628 research outputs found
Outcomes of a pilot study in chiropractic practices in Western Australia
Background
This paper reports the quantitative outcomes of a mixed-methods pilot study of the characteristics and demographics of chiropractic practices and patients in Western Australia.
Methods
This was a mixed-methods data transformation model (qualitative to quantitative) pilot study. A non-random sample of chiropractic practices across Western Australia was recruited and data collected anonymously from consecutive new patients using an online platform. Data covered practice and patient demographics and characteristics, alongside quality of life measures. A descriptive quantitative analysis characterised the sample, and the patient population was stratified by main reason for presentation to compare characteristics according to the presence of secondary complaints. Odds ratios were calculated to estimate the odds of a secondary complaint for various combinations of main complaints, from univariate logistic regression models.
Results
Of the 539 registered practitioners in WA in July 2014, 33 agreed to participate, from 20 different practices. Ten participating practices provided data on 325 adult new patients. The recruited practices (metropolitan n = 8, regional n = 2) had a positive response rate of 79.7 % (n = 301 metropolitan and n  = 24 regional patients), mean age 36.3 years (range 18–74) (53.2 % female). Spinal problems were reported as the main reason for consultation by 67 % and as secondary reasons by 77.2 % of patients. People presented primarily for health maintenance or a general health check in 11.4 %, and as a secondary reason 14.8 %. There were 30 % of people below societal norms for the SF-12 Physical Component Score (mean 47.19, 95 % CI; 46.27–48.19) and 86 % for the Mental Component Score (mean 36.64, 95 % CI; 35.93-37.65), Pain Impact Questionnaire mean scores were 54.60 (95 % CI; 53.32–55.88).
Conclusions
Patients presented to chiropractors in Western Australia with a fairly wide range of conditions, but primarily spinal and musculoskeletal-related problems. A significant proportion of patients had associated, or found to be at risk of, depression. Consequently, there are responsibilities and opportunities for chiropractors with respect to providing care services that include health promotion and well-being education related to musculoskeletal/spinal and mental health. This pilot study supports the feasibility of a future confirmatory study where the potential role of chiropractors in spinal/musculoskeletal health management may be explored
The Role of Surface Entropy in Statistical Emission of Massive Fragments from Equilibrated Nuclear Systems
Statistical fragment emission from excited nuclear systems is studied within
the framework of a schematic Fermi-gas model combined with Weisskopf's detailed
balance approach. The formalism considers thermal expansion of finite nuclear
systems and pays special attention to the role of the diffuse surface region in
the decay of hot equilibrated systems. It is found that with increasing
excitation energy, effects of surface entropy lead to a systematic and
significant reduction of effective emission barriers for fragments and,
eventually, to the vanishing of these barriers. The formalism provides a
natural explanation for the occurrence of negative nuclear heat capacities
reported in the literature. It also accounts for the observed linearity of
pseudo-Arrhenius plots of the logarithm of the fragment emission probability
{\it versus} the inverse square-root of the excitation energy, but does not
predict true Arrhenius behavior of these emission probabilities
Quantum superconductor-metal transition
We consider a system of superconducting grains embedded in a normal metal. At
zero temperature this system exhibits a quantum superconductor-normal metal
phase transition. This transition can take place at arbitrarily large
conductance of the normal metal.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure include
Quantum-fluctuation-induced repelling interaction of quantum string between walls
Quantum string, which was brought into discussion recently as a model for the
stripe phase in doped cuprates, is simulated by means of the
density-matrix-renormalization-group method. String collides with adjacent
neighbors, as it wonders, owing to quantum zero-point fluctuations. The energy
cost due to the collisions is our main concern. Embedding a quantum string
between rigid walls with separation d, we found that for sufficiently large d,
collision-induced energy cost obeys the formula \sim exp (- A d^alpha) with
alpha=0.808(1), and string's mean fluctuation width grows logarithmically \sim
log d. Those results are not understood in terms of conventional picture that
the string is `disordered,' and only the short-wave-length fluctuations
contribute to collisions. Rather, our results support a recent proposal that
owing to collisions, short-wave-length fluctuations are suppressed, but
instead, long-wave-length fluctuations become significant. This mechanism would
be responsible for stabilizing the stripe phase
Superconducting fluctuations and the Nernst effect: A diagrammatic approach
We calculate the contribution of superconducting fluctuations above the
critical temperature to the transverse thermoelectric response
, the quantity central to the analysis of the Nernst effect. The
calculation is carried out within the microscopic picture of BCS, and to linear
order in magnetic field. We find that as , the dominant contribution
to arises from the Aslamazov-Larkin diagrams, and is equal to the
result previously obtained from a stochastic time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau
equation [Ussishkin, Sondhi, and Huse, arXiv:cond-mat/0204484]. We present an
argument which establishes this correspondence for the heat current. Other
microscopic contributions, which generalize the Maki-Thompson and density of
states terms for the conductivity, are less divergent as .Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure
Scaling in the Lattice Gas Model
A good quality scaling of the cluster size distributions is obtained for the
Lattice Gas Model using the Fisher's ansatz for the scaling function. This
scaling identifies a pseudo-critical line in the phase diagram of the model
that spans the whole (subcritical to supercritical) density range. The
independent cluster hypothesis of the Fisher approach is shown to describe
correctly the thermodynamics of the lattice only far away from the critical
point.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
The power of quantum systems on a line
We study the computational strength of quantum particles (each of finite
dimensionality) arranged on a line. First, we prove that it is possible to
perform universal adiabatic quantum computation using a one-dimensional quantum
system (with 9 states per particle). This might have practical implications for
experimentalists interested in constructing an adiabatic quantum computer.
Building on the same construction, but with some additional technical effort
and 12 states per particle, we show that the problem of approximating the
ground state energy of a system composed of a line of quantum particles is
QMA-complete; QMA is a quantum analogue of NP. This is in striking contrast to
the fact that the analogous classical problem, namely, one-dimensional
MAX-2-SAT with nearest neighbor constraints, is in P. The proof of the
QMA-completeness result requires an additional idea beyond the usual techniques
in the area: Not all illegal configurations can be ruled out by local checks,
so instead we rule out such illegal configurations because they would, in the
future, evolve into a state which can be seen locally to be illegal. Our
construction implies (assuming the quantum Church-Turing thesis and that
quantum computers cannot efficiently solve QMA-complete problems) that there
are one-dimensional systems which take an exponential time to relax to their
ground states at any temperature, making them candidates for being
one-dimensional spin glasses.Comment: 21 pages. v2 has numerous corrections and clarifications, and most
importantly a new author, merged from arXiv:0705.4067. v3 is the published
version, with additional clarifications, publisher's version available at
http://www.springerlink.co
Critical fluctuation conductivity in layered superconductors in strong electric field
The paraconductivity, originating from critical superconducting
order-parameter fluctuations in the vicinity of the critical temperature in a
layered superconductor is calculated in the frame of the self-consistent
Hartree approximation, for an arbitrarily strong electric field and zero
magnetic field. The paraconductivity diverges less steep towards the critical
temperature in the Hartree approximation than in the Gaussian one and it shows
a distinctly enhanced variation with the electric field. Our results indicate
that high electric fields can be effectively used to suppress order-parameter
fluctuations in high-temperature superconductors.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.
Destruction of diagonal and off-diagonal long range order by disorder in two-dimensional hard core boson systems
We use quantum Monte Carlo simulations to study the effect of disorder, in
the form of a disordered chemical potential, on the phase diagram of the hard
core bosonic Hubbard model in two dimensions. We find numerical evidence that
in two dimensions, no matter how weak the disorder, it will always destroy the
long range density wave order (checkerboard solid) present at half filling and
strong nearest neighbor repulsion and replace it with a bose glass phase. We
study the properties of this glassy phase including the superfluid density,
energy gaps and the full Green's function. We also study the possibility of
other localized phases at weak nearest neighbor repulsion, i.e. Anderson
localization. We find that such a phase does not truly exist: The disorder must
exceed a threshold before the bosons (at weak nn repulsion) are localized. The
phase diagram for hard core bosons with disorder cannot be obtained easily from
the soft core phase diagram discussed in the literature.Comment: 7 pages, 10 eps figures include
DC and AC Josephson Effect in a Superconductor-Luttinger Liquid-Superconductor System
We calculate both the DC and the AC Josephson current through a
one-dimensional system of interacting electrons, connected to two
superconductors by tunnel junctions. We treat the (repulsive) Coulomb
interaction in the framework of the one-channel, spin- Luttinger model.
The Josephson current is obtained for two geometries of experimental relevance:
a quantum wire and a ring. At zero temperature, the critical current is found
to decay algebraically with increasing distance between the junctions. The
decay is characterized by an exponent which depends on the strength of the
interaction. At finite temperatures , lower than the superconducting
transition temperature , there is a crossover from algebraic to
exponential decay of the critical current as a function of , at a distance
of the order of . Moreover, the dependence of critical current
on temperature shows non-monotonic behavior. If the Luttinger liquid is
confined to a ring of circumference , coupled capacitively to a gate voltage
and threaded by a magnetic flux, the Josephson current shows remarkable parity
effects under the variation of these parameters. For some values of the gate
voltage and applied flux, the ring acts as a -junction. These features are
robust against thermal fluctuations up to temperatures on the order of . For the wire-geometry, we have also studied the AC-Josephson
effect. The amplitude and the phase of the time-dependent Josephson current are
affected by electron-electron interactions. Specifically, the amplitude shows
pronounced oscillations as a function of the bias voltage due to the difference
between the velocities of spin and charge excitations in the Luttinger liquid.
Therefore, the AC Josephson effect can be used as a tool for the observation o
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