Microscopic theory of multipole ordering in NpO2

In order to examine the mysterious ordered phase of NpO2 from a microscopic viewpoint, we investigate an f-electron model on an fcc lattice constructed based on a j-j coupling scheme. First, an effective model with multipole interactions is derived in the strong-coupling limit. Numerical analysis of the model clearly indicates that the interactions for \Gamma_{4u} and \Gamma_{5u} moments are relevant to the ground state. Then, by applying mean-field theory to the simplified model including only such interactions, we conclude that longitudinal triple-q \Gamma_{5u} octupole order is realized in NpO2 through the combined effects of multipole interactions and anisotropy of the \Gamma_{5u} moment.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Marking out the clinical expert/clinical leader/clinical scholar: Perspectives from nurses in the clinical arena

Background: Clinical scholarship has been conceptualised and theorised in the nursing literature for over 30 years but no research has captured nurses' clinicians' views on how it differs or is the same as clinical expertise and clinical leadership. The aim of this study was to determine clinical nurses' understanding of the differences and similarities between the clinical expert, clinical leader and clinical scholar.Methods: A descriptive interpretative qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews with 18 practising nurses from Australia, Canada and England. The audio-taped interviews were transcribed and the text coded for emerging themes. The themes were sorted into categories of clinical expert, clinical leader and clinical scholarship as described by the participants. These themes were then compared and contrasted and the essential elements that characterise the nursing roles of the clinical expert, clinical leader and clinical scholar were identified.Results: Clinical experts were seen as linking knowledge to practice with some displaying clinical leadership and scholarship. Clinical leadership is seen as a positional construct with a management emphasis. For the clinical scholar they linked theory and practice and encouraged research and dissemination of knowledge.Conclusion: There are distinct markers for the roles of clinical expert, clinical leader and clinical scholar. Nurses working in one or more of these roles need to work together to improve patient care. An 'ideal nurse' may be a blending of all three constructs. As nursing is a practice discipline its scholarship should be predominantly based on clinical scholarship. Nurses need to be encouraged to go beyond their roles as clinical leaders and experts to use their position to challenge and change through the propagation of knowledge to their community. © 2013 Mannix et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

Practicing nurses perspectives of clinical scholarship: A qualitative study

Background: There is a scarcity of research published on clinical scholarship. Much of the conceptualisation has been conducted in the academy. Nurse academics espouse that the practice of nursing must be built within a framework of clinical scholarship. A key concept of clinical scholarship emerging from discussions in the literature is that it is an essential component of enabling evidence-based nursing and the development of best practice standards to provide for the needs of patients/clients. However, there is no comprehensive definition of clinical scholarship from the practicing nurses. The aim of this study was to contribute to this definitional discussion on the nature of clinical scholarship in nursing.Methods: Naturalistic inquiry informed the method. Using an interpretative approach 18 practicing nurses from Australia, Canada and England were interviewed using a semi-structured format. The audio-taped interviews were transcribed and the text coded for emerging themes. The themes were sorted into categories and the components of clinical scholarship described by the participants compared to the scholarship framework of Boyer [JHEOE 7:5-18, 2010].Results: Clinical scholarship is difficult to conceptualise. Two of the essential elements of clinical scholarship are vision and passion. The other components of clinical scholarship were building and disseminating nursing knowledge, sharing knowledge, linking academic research to practice and doing practice-based research.Conclusion: Academic scholarship dominated the discourse in nursing. However, in order for nursing to develop and to impact on health care, clinical scholarship needs to be explored and theorised. Nurse educators, hospital-based researchers and health organisations need to work together with academics to achieve this goal.Frameworks of scholarship conceptualised by nurse academics are reflected in the findings of this study with their emphasis on reading and doing research and translating it into nursing practice. This needs to be done in a nonthreatening environment. © 2013 Wilkes et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

The importance of clinical leadership in the hospital setting

© 2014 Daly et al. In many areas of the developed world, contemporary hospital care is confronted by workforce challenges, changing consumer expectations and demands, fiscal constraints, increasing demands for access to care, a mandate to improve patient centered care, and issues concerned with levels of quality and safety of health care. Effective governance is crucial to efforts to maximize effective management of care in the hospital setting. Emerging from this complex literature is the role of leadership in the clinical setting. The importance of effective clinical leadership in ensuring a high quality health care system that consistently provides safe and efficient care has been reiterated in the scholarly literature and in various government reports. Recent inquiries, commissions, and reports have promoted clinician engagement and clinical leadership as critical to achieving and sustaining improvements to care quality and patient safety. In this discursive paper, we discuss clinical leadership in health care, consider published definitions of clinical leadership, synthesize the literature to describe the characteristics, qualities, or attributes required to be an effective clinical leader, consider clinical leadership in relation to hospital care, and discuss the facilitators and barriers to effective clinical leadership in the hospital sector. Despite the widespread recognition of the importance of effective clinical leadership to patient outcomes, there are some quite considerable barriers to participation in clinical leadership. Future strategies should aim to address these barriers so as to enhance the quality of clinical leadership in hospital care

Resonant X-ray diffraction studies on the charge ordering in magnetite

Here we show that the low temperature phase of magnetite is associated with an effective, although fractional, ordering of the charge. Evidence and a quantitative evaluation of the atomic charges are achieved by using resonant x-ray diffraction (RXD) experiments whose results are further analyzed with the help of ab initio calculations of the scattering factors involved. By confirming the results obtained from X-ray crystallography we have shown that RXD is able to probe quantitatively the electronic structure in very complex oxides, whose importance covers a wide domain of applications.Comment: 4 pages 4 figures, accepted for publication in PR

Multiple prior concussions are associated with symptoms in high school athletes

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the association of prior concussion on baseline computerized neurocognitive testing in a large cohort of high school athletes. Methods: This is a retrospective cohort study of student athletes from 49 Maine High Schools in 2010 who underwent baseline computerized neurocognitive evaluation with Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing (ImPACT®). As part of the ImPACT®, subjects reported a prior history of concussion as well as demographic information and a symptom questionnaire. We used linear regression to evaluate the association of prior concussion with baseline: (1) ImPACT® composite scores; and (2) symptom scores. Results: Six thousand seventy-five subjects were included in the study, of whom 57% were boys. The majority of student athletes (85.3%) reported no prior history of concussion while 4.6% reported having sustained two or more prior concussions. On simple linear regression, increasing number of concussions was related to worse performance in verbal memory (P = 0.039) and greater symptoms scores (P < 0.001). On multivariate modeling, only the association with baseline symptoms remained (P < 0.001). Other factors associated with baseline symptom reporting in the multivariate model included mental health history, headache/migraine history, gender, developmental and/or learning problems, and number of prior concussions. Interpretation In this large-scale, retrospective survey study, history of multiple prior concussions was associated with higher symptom burden but not baseline computerized neurocognitive testing. The association between baseline symptom reporting and clinical and demographic factors was greater than the association with a history of multiple concussions

Resonant X-Ray Scattering on the M-Edge Spectra from Triple-k Structure Phase in U_{0.75}Np_{0.25}O_{2} and UO_{2}

We derive an expression for the scattering amplitude of resonant x-ray scattering under the assumption that the Hamiltonian describing the intermediate state preserves spherical symmetry. On the basis of this expression, we demonstrate that the energy profile of the RXS spectra expected near U and Np M_4 edges from the triple-k antiferromagnetic ordering phase in UO_{2} and U_{0.75}Np_{0.25}O_{2} agree well with those from the experiments. We demonstrate that the spectra in the \sigma-\sigma' and \sigma-\pi' channels exhibit quadrupole and dipole natures, respectively.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, to be published in J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. Supp

A robust, discrete-gradient descent procedure for optimisation with time-dependent PDE and norm constraints

Many physical questions in fluid dynamics can be recast in terms of norm constrained optimisation problems; which in-turn, can be further recast as unconstrained problems on spherical manifolds. Due to the nonlinearities of the governing PDEs, and the computational cost of performing optimal control on such systems, improving the numerical convergence of the optimisation procedure is crucial. Borrowing tools from the optimisation on manifolds community we outline a numerically consistent, discrete formulation of the direct-adjoint looping method accompanied by gradient descent and line-search algorithms with global convergence guarantees. We numerically demonstrate the robustness of this formulation on three example problems of relevance in fluid dynamics and provide an accompanying library SphereManOpt