8,640 research outputs found

    The experience of financial stress among emerging adult cancer survivors.

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    Objective: The experience of cancer-related financial stress was examined within the developmental context of emerging adulthood.Methodological approach: This study is a secondary analysis of data drawn from two samples of testicular or hematologic cancer survivors. In-depth interviews from 52 emerging adult (EA) cancer survivors, ages 18-29, were coded by combining thematic analysis with an abductive approach.Findings: Emergent themes included some common to most age groups, including worries about medical costs and availability of health insurance, as well as specific age-related concerns, such as fertility preservation. Financial stress appeared to interrupt developmental tasks of emerging adulthood, including completing an education, establishing independence, and managing relationships. Surprisingly, financial stress was experienced as a benefit for some participants.Conclusion: Financial stress affects EA cancer survivors in unique ways. To provide support, health professionals should consider survivors' developmental life stage to understand their financial stress, and ultimately, to improve quality of life

    The phenomenon of the gender gap among gifted students: the situation in Italy based on analysis of results in mathematics competitions

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    This paper deals with the gender gap phenomenon as displayed by Italian students participating in mathematical competitions-gifted students. In particular, the results obtained by the entire student population participating in district competitions from 2017 to 2020 were analysed. The combined analysis of the competition results and of the final questionnaire allowed us to highlight and deepen possible causes of the gender gap. It has been observed that girls underestimate themselves, sometimes giving up participating in competitions. Particularly, during the upper secondary school years, increasingly fewer girls choose to attend mathematical competitions. Analysing the results, although the percentage of correct answers between the two genders is fairly similar, the rate of girls who prefer not to answer to avoid mistakes is higher than that of boys

    Wilson Fermions and Axion Electrodynamics in Optical Lattices

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    The formulation of massless relativistic fermions in lattice gauge theories is hampered by the fundamental problem of species doubling, namely, the rise of spurious fermions modifying the underlying physics. A suitable tailoring of the fermion masses prevents such abundance of species, and leads to the so-called Wilson fermions. Here we show that ultracold atoms provide us with the first controllable realization of these paradigmatic fermions, thus generating a quantum simulator of fermionic lattice gauge theories. We describe a novel scheme that exploits laser-assisted tunneling in a cubic optical superlattice to design the Wilson fermion masses. The high versatility of this proposal allows us to explore a variety of interesting phases in three-dimensional topological insulators, and to test the remarkable predictions of axion electrodynamics.Comment: RevTex4 file, color figures, slightly longer than the published versio

    Understanding the value of net metering outcomes for different averaging time steps

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    The installation of distributed energy resources (DER) heavily impacts on the power patterns of the prosumers. In fact, the variability of the generation, together with the technical characteristics of the storage systems, may introduce a huge variety in the shape of the net power curves seen from the point of common coupling (PCC). This leads to completely rethink the definition of the time series required to create homogeneous group of prosumers, for providing useful tools to manage the emerging paradigms in the electricity system, such as energy communities and local energy markets. Moreover, the differences between the local energy production and consumption at the PCC could become hidden, if the local energy management has to be considered as a private decision of the local user. In this case, only net metering (that implies a unique measurement of the net electricity taken from the grid) will be used to evaluate the impact on the network of the net power curves. Hence, new approaches are required to properly measure the electricity exchange at the PCC. This paper addresses how the net metering outcomes depend on the time resolution of the measured data, and how the information taken from net metering can be valued by giving different price rates to positive and negative values. Specific examples are provided to remark the importance of the time resolution to properly characterise the prosumers

    Impact of the time resolution for data gathering on loss calculation and demand side flexibility

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    Accurate data metering is needed for enabling demand side flexibility and the related services. Sufficient resolution in time of the data gathered is essential to obtain detailed information on how consumers and prosumers use electricity. This paper addresses two specific points concerning the effects of the time resolution on (i) the estimation of the network losses, and (ii) the assessment of the average power peak magnitude and duration. Specific indicators are introduced to estimate the losses and assess the peak power based on the load pattern shape. These effects are analysed based on examples taken from real measurements. The results clearly show that the time resolutions used today (from 15 min to 1 hour) are insufficient to perform effective assessments oriented to enhance demand side flexibility. Interval metering with better resolutions (1 min or less) or innovative technologies such as event-driven energy metering should be used to provide significantly better solutions

    Heuristic optimization of electrical energy systems: Refined metrics to compare the solutions

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    Many optimization problems admit a number of local optima, among which there is the global optimum. For these problems, various heuristic optimization methods have been proposed. Comparing the results of these solvers requires the definition of suitable metrics. In the electrical energy systems literature, simple metrics such as best value obtained, the mean value, the median or the standard deviation of the solutions are still used. However, the comparisons carried out with these metrics are rather weak, and on these bases a somehow uncontrolled proliferation of heuristic solvers is taking place. This paper addresses the overall issue of understanding the reasons of this proliferation, showing a conceptual scheme that indicates how the assessment of the best solver may result in the unlimited formulation of new solvers. Moreover, this paper shows how the use of more refined metrics defined to compare the optimization result, associated with the definition of appropriate benchmarks, may make the comparisons among the solvers more robust. The proposed metrics are based on the concept of first-order stochastic dominance and are defined for the cases in which: (i) the globally optimal solution can be found (for testing purposes); and (ii) the number of possible solutions is so large that practically it cannot be guaranteed that the global optimum has been found. Illustrative examples are provided for a typical problem in the electrical energy systems area – distribution network reconfiguration. The conceptual results obtained are generally valid to compare the results of other optimization problem
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