543 research outputs found
The effective ingredients of social care support at home for people with dementia: a literature review
Purpose:
Formal ties between the theatre and research dissemination have only recently developed and its general efficacy is largely unknown. Here the purpose of this paper is to redress this neglect by examining the effectiveness of a research-based theatrical event in promoting dementia knowledge transfer with a group of front line care workers. The event ran over eight days and consisted of an original theatrical production followed by a chaired audience discussion and workshops.
Design/methodology/approach:
Questionnaires which had been developed specifically for this evaluation were completed by 863 front line workers on the day of the event, eliciting their profiles and immediate reactions. Three months after the event, 30 completed a follow-up questionnaire and eight were interviewed.
Findings:
Attendance was well received with high degrees of both cognitive and emotional engagement being expressed in the initial questionnaire. The follow-up evaluation suggested that these positive reactions were sustained over time. However, many taking part in this follow-up thought that their practice had not changed as a result of event attendance. This apparent discrepancy between knowledge transfer and utilisation appeared to be partly the result of the influence of contextual factors in impeding this utilisation within work settings.
Originality/value:
Evidence is provided on the positive impact of theatre on dementia carers’ working lives. This is sufficient to warrant further applications of this method, provided there is careful attention to embedding the messages in the workplace context and evaluating their efficacy
Effects of acute pre-treatment with ethanolamine on isoprenalineinduced myocardial infarction in adult Wistar rats
Ethanolamine (Etn), a biogenic amine, protects isolated hearts against MI, but its effects in vivo are unknown. In this study, we investigated the effects of Etn pretreatment on isoprenaline (ISO)-induced MI in vivo. Wistar rats were treated with either Etn (10mg.kg-1, i.p.) or saline, prior to either ISO (67mg.kg-1, s.c.) or saline. Haemodynamic- and electrocardiographic parameters were recorded under anaesthesia, 24 hours post-treatment with ISO. Infarct sizes were determined by triphenyltetrazolium chloride staining. Oxidative stress plasma parameters, conjugated dienes (CD) and thio-barbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS), were measured by spectrophotometric analysis. Etn decreased ISO-induced pathological Q-waves, but had no effect on ISO-induced low-voltage electrocardiogram. In addition, Etn decreased overall mortality induced by ISO treatment. However, Etn did not prevent ISO-induced infarction or the systolic- and diastolic hypotensive effects. Etn also enhanced the ISO-induced increase in heart-to-body weight ratio, and reversed the decrease in lungs-to-body weight ratio. Neither ISO nor Etn altered CD or TBARS. These results suggest that, despite a tendency to modulate cardiac electrical activity, Etn did not prevent ISO-induced MI or myocardial dysfunction in vivo
Breaking of general rotational symmetries by multi-dimensional classical ratchets
We demonstrate that a particle driven by a set of spatially uncorrelated,
independent colored noise forces in a bounded, multidimensional potential
exhibits rotations that are independent of the initial conditions. We calculate
the particle currents in terms of the noise statistics and the potential
asymmetries by deriving an n-dimensional Fokker-Planck equation in the small
correlation time limit. We analyze a variety of flow patterns for various
potential structures, generating various combinations of laminar and rotational
flows.Comment: Accepted, Physical Review
Neutrino Quasielastic Scattering on Nuclear Targets: Parametrizing Transverse Enhancement (Meson Exchange Currents)
We present a parametrization of the observed enhancement in the transverse
electron quasielastic (QE) response function for nucleons bound in carbon as a
function of the square of the four momentum transfer () in terms of a
correction to the magnetic form factors of bound nucleons. The parametrization
should also be applicable to the transverse cross section in neutrino
scattering. If the transverse enhancement originates from meson exchange
currents (MEC), then it is theoretically expected that any enhancement in the
longitudinal or axial contributions is small. We present the predictions of the
"Transverse Enhancement" model (which is based on electron scattering data
only) for the differential and total QE cross sections
for nucleons bound in carbon. The dependence of the transverse
enhancement is observed to resolve much of the long standing discrepancy in the
QE total cross sections and differential distributions between low energy and
high energy neutrino experiments on nuclear targets.Comment: Revised Version- July 21, 2011: 17 pages, 20 Figures. To be published
in Eur. Phys. J.
Summer CO2 evasion from streams and rivers in the Kolyma River basin, north-east Siberia
Inland water systems are generally supersaturated in carbon dioxide (CO2) and are increasingly recognized as playing an important role in the global carbon cycle. The Arctic may be particularly important in this respect, given the abundance of inland waters and carbon contained in Arctic soils; however, a lack of trace gas measurements from small streams in the Arctic currently limits this understanding.We investigated the spatial variability of CO2 evasion during the summer low-flow period from streams and rivers in the northern portion of the Kolyma River basin in north-eastern Siberia. To this end, partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2) and gas exchange velocities (k) were measured at a diverse set of streams and rivers to calculate CO2 evasion fluxes.
We combined these CO2 evasion estimates with satellite remote sensing and geographic information system techniques to calculate total areal CO2 emissions. Our results show that small streams are substantial sources of atmospheric CO2 owing to high pCO2 and k, despite being a small portion of total inland water surface area. In contrast, large rivers were generally near equilibrium with atmospheric CO2. Extrapolating our findings across the Panteleikha-Ambolikha sub-watersheds demonstrated that small streams play a major role in CO2 evasion, accounting for 86% of the total summer CO2 emissions from inland waters within these two sub-watersheds. Further expansion of these regional CO2 emission estimates across time and space will be critical to accurately quantify and understand the role of Arctic streams and rivers in the global carbon budget
Breakup of F on Pb near the Coulomb barrier
Angular distributions of oxygen produced in the breakup of F incident
on a Pb target have been measured around the grazing angle at beam
energies of 98 and 120 MeV. The data are dominated by the proton stripping
mechanism and are well reproduced by dynamical calculations. The measured
breakup cross section is approximately a factor of 3 less than that of fusion
at 98 MeV. The influence of breakup on fusion is discussed.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figure
Black Hole Spin via Continuum Fitting and the Role of Spin in Powering Transient Jets
The spins of ten stellar black holes have been measured using the
continuum-fitting method. These black holes are located in two distinct classes
of X-ray binary systems, one that is persistently X-ray bright and another that
is transient. Both the persistent and transient black holes remain for long
periods in a state where their spectra are dominated by a thermal accretion
disk component. The spin of a black hole of known mass and distance can be
measured by fitting this thermal continuum spectrum to the thin-disk model of
Novikov and Thorne; the key fit parameter is the radius of the inner edge of
the black hole's accretion disk. Strong observational and theoretical evidence
links the inner-disk radius to the radius of the innermost stable circular
orbit, which is trivially related to the dimensionless spin parameter a_* of
the black hole (|a_*| < 1). The ten spins that have so far been measured by
this continuum-fitting method range widely from a_* \approx 0 to a_* > 0.95.
The robustness of the method is demonstrated by the dozens or hundreds of
independent and consistent measurements of spin that have been obtained for
several black holes, and through careful consideration of many sources of
systematic error. Among the results discussed is a dichotomy between the
transient and persistent black holes; the latter have higher spins and larger
masses. Also discussed is recently discovered evidence in the transient sources
for a correlation between the power of ballistic jets and black hole spin.Comment: 30 pages. Accepted for publication in Space Science Reviews. Also to
appear in hard cover in the Space Sciences Series of ISSI "The Physics of
Accretion onto Black Holes" (Springer Publisher). Changes to Sections 5.2,
6.1 and 7.4. Section 7.4 responds to Russell et al. 2013 (MNRAS, 431, 405)
who find no evidence for a correlation between the power of ballistic jets
and black hole spi
Relativistic Hydrodynamic Evolutions with Black Hole Excision
We present a numerical code designed to study astrophysical phenomena
involving dynamical spacetimes containing black holes in the presence of
relativistic hydrodynamic matter. We present evolutions of the collapse of a
fluid star from the onset of collapse to the settling of the resulting black
hole to a final stationary state. In order to evolve stably after the black
hole forms, we excise a region inside the hole before a singularity is
encountered. This excision region is introduced after the appearance of an
apparent horizon, but while a significant amount of matter remains outside the
hole. We test our code by evolving accurately a vacuum Schwarzschild black
hole, a relativistic Bondi accretion flow onto a black hole, Oppenheimer-Snyder
dust collapse, and the collapse of nonrotating and rotating stars. These
systems are tracked reliably for hundreds of M following excision, where M is
the mass of the black hole. We perform these tests both in axisymmetry and in
full 3+1 dimensions. We then apply our code to study the effect of the stellar
spin parameter J/M^2 on the final outcome of gravitational collapse of rapidly
rotating n = 1 polytropes. We find that a black hole forms only if J/M^2<1, in
agreement with previous simulations. When J/M^2>1, the collapsing star forms a
torus which fragments into nonaxisymmetric clumps, capable of generating
appreciable ``splash'' gravitational radiation.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figures, submitted to PR
Shared origins of a key enzyme during the evolution of C-4 and CAM metabolism
CAM and C4 photosynthesis are two key plant adaptations that have evolved independently multiple times, and are especially prevalent in particular groups of plants, including the Caryophyllales. We investigate the origin of photosynthetic PEPC, a key enzyme of both the CAM and C4 pathways. We combine phylogenetic analyses of genes encoding PEPC with analyses of RNA sequence data of Portulaca, the only plants known to perform both CAM and C4 photosynthesis. Three distinct gene lineages encoding PEPC exist in eudicots (namely ppc-1E1, ppc-1E2 and ppc-2), one of which (ppc-1E1) was recurrently recruited for use in both CAM and C4 photosynthesis within the Caryophyllales. This gene is present in multiple copies in the cacti and relatives, including Portulaca. The PEPC involved in the CAM and C4 cycles of Portulaca are encoded by closely related yet distinct genes. The CAM-specific gene is similar to genes from related CAM taxa, suggesting that CAM has evolved before C4 in these species. The similar origin of PEPC and other genes involved in the CAM and C4 cycles highlights the shared early steps of evolutionary trajectories towards CAM and C4, which probably diverged irreversibly only during the optimization of CAM and C4 phenotypes
Spatial updating in narratives.
Across two experiments we investigated spatial updating in
environments encoded through narratives. In Experiment 1, in which
participants were given visualization instructions to imagine the protagonist’s
movement, they formed an initial representation during learning but did not
update it during subsequent described movement. In Experiment 2, in which
participants were instructed to physically move in space towards the directions
of the described objects prior to testing, there was evidence for spatial updating.
Overall, findings indicate that physical movement can cause participants to link
a spatial representation of a remote environment to a sensorimotor framework
and update the locations of remote objects while they move
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