Spiritual support interventions in nursing care for patients suffering death anxiety in the final phase of life

PURPOSE: To investigate which activities from the 'Spiritual Support' intervention of the Nursing Interventions Classification (NIC) are used in patients with the nursing diagnosis 'Death Anxiety' in the Czech Republic, and which activities could feasibly be implemented into practice. METHOD: The study surveyed 468 Czech nurses using a quantitative questionnaire with Likert scales. RESULTS: The most frequently used activity was 'Treat individual with dignity and respect' and the least frequently used was 'Pray with the individual'. 'Treat individual with dignity and respect' was also thought to be the most feasible activity for Czech nursing practice. Significant differences were found between nurses working in hospices and those in other sites and between religious believers and non-believers. CONCLUSION: Even in the secularised Czech Republic, nurses can make use of the NIC Spiritual Support intervention in end-of-life care.Helena Kisvetrová, Miloslav Klugar, Ladislav Kabelk

Heterogeneous relaxation dynamics of nano-confined salol probed by DMA

We present novel low-frequency (0.1 Hz$\hbox{--}$50 Hz) measurements of the complex elastic susceptibility of the glass-forming liquid salol confined to nanoporous Vycor glass. Our data can be perfectly interpreted with the assumption of a radial distribution of Vogel-Fulcher temperatures $T_{0}(r)$ inside the pores, resulting from an increase of the molecular relaxation time with decreasing distance from the rough pore surface as recently found by computer simulations (Scheidler et al., Europhys. Lett. 59, 701 (2002)). The results show for the first time, that the dynamic elastic response is extremely sensitive for separating confinement-induced acceleration effects of the molecular dynamics and surface-induced slowing-down due to rough pore interfaces

Influence of various commercial water treatment processes on the electric conductivity of several drinking waters

Seven com. available devices for water treatment were used on samples of drinking water drawn from four geog. different sources in Austria contg. significantly different amts. of dissolved ions. The purpose of this investigation was to elucidate the influence of these water treatment processes, if any, on the elec. cond. of drinking waters. Within the limits of our exptl. precision, none of these seven devices had any discernable influence

Mechanical properties of filled antimonide skutterudites

Time-of-flight and resonant ultrasound spectroscopy techniques were employed for elastic moduli measurements on a set of various Fe4Sb12- and Co4Sb12-based skutterudites filled by mischmetal, didymium, or alkaline earths (Ca, Sr, Ba). A weak temperature influence on the longitudinal modulus C11 indicates weak degradation of elastic properties within the thermoelectric working temperature range. Elastic moduli for Co4Sb12-based skutterudites are only slightly higher than for Fe4Sb12-based skutterudites, and the influence of various filler atoms or filling fractions on the elastic moduli is even smaller. Ball milled and hot pressed samples (grain size not, vert, similar250 nm) illustrate an obvious improvement of elastic properties in relation to those hot pressed from hand milled powders (grain size not, vert, similar50 μm). Debye temperatures calculated from sound velocity measurements are comparable to the values obtained from the parameters fitted to thermal expansion, which indicate that Co4Sb12-based skutterudites having slightly higher values than Fe4Sb12-based skutterudites. Vickers hardness is increased by Co or Ni substitution and demonstrates a linear dependence on density, Young's modulus, and shear modulus