The purpose of this study was to determine if obese patients have a different sensory regression time from subarachnoid block than non-obese patients using hyperbaric 0.75% bupivacaine. A quasi-experimental design was used. Twenty patients were separated into two groups; one group was classified as obese, and the other group was classified as non-obese. The data consisting of age, height, weight, sex, and surgical procedure were recorded preoperatively. All the patients received hyperbaric 0.75% bupivacaine via subarachnoid puncture. The levels of spinal anesthesia were recorded at the highest level achieved. The injection time was also recorded. When the surgery was completed, the patient was transferred to the recovery room and levels of sensory blockade were checked by pin-prick with an 18-gauge needle every 10 minutes until complete recovery from the spinal anesthesia had been achieved. The hypothesis, there will be no difference in sensory regression time from SAB with hyperbaric 0.75% bupivacaine between obese and non-obese patients, failed to be rejected. No statistically significant difference, using linear regression analysis, was found in mean regression time between groups (obese versus non-obese).

Seven orthopedic surgery patients requiring the use of a tourniquet were studied. The hypothesis stated that tourniquet application does not affect coagulation. A total of 5 blood samples were drawn perioperatively (preoperative, 5 minutes after induction of anesthesia, 30 minutes after tourniquet inflation, 2 - 5 minutes after tourniquet deflation, and 30 minutes after tourniquet deflation. For each sample, TEG parameters (R, R + k, MA and α) were measured. The value for each TEG parameter was compared by analysis of variance (ANOVA), then the samples were contrasted and examined by repeated measures ANOVA. None of the TEG parameters showed a statistically significant difference in the blood samples before, during or after tourniquet application. The hypothesis could not be rejected at the α = .05 level of significance. A t test was used to examine the effect of anesthesia on coagulation. The TEG parameters indicated a significant relationship between the TEG values R and R + k, and a near significant relationship between TEG values MA and a and the administration of anesthesia. It was concluded that tourniquet use does not effect coagulation when applied 2 hours or less. However, anesthesia had a significant effect on TEG parameters R and R + k. The clinical significance of this effect was questionable since the type of anesthesia varied in some patients, and none of the patients in the study demonstrated symptoms of coagulopathy.

Although household archaeology has been around for a number of years now, it has been slow to truly catch on as a way to learn something about the people of ancient Israel as a whole. Many archaeologists historically were only interested in the monumental architecture like: “palatial and storage complexes, cultic complexes, cemeteries, and fortification systems” (Hardin 2011:12). Archaeologists have realized that studying the basic housing and activity areas of the people that inhabit cities and the outlying areas lead them to have a greater understanding of what is really happening on a day-to-day basis. Understanding what is happening in a small family’s daily life provides information about how the society as a whole might be working. While household archaeology can be studied anywhere by essentially the same methods that will be used in this thesis, my focus will be on the Iron Age II of the southern Levant.

The purpose of this research is to determine an appropriate nurse staffing strategy for the Intermediate Care Unit (ICU) and the Critical Care Unit (CCU) of the Emergency Department at York Hospital in York, Pennsylvania. This strategy must adhere to certain administrative policies while keeping patient waiting times within allowable limits. Determining the proper number of resources in an emergency department is a difficult problem because while assistance must be provided without delay at any time, the available resources are restricted by the hospital budget. This research involves simulating the operations of the Emergency Department at York Hospital using the software package Arena 7.0 to evaluate how the system is impacted by various nurse staffing strategies. A microcomputer-based decision support system (DSS) for nurse scheduling that was first developed by Sitompul in 1991 has been implemented using Turbo Pascal 6.0 to generate twenty possible nurse staffing plans. The best alternative staffing plan has been evaluated by the simulation model to determine its effect on waiting times for patients. Specifically, patients are divided into five ESI levels, where ESI-1 patients are the most serious and ESI-5 patients are the least serious, and waiting times are provided for each patient type. While the DSS approach is useful in generating specific working schedules that are acceptable to the nurses' requirements, it is limited when developing an overall staffing plan. Specifically, the DSS requires a user-defined ratio of nurses working the various shifts, and this ratio must remain constant throughout each month even if patient arrival rates are known to be time dependent. As an alternative approach, OptQuest for Arena was employed to search for an overall nurse staffing plan. After providing Arena with 50 DSS-generated schedules that satisfy the nurses' requirements, OptQuest was used to determine the best schedule for each nurse to follow in order to minimize the average waiting time in the system for patients. Although the average waiting time obtained by the OptQuest staffing plan decreased from the current staffing plan for all patient types, a paired-t comparison determined using Arena's Output Analyzer indicated no statistical difference (at the 95% confidence level) between the DSS and OptQuest scenarios, in terms of the average waiting time for ESI-1 and ESI-2 patients. Further analysis indicated that a system bottleneck occurred in the triage area of the emergency department during evening hours. After adding one additional triage nurse in the evening shift, the OptQuest-generated staffing plan was re-evaluated. The results indicate that the suggested staffing plan reduced the average waiting time in the current staffing plan by 34.33%, 32.73%, 47.87%, 54.92%, and 52.41% for ESI-1, ESI-2, ESI-3, ESI-4, and ESI-5 patients, respectively. In addition, the average waiting time of ESI-1, ESI-2, ESI-3, ESI-4, and ESI-5 patients for the suggested staffing plan was 19.27%, 19.36%, 39.37%, 48.55%, and 46.64%, respectively, less than for the staffing plan determined when using the DSS approach alone. / Master of Science

This dissertation uncovers three previously unrecognized innovations of Thomas Jeckyll in the Peacock Room. At the same time, the dissertation admits that sometimes James McNeill Whistler chose a more conventional path in the design of the room than previously acknowledged. The dissertation illuminates the often overlooked principle of Classical Decor, first described in the first century BC by Vitruvius, and analyzes how it was instituted in the Peacock Room. Four major points illustrate this conclusion. First, the meaning of the sunflower in the West is explored to account for the flower’s popularity and absorption into ancient heliotropic lore. Thomas Moore’s poetry may have inspired Aesthetic Movement designers such as Jeckyll to use the motif. Second, this dissertation demonstrates that the Peacock Room is only a distant descendant of the traditional European porcelain chamber. It was a new idea to turn the porcelain chamber into a dining room. Further, the room lacks two of the three key features of a porcelain room: lacquer panels and large plate-glass mirrors. When Whistler made the surfaces of this room dark and glossy, he made the room more traditional, aligning it with the customary lacquer paneling of porcelain rooms. And Jeckyll’s sho-dana shelving system in the Leyland dining room was without precedent in porcelain or other kinds of Western rooms, with influences from Japan and China. Third, Decor in the dining room was revealed as an established pattern in eating rooms from Ancient Roman triclinia to the present day. Fourth, Decor is present in the Peacock Room in four ways: in the trappings of the table used to decorate a dining room, in the darkness of this dining room, in the use of a foodstuff, the peacock, to decorate the room, and in the hearth’s sunflowers. Through the lens of the history of Western domestic interiors, significant innovations by Jeckyll have been brought to light, and the meaning of specific elements in the Peacock Room has been elucidated. Jeckyll and Whistler gave the world a sensational story in the Peacock Room but also a complex work of art that is only beginning to be illuminated.

We report a large enhancement of thermally injected spin current in normal metal (NM)/antiferromagnet (AF)/yttrium iron garnet (YIG), where a thin AF insulating layer of NiO or CoO can enhance the spin current from YIG to a NM by up to a factor of 10. The spin current enhancement in NM/AF/YIG, with a pronounced maximum near the Neel temperature of the thin AF layer, has been found to scale linearly with the spin-mixing conductance at the NM/YIG interface for NM = 3d, 4d, and 5d metals. Calculations of spin current enhancement and spin mixing conductance are qualitatively consistent with the experimental results.

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