A qualitative study of work-life balance amongst specialist orthodontists in the United Kingdom

Objective: To identify factors affecting work-life balance amongst male and female orthodontists in the United Kingdom. Design: A qualitative interview-based study with a cross-sectional design. Subjects: Specialist orthodontists working in specialist practice and the hospital service in the United Kingdom were selected by purposive sampling. Methods: In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with eighteen orthodontic specialists. Interview transcripts were analysed using Framework Analysis. Results: Four main themes pertaining to work-life balance in orthodontics were identified: work factors affecting work-life balance, life factors affecting worklife balance, perception and effects of work-life balance and suggestions for managing work-life balance within the profession. Conclusions: There was substantial variation in the work-life balance of the orthodontists interviewed in this study; however the majority reported high levels of career satisfaction despite difficulties maintaining a good work-life balance. Whilst there were some clear distinctions in the factors affecting work-life balance between the hospital environment and specialist practice (including additional professional commitments and teaching/training related issues), there were also a number of similarities. These included, the lack of flexibility in the working day, managing patient expectations, taking time off work at short notice and the ability to work part-time

CYCD3 D-type cyclins regulate cambial cell proliferation and secondary growth inArabidopsis

A major proportion of plant biomass is derived from the activity of the cambium, a lateral meristem responsible for vascular tissue formation and radial organ enlargement in a process termed secondary growth. In contrast to our relatively good understanding of the regulation of primary meristems, remarkably little is known concerning the mechanisms controlling secondary growth, particularly how cambial cell divisions are regulated and integrated with vascular differentiation. A genetic loss-of-function approach was used here to reveal a rate-limiting role for the Arabidopsis CYCLIN D3 (CYCD3) subgroup of cell-cycle genes in the control of cambial cell proliferation and secondary growth, providing conclusive evidence of a direct link between the cell cycle and vascular development. It is shown that all three CYCD3 genes are specifically expressed in the cambium throughout vascular development. Analysis of a triple loss-of-function CYCD3 mutant revealed a requirement for CYCD3 in promoting the cambial cell cycle since mutant stems and hypocotyls showed a marked reduction in diameter linked to reduced mitotic activity in the cambium. Conversely, loss of CYCD3 provoked an increase in xylem cell size and the expression of differentiation markers, showing that CYCD3 is required to restrain the differentiation of xylem precursor cells. Together, our data show that tight control of cambial cell division through developmental- and cell type-specific regulation of CYCD3 is required for normal vascular development, constituting part of a novel mechanism controlling organ growth in higher plants

Mechanics and materials in the design of a buckling diaphragm wave energy converter

Not sure what acceptance date was so just used publication date

Possible Experimental Test of Continuous Medium Model for Fractal Media

We use the fractional integrals to describe fractal media. We consider the fractal media as special ("fractional") continuous media. We discuss the possible experimental testing of the continuous medium model for fractal media that is suggested in Phys. Lett. A. 336 (2005) 167-174. This test is connected with measure of period of the Maxwell pendulum with fractal medium cylinder.Comment: 9 page

Quantifying the impact of different approaches for handling continuous predictors on the performance of a prognostic model

Continuous predictors are routinely encountered when developing a prognostic model. Investigators, who are often non-statisticians, must decide how to handle continuous predictors in their models. Categorising continuous measurements into two or more categories has been widely discredited, yet is still frequently done because of its simplicity, investigator ignorance of the potential impact and of suitable alternatives, or to facilitate model uptake. We examine three broad approaches for handling continuous predictors on the performance of a prognostic model, including various methods of categorising predictors, modelling a linear relationship between the predictor and outcome and modelling a nonlinear relationship using fractional polynomials or restricted cubic splines. We compare the performance (measured by the c-index, calibration and net benefit) of prognostic models built using each approach, evaluating them using separate data from that used to build them. We show that categorising continuous predictors produces models with poor predictive performance and poor clinical usefulness. Categorising continuous predictors is unnecessary, biologically implausible and inefficient and should not be used in prognostic model development

Combining Lattice QCD Results with Regge Phenomenology in a Description of Quark Distribution Functions

The most striking feature of quark distribution functions transformed to the longitudinal distance representation is the recognizable separation of small and large longitudinal distances. While the former are responsible for the average properties of parton distributions, the latter can be shown to determine specifically their small-$x$ behavior. In this paper we demonstrate how the distribution at intermediate longitudinal distances can be approximated by taking into account constraints which follow from the general properties of parton densities, such as their support and behavior at $x \to 1$. We show that the combined description of small, intermediate, and large longitudinal distances allows a good approximation of both shape and magnitude of parton distribution functions. As an application we have calculated low-virtuality C even and odd (valence) u and d quark parton densities of the nucleon and the C-even transversity distribution $h_1(x)$, combining recent QCD sum rules and lattice QCD results with phenomenological information about their small-$x$ behavior.Comment: LaTeX, 17 pages including 7 figures, shorter version will appear in Phys. Lett.

Severe Malignant Hypertension following Renal Artery Embolization: A Crucial Role for the Renal Microcirculation in the Pathogenesis of Hypertension?

Malignant hypertension is the most severe form of hypertension that is usually fatal if not properly managed. It is usually associated with evidence of microvascular damage such as retinopathy and nephropathy. Renal artery embolization is a widely utilised tool for the management of a wide range of conditions including drug resistant renovascular hypertension in patients with end stage renal failure. In this report we describe two patients with mild-to-moderate hypertension who underwent renal artery embolization for reasons unrelated to their hypertension. Contrary to conventional wisdom, in both patients hypertension became more severe and difficult to control. This report describes the cases and discusses the implications for current theory and the possible role of the microcirculation in the causation of hypertension

Thermodynamics of Quasi-Particles

We present in this work a generalization of the solution of Gorenstein and Yang for a consistent thermodynamics for systems with a temperature dependent Hamiltonian. We show that there is a large class of solutions, work out three particular ones, and discuss their physical relevance. We apply the particular solutions for an ideal gas of quasi-gluons, and compare the calculation to lattice and perturbative QCD results.Comment: 26 pages, 1 figure. To appear in Nuclear Physics

Large-Order Behavior of Two-coupling Constant ϕ4\phi^4-Theory with Cubic Anisotropy

For the anisotropic [u (\sum_{i=1^N {\phi}_i^2)^2+v \sum_{i=1^N \phi_i^4]-theory with {$N=2,3$} we calculate the imaginary parts of the renormalization-group functions in the form of a series expansion in $v$, i.e., around the isotropic case. Dimensional regularization is used to evaluate the fluctuation determinants for the isotropic instanton near the space dimension 4. The vertex functions in the presence of instantons are renormalized with the help of a nonperturbative procedure introduced for the simple g{\phi^4-theory by McKane et al.Comment: LaTeX file with eps files in src. See also http://www.physik.fu-berlin.de/~kleinert/institution.htm

Isolating vacuum amplitudes in quantum field calculations at finite temperature

In calculating Feynman diagrams at finite temperature, it is sometimes convenient to isolate subdiagrams which do not depend explicitly on the temperature. We show that, in the imaginary time formalism, such a separation can be achieved easily by exploiting a simple method, due to M. Gaudin, to perform the sum over the Matsubara frequencies. In order to manipulate freely contributions which may be individually singular, a regularization has to be introduced. We show that, in some cases, it is possible to choose this regularization in such a way that the isolated subdiagrams can be identified with analytical continuations of vacuum n-point functions. As an aside illustration of Gaudin's method, we use it to prove the main part of a recent conjecture concerning the relation which exists in the imaginary time formalism between the expressions of a Feynman diagram at zero and finite temperature.Comment: 37 pages, 12 figure