1,468 research outputs found
Assessing the operational feasibility and acceptability of an inhalable formulation of oxytocin for improving community-based prevention of postpartum haemorrhage in Myanmar: a qualitative inquiry
Objective: This study assessed the potential operational feasibility and acceptability of a heat-stable, inhaled oxytocin (IOT) product for community-based prevention of postpartum haemorrhage in Myanmar.
Methods: A qualitative inquiry was conducted between June 2015 and February 2016 through focus group discussions and in-depth interviews. Research was conducted in South Dagon township (urban setting) and in Ngape and Thanlyin townships (rural settings) in Myanmar. Eleven focus group discussions and 16 in-depth interviews were conducted with mothers, healthcare providers and other key informants. All audio recordings were transcribed verbatim in Myanmar language and were translated into English. Thematic content analysis was done using NVivo software.
Results: Future introduction of an IOT product for community-based services was found to be acceptable among mothers and healthcare providers and would be feasible for use by lower cadres of healthcare providers, even in remote settings. Responses from healthcare providers and community members highlighted that midwives and volunteer auxiliary midwives would be key advocates for promoting community acceptance of the product. Healthcare providers perceived the ease of use and lack of dependence on cold storage as the main enablers for IOT compared with the current gold standard oxytocin injection. A single-use disposable device with clear pictorial instructions and a price that would be affordable by the poorest communities was suggested. Appropriate training was also said to be essential for the future induction of the product into community settings.
Conclusion: In Myanmar, where home births are common, access to cold storage and skilled personnel who are able to deliver injectable oxytocin is limited. Among community members and healthcare providers, IOT was perceived to be an acceptable and feasible intervention for use by lower cadres of healthcare workers, and thus may be an alternative solution for the prevention of postpartum haemorrhage in community-based settings in the future
The Presence of Weak Active Galactic Nuclei in High Redshift Star Forming Galaxies
We present [OIII 5007A] observations of the star forming galaxy HDF-BMZ1299
(z=1.598) using Keck Observatory's Adaptive Optics system with the
near-infrared integral field spectrograph OSIRIS. Using previous Halpha and
[NII] measurements of the same source, we are able for the first time to use
spatially resolved observations to place a high-redshift galaxy's substructure
on a traditional HII diagnostic diagram. We find that HDF-BMZ1299's spatially
concentrated nebular ratios in the central ~1.5 kiloparsec (0."2) are best
explained by the presence of an AGN: log([NII]/Halpha)=-0.22+/-0.05 and 2sigma
limit of log([OIII]/Hbeta)>0.26. The dominant energy source of this galaxy is
star formation, and integrating a single aperture across the galaxy yields
nebular ratios that are composite spectra from both AGN and HII regions. The
presence of an embedded AGN in HDF-BMZ1299 may suggest a potential
contamination in a fraction of other high-redshift star forming galaxies, and
we suggest that this may be a source of the "elevated" nebular ratios
previously seen in seeing-limited metallicity studies. HDF-BMZ1299's estimated
AGN luminosity is L_Halpha = 3.7e41 erg/s and L_[OIII] = 5.8e41 erg/s, making
it one of the lowest luminosity AGN discovered at this early epoch.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, ApJ Accepted, new version to be published
(updated text, figures, and table
Epsilon iron oxide: Origin of the high coercivity stable low Curie temperature magnetic phase found in heated archeological materials
The identification of epsilon iron oxide (-Fe2O3) as the low Curie temperature high coercivity stable phase (HCSLT) carrying the remanence in heated archeological samples has been achieved in samples from two archeological sites that exhibited the clearest evidence of the presence of the HCSLT. This uncommon iron oxide has been detected by Confocal Raman Spectroscopy (CRS) and characterized by rock magnetic measurements. Large numbers of -Fe2O3 microaggregates (in CO) or isolated clusters (in HEL) could be recognized, distributed over the whole sample, and embedded within the ceramic matrix, along with hematite and pseudobrookite and with minor amounts of anatase, rutile, and maghemite. Curie temperature estimates of around 170 degrees C for CO and 190 degrees C for HEL are lower than for pure, synthetic -Fe2O3 (227 degrees C). This, together with structural differences between the Raman spectra of the archeologically derived and synthetic samples, is likely due to Ti substitution in the -Fe2O3 crystal lattice. The -Fe2O3--Fe2O3--Fe2O3 transformation series has been recognized in heated archeological samples, which may have implications in terms of their thermal history and in the factors that govern the formation of -Fe2O3
An algebraic SU(1,1) solution for the relativistic hydrogen atom
The bound eigenfunctions and spectrum of a Dirac hydrogen atom are found
taking advantage of the Lie algebra in which the radial part of the
problem can be expressed. For defining the algebra we need to add to the
description an additional angular variable playing essentially the role of a
phase. The operators spanning the algebra are used for defining ladder
operators for the radial eigenfunctions of the relativistic hydrogen atom and
for evaluating its energy spectrum. The status of the Johnson-Lippman operator
in this algebra is also investigated.Comment: to appear in Physics Letters A (2005). We corrected a misprint in
page 7, in the paragraph baggining with "With the value of ..." the ground
state should be |\lambda, \lambda>, not |\lambda, \lambda+1
Epsilon iron oxide: origin of the high coercivity stable low Curie temperature magnetic phase found in heated archeological materials
The identification of epsilon iron oxide (ɛ-Fe2O3) as the low Curie temperature high coercivity stable phase (HCSLT) carrying the remanence in heated archeological samples has been achieved in samples from two archeological sites that exhibited the clearest evidence of the presence of the HCSLT. This uncommon iron oxide has been detected by Confocal Raman Spectroscopy (CRS) and characterized by rock magnetic measurements. Large numbers of ɛ-Fe2O3 microaggregates (in CO) or isolated clusters (in HEL) could be recognized, distributed over the whole sample, and embedded within the ceramic matrix, along with hematite and pseudobrookite and with minor amounts of anatase, rutile, and maghemite. Curie temperature estimates of around 170°C for CO and 190°C for HEL are lower than for pure, synthetic ɛ-Fe2O3 (227°C). This, together with structural differences between the Raman spectra of the archeologically derived and synthetic samples, is likely due to Ti substitution in the ɛ-Fe2O3 crystal lattice. The γ-Fe2O3-ɛ-Fe2O3-α-Fe2O3 transformation series has been recognized in heated archeological samples, which may have implications in terms of their thermal history and in the factors that govern the formation of ɛ-Fe2O3
Persistent fluctuations in stride intervals under fractal auditory stimulation
Copyright @ 2014 Marmelat et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Stride sequences of healthy gait are characterized by persistent long-range correlations, which become anti-persistent in the presence of an isochronous metronome. The latter phenomenon is of particular interest because auditory cueing is generally considered to reduce stride variability and may hence be beneficial for stabilizing gait. Complex systems tend to match their correlation structure when synchronizing. In gait training, can one capitalize on this tendency by using a fractal metronome rather than an isochronous one? We examined whether auditory cues with fractal variations in inter-beat intervals yield similar fractal inter-stride interval variability as isochronous auditory cueing in two complementary experiments. In Experiment 1, participants walked on a treadmill while being paced by either an isochronous or a fractal metronome with different variation strengths between beats in order to test whether participants managed to synchronize with a fractal metronome and to determine the necessary amount of variability for participants to switch from anti-persistent to persistent inter-stride intervals. Participants did synchronize with the metronome despite its fractal randomness. The corresponding coefficient of variation of inter-beat intervals was fixed in Experiment 2, in which participants walked on a treadmill while being paced by non-isochronous metronomes with different scaling exponents. As expected, inter-stride intervals showed persistent correlations similar to self-paced walking only when cueing contained persistent correlations. Our results open up a new window to optimize rhythmic auditory cueing for gait stabilization by integrating fractal fluctuations in the inter-beat intervals.Commission of the European Community and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research
Galaxy evolution by color-log(n) type since redshift unity in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field
We explore the use of the color-log(n) plane (where n is the global Sersic
index) as a tool for subdividing the high redshift galaxy population in a
physically-motivated manner. Using a series of volume-limited samples out to
z=1.5 in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF) we confirm the correlation between
color-log(n) plane position and visual morphology observed locally and in other
high redshift studies in the color and/or structure domain. Via comparison to a
low redshift sample from the Millennium Galaxy Catalogue we quantify evolution
by color-log(n) type, accounting separately for the specific selection and
measurement biases against each. Specifically, we measure decreases in B-band
surface brightness of 1.57 +/- 0.22 mag/sq.arcsec and 1.65 +/- 0.22
mag/sq.arcsec for `blue, diffuse' and `red, compact' galaxies respectively
between redshift unity and the present day.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, to be published in A&A (accepted 29/10/08
Compact groups in theory and practice -- IV. The connection to large-scale structure
We investigate the properties of photometrically-selected compact groups
(CGs) in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. In this paper, the fourth in a series,
we focus on understanding the characteristics of our observed CG sample with
particular attention paid to quantifying and removing contamination from
projected foreground or background galaxies. Based on a simple comparison of
pairwise redshift likelihoods, we find that approximately half of compact
groups in the parent sample contain one or more projected (interloping)
members; our final clean sample contains 4566 galaxies in 1086 compact groups.
We show that half of the remaining CGs are associated with rich groups (or
clusters), i.e. they are embedded sub-structure. The other half have spatial
distributions and number-density profiles consistent with the interpretation
that they are either independently distributed structures within the field
(i.e. they are isolated) or associated with relatively poor structures.
Comparisons of late-type and red-sequence fractions in radial annuli show that
galaxies around apparently isolated compact groups resemble the field
population by 300 to 500 kpc from the group centre. In contrast, the galaxy
population surrounding embedded compact groups appears to remain distinct from
the field out beyond 1 to 2 Mpc, consistent with results for rich groups. We
take this as additional evidence that the observed distinction between compact
groups, i.e. isolated vs. embedded, is a separation between different host
environments.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA
A slitless spectroscopic survey for quasars near quasars
We present the results of the Quasars near Quasars (QNQ) survey, a CCD-based
slitless spectroscopic survey for faint V<22 quasars at 1.7<z<3.6 on 18
26.2'x33.5' fields centred on bright quasars at 2.76<z<4.69. In total 169
quasar candidates with emission lines were selected from the extracted
flux-calibrated spectra on the basis of well-defined automatic selection
criteria followed by visual inspection and verification. With follow-up
spectroscopy of 81 candidates that were likely to reside at z>1.7 we were able
to confirm 80 new quasars at 0.580<z<3.586 on 16 of our fields. 64 of the newly
discovered quasars are located at z>1.7. The overall high success rate implies
that most of the remaining 88 candidates are quasars as well, although the
majority of them likely resides at z<1.7 on the basis of the observed line
shapes and strengths. Due to the insufficient depth of the input source
catalogues needed for extraction of the slitless spectra our survey is not well
defined in terms of limiting magnitude for faint 2.5<z<3.6 quasars whose Lyman
alpha emission is detectable well beyond V=22, albeit at a continuum S/N<1.
While not useful for characterising the evolving space density of quasars, our
sample provides many new closely spaced quasar sightlines around intensely
studied quasars for further investigations on the three-dimensional
distribution of the intergalactic medium.Comment: 18 pages, 16 figures, accepted by A&A, includes Table 2 from online
material, full paper with appendices containing additional figures and tables
available at http://www.aip.de/People/gworseck/qnqpaper/qnqpaper_final.pd
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