Midwives experiences of removal of a newborn baby in New South Wales, Australia: Being in the 'head' and 'heart' space

© 2015 Australian College of Midwives. Background: A newborn baby is removed from his/her mother into formal care when he/she is considered at risk of serious harm and it is not in the best interests to go home with their parent(s) or carer(s). In New South Wales (NSW), this removal is known as an "assumption of care". This process is challenging for all involved especially when it occurs soon after birth. There is very limited research to inform midwives in this area of practice. Aim: To explore the experiences of midwives who had been involved in the assumption of care of a baby soon after birth or in the early postnatal period. Method: A qualitative descriptive approach was used. Ten midwives involved with the assumption of care of a baby were interviewed. A thematic analysis was undertaken. Findings: There were two overarching themes. "Being in the head space" represented the activities, tasks and/or processes midwives engaged in when involved in an assumption of care. "Being in the heart space" described the emotional impact on midwives, as well as their perceptions on how women were affected. Conclusion: Midwives described feeling unprepared and unsupported, in both the processes and the impact of assumption of care. They were confronted by this profound emotional work and described experiencing professional grief, similar to that felt when caring for a woman experiencing a stillbirth. In the future, midwives need to be provided with support to ensure that they can effectively care for these women and also manage the emotional impact themselves

Ultracompact X-ray Binaries in Globular Clusters: Variability of the Optical Counterpart of X1832-330 in NGC 6652

Evidence is emerging that the luminous X-ray sources in the cores of globular clusters may often consist of, or perhaps even as a class be dominated by, ultracompact (P < 1 hr) binary stars. To the two such systems already known, in NGC 6624 and NGC 6712, we now add evidence for two more. We detect large amplitude variability in the candidate optical counterpart for the X-ray source in the core of NGC 6652. Although the available observations are relatively brief, the existing Hubble Space Telescope data indicate a strong 43.6 min periodic modulation of the visible flux of semi-amplitude 30%. Further, although the orbital period of the source in NGC 1851 is not yet explicitly measured, we demonstrate that previous correlations of optical luminosity with X-ray luminosity and accretion disk size, strengthened by recent data, strongly imply that the period of that system is also less than 1 hr. Thus currently there is evidence that 4 of the 7 globular cluster X-ray sources with constrained periods are ultracompact, a fraction far greater than that found in X-ray binaries the field.Comment: 10 pages including 2 figures and 1 table. Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letter

Boosting clinical performance: The impact of enhanced final year placements.

BACKGROUND: This study follows on from a study that investigated how to develop effective final year medical student assistantship placements, using multidisciplinary clinical teams in planning and delivery. AIMS: This study assessed the effects on objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) performance of the in-course enhanced "super-assistantship" placement introduced to a randomly selected sample of 2013-14 final year medical students at Leeds medical school. METHODS: Quantitative data analysis was used to compare the global grades of OSCE stations between students who undertook this placement against those who did not. RESULTS: There was a small overall improvement in the "super-assistantship" student scores across the whole assessment (effect size = 0.085). "Pre-op Capacity", "Admissions Prescribing" and "Hip Pain" stations had small-medium effect sizes (0.226, 0.215, and 0.214) in favor of the intervention group. Other stations had small effect sizes (0.107-0.191), mostly in favor of the intervention group. CONCLUSIONS: The "super-assistantship" experience characterized by increasing student responsibility on placement can help to improve competence and confidence in clinical decision-making "in a simulated environment". The clinical environment and multidisciplinary team must be ready and supported to provide these opportunities effectively. Further in-course opportunities for increasing final year student responsibility should be developed

Nucleosynthesis: Stellar and Solar Abundances and Atomic Data

Abundance observations indicate the presence of often surprisingly large amounts of neutron capture (i.e., s- and r-process) elements in old Galactic halo and globular cluster stars. These observations provide insight into the nature of the earliest generations of stars in the Galaxy -- the progenitors of the halo stars -- responsible for neutron-capture synthesis. Comparisons of abundance trends can be used to understand the chemical evolution of the Galaxy and the nature of heavy element nucleosynthesis. In addition age determinations, based upon long-lived radioactive nuclei abundances, can now be obtained. These stellar abundance determinations depend critically upon atomic data. Improved laboratory transition probabilities have been recently obtained for a number of elements. These new gf values have been used to greatly refine the abundances of neutron-capture elemental abundances in the solar photosphere and in very metal-poor Galactic halo stars. The newly determined stellar abundances are surprisingly consistent with a (relative) Solar System r-process pattern, and are also consistent with abundance predictions expected from such neutron-capture nucleosynthesis.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, 1 table. To appear in the Proceedings of the NASA Laboratory Astrophysics Workshop in Las Vegas, NV (February 2006

X-Ray Spectroscopy of the Low-Mass X-ray Binaries 2S 0918-549 and 4U1543-624: Evidence for Neon-Rich Degenerate Donors

We present high-resolution spectroscopy of the neutron-star/low-mass X-ray binaries 2S 0918-549 and 4U 1543-624 with the High Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer onboard the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Reflection Grating Spectrometer onboard XMM-Newton. Previous low-resolution spectra of both sources showed a broad line-like feature at 0.7 keV that was originally attributed to unresolved line emission. We recently showed that this feature could also be due to excess neutral Ne absorption, and this is confirmed by the new high-resolution Chandra spectra. The Chandra spectra are each well fit by an absorbed power-law + blackbody model with a modified Ne/O number ratio of 0.52+/-0.12 for 2S 0918-549 and 1.5+/-0.3 for 4U 1543-624, compared to the interstellar-medium value of 0.18. The XMM spectrum of 2S 0918-549 is best fit by an absorbed power-law model with a Ne/O number ratio of 0.46+/-0.03, consistent with the Chandra result. On the other hand, the XMM spectrum of 4U 1543-624 is softer and less luminous than the Chandra spectrum and has a best-fit Ne/O number ratio of 0.54+/-0.03. The difference between the measured abundances and the expected interstellar ratio, as well as the variation of the column densities of O and Ne in 4U 1543-624, supports the suggestion that there is absorption local to these binaries. We propose that the variations in the O and Ne column densities of 4U 1543-624 are caused by changes in the ionization structure of the local absorbing material. It is important to understand the effect of ionization on the measured absorption columns before the abundance of the local material can be determined. This work supports our earlier suggestion that 2S 0918-549 and 4U 1543-624 are ultracompact binaries with Ne-rich companions.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, major revisions including addition of XMM spectral analysis, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal, vol. 59

Apollo experience report: Simulation of manned space flight for crew training

Through space-flight experience and the development of simulators to meet the associated training requirements, several factors have been established as fundamental for providing adequate flight simulators for crew training. The development of flight simulators from Project Mercury through the Apollo 15 mission is described. The functional uses, characteristics, and development problems of the various simulators are discussed for the benefit of future programs

The Low-Mass X-ray Binary X1822-330 in the Globular Cluster NGC 6652: A Serendipitous ASCA Observation

The Low Mass X-ray Binary (LMXB) X1822-330 in NGC 6652 is one of 12 bright, or transient, X-ray sources to have been discovered in Globular Clusters. We report on a serendipitous ASCA observation of this Globular Cluster LMXB, during which a Type I burst was detected and the persistent, non-burst emission of the source was at its brightest level recorded to date. No orbital modulation was detected, which argues against a high inclination for the X1822-330 system. The spectrum of the persistent emission can be fit with a power law plus a partial covering absorber, although other models are not ruled out. Our time-resolved spectral analysis through the burst shows, for the first time, clear evidence for spectral cooling from kT=2.4+/-0.6 keV to kT=1.0+/0.1 keV during the decay. The measured peak flux during the burst is ~10% of the Eddington luminosity for a 1.4 Msun neutron star. These are characteristic of a Type I burst, in the context of the relatively low quiescent luminosity of X1822-330.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, accepted for Ap

Adaptive NLMS Partial Crosstalk Cancellation in Digital Subscriber Lines

Crosstalk is a major limitation to achieving high data-rates in next generation VDSL systems. Whilst crosstalk cancellation can be applied to completely remove crosstalk, it is often too complex for application in typical VDSL binders, which can contain up to hundreds of lines. A practical alternative, known as partial cancellation limits the cancellation to crosstalkers that cause severe interference to the other lines within the binder. In real VDSL systems, the crosstalk environment changes rapidly as new lines come online; old lines go offline, and the crosstalk channels change with fluctuations in ambient temperature. Therefore, adaptive crosstalk cancellers are often required. In this paper, we propose a new detection guided adaptive NLMS method for Adaptive Partial Crosstalk Cancellation that detects significant crosstalkers and tracks variations in their crosstalk channels. This exploits the sparse and column-wise diagonal dominant properties of the crosstalk channel matrix and leads to fast convergence, accurate crosstalk channel tracking, with a lower update complexity. The end result is an adaptive Partial Crosstalk Cancellation algorithm that has lower run-time complexity than prior state-of-the-art whilst yielding comparatively high data-rates and reliable service

Accounting Editorial Board Membership And Research Output

The primary purpose of this article is to examine whether the university affiliation of  faculty members on the editorial boards of three  top academic accounting journals is related to the university affiliation of the faculty that publish in these journals.  The journals selected – The Accounting Review (AR); The Journal of Accounting Research (JAR); and, Accounting, Organizations and Society (AOS), were identified by Chan, et al. (2009) as the top three accounting research journals. The board members (as of January 1, 2007) of these three journals were categorized by university affiliation (both current employer and doctoral-degree granting), and cross referenced with the authors (including co-authors) of all main articles published in these three journals during the calendar years of 2007-2009.  The results indicate that the majority of the authors at JAR and AOS had academic affiliations different from the editorial board members. In the AR, however, over 60% of the authors had the same academic affiliations as the 101 members of the AR editorial review board.  Secondary results provide that a small handful of university affiliations dominate the U.S.-based journal boards, however this connection was not as strong in the non-U.S. AOS.   Overall, less than 11% of AACSB accredited business programs are represented on these collective boards, although AACSB accounting specific accreditation does increase this ratio to a 14% representation.