1,548 research outputs found
The impact on mental health of the economic recession in the district of Sassuolo (Modena): opinions of local occupational physicians.
INTRODUCTION The recent economic recession and the subsequent strategy of austerity have deceased
the amount of resources devoted to health care. They may also have contributed to the deterioration of the
population health.
AIM To assess the impact on mental health of the economic recession in the district of Sassuolo (Modena),
by collecting and analyzing opinions of local Occupational Physicians.
METHODS Qualitative survey, by focus groups, conducted in Sassuolo (Modena), industrial center of
ceramics, involving 8 Occupational Physicians active in the area. Rough descriptions analyzed
independently by GU and GM using MAXQDA, with the independent supervision of a third researcher (SF),
according to the principles of the General Grounded Theory. The second focus group was intendened as
respondent validation of the first, yet it gathered further data, up to theortical saturation.
RESULTS Two focus groups, about one hour long, attended by 8 Occupational Physicians, 7 during the first
focus group, 4 during the second (of these, 3 attending both focus groups). The coding process yielded 261
segments, divided into four main areas: "changes in contemporary world" (16 coded segments), "social
area" (82 coded segments), "medical area" (94 coded segments), "working area" (69 coded segments).
CONCLUSIONS The impact of the economic crisis on health produced mainly negative consequences,
locally, consistently with national data. Psychiatrists should work together with Occupational Physicians to
develop targeted interventions, addressing social, political and medical needs. A more structured liaison
between Psychiatry and Occupational Medicine is an interesting and useful tool for future action and
advocacy
Duality relations for the ASEP conditioned on a low current
We consider the asymmetric simple exclusion process (ASEP) on a finite
lattice with periodic boundary conditions, conditioned to carry an atypically
low current. For an infinite discrete set of currents, parametrized by the
driving strength , , we prove duality relations which arise from
the quantum algebra symmetry of the generator of the
process with reflecting boundary conditions. Using these duality relations we
prove on microscopic level a travelling-wave property of the conditioned
process for a family of shock-antishock measures for particles: If the
initial measure is a member of this family with microscopic shocks at
positions , then the measure at any time of the process
with driving strength is a convex combination of such measures with
shocks at positions . which can be expressed in terms of
-particle transition probabilities of the conditioned ASEP with driving
strength .Comment: 26 page
On the Fibonacci universality classes in nonlinear fluctuating hydrodynamics
We present a lattice gas model that without fine tuning of parameters is
expected to exhibit the so far elusive modified Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ)
universality class. To this end, we review briefly how non-linear fluctuating
hydrodynamics in one dimension predicts that all dynamical universality classes
in its range of applicability belong to an infinite discrete family which we
call Fibonacci family since their dynamical exponents are the Kepler ratios
of neighbouring Fibonacci numbers , including
diffusion (), KPZ (), and the limiting ratio which is the
golden mean . Then we revisit the case of two
conservation laws to which the modified KPZ model belongs. We also derive
criteria on the macroscopic currents to lead to other non-KPZ universality
classes.Comment: 17 page
Neonatal imitation and early social experience predict gaze following abilities in infant monkeys
Individuals vary in their social skills and motivation, the causes of which remain largely unknown. Here we investigated whether an individual’s propensity to interact with others measured within days after birth, and differences in infants’ early social environment, may predict a later social skill. Specifically, we tested whether neonatal imitation—newborns’ capacity to match modelled actions—and social experience in the first months of life predict gaze following (directing attention to locations where others look), in infant macaques (Macaca mulatta; n = 119). Facial gesture imitation in the first week of life predicted gaze following at 7 months of age. Imitators were better at gaze following than non-imitators, suggesting neonatal imitation may be an early marker predicting socio-cognitive functioning. In addition, infants with rich social environments outperformed infants with less socialization, suggesting early social experiences also support the development of infants’ gaze following competence. The present study offers compelling evidence that an individual difference present from birth predicts a functional social cognitive skill in later infancy. In addition, this foundational skill—gaze following—is plastic, and can be improved through social interactions, providing infants with a strong foundation for later social interaction and learning
Is psychiatric residential facility discharge possible and predictable? A multivariate analytical approach applied to a prospective study in Italy
A growing number of severely ill patients require long-term care in non-hospital residential facilities (RFs). Despite the magnitude of this development, longitudinal studies surveying fairly large resident samples and yielding important information on this population have been very few
Precision Measurement of the Newtonian Gravitational Constant Using Cold Atoms
About 300 experiments have tried to determine the value of the Newtonian
gravitational constant, G, so far, but large discrepancies in the results have
made it impossible to know its value precisely. The weakness of the
gravitational interaction and the impossibility of shielding the effects of
gravity make it very difficult to measure G while keeping systematic effects
under control. Most previous experiments performed were based on the torsion
pendulum or torsion balance scheme as in the experiment by Cavendish in 1798,
and in all cases macroscopic masses were used. Here we report the precise
determination of G using laser-cooled atoms and quantum interferometry. We
obtain the value G=6.67191(99) x 10^(-11) m^3 kg^(-1) s^(-2) with a relative
uncertainty of 150 parts per million (the combined standard uncertainty is
given in parentheses). Our value differs by 1.5 combined standard deviations
from the current recommended value of the Committee on Data for Science and
Technology. A conceptually different experiment such as ours helps to identify
the systematic errors that have proved elusive in previous experiments, thus
improving the confidence in the value of G. There is no definitive relationship
between G and the other fundamental constants, and there is no theoretical
prediction for its value, against which to test experimental results. Improving
the precision with which we know G has not only a pure metrological interest,
but is also important because of the key role that G has in theories of
gravitation, cosmology, particle physics and astrophysics and in geophysical
models.Comment: 3 figures, 1 tabl
Causality violation, gravitational shockwaves and UV completion
The effective actions describing the low-energy dynamics of QFTs involving
gravity generically exhibit causality violations. These may take the form of
superluminal propagation or Shapiro time advances and allow the construction of
"time machines", i.e. spacetimes admitting closed non-spacelike curves. Here,
we discuss critically whether such causality violations may be used as a
criterion to identify unphysical effective actions or whether, and how,
causality problems may be resolved by embedding the action in a fundamental, UV
complete QFT. We study in detail the case of photon scattering in an
Aichelburg-Sexl gravitational shockwave background and calculate the phase
shifts in QED for all energies, demonstrating their smooth interpolation from
the causality-violating effective action values at low-energy to their
manifestly causal high-energy limits. At low energies, these phase shifts may
be interpreted as backwards-in-time coordinate jumps as the photon encounters
the shock wavefront, and we illustrate how the resulting causality problems
emerge and are resolved in a two-shockwave time machine scenario. The
implications of our results for ultra-high (Planck) energy scattering, in which
graviton exchange is modelled by the shockwave background, are highlighted.Comment: 42 pages, 15 figures, updated reference
Control and Characterization of Individual Grains and Grain Boundaries in Graphene Grown by Chemical Vapor Deposition
The strong interest in graphene has motivated the scalable production of high
quality graphene and graphene devices. Since large-scale graphene films
synthesized to date are typically polycrystalline, it is important to
characterize and control grain boundaries, generally believed to degrade
graphene quality. Here we study single-crystal graphene grains synthesized by
ambient CVD on polycrystalline Cu, and show how individual boundaries between
coalescing grains affect graphene's electronic properties. The graphene grains
show no definite epitaxial relationship with the Cu substrate, and can cross Cu
grain boundaries. The edges of these grains are found to be predominantly
parallel to zigzag directions. We show that grain boundaries give a significant
Raman "D" peak, impede electrical transport, and induce prominent weak
localization indicative of intervalley scattering in graphene. Finally, we
demonstrate an approach using pre-patterned growth seeds to control graphene
nucleation, opening a route towards scalable fabrication of single-crystal
graphene devices without grain boundaries.Comment: New version with additional data. Accepted by Nature Material
Coral Reef Fish Rapidly Learn to Identify Multiple Unknown Predators upon Recruitment to the Reef
Organisms often undergo shifts in habitats as their requirements change with ontogeny
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