The effectiveness of job specific training on the occupational performance of student nurses

Body mechanic checklist scores during a one-person pivot transfer, and boosting up in bed were evaluated to determine the effectiveness of training on the work performance of female student nurses from a local college. Thirty subjects participated in the study and were divided into a control group, an experimental group that received basic body mechanic training, and an experimental group that received job specific training. A one-way ANCOVA was calculated to examine the effects of the experimental procedures on the subjects' performance. This revealed a statistically significant difference between the groups (patient transfer F = 10.11, p value < 0.001; boosting F = 38.62, p value < 0.001). A post hoc analysis (Bonferroni procedure) indicated that the job specific training group (mean 11.65, SD 0.66) demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in their performance compared to the other two groups (control group mean 7.5, SD 0.67; BBMT mean 9.66, SD 0.67).     

Bear ye one another’s genetic burdens: the price of diversity and complexity

Genetic variability and diversity are the result of a mutation-selection balance that acts permanently within and between species. The presence of deleterious mutations is a necessary consequence of this process and thus “the price paid by a species for its capacity for further evolution” (Haldane 1937, Am Nat 71:337–349). Recent estimations of mutation rate in the human lineage has revived the debate as to whether the high number of deleterious mutations poses a severe problem for the future of mankind. Theoretical considerations allow a scenario in which the survival of the human race is maintained by truncation selection of deleterious mutations that removes as many mutations as appear anew in every generation. In this case our genetic burden is carried by those individuals that suffer a genetic death resulting from random distribution of deleterious alleles. Nevertheless, one has to ask whether the mutation rate may set absolute limits on the complexity of a species.     

Optimal estimation of a finite population mean under generalized random permutation models

Employing certain generalized random permutation models and a general class of linear estimators of a finite population mean, it is shown that many of the conventional estimators are “optimal” in the sense of minimum average mean square error. Simple proofs are provided by using a well-known theorem on UMV estimation. The results also cover certain simple response error situations.     

Government policies towards innovation: A review of empirical findings

Since the Second World War, governments in Western mixed economies have become increasingly involved in promoting technical innovation in industry. The analytical basis for this involvement is deficient, as is empirical information and analysis on its effects. But it is probable that, from an economic viewpoint, governments have been mistaken in supplementing normal industrial activity by financing large-scale development projects in technically sophisticated industry. They should instead be financing longer-term basic and applied research, as well as increasing technical awareness in more traditional industries. More needs to be known about the factors affecting innovative decisions in industrial firms, including the effects of industry-specific characteristics and of government policies.     

Aesthetics and the Artistic Career: A Study of Anomie in Fine-Art Painting*

This is an empirical study of the relationship between aesthetic evaluation, collective action, and artistic success. Documentary evidence is examined to show that the initial artistic success of Jackson Pollock, the leading painter in the early years of Abstract Expressionism, was not due to coherent aesthetic evaluation by the New York art world. Secondary sources are then reviewed and it is suggested that Pollock's rise to artistic preeminence was brought about directly by collective action in the form of a promotional campaign on the part of a small, but influential, group of actors closely associated with the artist.     

On rates of convergence to infinitely divisible laws for dependent random variables

Large O and small o approximations of the expected value of a class of functions (modified K-functional and Lipschitz class) of the normalized partial sums of dependent random variables by the expectation of the corresponding functions of infinitely divisible random variables have been established. As a special case, we have obtained rates of convergence to the Stable Limit Laws and to the Weak Laws of Large Numbers. The technique used is the conditional version of the operator method of Trotter and the Taylor expansion.