Reflections on a coaching pilot project in healthcare settings

This paper draws on personal reflection of coaching experiences and learning as a coach to consider the relevance of these approaches in a management context with a group of four healthcare staff who participated in a pilot coaching project. It explores their understanding of coaching techniques applied in management settings via their reflections on using coaching approaches and coaching applications as healthcare managers. Coaching approaches can enhance a manager’s skill portfolio and offer the potential benefits in terms of successful goal achievement, growth, mutual learning and development for both themselves and staff they work with in task focused scenarios

Promoting Farmer occupational safety and health (OSH) services through Extension

Received: February 13th, 2021 ; Accepted: April 24th, 2021 ; Published: April 30th, 2021 ; Correspondence: [email protected] for improving OSH in European agriculture are urgently required given the high level of reported injuries and ill health in the sector. The agriculture sector in Europe is enormous in scale and diverse in production systems. A dispersed labour force is deployed in the sector, predominantly using family labour, which is self-employed. Accordingly, a large proportion of the agricultural workforce is outside the scope of EU directives on occupational safety and health (OSH).The aim of this paper is to examine the role and engagement of the discipline of agricultural extension in promoting OSH in agriculture and consider methodologies that this discipline can use most effectively to gain OSH adoption. The paper compares regulatory and extension approaches to consider their respective roles in promoting OSH in agriculture. EU developments related to extension and OSH are then outlined. Regarding extension engagement, findings of a survey among extension and OSH professionals throughout Europe found that OSH is considered an important topic and worthwhile for inclusion in extension but it indicates that currently the level of extension programming is limited. Irish data on OSH extension methodologies indicates that advisors consider that a range of extension approaches are available to motivate farmers on OSH adoption with TV victim testimonials, on-farm social learning discussion groups and on-farm demonstrations having the highest preferences. Data presented indicates that Irish farmers expressed good satisfaction ratings with OSH extension relevance to their farms. Overall, the study advocates giving more consideration of the role of extension in promoting agricultural OSH

Rapid purification of quantum systems by measuring in a feedback-controlled unbiased basis

Rapid-purification by feedback --- specifically, reducing the mean impurity faster than by measurement alone --- can be achieved by making the eigenbasis of the density matrix to be unbiased relative to the measurement basis. Here we further examine the protocol introduced by Combes and Jacobs [Phys.Rev.Lett. {\bf 96}, 010504 (2006)] involving continuous measurement of the observable $J_z$ for a $D$-dimensional system. We rigorously re-derive the lower bound $(2/3)(D+1)$ on the achievable speed-up factor, and also an upper bound, namely $D^2/2$, for all feedback protocols that use measurements in unbiased bases. Finally we extend our results to $n$ independent measurements on a register of $n$ qubits, and derive an upper bound on the achievable speed-up factor that scales linearly with $n$.Comment: v2: published versio

The EULAR–OMERACT rheumatoid arthritis MRI reference image atlas: the metacarpophalangeal joints

This paper presents the metacarpophalangeal (MCP) joint magnetic resonance images of the EULAR–OMERACT rheumatoid arthritis MRI reference image atlas. The illustrations include synovitis in the MCP joints (OMERACT RA magnetic resonance imaging scoring system (RAMRIS), grades 0–3), bone oedema in the metacarpal head and the phalangeal base (grades 0–3), and bone erosion in the metacarpal head and the phalangeal base (grades 0–3, and examples of higher grades). The presented reference images can be used to guide scoring of MCP joints according to the OMERACT RA MRI scoring system

Dietary dairy product intake and incident type 2 diabetes: a prospective study using dietary data from a 7-day food diary

The consumption of specific dairy types may be beneficial for the prevention of diabetes. Abstract: The aim of this study was to investigate the association between total and types of dairy product intake and risk of developing incident type 2 diabetes, using a food diary. Methods: A nested case-cohort within the EPIC-Norfolk Study was examined, including a random subcohort (n=4,000) and cases of incident diabetes (n=892, including 143 cases in the subcohort) followed-up for 11 years. Diet was assessed using a prospective 7-day food diary. Total dairy intake (g/day) was estimated and categorised into high-fat (≥3.9%) and low-fat (<3.9% fat) dairy, and by subtype into yoghurt, cheese and milk. Combined fermented dairy product intake (yoghurt, cheese, sour cream) was estimated and categorised into high- and low-fat. Prentice-weighted Cox regression HRs were calculated. Results: Total dairy, high-fat dairy, milk, cheese and high-fat fermented dairy product intakes were not associated with the development of incident diabetes. Low-fat dairy intake was inversely associated with diabetes in age- and sex-adjusted analyses (tertile [T] 3 vs T1, HR 0.81 [95% CI 0.66, 0.98]), but further adjustment for anthropometric, dietary and diabetes risk factors attenuated this association. In addition, an inverse association was found between diabetes and low-fat fermented dairy product intake (T3 vs T1, HR 0.76 [95% CI 0.60, 0.99]; ptrend=0.049) and specifically with yoghurt intake (HR 0.72 [95% CI 0.55, 0.95]; ptrend=0.017) in multivariable adjusted analyses. Conclusions/interpretation: Greater low-fat fermented dairy product intake, largely driven by yoghurt intake, was associated with a decreased risk of type 2 diabetes development in prospective analyses. These findings suggest that the consumption of specific dairy types may be beneficial for the prevention of diabetes, highlighting the importance of food group subtypes for public health messages

Competing magnetic fluctuations in Sr3Ru2O7 probed by Ti doping

We report the effect of nonmagnetic Ti4+ impurities on the electronic and magnetic properties of Sr3Ru2O7. Small amounts of Ti suppress the characteristic peak in magnetic susceptibility near 16 K and result in a sharp upturn in specific heat. The metamagnetic quantum phase transition and related anomalous features are quickly smeared out by small amounts of Ti. These results provide strong evidence for the existence of competing magnetic fluctuations in the ground state of Sr3Ru2O7. Ti doping suppresses the low temperature antiferromagnetic interactions that arise from Fermi surface nesting, leaving the system in a state dominated by ferromagnetic fluctuations.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl

Capacities of Grassmann channels

A new class of quantum channels called Grassmann channels is introduced and their classical and quantum capacity is calculated. The channel class appears in a study of the two-mode squeezing operator constructed from operators satisfying the fermionic algebra. We compare Grassmann channels with the channels induced by the bosonic two-mode squeezing operator. Among other results, we challenge the relevance of calculating entanglement measures to assess or compare the ability of bosonic and fermionic states to send quantum information to uniformly accelerated frames.Comment: 33 pages, Accepted in Journal of Mathematical Physics; The role of the (fermionic) braided tensor product for quantum Shannon theory, namely capacity formulas, elucidated; The conclusion on the equivalence of Unruh effect for bosons and fermions for quantum communication purposes made clear and even more precis

Integrated plasmonic circuitry on a vertical-cavity surface-emitting semiconductor laser platform

Integrated plasmonic sources and detectors are imperative in the practical development of plasmonic circuitry for bio- and chemical sensing, nanoscale optical information processing, as well as transducers for high-density optical data storage. Here we show that vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) can be employed as an on-chip, electrically pumped source or detector of plasmonic signals, when operated in forward or reverse bias, respectively. To this end, we experimentally demonstrate surface plasmon polariton excitation, waveguiding, frequency conversion and detection on a VCSEL-based plasmonic platform. The coupling efficiency of the VCSEL emission to waveguided surface plasmon polariton modes has been optimized using asymmetric plasmonic nanostructures. The plasmonic VCSEL platform validated here is a viable solution for practical realizations of plasmonic functionalities for various applications, such as those requiring sub-wavelength field confinement, refractive index sensitivity or optical near-field transduction with electrically driven sources, thus enabling the realization of on-chip optical communication and lab-on-a-chip devices

Pairing Neutral Cues with Alcohol Intoxication: New Findings in Executive and Attention Networks

Rationale: Alcohol-associated stimuli capture attention, yet drinkers differ in the precise stimuli that become paired with intoxication. Objectives: Extending our prior work to examine the influence of alcoholism risk factors, we paired abstract visual stimuli with intravenous alcohol delivered covertly and examined brain responses to these Pavlovian conditioned stimuli in fMRI when subjects were not intoxicated. Methods: Sixty healthy drinkers performed task-irrelevant alcohol conditioning that presented geometric shapes as conditioned stimuli. Shapes were paired with a rapidly rising alcohol limb (CS+) using intravenous alcohol infusion targeting a final peak breath alcohol concentration of 0.045 g/dL or saline (CS−) infusion at matched rates. On day two, subjects performed monetary delay discounting outside the scanner to assess delay tolerance and then underwent event-related fMRI while performing the same task with CS+, CS−, and an irrelevant symbol. Results: CS+ elicited stronger activation than CS− in frontoparietal executive/attention and orbitofrontal reward-associated networks. Risk factors including family history, recent drinking, sex, and age of drinking onset did not relate to the [CS+ > CS−] activation. Delay-tolerant choice and [CS+ > CS−] activation in right inferior parietal cortex were positively related. Conclusions: Networks governing executive attention and reward showed enhanced responses to stimuli experimentally paired with intoxication, with the right parietal cortex implicated in both alcohol cue pairing and intertemporal choice. While different from our previous study results in 14 men, we believe this paradigm in a large sample of male and female drinkers offers novel insights into Pavlovian processes less affected by idiosyncratic drug associations

The development of the EULAR–OMERACT rheumatoid arthritis MRI reference image atlas

Based on a previously developed rheumatoid arthritis MRI scoring system (OMERACT 2002 RAMRIS), the development team agreed which joints, MRI features, MRI sequences, and image planes would best illustrate the scoring system in an atlas. After collecting representative examples for all grades for each abnormality (synovitis, bone oedema, and bone erosion), the team met for a three day period to review the images and choose by consensus the most illustrative set for each feature, site, and grade. A predefined subset of images (for example, for erosion—all coronal slices through the bone) was extracted. These images were then re-read by the group at a different time point to confirm the scores originally assigned. Finally, all selected images were photographed and formatted by one centre and distributed to all readers for final approval