Patient Safety Culture Status and Its Predictors Among Healthcare Workers

Good patient safety culture of healthcare professionals brings about fine consequences for patients. This study, therefore, aimed in evaluating the current status and predictors of safety culture among healthcare workers in Mekelle Zone hospitals, Tigray, Northern Ethiopia. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 325 healthcare workers in three hospitals of Mekelle city from February to May, 2017. Simple random sampling technique was employed to select study subjects. Data was analyzed using SPSS. Logistic regression was used to determine the predictors of patient safety culture among healthcare workers at 95% confidence level and 5% level of significance. Statistical significance was set at p <0.05. Of the 325 Healthcare workers, 21.6% rated the culture of patient safety as satisfactory and 78.4% rated as unsatisfactory. Old aged healthcare workers (AOR=21.9, 95% of CI: 2.51-61.69) and ‘hospital management support for patient safety' (AOR=2.68, 95% CI=1.06-6.79) were strong predictor of satisfactory patient safety culture. Satisfactory patient safety culture grade obtained was only 21.6%, indicating that health care professionals are not delivering patient centered service and there is a lot of work to be done in the hospitals to improve culture of patient safety among healthcare workers

Type IIB Flows with N=1 Supersymmetry

We write general and explicit equations which solve the supersymmetry transformations with two arbitrary complex-proportional Weyl spinors on $\mathcal{N}=1$ supersymmetric type IIB strings backgrounds with all R-R $F_1$, $F_3$, $F_5$ and NS-NS $H_3$ fluxes turned on using SU(3) structures. The equations are generalizations of the ones found for specific relations between the two spinors by Grana, Minasian, Petrini and Tomasiello in [1] and by Butti, Grana, Minasian, Petrini and Zaffaroni in [2]. The general equations allow to study systematically generic type IIB backgrounds with $\mathcal{N}=1$ supersymmetry. We then explore some specific classes of flows with constant axion, flows with constant dilaton, flows on conformally Calabi-Yau backgrounds, flows with imaginary self-dual 3-form flux, flows with constant ratio of the two spinors, the corresponding equations are written down and some of their features and relations are discussed.Comment: 28 page

Construction of a polarization insensitive lens from a quasi-isotropic metamaterial slab

We propose to employ the quasiisotropic metamaterial (QIMM) slab to construct a polarization insensitive lens, in which both E- and H-polarized waves exhibit the same refocusing effect. For shallow incident angles, the QIMM slab will provide some degree of refocusing in the same manner as an isotropic negative index material. The refocusing effect allows us to introduce the ideas of paraxial beam focusing and phase compensation by the QIMM slab. On the basis of angular spectrum representation, a formalism describing paraxial beams propagating through a QIMM slab is presented. Because of the negative phase velocity in the QIMM slab, the inverse Gouy phase shift and the negative Rayleigh length of paraxial Gaussian beam are proposed. We find that the phase difference caused by the Gouy phase shift in vacuum can be compensated by that caused by the inverse Gouy phase shift in the QIMM slab. If certain matching conditions are satisfied, the intensity and phase distributions at object plane can be completely reconstructed at image plane. Our simulation results show that the superlensing effect with subwavelength image resolution could be achieved in the form of a QIMM slab.Comment: 25 pages, 8 figure

Timber composite floor beams under 2 years lon-term load

The long-term behaviour of composite beams is characterised by the response of its component parts (flanges and webs) to load, moisture content, temperature and relative humidity of the environment. This paper reports the results of a two years long-term test on two 6 m span composite floor beams made of laminated veneer lumber (LVL) under service load performed in an indoor, semi-controlled, and unheated environment. The environmental conditions were characterized by artificially induced cyclic air humidity with quasi-constant temperature. These conditions can be characterized as reasonably severe and presumably close to service class 3 according to Eurocode 5. During the test, the mid-span deflection, moisture content and air humidity were monitored. The paper recommends a creep factor for design of timber composite beams in severe environmental conditions

On modeling and measuring viscoelasticity with dynamic Atomic Force Microscopy

The interaction between a rapidly oscillating atomic force microscope tip and a soft material surface is described using both elastic and viscous forces with a moving surface model. We derive the simplest form of this model, motivating it as a way to capture the impact dynamics of the tip and sample with an interaction consisting of two components: interfacial or surface force, and bulk or volumetric force. Analytic solutions to the piece-wise linear model identify characteristic time constants, providing a physical explanation of the hysteresis observed in the measured dynamic force quadrature curves. Numerical simulation is used to fit the model to experimental data and excellent agreement is found with a variety of different samples. The model parameters form a dimensionless impact-rheology factor, giving a quantitative physical number to characterize a viscoelastic surface that does not depend on the tip shape or cantilever frequency.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figure

Low-Temperature Orientation Dependence of Step Stiffness on {111} Surfaces

For hexagonal nets, descriptive of {111} fcc surfaces, we derive from combinatoric arguments a simple, low-temperature formula for the orientation dependence of the surface step line tension and stiffness, as well as the leading correction, based on the Ising model with nearest-neighbor (NN) interactions. Our formula agrees well with experimental data for both Ag and Cu{111} surfaces, indicating that NN-interactions alone can account for the data in these cases (in contrast to results for Cu{001}). Experimentally significant corollaries of the low-temperature derivation show that the step line tension cannot be extracted from the stiffness and that with plausible assumptions the low-temperature stiffness should have 6-fold symmetry, in contrast to the 3-fold symmetry of the crystal shape. We examine Zia's exact implicit solution in detail, using numerical methods for general orientations and deriving many analytic results including explicit solutions in the two high-symmetry directions. From these exact results we rederive our simple result and explore subtle behavior near close-packed directions. To account for the 3-fold symmetry in a lattice gas model, we invoke a novel orientation-dependent trio interaction and examine its consequences.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure

Visceral leishmaniasis patients display altered composition and maturity of neutrophils as well as impaired neutrophil effector functions

Immunologically, active visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is characterised by profound immunosuppression, severe systemic inflammatory responses and an impaired capacity to control parasite replication. Neutrophils are highly versatile cells, which play a crucial role in the induction as well as the resolution of inflammation, the control of pathogen replication and the regulation of immune responses. Neutrophil functions have been investigated in human cutaneous leishmaniasis, however, their role in human visceral leishmaniasis is poorly understood. In the present study we evaluated the activation status and effector functions of neutrophils in patients with active VL and after successful anti-leishmanial treatment. Our results show that neutrophils are highly activated and have degranulated; high levels of arginase, myeloperoxidase and elastase, all contained in neutrophils’ granules, were found in the plasma of VL patients. In addition, we show that a large proportion of these cells are immature. We also analysed effector functions of neutrophils that are essential for pathogen clearance and show that neutrophils have an impaired capacity to release neutrophil extracellular traps, produce reactive oxygen species and phagocytose bacterial particles, but not Leishmania parasites. Our results suggest that impaired effector functions, increased activation and immaturity of neutrophils play a key role in the pathogenesis of VL

Post-harvest and food safety: Africa RISING science, innovations and technologies with scaling potential from the Ethiopian Highlands

United States Agency for International Developmen

N=1* model superpotential revisited (IR behaviour of N=4 limit)

The one-loop contribution to the superpotential, in particular the Veneziano-Yankielowicz potential in N=1 supersymmetric Yang-Mills model is discussed from an elementary field theory method and the matrix model point of view. Both approaches are based on the Renormalization Group variation of the superconformal N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills model.Comment: 31 page