30,082 research outputs found
Qualitative analysis of psychosocial impact of diagnosis of Chlamydia trachomatis: implications for screening
OBJECTIVES: To investigate the psychosocial impact for women of a diagnosis of Chlamydia trachomatis and discuss the implications for the proposed UK chlamydia screening programme. DESIGN: Qualitative study with semistructured interviews. Interview transcripts analysed to identify recurrent themes. PARTICIPANTS: Seventeen women with a current or recent diagnosis of chlamydia. SETTING: A family planning clinic and a genitourinary medicine clinic in Glasgow. RESULTS: Three themes were identified: perceptions of stigma associated with sexually transmitted infection, uncertainty about reproductive health after diagnosis, and anxieties regarding partner's reaction to diagnosis. Most women had not previously perceived sexually transmitted infections as personally relevant; this was a function of stereotypical beliefs about who was "at risk" of sexually transmitted infection. These beliefs were pervasive and negatively affected reactions to diagnosis and produced anxiety about disclosure of the condition to others (particularly sexual partners) and future reproductive morbidity. This anxiety, given the uncertain natural history of chlamydia, may prove difficult to dispel. CONCLUSIONS: There are three primary areas of concern for women after a diagnosis of chlamydia which need to be examined in the proposed screening programme. Information provided should normalise and destigmatise chlamydial infection and positively promote genitourinary medicine services. Support services should be available because notification of partner can cause anxiety. Uncertainty about future reproductive morbidity may be inevitable; staff providing screening will require guidance in providing advice under such conditions
The locality of the square-root method for improved staggered quarks
We study the effects of improvement on the locality of square-rooted
staggered Dirac operators in lattice QCD simulations. We find the localisation
lengths of the improved operators (FAT7TAD and ASQTAD) to be very similar to
that of the one-link operator studied by Bunk et al., being at least the
Compton wavelength of the lightest particle in the theory, even in the
continuum limit. We conclude that improvement has no effect. We discuss the
implications of this result for the locality of the nth-rooted fermion
determinant used to reduce the number of sea quark flavours, and for possible
staggered valence quark formulations
Z2 monopoles in D=2+1 SU(2) lattice gauge theory
We calculate the Euclidean action of a pair of Z2 monopoles (instantons), as
a function of their spatial separation, in D=2+1 SU(2) lattice gauge theory. We
do so both above and below the deconfining transition at T=Tc. At high T, and
at large separation, we find that the monopole `interaction' grows linearly
with distance: the flux between the monopoles forms a flux tube (exactly like a
finite portion of a Z2 domain wall) so that the monopoles are linearly
confined. At short distances the interaction is well described by a Coulomb
interaction with, at most, a very small screening mass, possibly equal to the
Debye electric screening mass. At low T the interaction can be described by a
simple screened Coulomb (i.e. Yukawa) interaction with a screening mass that
can be interpreted as the mass of a `constituent gluon'. None of this is
unexpected, but it helps to resolve some apparent controversies in the recent
literature.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figure
Vortices and confinement in hot and cold D=2+1 gauge theories
We calculate the variation with temperature of the vortex free energy in
D=2+1 SU(2) lattice gauge theories. We do so both above and below the
deconfining transition at T=Tc. We find that this quantity is zero at all T for
large enough volumes. For T<Tc this observation is consistent with the fact
that the phase is linearly confining; while for T>Tc it is consistent with the
conventional expectation of `spatial' linear confinement. In small spatial
volumes this quantity is shown to be non-zero. The way it decreases to zero
with increasing volume is shown to be controlled by the (spatial) string
tension and it has the functional form one would expect if the vortices being
studied were responsible for the confinement at low T, and for the `spatial'
confinement at large T. We also discuss in detail some of the direct numerical
evidence for a non-zero spatial string tension at high T, and we show that the
observed linearity of the (spatial) potential extends over distances that are
large compared to typical high-T length scales.Comment: 27 pages, 6 figure
Amplitude squeezed light from a laser
Intensity squeezed light was successfully generated using semiconductor lasers with sub-Poissonian pumping. Control of the pumping statistics is crucial and is achieved by a large series resistor which regulates the pump current; its sub-Poissonian statistics are then transferred to the laser output. The sub-Poissonian pumping of other laser systems is not so simple, however, and their potential as squeezed states sources is apparently diminished. We consider a conventional laser incoherently pumped well above threshold, and allow for pump depletion of the ground state. In this regime, sub-Poissonian photon statistics and squeezed amplitude fluctuations are produced
On the Shapley-like Payoff Mechanisms in Peer-Assisted Services with Multiple Content Providers
This paper studies an incentive structure for cooperation and its stability
in peer-assisted services when there exist multiple content providers, using a
coalition game theoretic approach. We first consider a generalized coalition
structure consisting of multiple providers with many assisting peers, where
peers assist providers to reduce the operational cost in content distribution.
To distribute the profit from cost reduction to players (i.e., providers and
peers), we then establish a generalized formula for individual payoffs when a
"Shapley-like" payoff mechanism is adopted. We show that the grand coalition is
unstable, even when the operational cost functions are concave, which is in
sharp contrast to the recently studied case of a single provider where the
grand coalition is stable. We also show that irrespective of stability of the
grand coalition, there always exist coalition structures which are not
convergent to the grand coalition. Our results give us an important insight
that a provider does not tend to cooperate with other providers in
peer-assisted services, and be separated from them. To further study the case
of the separated providers, three examples are presented; (i) underpaid peers,
(ii) service monopoly, and (iii) oscillatory coalition structure. Our study
opens many new questions such as realistic and efficient incentive structures
and the tradeoffs between fairness and individual providers' competition in
peer-assisted services.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, an extended version of the paper to be presented
in ICST GameNets 2011, Shanghai, China, April 201
High power coupled CO2 waveguide laser array
A hollow-bore ridge waveguide technique for phase locking arrays of coupled CO2 rf excited waveguide lasers was demonstrated. Stable phase-locked operation of two- and three-channel arrays has been demonstrated at the 50 W output level. Preliminary experiments with a five-element array generated an output power of 95 W but phase-locked operation was not conclusively demonstrated
Casimir scaling of domain wall tensions in the deconfined phase of D=3+1 SU(N) gauge theories
We perform lattice calculations of the spatial 't Hooft k-string tensions in
the deconfined phase of SU(N) gauge theories for N=2,3,4,6. These equal (up to
a factor of T) the surface tensions of the domain walls between the
corresponding (Euclidean) deconfined phases. For T much larger than Tc our
results match on to the known perturbative result, which exhibits Casimir
Scaling, being proportional to k(N-k). At lower T the coupling becomes stronger
and, not surprisingly, our calculations show large deviations from the
perturbative T-dependence. Despite this we find that the behaviour proportional
to k(N-k) persists very accurately down to temperatures very close to Tc. Thus
the Casimir Scaling of the 't Hooft tension appears to be a `universal' feature
that is more general than its appearance in the low order high-T perturbative
calculation. We observe the `wetting' of these k-walls at T around Tc and the
(almost inevitable) `perfect wetting' of the k=N/2 domain wall. Our
calculations show that as T tends to Tc the magnitude of the spatial `t Hooft
string tension decreases rapidly. This suggests the existence of a (would-be)
't Hooft string condensation transition at some temperature which is close to
but below Tc. We speculate on the `dual' relationship between this and the
(would-be) confining string condensation at the Hagedorn temperature that is
close to but above Tc.Comment: 40 pages, 14 figure
The monopole mass in the three-dimensional Georgi-Glashow model
We study the three-dimensional Georgi-Glashow model to demonstrate how
magnetic monopoles can be studied fully non-perturbatively in lattice Monte
Carlo simulations, without any assumptions about the smoothness of the field
configurations. We examine the apparent contradiction between the conjectured
analytic connection of the `broken' and `symmetric' phases, and the
interpretation of the mass (i.e., the free energy) of the fully quantised 't
Hooft-Polyakov monopole as an order parameter to distinguish the phases. We use
Monte Carlo simulations to measure the monopole free energy and its first
derivative with respect to the scalar mass. On small volumes we compare this to
semi-classical predictions for the monopole. On large volumes we show that the
free energy is screened to zero, signalling the formation of a confining
monopole condensate. This screening does not allow the monopole mass to be
interpreted as an order parameter, resolving the paradox.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, uses revtex. Minor changes made to the text to
match with the published version at
http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRD/v65/e12500
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