Qualities of culturally and religiously sensitive practice: a cross-sectional study

Background: Culture and religion influence lived experience and particularly dying and grieving. Research has largely focused on exploring culturally and religiously sensitive practices, but not necessarily in palliative and hospice care or across nations. Acquired knowledge from the more advanced end-of-life care systems (eg the UK) tends to be generalized to other contexts where its cultural appropriation is not tested. Aim: This study explored the different qualities, among hospice and palliative professionals in Cyprus, describing cultural competence, cultural humility, and religious literacy. Design: A cross-sectional study of 41 palliative and hospice professionals in Cyprus, with the use of a 5-point Likert style questionnaire (a = 0.898). Setting: The study took place in Cyprus and participants were recruited from across palliative and hospice care organizations, including the only hospice in Cyprus, Cyprus Association of Cancer Patients and Friends (PASYKAF), and the Cyprus Anti-Cancer Society (CACS). Results: This study found that there are four main qualities that lead to effective culturally and religiously sensitive practice—informed decision-making, respect, adaptability, and nonjudgmental practice. Conclusions: Future education and training of professionals can consider these findings to appropriate approaches in practice that fit the Cypriot end-of-life care context more effectively

The Destruction of Sol in Three Acts

Conductor\u27s score for The Destruction of Sol in Three Acts. I. Awe: The Destruction of Sol II. Despair: Floating in Space III. Acceptance: The Starry Day Scored for flute, alto flute, oboe, English horn, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, contrabassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, glockenspiel, chimes, percussion, piano, and strings

One-stage thumb lengthening with use of an osteocutaneous 2nd metacarpal flap

Traumatic thumb amputation represents an extremely disabling entity, thus rendering its reconstruction a procedure of paramount importance. A case of a patient, who sustained a traumatic amputation of his left index finger at the metacarpophalangeal joint and of his left thumb in the middle of the proximal phalanx 4 months ago and was initially treated elsewhere, is described. For the thumb reconstruction, an osteocutaneous flap of the radial side of the 2nd metacarpal, which consisted of a 3, 5-cm bony segment with the overlying skin and its blood and nerve supply was used. The flap was transferred and fixed with a plate and screws to the palmar-medial side of the stump of the thumb, while the 1st web space was deepened by removing the rest of the second metacarpal, while a partial skin graft was used to cover a remaining gap. Thumb functionality was restored immediately postoperatively, and the overall result was satisfactory

Integrating the Global Agenda of Social Work and Social Development in the Republic of Cyprus

Cyprus is a nation of great history, old and new, that makes up a controversial and often stressful environment in which social work is practiced. The intent of this paper is to highlight the Cypriot context and discuss how the Global Agenda is integrated in it. Drawing on the key objectives of the Global Agenda — promoting social and economic equalities; promoting the dignity and worth of peoples; promoting community and environmental sustainability; and, strengthening recognition of the importance of human relationships — the paper explores the challenges and barriers that social work in the nation faces in an attempt to promote the wellbeing and growth of communities, families and individuals. With consideration to the many and rich initiatives toward increasing social solidarity, collaboration and community engagement, the paper makes suggestions to overcome the challenges that prevent social work from fully committing to the agenda

Spin- and momentum-correlated atom pairs mediated by photon exchange and seeded by vacuum fluctuations

Engineering pairs of massive particles that are simultaneously correlated in their external and internal degrees of freedom is a major challenge, yet essential for advancing fundamental tests of physics and quantum technologies. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate a mechanism for generating pairs of atoms in well-defined spin and momentum modes. This mechanism couples atoms from a degenerate Bose gas via a superradiant photon-exchange process in an optical cavity, producing pairs via a single or two discernible channels. The scheme is independent of collisional interactions, fast and tunable. We observe a collectively enhanced production of pairs and probe inter-spin correlations in momentum space. We characterize the emergent pair statistics, and find that the observed dynamics is consistent with being primarily seeded by vacuum fluctuations in the corresponding atomic modes. Together with our observations of coherent many-body oscillations involving well-defined momentum modes, our results offer promising prospects for quantum-enhanced interferometry and quantum simulation experiments using entangled matter waves.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure

CoPe_it! - Supporting collaboration, enhancing learning

CoPe_it! is an innovative web-based tool that complies with collaborative practices to provide members of communities with the appropriate means to manage individual and collective knowledge, and collaborate towards the solution of diverse issues. In this article, we demonstrate its applicability in tackling data-intensive collaboration settings, which are characterized by big volumes of complex and interrelated data obtained from diverse sources, and knowledge expressed by diverse participants. We focus on issues related to the representation of such settings and the proposed approach towards making it easier for participants to follow the evolution of a collaboration, comprehend it in its entirety, and meaningfully aggregate data in order to resolve the issue under consideration

Bridge monitoring system based on vibration measurements

This work outlines the main algorithms involved in a proposed bridge monitoring system based on ambient and earthquake vibration measurements. The monitoring system can be used to predict the existence, location and size of structural modifications in the bridge by monitoring the changes in the modal characteristics and updating the finite element model of the bridge based on the modal characteristics. Sophisticated system identification methods, combining information from a sensor network with the theoretical information built into a fi-nite element model for simulating structural behaviour, are incorporated into the monitoring system in order to track structural changes and identify the location, type and extent of these changes. Emphasis in this work is given on presenting theoretical and computational issues relating to structural modal identification and structural model updating methods. Specifical-ly, the proposed work outlines the algorithms and software that has been developed for com-puting the modal properties using ambient and earthquake data, as well as recent methodologies and software for finite element model updating using the modal characteristics. Various issues encountered in the optimization problems involved in model updating are demonstrated, including the existence of multiple local optima and the effects of weight values in conventional weighted modal residual methods for selecting the optimal finite element model. Selected features are demonstrated using vibration measurements from a four-span bridge of the Egnatia Odos motorway in Greece