Doctoral profile of the medical radiation sciences: a baseline for Australia and New Zealand

YesResearch is critical to evidence‐based practice, and the rapid developments in technology provide opportunities to innovate and improve practice. Little is known about the research profile of the medical radiation science (MRS) profession in Australia and New Zealand (NZ). This study provides a baseline of their doctoral activity. A cross‐sectional survey of MRS professionals in Australia and NZ holding a doctorate or undertaking doctoral studies, was performed using an online tool (Bristol Online Survey®, Bristol, UK). A chain‐referral sampling technique was adopted for data collection. An email invitation with a link to the survey was generated and distributed through email and social media. The survey contained questions related to participant demographics, doctoral status, qualification route, funding and employment. There were 63 responses to the survey comprising 50.8% diagnostic radiographers (DRs; n = 32), 23.8% radiation therapists (RTs; n = 15), with the remaining 25.4% (n = 16) equally split between sonographers and nuclear medicine technologists (NMTs). A total of 40 (63.5%) of respondents had completed their doctoral qualification. In NZ, only DRs held a doctoral award constituting 0.3% of DRs and 0.2% of the total registered MRS population. In Australia, there was a greater proportion of doctoral NMTs (n = 8/1098; 0.7%) than RTs (n = 15/2394; 0.6%) and DRs (n = 27/12,001; 0.2%). Similar to other countries, findings show a very small percentage of doctoral MRS professionals in Australia and NZ. Strategies to engage and support individuals in research, up to and beyond doctoral study, need to be embedded in practice

Competition between fluctuations and disorder in frustrated magnets

We investigate the effects of impurities on the nature of the phase transition in frustrated magnets, in d=4-epsilon dimensions. For sufficiently small values of the number of spin components, we find no physically relevant stable fixed point in the deep perturbative region (epsilon << 1), contrarily to what is to be expected on very general grounds. This signals the onset of important physical effects.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, published versio

Log Fano varieties over function fields of curves

Consider a smooth log Fano variety over the function field of a curve. Suppose that the boundary has positive normal bundle. Choose an integral model over the curve. Then integral points are Zariski dense, after removing an explicit finite set of points on the base curve.Comment: 18 page

High concordance between mental stress-induced and adenosine-induced myocardial ischemia assessed using SPECT in heart failure patients:Hemodynamic and biomarker correlates

Mental stress can trigger myocardial ischemia, but the prevalence of mental stress–induced ischemia in congestive heart failure (CHF) patients is unknown. We characterized mental stress–induced and adenosine-induced changes in myocardial perfusion and neurohormonal activation in CHF patients with reduced left-ventricular function using SPECT to precisely quantify segment-level myocardial perfusion. Methods: Thirty-four coronary artery disease patients (mean age ± SD, 62 ± 10 y) with CHF longer than 3 mo and ejection fraction less than 40% underwent both adenosine and mental stress myocardial perfusion SPECT on consecutive days. Mental stress consisted of anger recall (anger-provoking speech) followed by subtraction of serial sevens. The presence and extent of myocardial ischemia was quantified using the conventional 17-segment model. Results: Sixty-eight percent of patients had 1 ischemic segment or more during mental stress and 81% during adenosine. On segment-by-segment analysis, perfusion with mental stress and adenosine were highly correlated. No significant differences were found between any 2 time points for B-type natriuretic peptide, tumor necrosis factor-α, IL-1b, troponin, vascular endothelin growth factor, IL-17a, matrix metallopeptidase-9, or C-reactive protein. However, endothelin-1 and IL-6 increased, and IL-10 decreased, between the stressor and 30 min after stress. Left-ventricular end diastolic dimension was 179 ± 65 mL at rest and increased to 217 ± 71 after mental stress and 229 ± 86 after adenosine (P < 0.01 for both). Resting end systolic volume was 129 ± 60 mL at rest and increased to 158 ± 66 after mental stress (P < 0.05) and 171 ± 87 after adenosine (P < 0.07), with no significant differences between adenosine and mental stress. Ejection fraction was 30 ± 12 at baseline, 29 ± 11 with mental stress, and 28 ± 10 with adenosine (P = not significant). Conclusion: There was high concordance between ischemic perfusion defects induced by adenosine and mental stress, suggesting that mental stress is equivalent to pharmacologic stress in eliciting clinically significant myocardial perfusion defects in CHF patients. Cardiac dilatation suggests clinically important changes with both conditions. Psychosocial stressors during daily life may contribute to the ischemic burden of CHF patients with coronary artery disease. Keywords: heart failure, mental stress, ischemia, myocardial perfusion, adenosine, single-photon emission computed tomograph

Transverse Phase Locking for Vortex Motion in Square and Triangular Pinning Arrays

We analyze transverse phase locking for vortex motion in a superconductor with a longitudinal DC drive and a transverse AC drive. For both square and triangular arrays we observe a variety of fractional phase locking steps in the velocity versus DC drive which correspond to stable vortex orbits. The locking steps are more pronounced for the triangular arrays which is due to the fact that the vortex motion has a periodic transverse velocity component even for zero transverse AC drive. All the steps increase monotonically in width with AC amplitude. We confirm that the width of some fractional steps in the square arrays scales as the square of the AC driving amplitude. In addition we demonstrate scaling in the velocity versus applied DC driving curves at depinning and on the main step, similar to that seen for phase locking in charge-density wave systems. The phase locking steps are most prominent for commensurate vortex fillings where the interstitial vortices form symmetrical ground states. For increasing temperature, the fractional steps are washed out very quickly, while the main step gains a linear component and disappears at melting. For triangular pinning arrays we again observe transverse phase locking, with the main and several of the fractional step widths scaling linearly with AC amplitude.Comment: 10 pages, 14 postscript figure

The Intentional Use of Service Recovery Strategies to Influence Consumer Emotion, Cognition and Behaviour

Service recovery strategies have been identified as a critical factor in the success of. service organizations. This study develops a conceptual frame work to investigate how specific service recovery strategies influence the emotional, cognitive and negative behavioural responses of . consumers., as well as how emotion and cognition influence negative behavior. Understanding the impact of specific service recovery strategies will allow service providers' to more deliberately and intentionally engage in strategies that result in positive organizational outcomes. This study was conducted using a 2 x 2 between-subjects quasi-experimental design. The results suggest that service recovery has a significant impact on emotion, cognition and negative behavior. Similarly, satisfaction, negative emotion and positive emotion all influence negative behavior but distributive justice has no effect

Ecological Invasion, Roughened Fronts, and a Competitor's Extreme Advance: Integrating Stochastic Spatial-Growth Models

Both community ecology and conservation biology seek further understanding of factors governing the advance of an invasive species. We model biological invasion as an individual-based, stochastic process on a two-dimensional landscape. An ecologically superior invader and a resident species compete for space preemptively. Our general model includes the basic contact process and a variant of the Eden model as special cases. We employ the concept of a "roughened" front to quantify effects of discreteness and stochasticity on invasion; we emphasize the probability distribution of the front-runner's relative position. That is, we analyze the location of the most advanced invader as the extreme deviation about the front's mean position. We find that a class of models with different assumptions about neighborhood interactions exhibit universal characteristics. That is, key features of the invasion dynamics span a class of models, independently of locally detailed demographic rules. Our results integrate theories of invasive spatial growth and generate novel hypotheses linking habitat or landscape size (length of the invading front) to invasion velocity, and to the relative position of the most advanced invader.Comment: The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com/content/8528v8563r7u2742