1,580 research outputs found
The role of UK alcohol and drug (AOD) nurses in a changing workforce
Background: This paper presents the findings from an exploratory study on alcohol and other drugs (AOD) nurses’ views on current career opportunities and challenges and on how their role has been affected by clinical and structural changes in service delivery.
Methods: The paper is based on qualitative interviews with a purposive sample of twelve AOD nurses in the UK. A narrative approach to interviewing aimed to encourage emergence of new insights and suggest theories for future examination. Interview domains were informed by the research team’s knowledge of AOD nursing and by themes from published literature. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded and a reflexive thematic analysis was conducted.
Results: Key themes emerging focused on the growth, advantages, and challenges of non-medical prescribing (NMP), and the impact on AOD nursing of changes in workforce structures and environments. The findings indicate considerable doubts about career opportunities for nurses in AOD services although NMP may offer some limited routes to career advancement.
Conclusions: Some long-standing issues around the identity and professional status of AOD nurses persist and current clinical and structural changes have created a “liminal space” within which the nursing role and AOD nurse identity are disrupted and in transition
Singlet-Triplet Excitations in the Unconventional Spin-Peierls System TiOBr
We have performed time-of-flight neutron scattering measurements on powder
samples of the unconventional spin-Peierls compound TiOBr using the
fine-resolution Fermi chopper spectrometer (SEQUOIA) at the SNS. These
measurements reveal two branches of magnetic excitations within the
commensurate and incommensurate spin-Peierls phases, which we associate with n
= 1 and n = 2 triplet excitations out of the singlet ground state. These
measurements represent the first direct measure of the singlet-triplet energy
gap in TiOBr, which is determined to be Eg = 21.2 +/- 1.0 meV.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, submitted for publicatio
New writings in feminist and women's studies winning and short-listed entries from the 2018 feminist and women's studies association's (FWSA) annual student essay competition
New near-IR observations of mesospheric CO2 and H2O clouds on Mars
Carbon dioxide clouds, which are speculated by models on solar and
extra-solar planets, have been recently observed near the equator of Mars. The
most comprehensive identification of Martian CO2 ice clouds has been obtained
by the near-IR imaging spectrometer OMEGA. CRISM, a similar instrument with a
higher spatial resolution, cannot detect these clouds with the same method due
to its shorter wavelength range. Here we present a new method to detect CO2
clouds using near-IR data based on the comparison of H2O and CO2 ice spectral
properties. The spatial and seasonal distributions of 54 CRISM observations
containing CO2 clouds are reported, in addition to 17 new OMEGA observations.
CRISM CO2 clouds are characterized by grain size in the 0.5-2\mum range and
optical depths lower than 0.3. The distributions of CO2 clouds inferred from
OMEGA and CRISM are consistent with each other and match at first order the
distribution of high altitude (>60km) clouds derived from previous studies. At
second order, discrepancies are observed. We report the identification of H2O
clouds extending up to 80 km altitude, which could explain part of these
discrepancies: both CO2 and H2O clouds can exist at high, mesospheric
altitudes. CRISM observations of afternoon CO2 clouds display morphologies
resembling terrestrial cirrus, which generalizes a previous result to the whole
equatorial clouds season. Finally, we show that morning OMEGA observations have
been previously misinterpreted as evidence for cumuliform, and hence
potentially convective, CO2 clouds.Comment: Vincendon, M., C. Pilorget, B. Gondet, S. Murchie, and J.-P. Bibring
(2011), New near-IR observations of mesospheric CO2 and H2O clouds on Mars,
J. Geophys. Res., 116, E00J0
Structural Fluctuations in the Spin Liquid State of Tb2Ti2O7
High resolution X-ray scattering measurements on single crystal Tb2Ti2O7
reveal finite structural correlations at low temperatures. This geometrically
frustrated pyrochlore is known to exhibit a spin liquid, or cooperative
paramagnetic state, at temperatures below ~ 20 K. Parametric studies of
structural Bragg peaks appropriate to the Fdm space group of Tb2Ti2O7
reveal substantial broadening and peak intensity reduction in the temperature
regime 20 K to 300 mK. We also observe a small, anomalous lattice expansion on
cooling below a density maximum at ~ 18 K. These measurements are consistent
with the development of fluctuations above a cooperative Jahn-Teller,
cubic-tetragonal phase transition at very low temperatures.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, submitted for publicatio
Inflation and initial conditions in the pre-big bang scenario
The pre-big bang scenario describes the evolution of the Universe from an
initial state approaching the flat, cold, empty, string perturbative vacuum.
The choice of such an initial state is suggested by the present state of our
Universe if we accept that the cosmological evolution is (at least partially)
duality-symmetric. Recently, the initial conditions of the pre-big bang
scenario have been criticized as they introduce large dimensionless parameters
allowing the Universe to be "exponentially large from the very beginning". We
agree that a set of initial parameters (such as the initial homogeneity scale,
the initial entropy) larger than those determined by the initial horizon scale,
H^{-1}, would be somewhat unnatural to start with. However, in the pre-big bang
scenario, the initial parameters are all bounded by the size of the initial
horizon. The basic question thus becomes: is a maximal homogeneity scale of
order H^{-1} necessarily unnatural if the initial curvature is small and,
consequently, H^{-1} is very large in Planck (or string) units? In the
impossibility of experimental information one could exclude "a priori", for
large horizons, the maximal homogeneity scale H^{-1} as a natural initial
condition. In the pre-big bang scenario, however, pre-Planckian initial
conditions are not necessarily washed out by inflation and are accessible (in
principle) to observational tests, so that their naturalness could be also
analyzed with a Bayesan approach, in terms of "a posteriori" probabilities.Comment: 4 pages, Latex, one figure. Many references added. The text has been
improved in many points. To appear in Phys. Rev.
Magnetoelastics of a spin liquid: X-ray diffraction studies of Tb2Ti2O7 in pulsed magnetic fields
We report high resolution single crystal x-ray diffraction measurements of
the frustrated pyrochlore magnet Tb2Ti2O7, collected using a novel low
temperature pulsed magnet system. This instrument allows characterization of
structural degrees of freedom to temperatures as low as 4.4 K, and in applied
magnetic fields as large as 30 Tesla. We show that Tb2Ti2O7 manifests
intriguing structural effects under the application of magnetic fields,
including strongly anisotropic giant magnetostriction, a restoration of perfect
pyrochlore symmetry in low magnetic fields, and ultimately a structural phase
transition in high magnetic fields. It is suggested that the magnetoelastic
coupling thus revealed plays a significant role in the spin liquid physics of
Tb2Ti2O7 at low temperatures.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, submitted for publicatio
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