Professional Preparation: Faculty Practices for NCLEX-RN® Success

Davis proposed that there are three overlapping phases of a caring relationship to NCLEX-RN® preparation, grounded in Peplau’s theory. Faculty members’ perspectives on successful strategies related to NCLEX-RN® results were explored using semistructured phone interviews. Faculty perspectives were categorized under external support structures and internal collaborative processes. The results indicate that a multifaceted collaborative approach using commercial testing products and program evaluation is the best approach.

The Human Touch in Kitchen Technology: How Technology Changes Our Relationship with Food in the Rational and Ritual Kitchen

The kitchen is the visible cultural manifestation of the technology human beings employ to store, prepare and eat food. Those who look at the history of kitchens will see two approaches for kitchen design that have determined the influence of technology on our relationship with storing, preparing and consuming food in the private households: the technological-rational kitchen and the social-ritual kitchen. The technological-rational kitchen had both a commercial and a social objective: it functions as a commercial testing ground for the latest technologies and materials, but it had its origins in the disappearance of domestic servants. The rational kitchen is first and foremost a commercial, technological vision of the future that affirms prevailing social conventions. Some architects, designers and artists have reflected critically on the overly tech-driven design approaches and come up with alternatives more attuned to the ritualistic relationship between human beings and food. Despite the promise of physical convenience and time saving, the rational kitchen deprives people of the pleasure and knowledge of cooking. For most daily users, the kitchen is not an optimal cooking workspace from which human beings are banned, but a social, ritualistic meeting place.

Atypical Genotypes for Canine Agouti Signaling Protein Suggest Novel Chromosomal Rearrangement

Canine coat color is a readily observed phenotype of great interest to dog enthusiasts; it is also an excellent avenue to explore the mechanisms of genetics and inheritance. As such, multiple commercial testing laboratories include basic color alleles in their popular screening panels, allowing for the creation of genotyped datasets at a scale not before appreciated in canine genetic research. These vast datasets have revealed rare genotype anomalies that encourage further exploration of color and pattern inheritance. We previously reported the simultaneous presence of greater than two allele variants at the Agouti Signaling Protein (ASIP) locus in a commercial genotype cohort of 11,790 canids. Here we present additional data to characterize the occurrence of anomalous ASIP genotypes. We document the detection of combinations of three or four ASIP allele variants in 17 dog breeds and Dingoes, at within-breed frequencies of 1.32–63.34%. We analyze the potential impact on phenotype that these allele combinations present, and propose mechanisms that could account for the findings, including: gene recombination, duplication, and incorrect causal variant identification. These findings speak to the accuracy of industry-wide protocols for commercial ASIP genotyping and imply that ASIP should be analyzed via haplotype, rather than using only the existing allele hierarchy, in the future.

Comparative Review of the Features of Automated Software Testing Tools

<span>Software testing is considered to be one of the most important processes in software development for it verifies if the system meets the user requirements and specification. Manual testing and automated testing are two ways of conducting software testing. Automated testing gives software testers the ease to automate the process of software testing thus considered more effective when time, cost and usability are concerned. There are a wide variety of automated testing tools available, either open source or commercial. This paper provides a comparative review of features of open source and commercial testing tools that may help users to select the appropriate software testing tool based on their requirements.</span>

Research: Ensuring Cavitation in a Medical Device Ultrasonic Cleaner

Background: Ultrasonic cleaners are used for fine cleaning of medical devices, removing soil from joints, crevices, lumens, and other areas that are difficult to clean using other methods. To accomplish this fine cleaning, ultrasonic cleaners use a process known as cavitation. To understand the function of the cavitation process on items that require enhanced cleaning, a study was conducted to determine whether four commercially available products claiming to test for cavitation actually detect cavitation activity. Methods: Each of the products selected for the study were placed into a Mason jar containing cleaning solution at temperatures of 77°F (25°C) and 100°F (38°C), with no cavitation energy generated. The jars were agitated by vigorous manual shaking for five seconds (one time per minute for 15 minutes) by the same operator. The results of the commercial testing products were interpreted according to manufacturers' instructions for use and recorded following the 15-minute agitation process. Each test was repeated three times. Results: Three of the four commercially available tests claiming to detect cavitation were demonstrated to not be specific to cavitation. Each of the three tests satisfied the criteria for passing when in the absence of cavitation. Conclusion: Cavitation is an important and necessary function of all ultrasonic cleaners. The results of the study clearly demonstrate that even when no cavitation is being produced, certain tests will still provide results indicating the presence of cavitation. Those tests do not distinguish between cavitation energy and the other parameters in an ultrasonic cleaner.

Supercapacitor based PV measurement technique − quality assessment with poly-Si PV modules at IIEST, Kolkata

Supercapacitors have been used for the first time as load to PV cell/modules for characterizing their behavior. In this paper, a novel and essentially simple design of a V–I plotter is attempted with a bank of super capacitors (SC) as the load to the PV modules of varying capacities. The distinct advantages of the SC's over the erstwhile capacitors have been comparatively experimented. Finally, an elaborate regression analysis (RA) of principal electrical parameters have yielded consistently high values exceeding 0.993 experimental evaluation of quality parameters like fill-factor (FF) and performance ratio (PR) have yielded a range of 70–79% while PR values frequently ranges from 90% to 99%. Suitability of poly-Si PV modules at the level of PV panel configurations have been ascertained through experimental estimate of series and parallel relative power loss (RPL) values. Typical values below 2% obtained for widely varying climatic level is also a quality indicator for the new metrology in question. Such a prototype I–V plotter is expected to be duly considered for commercial testing applications in PV industries.