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Workplace violence in healthcare settings is on the rise, particularly against nurses. Most healthcare violence research is in acute care settings. The purpose of this paper is to present descriptive findings on the prevalence of types and sources of workplace violence among nurses in different roles (i.e., direct care, leader, educator), specialties, care sectors (i.e., acute, community, long-term care) and geographic contexts (i.e., urban, suburban, rural) within the province of British Columbia (BC), Canada. This is a province-wide survey study using a cross-sectional descriptive, correlational design. An electronic survey was emailed by the provincial union to members across the province in Fall 2019. A total of 4462 responses were analyzed using descriptive and chi-square statistics. The most common types of workplace violence were emotional abuse, threats of assault and physical assault for all nursing roles and contexts. Findings were similar to previous BC research from two decades ago except for two to ten times higher proportions of all types of violence, including verbal and physical sexual assault. Patients were the most common source of violence towards nurses. Nurses should be involved in developing workplace violence interventions that are tailored to work environment contexts and populations.

Background and Aims: Significant stenosis is the principal cause of stable angina but its predictors and their variation by geographical region are unclear.Methods and Results: From the European Calcific Coronary Artery Disease (Euro-CCAD) cohort, we retrospectively investigated 5515 symptomatic patients from northern Europe (Denmark, France, Germany), southern Europe (Italy, Spain) and USA. All had conventional cardiovascular risk factor assessment, angiography and CT scanning for coronary artery calcium (CAC) scoring. There were differences in the patient characteristics between the groups, with the USA patients being younger and having more diet and lifestyle-related risk factors, although hypertension may have been better controlled than in Europe. USA patients had a two-fold increase in prevalence of significant stenosis and a three-fold increase in median CAC score. In all three groups, the log CAC score proved to be the strongest predictor of >50% stenosis followed by male gender. In the USA group, there were no additional independently predictive risk factors, although in northern Europe obesity, hypertension, smoking and hypercholesterolaemia remained predictive, with all risk factors other than hypertension proving to be predictive in the southern Europe group. Without the CAC score as a variable, male gender followed by diabetes were the most important predictors in all three regions, with hypertension also proving predictive in northern Europe.Conclusion: In symptomatic patients, the CAC score and male gender were the two most important predictors of significant stenosis in symptomatic patients in northern and southern Europe and the USA.

Background: Panax notoginseng is a highly valued medicine and functional food, whose quality is considered to be influenced by the size, botanical parts, and growth environments. Methods: In this study, a HPLC method integrating fingerprinting and determination of multiconstituents by single reference standard was established and adopted to investigate the chemical profiles and active constituent contents of 215 notoginseng samples with different sizes, from different botanical parts and geographical regions. Results: Chemical differences among main root, branch root, and rotten root were not distinct, while rhizome and fibrous root could be discriminated from other parts. The notoginseng samples from Wenshan Autonomous Prefecture and cities nearby were similar, whereas samples from cities far away were not. The contents of major active constituents in main root did not correlate with the market price. Conclusion: This study provided comprehensive chemical evidence for the rational usage of different parts, sizes, and growth regions of notoginseng in practice. Keywords: chemical profile, geographical region, HPLC fingerprinting, multivariate analysis, Panax notoginseng

Background: Delivery of maternal health care services is a major challenge to the health system in developing countries. Provision of antenatal care (ANC) services is the major function of public health delivery system in India to improve maternal health outcomes and its impact on maternal morbidity and mortality. Studies are lack in documenting variation in utilization of ANC services between geographical regions of Andhra Pradesh (AP). Objective: The objective of this study is to assess variation in utilization of ANC services stratified by geographical region, type of delivery and determinants of utilization of ANC services in AP. Methodology: It is a cross-sectional study of District Level Household and Facility Survey-4 of the state of AP. Multistage, stratified and probability proportional to size sample with replacement was used. Around 3982 women who delivered after the year 2007 were considered for analysis. Binomial logistic regression was carried out to determine association of demographic, system level variables with adequate ANC. Results: Study reveals wide variation across four regions of AP in utilization of ANC services. Reception of adequate ANC was low in Rayalaseema region (27.9%) and high in North-coastal region (42.4%). The utilization of private health facilities for ANC services were highest in South-coastal region (73.2%) and lowest in North-coastal region (43.2%). Conclusion: Policy measures are to be adopted and implemented by government to address the demand-supply imbalance such as public health infrastructure and quality of services in underperforming districts of AP and to increase outreach of current programs by engaging communities.

The aim of this paper is to provide evidence about the financial performance that the companies that are listed on a regular market obtained. The financial performance can be influenced by individual characteristic of the entity, like: size, indebtedness ratio, and liquidity ratio, type of the auditor, the industry where they act or other particular features. The research was conducted upon the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BSE). It took into consideration the entities that have to report their individual financial statements under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). This regulation is compulsory for entities that are admitted for listing on a regular market from 2012. The study provides proper evidence about the factors that influence the entities’ performance. Both quantitative and qualitative measures were taken into consideration. The qualitative elements were quantified using dummy variables (the development region, the type of auditor, the specialization field, the case in which major shareholder has more than 50% of the shares). The results emphasize the important of several variables (i.e. the company's size, the region where the entity acts, the company's indebtedness ratio, and the company's age) that have significantly influenced, both in a positive and a negative way, the financial performance. Considering the area in which the company is specialized, no reliable information was detected. It seems that neither return on equity, neither return on assets, neither cash flow from operation divided by total assets are reliable financial measure though which the influence of specialization can be properly reflected. Considering geographical regions, companies from nord - west region and from the west region do obtained a lower financial performance that that that it's obtained if the company act in other development region.

Through presenting the main axes in this study, it is clear that identifying a precise concept of industrial development is related to a wider idea of development. Despite that, the geographical view gives a wider and more comprehensive concept of the industrial development. Moreover, balanced spatial development is closely related to industrial and agricultural development within the space of a geographical region. Industry and agriculture represent productive activities which form the economic basis for a region. Industrial development is the most important tool which is used in developing rural areas. Moreover, industrial development has a great role in developing other activities, especially services in a region. This is done through the capability of industry to provide requirements of other activities and absorb labour force surplus from other economic sectors. In addition, the industry sector increases economic revenues for the region and raises the individuals’ incomes. Strategies of achieving industrial development spatially differ from region to region. This relates to a group of variables, such as political and economic conditions in a region, its development, as well as size of industrial investments. However, accomplishing industrial development spatially requires putting appropriate developmental strategies which conform with a region’s development level and available industrial investments, particularly, in underdeveloped regions with limited financial resources. These regions need to be identified as the most underdeveloped ones in order to attract industrial investments according to the unparalleled spatial development model. What should be taken into consideration is focus on adopting the modern technological development of industry in the field of spatially achieved industrial development through providing appropriate spatial elements. This should be followed by the distribution of modern industrial projects of large production capacity which exploit ideally the available geographical qualifications to attain big economic revenues that supports and develop other economic activities. This is reflected positively in the balanced spatial development of a geographical region

Per capita income disparities, particularly evident between developed and less developed countries, are of noticeable importance even amongst the regions of the European Union and do not seem to reduce their extent following the predictions of the neoclassical model, despite the high degree of openness typical of regional economies. The empirical analysis of convergence among regions confronts two problems that, if not correctly addressed, can reduce the validity of the results. The first concerns the definition of region. Very often, in fact, empirical analyses within a regional context make use of the available data for administrative regions without adequately considering the consequent results of this choice. The second problem is related to the nature of the growth process. The methodology followed by the vast majority of researchers, i.e., cross-sectional regression, is based on the hypothesis of a growth process characterised by a smooth path towards a steady-state. As some authors have demonstrated empirically that this underlying hypothesis is invalid, it is interesting to develop an alternative methodology the results of which are not subject to this restrictive hypothesis on the growth process. The methodology suggested in this study focuses directly on the cross-sectional distribution of per capita income, modelling the growth process as a time homogeneous Markov chain. The methodology is then applied to per capita income data for 122 EU functional regions over the period 1979–1990.

International audience; The first step in the evaluation of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) applications is based on simulations. The quality of those simulations not only depends on the accuracy of the network model but also on the degree of reality of the underlying mobility model. VehILux-a recently proposed vehicular mobility model, allows generating realistic mobility traces using traffic volume count data. It is based on the concept of probabilistic attraction points. However, this model does not address the question of how to select the best values of the probabilities associated with the points. Moreover, these values depend on the problem instance (i.e. geographical region). In this article we demonstrate how genetic algorithms (GAs) can be used to discover these probabilities. Our approach combined together with VehILux and a traffic simulator allows to generate realistic vehicular mobility traces for any region, for which traffic volume counts are available. The process of the discovery of the probabilities is represented as an optimisation problem. Three GAs-generational GA, steady-state GA, and cellular GA-are compared. Computational experiments demonstrate that using basic evolutionary heuristics for optimising VehILux parameters on a given problem instance permits to improve the model realism. However, in some cases, the results significantly deviate from real traffic count data. This is due to the route generation method of the VehILux model, which does not take into account specific behaviour of drivers in rush hours.

Aims To examine the prevalence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) and its associated factors in a multinational population with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and prior cardiovascular disease (CVD). Methods The LEADER trial randomized 9340 participants—81.3% with prior CVD at baseline. CKD was defined as estimated GFR 2 and/or an albumin-to-creatinine ratio ≥3.0mg/mmol. Results At baseline, 51.9% of participants with prior CVD had CKD. CKD prevalence was highest in Asia (75.8%) and lowest in Europe (43.7%) and the Middle East (43.4%). Baseline factors associated with increased CKD prevalence included increased age, HbA 1c , diabetes duration, systolic blood pressure or triglyceride levels; greater number of antihypertensive medications; living in Asia, the Americas or Africa versus Europe; being male; and not receiving oral antidiabetic drugs (most receiving insulin), beta-blockers or ACE inhibitors. Factors associated with decreased CKD prevalence included increased diastolic blood pressure, no diuretic treatment and prior myocardial infarction, angina or stroke. Conclusions CKD prevalence is high among patients with T2DM and prior CVD. Advanced age, long diabetes duration, poor glycemic control, comorbidities and medications used are associated with CKD. Our results strengthen the rationale for early screening and interventions for CKD in patients with T2DM and prior CVD.