Replicating the Family: The Biopolitics of Involvement Discourses Concerning Relatives in Nursing Home Institutions

The aim of this study was to describe the biopolitics of involvement discourses articulated by nursing staff concerning relatives in nursing home institutions, using a Foucault-inspired discourse analytical approach. Previous research has described how relatives have not been involved in nursing homes on their own terms. This is partly due to a lack of communication and knowledge, but it is also a consequence of an unclear organizational structure. Results from a discourse analysis of six focus group interviews with nursing staff show that the “involvement discourse” in nursing homes can be described as a “new” vs “old” family rhetoric. This rhetoric can be said to uphold, legitimize and provide different subject positions for both nursing staff and relatives concerning the conditions for involvement in nursing homes. As part of a “project of possibility” in elderly care, it may be possible to adopt a critical pedagogical approach among nursing staff in order to educate, strengthen and support them in reflecting on their professional norming and how it conditions the involvement of relatives

Atomistic spin dynamics of the CuMn spin glass alloy

We demonstrate the use of Langevin spin dynamics for studying dynamical properties of an archetypical spin glass system. Simulations are performed on CuMn (20% Mn) where we study the relaxation that follows a sudden quench of the system to the low temperature phase. The system is modeled by a Heisenberg Hamiltonian where the Heisenberg interaction parameters are calculated by means of first-principles density functional theory. Simulations are performed by numerically solving the Langevin equations of motion for the atomic spins. It is shown that dynamics is governed, to a large degree, by the damping parameter in the equations of motion and the system size. For large damping and large system sizes we observe the typical aging regime.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figure

Beyond viral suppression: the quality of life of people living with HIV in Sweden

Sweden has one of the best HIV treatment outcomes in the world and an estimated 95% of all diagnosed people living with HIV are virally suppressed, but the quality of life (QoL) is understudied. The aim of this study was to examine the associations between variables within sociodemographic, behavioural, clinical, psychological, sexual life, social support and personal resource component and the QoL of people living with HIV in Sweden. Data were derived from a cross-sectional, nation-wide survey completed by 15% (n = 1096) of all people living with HIV and collected at 15 infectious disease clinics and 2 needle exchange sites during 2014. Ordinal univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to examine associations between potential contributors and QoL. Respondents reported high QoL: 63% rated their QoL 7 or higher on a scale ranging from 0 to 10. QoL was independent of gender, age, mode of HIV transmission and country of origin. Lower QoL was associated with recent homelessness, hazardous alcohol consumption, comorbidities, treatment side-effects, HIV-related physical symptoms, hopelessness, negative self-image, sexual dissatisfaction, and negative changes in sex life after HIV. The QoL of people living with HIV in Sweden was high overall, but still significantly influenced by HIV

Analytic continuation by averaging Pad\'e approximants

The ill-posed analytic continuation problem for Green's functions and self-energies is investigated by revisiting the Pad\'{e} approximants technique. We propose to remedy the well-known problems of the Pad\'{e} approximants by performing an average of several continuations, obtained by varying the number of fitted input points and Pad\'{e} coefficients independently. The suggested approach is then applied to several test cases, including Sm and Pr atomic self-energies, the Green's functions of the Hubbard model for a Bethe lattice and of the Haldane model for a nano-ribbon, as well as two special test functions. The sensitivity to numerical noise and the dependence on the precision of the numerical libraries are analysed in detail. The present approach is compared to a number of other techniques, i.e. the non-negative least-square method, the non-negative Tikhonov method and the maximum entropy method, and is shown to perform well for the chosen test cases. This conclusion holds even when the noise on the input data is increased to reach values typical for quantum Monte Carlo simulations. The ability of the algorithm to resolve fine structures is finally illustrated for two relevant test functions.Comment: 10 figure

General Bounds on Electronic Shot Noise in the Absence of Currents

We investigate the charge and heat electronic noise in a generic two-terminal mesoscopic conductor in the absence of the corresponding charge and heat currents. Despite these currents being zero, shot noise is generated in the system. We show that, irrespective of the conductor’s details and the specific nonequilibrium conditions, the charge shot noise never exceeds its thermal counterpart, thus establishing a general bound. Such a bound does not exist in the case of heat noise, which reveals a fundamental difference between charge and heat transport under zero-current conditions

H^\pm W^\mp production in the MSSM at the LHC

We investigate the viability of observing charged Higgs bosons (H^\pm) produced in association with W bosons at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, using the leptonic decay H^+ -> tau^+ nu_tau and hadronic W decay, within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. Performing a parton level study we show how the irreducible Standard Model background from W + 2 jets can be controlled by applying appropriate cuts. In the standard m_h^max scenario we find a viable signal for large tan beta and intermediate H^\pm masses (~ m_t).Comment: 3 pages, LaTeX, 4 eps figures, uses jpconf.cls, talk given by S. Hesselbach at the 2007 Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics, Manchester, England, 19-25 July 200

Conserved Matter Superenergy Currents for Orthogonally Transitive Abelian G2 Isometry Groups

In a previous paper we showed that the electromagnetic superenergy tensor, the Chevreton tensor, gives rise to a conserved current when there is a hypersurface orthogonal Killing vector present. In addition, the current is proportional to the Killing vector. The aim of this paper is to extend this result to the case when we have a two-parameter Abelian isometry group that acts orthogonally transitive on non-null surfaces. It is shown that for four-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell theory with a source-free electromagnetic field, the corresponding superenergy currents lie in the orbits of the group and are conserved. A similar result is also shown to hold for the trace of the Chevreton tensor and for the Bach tensor, and also in Einstein-Klein-Gordon theory for the superenergy of the scalar field. This links up well with the fact that the Bel tensor has these properties and the possibility of constructing conserved mixed currents between the gravitational field and the matter fields.Comment: 15 page

Assessment of breast cancer risk factors reveals subtype heterogeneity

Subtype heterogeneity for breast cancer risk factors has been suspected, potentially reflecting etiological differences and implicating risk prediction. Reports are conflicting regarding presence of heterogeneity for many exposures. To examine subtype heterogeneity across known breast cancer risk factors, we conducted a case-control analysis of 2,632 breast cancers and 15,945 controls in Sweden. Molecular subtype was predicted from pathology-record derived immunohistochemistry markers by a classifier trained on PAM50 subtyping. Multinomial logistic regression estimated separate odds ratios for each subtype by the exposures parity, age at first birth, breastfeeding, menarche, HRT use, somatotype at age 18, benign breast disease, mammographic density, polygenic risk score, family history of breast cancer and BRCA mutations. We found clear subtype heterogeneity for genetic factors and breastfeeding. The polygenic risk score was associated with risk of all subtypes except for the basal-like (p heterogeneity < 0.0001). Parous women who never breastfed were at higher risk of basal-like subtype (OR 4.17; 95% CI 1.89 to 9.21) compared to both nulliparous (reference) and breastfeeding women. Breastfeeding was not associated with risk of HER2-overexpressing type, but protective for all other subtypes. The observed heterogeneity in risk of distinct breast cancer subtypes for germline variants supports heterogeneity in etiology and has implications for their use in risk prediction. The increased risk of basal-like subtype among women who never breastfed merits more research into potential causal mechanisms and confounders.Swedish Research CouncilSwedish Cancer SocietyAccepte