An Investigation of Nutrition Risk among Hospitalised Older Adults Admitted to the Assessment, Treatment and Rehabilitation Wards of Waitemata District Health Board Hospitals : A Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Nutrition and Dietetics Massey University, Albany New Zealand

Background: The proportion of older adults in New Zealand is increasing. Studies shows compromised nutrition status is prevalent in older adults, and can exacerbate poor health. It is therefore important to identify those who are malnourished, or those who are at nutrition risk for early nutrition intervention. Nutrition screening tools allow for the identification of nutrition risk status and initiation of nutritional care to result in improved health outcomes. Current data on the prevalence of nutrition risk in hospitalised older adults in New Zealand is limited. Design: Cross-sectional, observational study as part of a multicentre prospective study. Aim: To investigate the prevalence of nutrition risk among older adults (65-84 years) in the Assessment, Treatment and Rehabilitation (AT&R) wards of North Shore and Waitakere Hospitals. Potential nutrition risk factors including dysphagia risk, muscle mass and hand grip strength will also be investigated, as well as other relevant physiological and socio-demographic risk factors. Methods: Participants were recruited within five days of admission to the AT&R wards. Face-to-face interviews and assessments were conducted on the wards. A questionnaire incorporating participant characteristics, health and support data and validated screening and assessment tools were used. Nutrition risk status was assessed by the Mini Nutrition Assessment-Short Form, dysphagia risk status was assessed by the Eating Assessment Tool, cognitive status was assessed by the Montreal Cognitive Assessment and muscle mass was assessed by bioelectrical impedance analysis. Hand grip strength was measured using a hydraulic dynamometer. Results: A total of 89 participants took part in the study. Nutrition risk and malnutrition was evident in 43.8 and 27.0 percent of the study participants respectively. Indicated by the Mini-Nutrition Assessment-Short Form, participants with poor nutritional status were more likely to report reduced food intake, unintentional weight loss, requiring aid with activities of daily living, having previous dietetic input and being at risk of dysphagia compared to participants with ‘normal’ nutritional status. Conclusion: A high percentage of hospitalised older adults recently admitted to the AT&R wards had compromised nutritional status. Routine screening is highly advised to identify nutritional risk and instigate nutritional care

Loud and Trendy: Crowdsourcing Impressions of Social Ambiance in Popular Indoor Urban Places

New research cutting across architecture, urban studies, and psychology is contextualizing the understanding of urban spaces according to the perceptions of their inhabitants. One fundamental construct that relates place and experience is ambiance, which is defined as "the mood or feeling associated with a particular place". We posit that the systematic study of ambiance dimensions in cities is a new domain for which multimedia research can make pivotal contributions. We present a study to examine how images collected from social media can be used for the crowdsourced characterization of indoor ambiance impressions in popular urban places. We design a crowdsourcing framework to understand suitability of social images as data source to convey place ambiance, to examine what type of images are most suitable to describe ambiance, and to assess how people perceive places socially from the perspective of ambiance along 13 dimensions. Our study is based on 50,000 Foursquare images collected from 300 popular places across six cities worldwide. The results show that reliable estimates of ambiance can be obtained for several of the dimensions. Furthermore, we found that most aggregate impressions of ambiance are similar across popular places in all studied cities. We conclude by presenting a multidisciplinary research agenda for future research in this domain

Topological quantum paramagnet in a quantum spin ladder

It has recently been found that bosonic excitations of ordered media, such as phonons or spinons, can exhibit topologically nontrivial band structures. Of particular interest are magnon and triplon excitations in quantum magnets, as they can easily be manipulated by an applied field. Here we study triplon excitations in an S=1/2 quantum spin ladder and show that they exhibit nontrivial topology, even in the quantum-disordered paramagnetic phase. Our analysis reveals that the paramagnetic phase actually consists of two separate regions with topologically distinct triplon excitations. We demonstrate that the topological transition between these two regions can be tuned by an external magnetic field. The winding number that characterizes the topology of the triplons is derived and evaluated. By the bulk-boundary correspondence, we find that the non-zero winding number implies the presence of localized triplon end states. Experimental signatures and possible physical realizations of the topological paramagnetic phase are discussed.Comment: 6+4 pages; References, footnotes, small clarification added in conclusions and suppl. mat (v2); Minor modifications, close to published version (v3

Review of \u3ci\u3eWhite Sun (Seto Surya)\u3c/i\u3e by Deepak Rauniyar

This is a review of White Sun, a Nepali-language movie directed by Deepak Rauniyar

Hydrogen adsorption on Na-SWCNT systems

We investigate the hydrogen adsorption capacity of Na-coated carbon nanotubes (Na-SWCNTs) using first-principles electronic structure calculations at absolute temperature and pressure. A single Na atom is always found to occupy the hollow site of a hexagonal carbon ring in all the six different SWCNTs considered, with a nearly uniform Na-C bond length of 2.5 A. Semiconducting zigzag nanotubes, (8,0) and (5,0), show stronger binding energies for the Na atom (-2.1 eV and -2.6 eV respectively), as compared to metallic SWCNTs with armchair and chiral geometries. The single Na atom can further adsorb up to six hydrogen molecules with a relatively constant binding energy of -0.26 eV/H$_{2}$. Mulliken population analysis shows that positively charged Na atoms with 0.82$e$ charge transfer to nearest carbon atoms which polarizes the SWCNT leading to local dipole moments. This charge-induced dipole interaction is responsible for the higher hydrogen uptake of Na-coated SWCNTs. The transition state search shows that diffusion barrier of Na-atom on the SWCNT between two adjoining C-C rings is 0.35 eV. We also investigate the clustering of Na atoms to find out the maximum weight percentage adsorption of H$_{2}$ molecules. At high Na coverage, we show that Na-coated SWCNTs can adsorb 9.2-11.28 wt % hydrogen. Our analysis shows that, although indeed Na-coated SWCNTs present potential material for the hydrogen storage, care should be taken to avoid Na atoms clustering on support material at elevated temperature and pressure, to achieve higher hydrogen capacity.Comment: 22pages, 13 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:0811.1856 by other author

Quantum Hertz entropy increase in a quenched spin chain

The classical Hertz entropy is the logarithm of the volume of phase space bounded by the constant energy surface; its quantum counterpart, the quantum Hertz entropy, is $\hat S = k_B \ln \hat N$, where the quantum operator $\hat N$ specifies the number of states with energy below a given energy eigenstate. It has been recently proved that, when an isolated quantum mechanical system is driven out of equilibrium by an external driving, the change in the expectation of its quantum Hertz entropy cannot be negative, and is null for adiabatic driving. This is in full agreement with the Clausius principle. Here we test the behavior of the expectation of the quantum Hertz entropy in the case when two identical XY spin chains initially at different temperatures are quenched into a single XY chain. We observed no quantum Hertz entropy decrease. This finding further supports the statement that the quantum Hertz entropy is a proper entropy for isolated quantum systems. We further quantify how far the quenched chain is from thermal equilibrium and the temperature of the closest equilibrium.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure