Resilience, stress and burnout in student midwives

Background: There is a lack of research on resilience in midwifery, yet this may be a factor that can help prevent burnout and intention to leave the profession. Objectives: To explore the relationship between perceived stress, resilience and burnout and the intention to leave midwifery within Midwifery students. Design: A Quantitative study with a cross-sectional survey design Setting: A London University in the UK. Participants: 150 BSc student midwives, aged between 18 and 44, studying at University participated in this study. This included 72 students in year one, 26 in year two and 52 in year three. Methods: Participants completed the Perceived Stress Scale, the Oldenburg burnout Inventory and the Resilience scale-14 to examine their self-reported stress levels, burnout (emotional exhaustion and disengagement) and level of resilience. Intentions to quit the profession were also measured. Results: All variables were significantly correlated but in multiple regression analyses only stress predicted disengagement, and stress and year of study predicted emotional exhaustion. High stress and reduced resilience predicted intentions to quit midwifery. Resilience did not act as a moderator. Thus the findings suggest that resilience did not protect students from high levels of stress leading to burnout or wanting to quit, although resilience did help to reduce intentions to quit. Conclusion: Student stress levels are not moderated by resilience and resilience played no role in reducing burnout. However, resilience may help students to persevere in the profession rather than leaving their studies. In order to minimise burnout and stress we need to consider alternative ways of enhancing the current workforce to reduce the decline in midwives entering the profession

Sensitive detection of photoexcited carriers by resonant tunneling through a single quantum dot

We show that the resonant tunnel current through a single energy level of an individual quantum dot within an ensemble of dots is strongly sensitive to photoexcited holes that become bound in the close vicinity of the dot. The presence of these holes lowers the electrostatic energy of the quantum dot state and switches the current carrying channel from fully open to fully closed with a high on/off ratio (> 50). The device can be reset by means of a bias voltage pulse. These properties are of interest for charge sensitive photon counting devices.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Polygonal excitations of spinning and levitating droplets

The shape of a weightless spinning liquid droplet is governed by the balance between the surface tension and centrifugal forces. The axisymmetric shape for slow rotation becomes unstable to a non-axisymmetric distortion above a critical angular velocity, beyond which the droplet progresses through a series of 2-lobed shapes. Theory predicts the existence of a family of 3- and 4-lobed equilibrium shapes at higher angular velocity. We investigate the formation of a triangular-shaped magnetically levitated water droplet, driven to rotate by the Lorentz force on an ionic current within the droplet. We also study equatorial traveling waves which give the droplet 3, 4 and 5-fold symmetry.Comment: Supplementary information at http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~ppzlev/Drople

Mobility enhancement of CVD graphene by spatially correlated charges

The manuscript presents a strategy for enhancing the carrier mobility of single layer CVD graphene (CVD SLG) based on spatially correlated charges. Our Monte Carlo simulations, numerical modeling and the experimental results confirm that spatial correlation between defects with opposite charges can provide a means to control independently the carrier concentration and mobility of planar field effect transistors in which graphene is decorated with a layer of colloidal quantum dots (QDs). We show that the spatial correlation between electrically charged scattering centres close to the graphene/SiO2 interface and the localised charges in a QD layer can smooth out the electrostatic potential landscape, thus reducing scattering and enhancing the carrier mobility. The QD capping molecules influence the distribution and correlation of electrical charges in the vicinity of SLG and provide a means of tuning the carrier concentration and increasing the carrier mobility in graphene. These results represent a significant conceptual advance and provide a novel strategy for control of the electronic properties of 2D materials that could accelerate their utilization in optoelectronic devices

Dewatering saturated, networked suspensions with a screw press

A model is presented for the dewatering of a saturated two-phase medium in a screw press. The model accounts for the detailed two-phase rheological behaviour of the pressed material and splits the press into two zones, an initial well-mixed constant-pressure region followed by an axial transport region in which the total pressure steadily increases. In this latter region, a slowly varying helical coordinate transformation is introduced to help reduce the dynamics to an annular bi-axial compression of the two-phase medium. Unlike previous modelling, the transition point between the two zones is determined self-consistently, rather than set a priori, and the pressure along the length of the press is deduced from the rheology of the two-phase flow rather than averaging the two-phase dynamics over a cross section of the press. The model is compared to experimental observations of the dewatering of a paper-making fibre suspension and of a clay slurry, and is shown to reproduce operational data