Includes bibliographical references. / Coordinating and organising divergent stakeholders to undertake action to improve a shared situation of concern is an increasingly perplexing problem. Industry, government and academia operate in siloes, make decisions at different speeds, have disparate worldviews and value sets, and do not share the same priorities and concerns. Whilst meetings between these stakeholders are not uncommon, progressing these conversations beyond ‘talk’ to achieve commitment to act, requires purposeful effort. This study investigates the persistent and relevant problem of how to design purposeful action, in a ‘wicked’ problem situation that cannot be solved by any one stakeholder operating alone, and in which the stakeholders do not share the same interpretation of the problem situation. Although such situations are common in cluster development, the literature on cluster development does not offer solutions as to how to design purposeful action, nor does it provide insight as to why attempts to intervene in systemic problems can result in a failure to improve the problem situation.

Information Systems in generally acknowledged to be a complex field and many studies over time have quoted significant failure statistics. This paper seeks to answer the question - How to more appropriately evaluate and select information systems design (ISD) methods that better enable successful design outcomes. The research covers literature relating analysis and design, information systems design methods, complexity, ontology and conceptual modelling and how they relate to ISD. This research was conducted within a larger national research project aiming to improve organising practices within IT in organisations. To this end the research followed a participatory action research approach underpinned by systems thinking theoretical perspective. What emerged out of this study was the appreciation for the bricolage that takes during an analysis or design effort - this perspective highlighted the following factors that can enable improved method evaluation and selection, namely: Epistemology, Contextual Influences and Social Action. These factors are shown to operate in dialectic process that if engaged with can provide insight into what an appropriate method can be.

Bacteria are remarkably adaptable organisms with an innate ability to circumvent damage if exposed to a toxic environment. Antimicrobial-resistant bacteria are present worldwide, and many common infections are becoming more difficult to treat. Continued resistance is rapidly eliminating treatment options for patients, and the cost burden to treat a multidrug-resistant infection is climbing. Owing to the substantial costs associated with drug development, the introduction of novel antibiotics has lagged behind the increase in bacterial resistance. To address this crisis, pharmacists can take an active role in antimicrobial stewardship and foster understanding of how bacteria evade even the strongest available antimicrobial agents.

Inositol is a 6-carbon sugar alcohol that has been shown in limited studies to reduce retinopathy of prematurity and chronic lung disease in premature newborns. Developmentally it has a high concentration in the fetus that decreases with gestational age. It is transported from the fetus to the mother across the placenta. Although studies are underway to determine inositol kinetics in premature newborns treated therapeutically, the effects of gestational age, age after birth, and feeding on inositol concentrations after birth have not been studied adequately in premature newborns. Such studies would minimize blood removal and trauma in preterm newborns by using plasma samples scavenged from the clinical laboratory to measure inositol after birth, if they remain stable. This report describes a new high pressure liquid chromatographic assay for inositol and its use to study the stability of inositol in conditions of storage that might be encountered within the clinical laboratory. The assay is linear from 0 to 1000 Mm with a lower limit of quantitation of 50 μM. Inositol in human plasma remains stable in refrigeration and at room temperature for up to 14 days and is not affected by storage in red blood cells that are intact or lysed. Anticoagulants encountered in clinical blood samples do not interfere with the chromatograms. Thus, it is feasible to measure the changes in inositol concentrations in plasma from preterm newborns that is scavenged from the clinical laboratory after storage for as long as 14 days.

No description available.

Thesis (M.H.A.)--University of Michigan, 1963.

Thesis (M.H.A.)--University of Michigan, 1963.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed June 30, 2007). Includes bibliographical references (p. 86-90).

The Streetscapes Project is a photographic and journalistic documentation of ten street-based people's stories from Cape Town, South Africa. The subjects of the project are employed by Khulisa Social Solutions, a non-profit organisation (NPO) that adopts a systemic approach to breaking the cycle of crime and poverty. Streetscapes falls under two of the NPO's eleven programmes, i.e. the offender rehabilitation & reintegration programme and the diversion programme, and includes five social enterprises with the urban garden project in Roeland Street, Cape Town, being one of it. Through narratives and research this project shows how street-based people are highly motivated to work and rebuild their lives, and that having a job means more than simply earning an income to them – it provides them with self-worth, dignity and a source of hope. Beyond the documentation of their personal stories the project also explores the larger structural and systemic barriers surrounding the broader issue of homelessness in the city, including access to shelter services, among others. Ultimately, this project aims to debunk stereotypes about street-based people and enlighten the public about the challenges they face when living on the streets.

Current literature regarding quality health services frequently identifies interprofessional collaboration (IPC) as essential to patient-centred care, sustainable health systems, and a productive workforce. The IPC literature tends to focus on interprofessionalism and collaboration and pays little attention to the concept of practice, which is thought to be a represented world of objects and processes that have pre-given characteristics practitioners can know cognitively and apply or manage correctly. Many strategies intended to support IPC simplify and codify the complex, contested, and unpredictable day-to-day interactions among interdependent agents that I argue constitute the practices of a community. These strategies are based in systems thinking, which understand the system as distinct from experience and subject to rational, linear logic. In this thinking, a leader can step outside of the system to develop an ideal plan, which is then implemented to unfold the predetermined ideal future. However, changes in health services and healthcare practices are often difficult to enact and sustain.This thesis problematises the concept of ‘practice’, and claims practices as thoroughly social and emergent phenomenon constituted by interdependent and iterative processes of representation (policies and practice guidelines), signification (sense making through negotiation and reflective and reflexive practices), and improvisation (acting into the circumstances that present at the point and in the moments of care). I argue that local and population-wide patterns are negotiated and iteratively co-expressed through relations of power, values, and identity. Moreover, practice (including the practice of leadership or consulting) is inherently concerned with ethics, which I also formulate as both normative and social/relational in nature. I argue that theory and practice are not separate but paradoxical phenomena that remain in generative tension, which in healthcare is often felt as tension between what we should do (best practice) and what we actually do (best possible practice in the contingent circumstances we find ourselves in). I articulate the implications this has for how knowledge and knowing are understood, how organisations change, and how the role of an internal practice consultant is understood. An important implication is that practice-based evidence and evidence-based practice are iterative and coexpressed(not sequential), and while practice is primordial, it is not privileged over theory.I propose that a practice consultant could usefully become a temporary participant in the practices of a particular community. Through a position of ‘involved detachment’, a consultant can more easily notice and articulate the practices of a community that for participants are most often implicit and taken for granted. Reflective and reflexive consideration of what is taken for granted may change conversations and thus be transformative.