2,948 research outputs found
Difficulties in the delivery of high quality family medicine
Many young people find medicine fascinating and a challenging career due to the attraction of dealing with a subject relating to life and death and major life incidents, as well as having the opportunity to get to know people over a long period through the ups and downs of life. In this article the author describes two particular problems in the delivery of health care. The first is the difference between doctorsâ agendas and patientsâ agendas and the second is communication between said parties.peer-reviewe
Maineâs Mode of Privateering: A Tale of Fraud and Collusion in the Northeast Borderlands, 1812â1815
The American declaration of war passed by Congress in June 1812 was followed by a prize act which authorised the issuing of Letters of marque. These commissions or licenses allowed American citizens to fit out privately armed vessels to seize British ships. Although most privateers complied with Congressâs instructions, their counterparts operating along the Maine coast used their commissions to further own economic self-interest by orchestrating pre-arranged captures with British merchants in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Since the British government encouraged its subjects to trade with the enemy to undermine the American war effort, American privateers assumed most of the risks. Merchants and mariners from as far away as New York and Connecticut traveled to Maine to trade with the British despite the hazards of detection. As these privateers engaged in fraud, other Americans turned to vigilante violence to uncover and foil these schemes. After the British occupied Eastern Maine in the summer of 1814 trading with the enemy became illegal on the British side of the border. Despite the risks, British merchants continued to engage in trade with the enemy. Ultimately, persistence of conflict and accommodation in the Northeastern Borderlands, the area comprising Maine, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, helped undermined Eastern Maineâs allegiance to the United States
New Ways to Soft Leptogenesis
Soft supersymmetry breaking terms involving heavy singlet sneutrinos provide
new sources of lepton number violation and of CP violation. In addition to the
CP violation in mixing, investigated previously, we find that `soft
leptogenesis' can be generated by CP violation in decay and in the interference
of mixing and decay. These additional ways to leptogenesis can be significant
for a singlet neutrino Majorana mass that is not much larger than the
supersymmetry breaking scale, . In contrast to CP violation
in mixing, for some of these new contributions the sneutrino oscillation rate
can be much faster than the decay rate, so that the bilinear scalar term need
not be smaller than its natural scale.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figure
Utilization of design principles for hybrid learning configurations by interprofessional design teams
Educational design research yields design knowledge, often in the form of design principles or guidelines that provide the rationale or âknow-whyâ for the design of educational interventions. As such, design principles can be utilized by designers in contexts other than the research context in which they were generated. Although research has shown that quality support is important for design success, less is known about processes that promote utilization of design principles as the rationale for instructional design. In this study we therefore explored an intervention for promoting the utilization of a set of research-based design principles in educational practice. This intervention aimed to promote utilization through enhancing perceived usefulness of the design principles by design teams in various contexts. The set of design principles that was utilized by the design teams in this study underpins the design of so-called hybrid learning configurations that are situated at the interface between school and workplace. The intervention was developed from the perspective of boundary crossing theory and was conducted with four different design teams. It was evaluated by way of a questionnaire and a dialogue with members of the design teams. This boundary crossing intervention appeared to bring about the desired outcomes. Most of the design team members considered the set of design principles useful in several different ways and they expected that utilization of the principles would lead to an improved learning configuration.</p
Monopoles, noncommutative gauge theories in the BPS limit and some simple gauge groups
For three conspicuous gauge groups, namely, SU(2), SU(3) and SO(5), and at
first order in the noncommutative parameter matrix h\theta^{\mu\nu}, we
construct smooth monopole --and, some two-monopole-- fields that solve the
noncommutative Yang-Mills-Higgs equations in the BPS limit and that are formal
power series in h\theta^{\mu\nu}. We show that there exist noncommutative BPS
(multi-)monopole field configurations that are formal power series in
h\theta^{\mu\nu} if, and only if, two a priori free parameters of the
Seiberg-Witten map take very specific values. These parameters, that are not
associated to field redefinitions nor to gauge transformations, have thus
values that give rise to sharp physical effects.Comment: 30 pages, no figure
On the Boundary Dynamics of Chern-Simons Gravity
We study Chern-Simons theory with a complex G_C or a real G x G gauge group
on a manifold with boundary - this includes Lorentzian and Euclidean (anti-) de
Sitter (E/A)dS gravity for G=SU(2) or G=SL(2,R). We show that there is a
canonical choice of boundary conditions that leads to an unambiguous, fully
covariant and gauge invariant, off-shell derivation of the boundary action - a
G_C/G or G WZW model, coupled in a gauge invariant way to the boundary value of
the gauge field. In particular, for (E/A)dS gravity, the boundary action is a
WZW model with target space (E/A)dS_3, reminiscent of a worldsheet for
worldsheet mechanism. We discuss in some detail the properties of the boundary
theories that arise and we confront our results with various related
constructions in the literature.Comment: 22 pages, LaTeX2e, v2: JHEP3.cls, references and a footnote adde
Collider signals from slow decays in supersymmetric models with an intermediate-scale solution to the mu problem
The problem of the origin of the mu parameter in the Minimal Supersymmetric
Standard Model can be solved by introducing singlet supermultiplets with
non-renormalizable couplings to the ordinary Higgs supermultiplets. The
Peccei-Quinn symmetry is broken at a scale which is the geometric mean between
the weak scale and the Planck scale, yielding a mu term of the right order of
magnitude and an invisible axion. These models also predict one or more singlet
fermions which have electroweak-scale masses and suppressed couplings to MSSM
states. I consider the case that such a singlet fermion, containing the axino
as an admixture, is the lightest supersymmetric particle. I work out the
relevant couplings in several of the simplest models of this type, and compute
the partial decay widths of the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle
involving leptons or jets. Although these decays will have an average proper
decay length which is most likely much larger than a typical collider detector,
they can occasionally occur within the detector, providing a striking signal.
With a large sample of supersymmetric events, there will be an opportunity to
observe these decays, and so gain direct information about physics at very high
energy scales.Comment: 24 pages, LaTeX, 4 figure
Ab initio molecular dynamics simulations of Aluminum solvation
The solvation of Al and its hydrolyzed species in water clusters has been
studied by means of ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. The hexa-hydrate
aluminum ion formed a stable complex in the finite temperature cluster
simulation of one aluminum ion and 16 waters. The average dipole moment of
strongly polarized hydrated water molecules in the first solvation shell of the
hexa-hydrate aluminum ion was found to be 5.02 Debye. The deprotonated
hexa-hydrate complex evolves into a tetra-coordinated aluminate ion with two
water molecules in the second solvation shell forming hydrogen bonds to the
hydroxyl groups in agreement with the observed coordination.Comment: 12 pages in Elsevier LaTeX, 5 figures in Postscript, 2 last figures
are in color, submitted to Chemical Physics Letter
Dissociable contributions of ventromedial prefrontal and posterior parietal cortex to value-guided choice
AbstractTwo long-standing traditions have highlighted cortical decision mechanisms in the parietal and prefrontal cortices of primates, but it has not been clear how these processes differ, or when each cortical region may influence behaviour. Recent data from ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and posterior parietal cortex (PPC) have suggested one possible axis on which the two decision processes might be delineated. Fast decisions may be resolved primarily by parietal mechanisms, whereas decisions made without time pressure may rely on prefrontal mechanisms. Here, we report direct evidence for such dissociation. During decisions under time pressure, a value comparison process was evident in PPC, but not in vmPFC. Value-related activity was still found in vmPFC under time pressure. However, vmPFC represented overall input value rather than compared output value. In contrast, when decisions were made without time pressure, vmPFC transitioned to encode a value comparison while value-related parameters were entirely absent from PPC. Furthermore, under time pressure, decision performance was primarily governed by PPC, while it was dominated by vmPFC at longer decision times. These data demonstrate that parallel cortical mechanisms may resolve the same choices in differing circumstances, and offer an explanation of the diverse neural signals reported in vmPFC and PPC during value-guided choice
- âŠ