The Quality Management System of One Polytechnic College

The purpose of this research is to evaluate the Quality Management System of Camarines Sur Polytechnic Colleges (CSPC) as an ISO 9001-2015 certified state college and identify the benefits derived by the college along with its certification. Process owners, teaching and Non-Teaching personnel, and students' perceptions were validated using weighted mean and rank order statistic designs. The study revealed that they were satisfied with the customer focus, leadership, engagement of people, process approach, continual improvement, evidence-based decision-making, and systematic approach to management. As a result of the ISO certification of the college, gained a positive image to the community and raised to competitors' level or even at a higher level, increased the quality of services, and raised staff awareness were among the positive remarks of the college its stakeholders. Identify problems in good time wherein they can be quickly taken to avoid the same mistakes and achieve local, national, and international quality recognition were among the benefits derived by the college as an ISO-certified institution. Using Freidman's test, there is no significant difference in the perceived satisfaction among the three groups of respondents. Although the study shows a remarkable satisfaction rate, a proposed suggested recommendation will make the Quality Management system of the college more vibrant and value-adding.

Examining the Factors Influencing Applicants’ Placement on One General Surgery Program’s Rank Order List

Purpose Surgery residency applications include variables that determine an individual’s rank on a program’s match list. We performed this study to determine which residency application variables are the most impactful in creating our program’s rank order list. Methods We completed a retrospective examination of all interviewed applicants for the 2019 match. We recorded United States Medical Licensing Examinations (USMLE) step I and II scores, class quartile rank from the Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) membership, geographic region, surgery clerkship grade, and grades on other clerkships. The MSPE and letters of recommendation were reviewed by two of the authors and assigned a score of 1 to 3, where 1 was weak and 3 was strong. The same two authors reviewed the assessments from each applicant’s interview and assigned a score from 1-5, where 1 was poor and 5 was excellent. Univariate analysis was performed, and the significant variables were used to construct an adjusted multivariate model with significance measured at P < .05. Results Univariate analysis for all 92 interviewed applicants demonstrated that USMLE step 2 scores ( P = .002), class quartile rank ( P = .004), AOA status ( P = .014), geographic location ( P < .001), letters of recommendation ( P < .001), and interview rating ( P < .001) were significant in predicting an applicant’s position on the rank list. On multivariate analysis only USMLE step 2 ( P = .018) and interview ( P < .001) remained significant. Conclusion USMLE step 2 and an excellent interview were the most important factors in constructing our rank order list. Applicants with a demonstrated strong clinical fund of knowledge that develop a rapport with our faculty and residents receive the highest level of consideration for our program.

Safe Working Cycle: Is It a Panacea to Combat Construction Site Safety Accidents in Hong Kong?

In Hong Kong, the accident statistics of the construction industry is still comparatively higher than other industries. However, accident rates within the industry have significantly decreased, starting from the implementation of diverse safety initiatives, including the Safe Working Cycle (SWC). In this study, a post-positivist philosophical stance was adopted, and a questionnaire survey was launched to gather empirical data on the application of SWC in construction projects, the effectiveness of the safety initiative, and the benefits thereof. The data gathered from 197 construction participants were analysed using descriptive statistics, mean score, Mann–Whitney U-Test, Kendall’s concordance analysis, Chi-square value, Spearman rank-order correlation test and exploratory factor analysis. The findings revealed significant adoption of SWC in the Hong Kong construction industry. Furthermore, daily, weekly, and monthly inspections and supervisions and safety committee meetings are effective items of this safety initiative. The benefits of adopting SWC can be grouped into the safety of frontline workers and increase in the organisation’s safety commitment and reputation. This study has created an excellent theoretical platform for future research work on the usefulness of the SWC in the construction industry at large.

Impression Management and Organizational Citizenship Behaviour of Hotels in Rivers State, Nigeria

This work examined the nexus amongst impression management (IM) and organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) of hotels in Rivers state, Nigeria. A cross-sectional survey was conducted, covering a population of 341 workers (341) from twenty hotels. The study drew a sample size of 181 workers. The study employed a basic random sampling method. Copies of the questionnaire were distributed for data collection. The spearman rank order correlation coefficient was used to analyze the hypotheses. According to the studies, self-promotion and exemplification have a strong correlation with indicators of corporate citizenship behavior. Thus, the study concluded that a well-executed impression management approach in the form of self-promotion and exemplification in hotels would aid in the enhancement of an employee’s altruistic and attentive conduct. The study suggested, among other, that hotel workers employ a diplomatic self-promotion technique of impression management in order to increase the organization’s altruistic behavior.

Measuring dominance certainty and assessing its impact on individual and societal health in a nonhuman primate model: a network approach

The notion of dominance is ubiquitous across the animal kingdom, wherein some species/groups such relationships are strictly hierarchical and others are not. Modern approaches for measuring dominance have emerged in recent years taking advantage of increased computational power. One such technique, named Percolation and Conductance (Perc), uses both direct and indirect information about the flow of dominance relationships to generate hierarchical rank order that makes no assumptions about the linearity of these relationships. It also provides a new metric, known as ‘dominance certainty’, which is a complimentary measure to dominance rank that assesses the degree of ambiguity of rank relationships at the individual, dyadic and group levels. In this focused review, we will (i) describe how Perc measures dominance rank while accounting for both nonlinear hierarchical structure as well as sparsity in data—here we also provide a metric of dominance certainty estimated by Perc, which can be used to compliment the information dominance rank supplies; (ii) summarize a series of studies by our research team reflecting the importance of ‘dominance certainty’ on individual and societal health in large captive rhesus macaque breeding groups; and (iii) provide some concluding remarks and suggestions for future directions for dominance hierarchy research. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies’.

Toward Empowering Conversational Agency in Aphasia: Understanding Mechanisms of Topic Initiation in People With and Without Aphasia

Purpose: This study examined topic initiation (TI) in conversations involving people with aphasia (PWA), matched people without aphasia (M-PWoA), and speech-language pathologists who were their conversation partners (SLP-Ps). For each speaker type, we analyzed patterns of distribution of typical mechanisms of TI and patterns of simultaneous use of multiple TI mechanisms. Lastly, we examined associations between use of simultaneous TI mechanisms and communicative success. Method: Twenty PWA and 20 M-PWoA each participated in two conversations with SLP-Ps. Conversation samples were analyzed for TI locations and mechanisms, with results tallied for each speaker type following a published typology. A measure of communicative success was applied to TI utterances. Rank-order correlations were conducted to evaluate the patterns of distribution of the TI mechanisms between speaker types and the patterns of multiple mechanism usage between speaker types. Descriptive analysis was conducted to provide additional insight to the TI behaviors of each speaker type and to evaluate the relationship between multiple TI mechanisms and communicative success. Results: All speaker types used cohesion most often to achieve TI. PWA used an abrupt method of TI (noncoherent TI) more often than other speaker types. A single mechanism of TI was used most often by all speaker types, except for SLP-Ps when they were in conversations with PWA. In this case, SLP-Ps most often used two or more layered mechanisms of TI. SLP-Ps also used a highly salient TI mechanism with greater frequency when speaking with PWA than observed between other speaker types. When PWA layered mechanisms of TI, they appeared to be more likely to achieve better communicative success. Conclusions: Specific, teachable behaviors such as favoring certain TI mechanisms and using multiple TI mechanisms may improve communicative success during TI for PWA. Furthermore, findings suggest that SLP-Ps modify their TI behaviors when speaking to PWA. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.17699423

Assessment of NSAIDs as potential inhibitors of the fatty acid amide hydrolase I (FAAH-1) using three different primary fatty acid amide substrates in vitro

Background Pain relief remains a major subject of inadequately met need of patients. Therapeutic agents designed to treat pain and inflammation so far have low to moderate efficiencies with significant untoward side effects. FAAH-1 has been proposed as a promising target for the discovery of drugs to treat pain and inflammation without significant adverse effects. FAAH-1 is the primary enzyme accountable for the degradation of AEA and related fatty acid amides. Studies have revealed that the simultaneous inhibition of COX and FAAH-1 activities produce greater pharmacological efficiency with significantly lowered toxicity and ulcerogenic activity. Recently, the metabolism of endocannabinoids by COX-2 was suggested to be differentially regulated by NSAIDs. Methods We analysed the affinity of oleamide, arachidonamide and stearoylamide at the FAAH-1 in vitro and investigated the potency of selected NSAIDs on the hydrolysis of endocannabinoid-like molecules (oleamide, arachidonamide and stearoylamide) by FAAH-1 from rat liver. NSAIDs were initially screened at 500 μM after which those that exhibited greater potency were further analysed over a range of inhibitor concentrations. Results The substrate affinity of FAAH-1 obtained, increased in a rank order of oleamide < arachidonamide < stearoylamide with resultant Vmax values in a rank order of arachidonamide > oleamide > stearoylamide. The selected NSAIDs caused a concentration-dependent inhibition of FAAH-1 activity with sulindac, carprofen and meclofenamate exhibiting the greatest potency. Michaelis-Menten analysis suggested the mode of inhibition of FAAH-1 hydrolysis of both oleamide and arachidonamide by meclofenamate and indomethacin to be non-competitive in nature. Conclusion Our data therefore suggest potential for study of these compounds as combined FAAH-1-COX inhibitors.

Business-Information Technology Alignment and Sustainability of State-Owned Tertiary Institutions in Rivers State, Nigeria

Purpose: This work examined Business-Information Technology Alignment and Sustainability of State-Owned Tertiary Institutions in Rivers State, Nigeria. The objective was to investigate the relationship between strategy-driven alignment and sustainability of state-owned tertiary institutions in Rivers State, Nigeria. Methodology: To achieve this, two research questions and hypotheses were designed to guide the study. The population for this work comprised 1,224 staff between grade level 11 and above in the five state-owned tertiary institutions in Rivers State. The sample size of this study consisted of 302 selected using the Taro-Yamane sampling technique. The instrument for data collection was the questionnaire. The test for the internal regularity of the instrument was conducted using Spearman Rank Order correlation. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions; Statistical Package for Social Science out version 23.0 was used to test the null hypotheses. Findings: It was found that strategy-driven alignment significantly influenced the sustainability of quality service delivery of the state-owned tertiary institutions in Rivers State, Nigeria; the study therefore concluded that adopting the concept of business-information technology alignment will invariably result to sustainability in tertiary institutions. Recommendation: The study recommended among other things that: Federal and state governments as well as tertiary institution’s management should, as a matter of urgency, develop credible strategy-driven alignment approach that will ensure that the unique objectives of the tertiary institutions are derived seamlessly while using IT, that tertiary institution management should fore-handily train all IT staff on the objectives of the institution so that everyone in IT has a visceral understanding of the institutions intention with regards to quality service delivery.

The Grapefruit Flavonoid Naringenin Inhibits Multiple Cardiac Ion Channels

Drinking fresh grapefruit juice is associated with a significant prolongation of the QT segment on the electrocardiogram (ECG) in healthy volunteers. Among the prominent flavonoids contained in citrus fruits, the flavanone naringenin is known to be a blocker of the human ether-a-go-go related gene (hERG) potassium channel. We hypothesized that naringenin could interfere with other major ion channels shaping the cardiac ventricular action potential (AP). To this end, we examined the effects of naringenin on the seven currents comprising the Comprehensive in vitro Pro-Arrhythmia (CiPA) panel for early arrhythmogenic risk assessment in drug discovery and development. We used automated patch-clamp of human ion channels heterologously expressed in mammalian cell lines to evaluate half-maximal inhibitory concentrations (IC50). Naringenin blocked all CiPA currents tested with IC50 values in the 30 µM – 100 µM concentration-range. The rank-order of channel sensitivity was the following: hERG > Kir2.1 > NaV1.5 late > NaV1.5 peak > KV7.1 > KV4.3 > CaV1.2. This multichannel inhibitory profile of naringenin suggests exercising caution when large amounts of grapefruit juice or other citrus juices enriched in this flavanone are drunk in conjunction with QT prolonging drugs or by carriers of congenital long QT syndromes.

Predisposing Factors to Drug Abuse Among In-School Adolescents in Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria

Drug abuse among in-school adolescents is a problem which the government of Nigeria and indeed some other countries are yet to find a lasting solution to. Drug abuse among school children can disrupt the smooth running of teaching and learning in school. One of the ways of solving the problem is by trying to find out what leads in-school adolescents into the act. The objectives of this study were to examine the predisposing factors to drug abuse among in-school adolescents in Kwara State and to examine the influence of the variables of gender, age, religion and level of study on the respondents’ response on the predisposing factors. A descriptive research design was adopted for the study. The population for the study comprised of the adolescents in secondary school and university. A sample of 403 students were selected through a multistage sampling procedure in order to participate in the study. Data was collected via a questionnaire titled ‘Predisposing Factors to Drug Abuse (PFDA)’. The questionnaire was validated by experts in test and measurement design. It has a reliability coefficient of 0.68 which adjudged the instrument to be reliable. Data was analysed with mean, rank order, t-test and analysis of variance. Hypotheses were tested at a 0.05 level of significance. Findings showed that the factors that predispose in-school adolescents to drug abuse were: peer influence, depression, lack of good parental care, low self-esteem, poor academic performance, among other factors. Findings further revealed that age, gender, religion and level of education did not make the respondents differ in their responses on the predisposing factors to drug abuse among in-school adolescents. It is recommended that counsellors, parents and stake holders in education should initiate a serious campaign regarding sensitization against drug abuse. It is also recommended that academic programs should be learner-centred.