5,471 research outputs found
Medical students using the technique of 55-word stories to reflect on a 6-week rotation during the integrated primary care block
Background. Reflection and reflective practice are identified as a core competency for graduates in health professions education. Students are expected to be in a position to process experiences in a variety of ways through reflective learning. In doing so, they can explore the understanding of their actions and experiences, and the impact of these on themselves and others.
Objectives. To draw on 5-weekly reflections by final-year medical students during the integrated primary care block placement. These reflections explore the learning that occurred during the rotation and the change in experiences during this period, and illustrate the use of reflection as a tool to support the development of professional practice.
Methods. This descriptive qualitative study analysed studentsâ 55-word reflective stories during a 6-week preceptorship in either a rural or urban primary healthcare centre. The writing technique of short 55-word reflective stories was used to record student experiences. Inductive thematic analysis was conducted using MAXQDA software. This involved identifying the most commonly used words for each week through a word cloud, highlighting each weekâs most notable focus for learning to generate themes and sub-themes.
Results. Analysis of 127 logbook entries generated 464 stories on a range of experiences that had a significant impact on learning. Studentsâ reflections in the first 2 weeks were linked to personal experiences and views about the block. In subsequent weeks, reflections focused on the individual responses of students to the learning experiences regarding the curriculum, patient care, ethics, professionalism and the health system.
Conclusions. The reflections highlighted the key learning experiences of the medical students and illustrated how meaning is constructed from these experiences. The 55-word stories as a reflection tool have potential to support reflection for students, and provide valuable insight into medical studentsâ learning journey during their clinical training
In the footsteps of Darwin:dwarf male attachment sites in scalpellid barnacles (Crustacea: Cirripedia: Thoracica) - implications for phylogeny and the evolution of sexual systems
Imaging and phase-locking of non-linear spin waves
Non-linear processes are a key feature in the emerging field of spin-wave based information processing and allow to convert uniform spin-wave excitations into propagating modes at different frequencies. Recently, the existence of non-linear magnons at half-integer multiples of the driving frequency has been predicted for Ni80Fe20 at low bias fields. However, it is an open question under which conditions such non-linear spin waves emerge coherently and how they may be used in device structures. Usually non-linear processes are explored in the small modulation regime and result in the well known three and four magnon scattering processes. Here we demonstrate and image a class of spin waves oscillating at half-integer harmonics that have only recently been proposed for the strong modulation regime. The direct imaging of these parametrically generated magnons in Ni80Fe20 elements allows to visualize their wave vectors. In addition, we demonstrate the presence of two degenerate phase states that may be selected by external phase-locking. These results open new possibilities for applications such as spin-wave sources, amplifiers and phase-encoded information processing with magnons
Dripping Faucet Dynamics Clarified by an Improved Mass-Spring Model
An improved mass-spring model for a dripping faucet is presented. The model
is constructed based on the numerical results which we recently obtained from
fluid dynamical calculations. Both the fluid dynamical calculations and the
present mass-spring model exhibit a variety of complex behavior including
transition to chaos in good agreement with experiments. Further, the
mass-spring model reveals fundamental dynamics inherent in the dripping faucet
system.Comment: 17 pages, 17 figure
Chandra Observations of Extended X-ray Emission in Arp 220
We resolve the extended X-ray emission from the prototypical ultraluminous
infrared galaxy Arp 220. Extended, faint edge-brightened, soft X-ray lobes
outside the optical galaxy are observed to a distance of 10 to 15 kpc on each
side of the nuclear region. Bright plumes inside the optical isophotes coincide
with the optical line emission and extend 11 kpc from end to end across the
nucleus. The data for the plumes cannot be fit by a single temperature plasma,
and display a range of temperatures from 0.2 to 1 keV. The plumes emerge from
bright, diffuse circumnuclear emission in the inner 3 kpc centered on the
Halpha peak, which is displaced from the radio nuclei. There is a close
morphological correspondence between the Halpha and soft X-ray emission on all
spatial scales. We interpret the plumes as a starburst-driven superwind, and
discuss two interpretations of the emission from the lobes in the context of
simulations of the merger dynamics of Arp 220.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ; see also astro-ph/0208477 (Paper 1
Stability and quasi-normal modes of charged black holes in Born-Infeld gravity
In this paper we study the stability and quasi-normal modes of scalar
perturbations of black holes. The static charged black hole considered here is
a solution to Born-Infeld electrodynamics coupled to gravity. We conclude that
the black hole is stable. We also compare the stability of it with its linear
counter-part Reissner-Nordstrom black hole. The quasi-normal modes are computed
using the WKB method. The behavior of these modes with the non-linear
parameter, temperature, mass of the scalar field and the spherical index are
analyzed in detail.Comment: Latex, 17 pages, 13 figures, some sections edited, references adde
Asymptotic quasinormal modes of Reissner-Nordstr\"om and Kerr black holes
According to a recent proposal, the so-called Barbero-Immirzi parameter of
Loop Quantum Gravity can be fixed, using Bohr's correspondence principle, from
a knowledge of highly-damped black hole oscillation frequencies. Such
frequencies are rather difficult to compute, even for Schwarzschild black
holes. However, it is now quite likely that they may provide a fundamental link
between classical general relativity and quantum theories of gravity. Here we
carry out the first numerical computation of very highly damped quasinormal
modes (QNM's) for charged and rotating black holes. In the Reissner-Nordstr\"om
case QNM frequencies and damping times show an oscillatory behaviour as a
function of charge. The oscillations become faster as the mode order increases.
At fixed mode order, QNM's describe spirals in the complex plane as the charge
is increased, tending towards a well defined limit as the hole becomes
extremal. Kerr QNM's have a similar oscillatory behaviour when the angular
index . For the real part of Kerr QNM frequencies tends to
, being the angular velocity of the black hole horizon, while
the asymptotic spacing of the imaginary parts is given by .Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures. Added result on the asymptotic spacing of the
imaginary part, minor typos correcte
Quantum Histories and Quantum Gravity
This paper reviews the histories approach to quantum mechanics. This
discussion is then applied to theories of quantum gravity. It is argued that
some of the quantum histories must approximate (in a suitable sense) to
classical histories, if the correct classical regime is to be recovered. This
observation has significance for the formulation of new theories (such as
quantum gravity theories) as it puts a constraint on the kinematics, if the
quantum/classical correspondence principle is to be preserved. Consequences for
quantum gravity, particularly for Lorentz symmetry and the idea of "emergent
geometry", are discussed.Comment: 35 pages (29 pages main body), two figure
Immunohistochemical Expression Analysis of Caldesmon Isoforms in Colorectal Carcinoma Reveals Interesting Correlations with Tumor Characteristics
Colorectal cancer is a notorious disease, with almost half of the patients succumbing to the disease. The prevalence and incidence rates of colorectal cancer are increasing in many parts of the world, highlighting the need to discover new biomarkers for diagnosis and therapy. Caldesmon (CaD), an actin-binding protein that plays a significant role in controlling cell motility, has emerged as a promising biomarker. The CALD1 gene encodes CaD as multiple transcripts that mainly encode two protein isoforms: High-molecular-weight (h-CaD), expressed in smooth muscle, and low-molecular-weight (l-CaD), expressed in nonsmooth muscle cells. Most studies have suggested an oncogenic role of CaD in colorectal cancer, but the exact subcellular localization of the two CaD isoforms in tumor cells and stroma have not been clarified yet. Here, we analyzed tissue samples from 262 colorectal cancer patients by immunohistochemistry analysis using specific antibodies for l-CaD and h-CaD. The results showed elevated cytoplasmic expression levels of l-Cad in 187/262 (71.4%) cases. l-Cad was expressed at low levels in the normal colon mucosa and was also consistently expressed in the cancer-associated stroma of all cases, suggesting that it could play a role in modulating the tumor microenvironment. l-CaD expression in cancer cells was associated with preinvasive stages of cancer. Survival analysis indicated that patients with high l-CaD expression in tumor cells could respond poorly to selective chemotherapeutic 5FU, but not combination chemotherapy. h-CaD was expressed in colonic and vascular smooth muscle cells as expected and to a lesser extent in the tumor-associated stroma, but it was not expressed in the cancer cells or normal colon mucosal epithelial cells. Collectively, these data clarify how the expression patterns of CaD isoforms in colorectal cancer can have applications in the management of colorectal cancer patients
Perturbative stability of the QCD analysis of DIS data
We perform pQCD analysis of the existing DIS data for charged leptons with
account of corrections up to the NNLO. The parton distributions, value of
strong coupling constant, and high-twist terms are extracted and their
stability with respect to account of the NNLO corrections is analyzed. All the
quantities are generally stable within their experimental errors. Obtained
value of the strong coupling constant is with a guess .Comment: 4 pages, LATEX, 3 figures (EPS). Talk presented at the 37th
Rencontres de Moriond, QCD and Hadronic Interactions, Les Arcs 1800 (France),
March 16-23 200
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