791 research outputs found
Functional determinants on certain domains
Functional determinants on various domains of the sphere and flat space are
presented for scalar and spinor fields.Comment: 14p, plain TeX, talk presented at the 6th Moscow Quantum Gravity
Seminar, Moscow, June 12-19, 1995.(Minor errors corrected.
Parents’ and carers’ attitudes to the use of digital technology and its role in the care of children with complex needs.
Abstract
Introduction:
Parent/carers of disabled children want timely and personalized support. Research suggests that technology may address some limitations associated with traditional methods of communication with therapists (e.g. letter, telephone). This exploratory study examined United Kingdom (UK) parents and carers views on the use of digital technology (i.e. computers/phones) in supporting their child and the potential for its greater use in the care of children with complex needs.
Methods:
An online survey was distributed via special schools and support forums/networks. Questions explored use of and attitudes to digital technology in the care of children with complex needs. Descriptive statistical analyses and content analyses were undertaken on the data.
Results:
Respondents were 43 parents/carers whose children used rehabilitation services prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The majority used digital technology frequently to support their child and saw the potential for greater use in rehabilitation services – provided this was not at the expense of in-person therapist contact.
Conclusion:
Parents and carers held positive views of digital technology as a tool to support their child and enhance rehabilitation services. Recommendations include regular service consultation on parental/child attitudes to digital service delivery and longitudinal studies to assess related health outcomes
The C_2 heat-kernel coefficient in the presence of boundary discontinuities
We consider the heat-kernel on a manifold whose boundary is piecewise smooth.
The set of independent geometrical quantities required to construct an
expression for the contribution of the boundary discontinuities to the C_{2}
heat-kernel coefficient is derived in the case of a scalar field with Dirichlet
and Robin boundary conditions. The coefficient is then determined using
conformal symmetry and evaluation on some specific manifolds. For the Robin
case a perturbation technique is also developed and employed. The contributions
to the smeared heat-kernel coefficient and cocycle function are calculated.
Some incomplete results for spinor fields with mixed conditions are also
presented.Comment: 25 pages, LaTe
Hyperspherical entanglement entropy
The coefficient of the log term in the entanglement entropy associated with
hyperspherical surfaces in flat space-time is shown to equal the conformal
anomaly by conformally transforming Euclideanised space--time to a sphere and
using already existing formulae for the relevant heat--kernel coefficients
after cyclic factoring. The analytical reason for the result is that the
conformal anomaly on the lune has an extremum at the ordinary sphere limit. A
proof is given. Agreement with a recent evaluation of the coefficient is found.Comment: 7 pages. Final revision. Historical comments amended. Minor remarks
adde
A comparison of a structured home-based rehabilitation programme with conventional supervised pulmonary rehabilitation:A randomised non-inferiority trial
Background: Standardised home-based pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) programmes offer an alternative model to centre-based supervised PR for which uptake is currently poor. We determined if a structured home-based unsupervised PR programme was non-inferior to supervised centre-based PR for participants with COPD.
Methods: A total of 287 participants with COPD who were referred to PR (187 male, mean (SD) age 68 (8.86) years, FEV1% predicted 48.34 (17.92)) were recruited. They were randomised to either centre-based PR or a structured unsupervised home-based PR programme including a hospital visit with a healthcare professional trained in motivational interviewing, a self-management manual and two telephone calls. Fifty-eight (20%) withdrew from the centre-based group and 51 (18%) from the home group. The primary outcome was dyspnoea domain in the chronic respiratory disease questionnaire (Chronic Respiratory Questionnaire Self-Report; CRQ-SR) at 7 weeks. Measures were taken blinded. We undertook a modified intention-to-treat (mITT) complete case analysis, comparing groups according to original random allocation and with complete data at follow-up. The non-inferiority margin was 0.5 units.
Results: There was evidence of significant gains in CRQ-dyspnoea at 7 weeks in both home and centre-based groups. There was inconclusive evidence that home-based PR was non-inferior to PR in dyspnoea (mean group difference, mITT: −0.24, 95% CI −0.61 to 0.12, p=0.18), favouring the centre group at 7 weeks.
Conclusions: The standardised home-based programme provides benefits in dyspnoea. Further evidence is needed to definitively determine if the health benefits of the standardised home-based programme are non-inferior or equivalent to supervised centre-based rehabilitation
Social environment-based opportunity costs dictate when people leave social interactions
There is an ever-increasing understanding of the cognitive mechanisms underlying how we process others’ behaviours during social interactions. However, little is known about how people decide when to leave an interaction. Are these decisions shaped by alternatives in the environment – the opportunity-costs of connecting to other people? Here, participants chose when to leave partners who treated them with varying degrees of fairness, and connect to others, in social environments with different opportunity-costs. Across four studies we find people leave partners more quickly when opportunity-costs are high, both the average fairness of people in the environment and the effort required to connect to another partner. People’s leaving times were accounted for by a fairness-adapted evidence accumulation model, and modulated by depression and loneliness scores. These findings demonstrate the computational processes underlying decisions to leave, and highlight atypical social time allocations as a marker of poor mental health
Further functional determinants
Functional determinants for the scalar Laplacian on spherical caps and
slices, flat balls, shells and generalised cylinders are evaluated in two,
three and four dimensions using conformal techniques. Both Dirichlet and Robin
boundary conditions are allowed for. Some effects of non-smooth boundaries are
discussed; in particular the 3-hemiball and the 3-hemishell are considered. The
edge and vertex contributions to the coefficient are examined.Comment: 25 p,JyTex,5 figs. on request
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