192 research outputs found
Pre-hospital emergency nurse specialist's experiences in caring for patients with non-specific chief complaints in the ambulance - A qualitative interview study
Background: Pre-hospital emergency nurse (PEN) specialists are faced with patients presenting with non-specific chief complaints (NSC) to the emergency medical service (EMS) on a daily basis. These patients are often elderly and one in three has a serious condition and their acuity is not recognized. Objective: The aim of the current study was to explore PEN specialists' experiences in caring for patients presenting with non-specific chief complaints. Design: A qualitative study design with eleven individual interviews of PENs, between 2018 and 2020. Qualitative content analysis was used. Results: The analyses generated three categories including subcategories. The categories were "Unexplained suffering". "Systematic approach and experience enhances medical safety". "Organizational processes can be optimized". The relation between the categories compiled as 'In-depth systematic assessment is perceived to reduce suffering and increases patient safety. Conclusion: The PENs experiences in caring for patients presenting with non-specific chief complaints show that an in-depth systematic assessment may lead to a meaningful caring encounter which enables the identification of the cause of the chief complaint. Experience and a systematic approach were considered as essential to enhance medical safety. This could be strengthened through feedback on the nurse's care provided by care managers and employers. To optimize organizational processes, the development of the opportunity to convey the patient to different levels of care can be an important component.Peer reviewe
From Davydov solitons to decoherence-free subspaces: self-consistent propagation of coherent-product states
The self-consistent propagation of generalized [coherent-product]
states and of a class of gaussian density matrix generalizations is examined,
at both zero and finite-temperature, for arbitrary interactions between the
localized lattice (electronic or vibronic) excitations and the phonon modes. It
is shown that in all legitimate cases, the evolution of states reduces
to the disentangled evolution of the component states. The
self-consistency conditions for the latter amount to conditions for
decoherence-free propagation, which complement the Davydov soliton
equations in such a way as to lift the nonlinearity of the evolution for the
on-site degrees of freedom. Although it cannot support Davydov solitons, the
coherent-product ansatz does provide a wide class of exact density-matrix
solutions for the joint evolution of the lattice and phonon bath in compatible
systems. Included are solutions for initial states given as a product of a
[largely arbitrary] lattice state and a thermal equilibrium state of the
phonons. It is also shown that external pumping can produce self-consistent
Frohlich-like effects. A few sample cases of coherent, albeit not solitonic,
propagation are briefly discussed.Comment: revtex3, latex2e; 22 pages, no figs.; to appear in Phys.Rev.E
(Nov.2001
Continuum Surface Energy from a Lattice Model
We investigate connections between the continuum and atomistic descriptions
of deformable crystals, using certain interesting results from number theory.
The energy of a deformed crystal is calculated in the context of a lattice
model with general binary interactions in two dimensions. A new bond counting
approach is used, which reduces the problem to the lattice point problem of
number theory. The main contribution is an explicit formula for the surface
energy density as a function of the deformation gradient and boundary normal.
The result is valid for a large class of domains, including faceted (polygonal)
shapes and regions with piecewise smooth boundaries.Comment: V. 1: 10 pages, no fig's. V 2: 23 pages, no figures. Misprints
corrected. Section 3 added, (new results). Intro expanded, refs added.V 3: 26
pages. Abstract changed. Section 2 split into 2. Section (4) added material.
V 4, 28 pages, Intro rewritten. Changes in Sec.5 (presentation only). Refs
added.V 5,intro changed V.6 address reviewer's comment
Correlation between acoustic divergence and phylogenetic distance in soniferous European gobiids (Gobiidae; Gobius lineage)
In fish, species identity can be encoded by sounds, which have been thoroughly investigated
in European gobiids (Gobiidae, Gobius lineage). Recent evolutionary studies suggest
that deterministic and/or stochastic forces could generate acoustic differences among
related animal species, though this has not been investigated in any teleost group to date. In
the present comparative study, we analysed the sounds from nine soniferous gobiids and
quantitatively assessed their acoustic variability. Our interspecific acoustic study, incorporating
for the first time the representative acoustic signals from the majority of soniferous
gobiids, suggested that their sounds are truly species-specific (92% of sounds correctly
classified into exact species) and each taxon possesses a unique set of spectro-temporal
variables. In addition, we reconstructed phylogenetic relationships from a concatenated
molecular dataset consisting of multiple molecular markers to track the evolution of acoustic
signals in soniferous gobiids. The results of this study indicated that the genus Padogobius
is polyphyletic, since P. nigricans was nested within the Ponto-Caspian clade, while the congeneric
P. bonelli turned out to be a sister taxon to the remaining investigated soniferous
species. Lastly, by extracting the acoustic and genetic distance matrices, sound variability
and genetic distance were correlated for the first time to assess whether sound evolution follows
a similar phylogenetic pattern. The positive correlation between the sound variability
and genetic distance obtained here emphasizes that certain acoustic features from representative
sounds could carry the phylogenetic signal in soniferous gobiids. Our study was
the first attempt to evaluate the mutual relationship between acoustic variation and genetic
divergence in any teleost fish
Physics of the Riemann Hypothesis
Physicists become acquainted with special functions early in their studies.
Consider our perennial model, the harmonic oscillator, for which we need
Hermite functions, or the Laguerre functions in quantum mechanics. Here we
choose a particular number theoretical function, the Riemann zeta function and
examine its influence in the realm of physics and also how physics may be
suggestive for the resolution of one of mathematics' most famous unconfirmed
conjectures, the Riemann Hypothesis. Does physics hold an essential key to the
solution for this more than hundred-year-old problem? In this work we examine
numerous models from different branches of physics, from classical mechanics to
statistical physics, where this function plays an integral role. We also see
how this function is related to quantum chaos and how its pole-structure
encodes when particles can undergo Bose-Einstein condensation at low
temperature. Throughout these examinations we highlight how physics can perhaps
shed light on the Riemann Hypothesis. Naturally, our aim could not be to be
comprehensive, rather we focus on the major models and aim to give an informed
starting point for the interested Reader.Comment: 27 pages, 9 figure
On the vibron dressing in the --helicoidal macromolecular chains
We present a study of the physical properties of the vibrational excitation
in --helicoidal macromolecular chains, caused by the interaction with
acoustical and optical phonon modes. The influence of the temperature and the
basic system parameters on the vibron dressing has been analyzed by employing
the simple mean--field approach based on the variational extension of the
Lang--Firsov unitary transformation. Applied approach predicts a region in
system parameter space where one takes place an abrupt transition from
partially dressed (light and mobile) to fully dressed (immobile) vibron states.
We found that the boundary of this region depends on system temperature and
type of bond among structural elements in the macromolecular chain.Comment: 22 pages, 12 figures, title changed, the interaction with optical
phonon modes jointly with acoustical ones added, consideration significantly
enlarged, references added, the paper develops the results of
arxiv:1210.3918, accepted for publication in Chinese Physics
Bilobalide modulates serotonin-controlled behaviors in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Dysfunctions in the serotonergic system have been implicated in several neurological disorders such as depression. Elderly individuals who have been diagnosed with clinical depression show elevated cases of neurodegenerative diseases. This has led to suggestions that modulating the serotonin (5-HT) system could provide an alternative method to current therapies for alleviating these pathologies. The neuroprotective effects of bilobalide <it>in vitro </it>have been documented. We aim to determine whether bilobalide affects the 5-HT system in the nematode <it>C. elegans</it>. The wild type worms, as well as well-characterized 5-HT mutants, were fed with bilobalide in a range of concentrations, and several 5-HT controlled behaviors were tested.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We observed that bilobalide significantly inhibited 5-HT-controlled egg-laying behavior in a dose-dependent manner, which was blocked in the 5-HT receptor mutants (<it>ser-4, mod-1</it>), but not in the 5-HT transporter (<it>mod-5</it>) or synthesis (<it>tph-1</it>) mutants. Bilobalide also potentiated a 5-HT-controlled, experience-dependent locomotory behavior, termed the enhanced slowing response in the wild type animals. However, this effect was fully blocked in 5-HT receptor <it>mod-1 </it>and dopamine defective <it>cat-2 </it>mutants, but only partially blocked in <it>ser-4 </it>mutants. We also demonstrated that acetylcholine transmission was inhibited in a transgenic <it>C. elegans </it>strain that constitutively expresses Aβ, and bilobalide did not significantly affect this inhibition.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These results suggest that bilobalide may modulate specific 5-HT receptor subtypes, which involves interplay with dopamine transmission. Additional studies for the function of bilobalide in neurotransmitter systems could aid in our understanding of its neuroprotective properties.</p
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