6,371 research outputs found
“I wish I’d told them”: a qualitative study examining the unmet psychosexual needs of prostate cancer patients during follow-up after treatment
<b>Objective</b> To gain insight into patients' experiences of follow-up care after treatment for prostate cancer and identify unmet psychosexual needs.<p></p>
<b>Methods</b> Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 35 patients aged 59-82 from three UK regions. Partners were included in 18 interviews. Data were analyzed using constant comparison. <p></p>
<b>Results</b> (1) Psychosexual problems gained importance over time, (2) men felt they were rarely invited to discuss psychosexual side effects within follow-up appointments and lack of rapport with health care professionals made it difficult to raise problems themselves, (3) problems were sometimes concealed or accepted and professionals' attempts to explore potential difficulties were resisted by some, and (4) older patients were too embarrassed to raise psychosexual concerns as they felt they would be considered 'too old' to be worried about the loss of sexual function.<p></p>
<b>Conclusion</b> Men with prostate cancer, even the very elderly, have psychosexual issues for variable times after diagnosis. These are not currently always addressed at the appropriate time for the patient.Practice implications Assessments of psychosexual problems should take place throughout the follow-up period, and not only at the time of initial treatment. Further research examining greater willingness or reluctance to engage with psychosexual interventions may be particularly helpful in designing future intervention
Energy spectra of the ocean's internal wave field: theory and observations
The high-frequency limit of the Garrett and Munk spectrum of internal waves
in the ocean and the observed deviations from it are shown to form a pattern
consistent with the predictions of wave turbulence theory. In particular, the
high frequency limit of the Garrett and Munk spectrum constitutes an {\it
exact} steady state solution of the corresponding kinetic equation.Comment: 4 pages, one color figur
Experimental observation of oscillating and interacting matter wave dark solitons
We report on the generation, subsequent oscillation and interaction of a pair
of matter wave dark solitons. These are created by releasing a Bose-Einstein
condensate from a double well potential into a harmonic trap in the crossover
regime between one dimension (1D) and three dimensions (3D). The oscillation of
the solitons is observed and the frequency is in quantitative agreement with
simulations using the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. An effective particle picture
is developed and reveals that the deviation of the observed frequencies from
the asymptotic prediction , where is the
longitudinal trapping frequency, results from the dimensionality of the system
and the interaction between the solitons.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Validity of the activPAL3 activity monitor in people moderately affected by Multiple Sclerosis
Background: Walking is the primary form of physical activity performed by people with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), therefore it is important to ensure the validity of tools employed to measure walking activity. The aim of this study was to assess the criterion validity of the activPAL3 activity monitor during overground walking in people with MS.\ud
Methods: Validity of the activPAL3 accelerometer was compared to video observation in 20 people moderately affected by MS. Participants walked 20-30m twice along a straight quiet corridor at a comfortable speed.\ud
Results: Inter-rater reliability of video observations was excellent (all intraclass correlations > 0.99). The mean difference (activPAL3- mean of raters) was -4.70 ± 9.09, -4.55 s ± 10.76 and 1.11 s ± 1.11 for steps taken, walking duration and upright duration respectively. These differences represented 8.7, 10.0 and 1.8% of the mean for each measure respectively. The activPAL3 tended to underestimate steps taken and walking duration in those who walked at cadences of ≤ 38 steps/minute by 60% and 47% respectively.\ud
Discussion: The activPAL3 is valid for measuring walking activity in people moderately affected by MS. It is accurate for upright duration regardless of cadence. In participants with slow walking cadences, outcomes of steps taken and walking duration should be interpreted with caution
Dispersive magnetic excitations in the S=1 antiferromagnet BaMnO
We present powder inelastic neutron scattering measurements of the S=1
dimerized antiferromagnet BaMnO. The K magnetic spectrum
exhibits a spin-gap of meV and a dispersive spectrum with
a bandwidth of approximately 1.5 meV. Comparison to coupled dimer models
describe the dispersion and scattering intensity accurately and determine the
exchange constants in BaMnO. The wave vector dependent scattering
intensity confirms the proposed S=1 dimer bond. Temperature dependent
measurements of the magnetic excitations indicate the presence of both
singlet-triplet and thermally activated triplet-quintet excitations.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, Submitted to Physical Review B, Resubmited
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The future of North American trade policy: lessons from NAFTA
This repository item contains a single issue of the Pardee Center Task Force Reports, a publication series that began publishing in 2009 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.This Task Force Report written by an international group of trade policy experts calls for significant reforms to address adverse economic, environmental, labor and societal impacts created by the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
The report is intended to contribute to the discussion and decisions stemming from ongoing reviews of proposed reforms to NAFTA as well as to help shape future trade agreements. It offers detailed proposals on topics including services, manufacturing, agriculture, investment, intellectual property, labor, environment, and migration.
Fifteen years after NAFTA was enacted, there is widespread agreement that the trade treaty among the United States, Canada and Mexico has fallen short of its stated goals. While proponents credit the agreement with stimulating the flow of goods, services, and investment among the North American countries, critics in all three countries argue that this has not brought improvements in the standards of living of most people. Rather than triggering a convergence across the three nations, NAFTA has accentuated the economic and regulatory asymmetries that had existed among the three countries. [TRUNCATED
Estimate of the impact of background particles on the X-Ray Microcalorimeter Spectrometer on IXO
We present the results of a study on the impact of particles of galactic
(GCR) and solar origin for the X-ray Microcalorimeter Spectrometer (XMS) aboard
an astronomical satellite flying in an orbit at the second Lagrangian point
(L2). The detailed configuration presented in this paper is the one adopted for
the International X-Ray Observatory (IXO) study, however the derived estimates
can be considered a conservative limit for ATHENA, that is the IXO redefined
mission proposed to ESA. This work is aimed at the estimate of the residual
background level expected on the focal plane detector during the mission
lifetime, a crucial information in the development of any instrumental
configuration that optimizes the XMS scientific performances. We used the
Geant4 toolkit, a Monte Carlo based simulator, to investigate the rejection
efficiency of the anticoincidence system and assess the residual background on
the detector.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figure
Multiple atomic dark solitons in cigar-shaped Bose-Einstein condensates
We consider the stability and dynamics of multiple dark solitons in
cigar-shaped Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). Our study is motivated by the
fact that multiple matter-wave dark solitons may naturally form in such
settings as per our recent work [Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 130401 (2008)]. First,
we study the dark soliton interactions and show that the dynamics of
well-separated solitons (i.e., ones that undergo a collision with relatively
low velocities) can be analyzed by means of particle-like equations of motion.
The latter take into regard the repulsion between solitons (via an effective
repulsive potential) and the confinement and dimensionality of the system (via
an effective parabolic trap for each soliton). Next, based on the fact that
stationary, well-separated dark multi-soliton states emerge as a nonlinear
continuation of the appropriate excited eigensates of the quantum harmonic
oscillator, we use a Bogoliubov-de Gennes analysis to systematically study the
stability of such structures. We find that for a sufficiently large number of
atoms, multiple soliton states may be dynamically stable, while for a small
number of atoms, we predict a dynamical instability emerging from resonance
effects between the eigenfrequencies of the soliton modes and the intrinsic
excitation frequencies of the condensate. Finally we present experimental
realizations of multi-soliton states including a three-soliton state consisting
of two solitons oscillating around a stationary one.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figure
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