Developing a quality measure to assess use of antibiotic medications for respiratory conditions.

Objective: Antibiotics are essential medications for treating life-threatening infections. However, incorrect prescribing can lead to adverse events and contribute to antibiotic resistance. We sought to develop a utilization quality measure that could be used by health insurance plans to track overall prescribing for respiratory conditions.

Hydraulic investigation of the impact of retrofitting floating treatment wetlands in retention ponds.

This paper describes the laboratory experimental investigations undertaken to analyse the influence of floating treatment wetlands (FTWs) on the hydraulic performance of a stormwater retention pond. Two experimental series were conducted, each focussed on investigating the influence of placing an FTW in a pond with firstly the inflow entering the retention pond from an inlet positioned 0.25 m offset from the longitudinal axis of the pond, and secondly the inlet positioned at the longitudinal axis of the pond.

Description of Pharmacist Recommendations in the Caring for Older Adults and Caregivers at Home (COACH) Program.

To describe recommendations made by geriatric clinical pharmacists within an innovative care model focusing on patients with dementia living at home. Retrospective chart review. Outpatients in a tertiary care Veterans Affairs health care system.

Stream Temperature Modeling and Fiber Optic Temperature Sensing to Characterize Groundwater Discharge.

The Ngongotaha Stream was used as a case study to assess the applicability of fiber optic distributed temperature sensing (FODTS) to identify the location of springs and quantify their discharge. Thirteen springs were identified, mostly located within a 115 m reach, five discharged from the right bank and eight from the left bank. To quantify groundwater discharge, a new approach was developed in which the one-dimensional transient heat transport model was fitted to the FODTS measurements, where the main calibration parameters of interest were the unknown spring discharges.

Experimental investigation of the effect of temperature differentials on hydraulic performance and flow pattern of a sediment retention pond.

Existing studies on sediment retention ponds (SRPs) have examined the effects of pond layout, inlet and outlet geometry and the installation of baffles on the performance of the SRPs. However, the effects of a temperature difference between the ambient water in the pond and the inflow are often neglected, and the buoyancy forces arising from these differences in temperature can potentially change the flow in the pond and hence its hydraulic performance. This study has experimentally evaluated the effect of these temperature differences on the flow field and residence time in a retention pond for a range of temperature differences.