regression and event history analysis. In sum, despite difficulties with coding and variation in CV formats, this collection strategy seems to us to hold much promise.     

Clinical practice as natural laboratory for psychotherapy research: A guide to case-based time-series analysis.

Both researchers and practitioners need to know more about how laboratory treatment protocols translate to real-world practice settings and how clinical innovations can be systematically tested and communicated to a skeptical scientific community. The single-case time-series study is well suited to opening a productive discourse between practice and laboratory. The appeal of case-based time-series studies, with multiple observations both before and after treatment, is that they enrich our design palette by providing the discipline another way to expand its empirical reach to practice settings and its subject matter to the contingencies of individual change. This article is a user's guide to conducting empirically respectable case-based time-series studies in a clinical practice or laboratory setting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychology and the American health professional community in transition.

W. N. Robiner and D. P. Crew (2000) have provided a very useful assessment of the dynamics of the psychology workforce in the United States today (see record 2000-03894-001). Their conclusion that the overall supply of psychologists exceeds the current and projected future level of demand is consistent with other analysis of similar health professions. The action recommendations they offered, although dramatic, are precisely those that must be taken in order to prevent the situation from deteriorating and bringing more peril to the profession and current and future practitioners. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Carbon-nanofiber-based nanocomposite membrane as a highly stable solid-state junction for reference electrodes

There is currently a need for a reliable solid-state reference electrode, especially in applications such as autonomous sensing or long-term environmental monitoring. We present here for the first time a novel solid-state nanofiber junction reference electrode (NFJRE) incorporating a junction consisting of poly(methyl methacrylate) and carbon graphene stacked nanofibers. The NFJRE operates by using the membrane polymer junction, which has a very high glass transition temperature (T(g)) and small diffusion coefficient, to control the diffusion of ions, and the carbon nanofibers lower the junction resistance and act as ion-to-electron transducers. The fabrication of the NFJRE is detailed, and its behavior is characterized in terms of its impedance, stability, and behavior in comparison with traditional reference electrodes. The NFJRE showed a response of <5-13 mV toward a variety of electrolyte solutions from 10(-5) to 10(-2) M, <10 mV over a pH range of 2-12, and excellent behavior when used with voltammetric methods.     

Nutrient contribution of breakfast, secular trends, and the role of ready-to-eat cereals: a review of data from the Bogalusa Heart Study

Breakfast consumption has been identified as an important factor in the nutritional well-being of children. Several studies have indicated that omission of breakfast or consumption of an inadequate breakfast is a factor contributing to poor school performance and to dietary inadequacies that are rarely compensated for in other meals of the day. Differences have also been observed in the nutrient density of the breakfast meal, depending on whether it was consumed at school or at home. Ready-to-eat cereals make a significant contribution to the nutritional quality of diets of children and young adults. The Bogalusa Heart Study, which began 25 y ago, is an epidemiologic investigation of cardiovascular risk factors and environmental determinants in a biracial pediatric population. The purpose of this review is to present data from the Bogalusa Heart Study and other studies supporting the statements above.