Burnout and Self-stigma of Seeking Psychological Help in Military Healthcare Providers

Military healthcare providers (HCPs) are tasked with maintaining the military’s mission readiness while balancing the roles of being providers and military members themselves. As such, military HCPs serve in various settings, including hospitals, clinics, ships, and austere environments. Military HCPs may experience a host of occupational stressors, such as long deployments, being in the line of fire, seeing dead or injured comrades, responding to mass casualty events, having excessive caseloads, and working prolonged hours. These factors make military HCPs susceptible to burnout. Unfortunately, stigma of seeking psychological help is prevalent in the military and may deter individuals from seeking the psychological help they need. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between burnout and self-stigma of seeking psychological help in military HCPs to include behavioral health and medical providers, as influenced by, but not limited to, military status (e.g., civilian or military), gender, and profession. Findings from this study revealed a significantly positive relationship between burnout and self-stigma of seeking psychological help and a significantly negative relationship between being a behavioral-health provider and burnout. All other hypotheses were not supported. Results from this study can offer guidance to inform policy and improve wellness and self-care programs for providers. Explanations of the results, limitations of the study, and future implications are also discussed

Bias correction factors for near-Earth asteroids

Knowledge of the population size and physical characteristics (albedo, size, and rotation rate) of near-Earth asteroids (NEA's) is biased by observational selection effects which are functions of the population's intrinsic properties and the size of the telescope, detector sensitivity, and search strategy used. The NEA population is modeled in terms of orbital and physical elements: a, e, i, omega, Omega, M, albedo, and diameter, and an asteroid search program is simulated using actual telescope pointings of right ascension, declination, date, and time. The position of each object in the model population is calculated at the date and time of each telescope pointing. The program tests to see if that object is within the field of view (FOV = 8.75 degrees) of the telescope and above the limiting magnitude (V = +1.65) of the film. The effect of the starting population on the outcome of the simulation's discoveries is compared to the actual discoveries in order to define a most probable starting population

Clinical challenges in the co-management of diabetes mellitus and tuberculosis in southern Africa

Over the past 20 years, tuberculosis incidence in southern Africa has increased at an alarming rate, fuelled primarily by the human immunodeficiency virus epidemic. The emerging prevalence of diabetes mellitus in the region represents a new threat to tuberculosis control. The intersecting double burden is a cause for concern since diabetes mellitus increases the risk of tuberculosis and results in poor treatment outcomes. This review article discusses the evidence of a causal association between these two conditions, and examines the numerous clinical challenges that relate to tuberculosis and diabetes mellitus co-management. Diabetes is associated with a more advanced age and body weight in patients with tuberculosis, although not with a specific clinical presentation of tuberculosis. Rifampicin adversely alters glycaemic control by lowering the concentrations of most oral antidiabetic drugs. Poor glycaemic control, possibly exacerbated by tuberculosis and anti-tuberculous therapy, is an important contributing factor to tuberculosis case fatality and relapse. Clinicians need to be aware of these clinical and pharmacological challenges when co-managing these complex diseases.Keywords: diabetes, tuberculosis, rifampicin, co-management, southern Afric

Holographic Non-Gaussianity

We investigate the non-Gaussianity of primordial cosmological perturbations within our recently proposed holographic description of inflationary universes. We derive a holographic formula that determines the bispectrum of cosmological curvature perturbations in terms of correlation functions of a holographically dual three-dimensional non-gravitational quantum field theory (QFT). This allows us to compute the primordial bispectrum for a universe which started in a non-geometric holographic phase, using perturbative QFT calculations. Strikingly, for a class of models specified by a three-dimensional super-renormalisable QFT, the primordial bispectrum is of exactly the factorisable equilateral form with f_nl^eq=5/36, irrespective of the details of the dual QFT. A by-product of this investigation is a holographic formula for the three-point function of the trace of the stress-energy tensor along general holographic RG flows, which should have applications outside the remit of this work.Comment: 42 pages, 2 figs, published versio

Trajectory Tracking Control of Skid-Steering Mobile Robots with Slip and Skid Compensation using Sliding-Mode Control and Deep Learning

Slip and skid compensation is crucial for mobile robots' navigation in outdoor environments and uneven terrains. In addition to the general slipping and skidding hazards for mobile robots in outdoor environments, slip and skid cause uncertainty for the trajectory tracking system and put the validity of stability analysis at risk. Despite research in this field, having a real-world feasible online slip and skid compensation is still challenging due to the complexity of wheel-terrain interaction in outdoor environments. This paper presents a novel trajectory tracking technique with real-world feasible online slip and skid compensation at the vehicle-level for skid-steering mobile robots in outdoor environments. The sliding mode control technique is utilized to design a robust trajectory tracking system to be able to consider the parameter uncertainty of this type of robot. Two previously developed deep learning models [1], [2] are integrated into the control feedback loop to estimate the robot's slipping and undesired skidding and feed the compensator in a real-time manner. The main advantages of the proposed technique are (1) considering two slip-related parameters rather than the conventional three slip parameters at the wheel-level, and (2) having an online real-world feasible slip and skid compensator to be able to reduce the tracking errors in unforeseen environments. The experimental results show that the proposed controller with the slip and skid compensator improves the performance of the trajectory tracking system by more than 27%

Universality of Cluster Dynamics

We have studied the kinetics of cluster formation for dynamical systems of dimensions up to $n=8$ interacting through elastic collisions or coalescence. These systems could serve as possible models for gas kinetics, polymerization and self-assembly. In the case of elastic collisions, we found that the cluster size probability distribution undergoes a phase transition at a critical time which can be predicted from the average time between collisions. This enables forecasting of rare events based on limited statistical sampling of the collision dynamics over short time windows. The analysis was extended to L$^p$-normed spaces ($p=1,...,\infty$) to allow for some amount of interpenetration or volume exclusion. The results for the elastic collisions are consistent with previously published low-dimensional results in that a power law is observed for the empirical cluster size distribution at the critical time. We found that the same power law also exists for all dimensions $n=2,...,8$, 2D L$^p$ norms, and even for coalescing collisions in 2D. This broad universality in behavior may be indicative of a more fundamental process governing the growth of clusters

The Structure of Martian Magnetosphere at the Dayside Terminator Region as Observed on MAVEN Spacecraft

We analyzed 44 passes of the MAVEN spacecraft through the magnetosphere, arranged by the angle between electric field vector and the projection of spacecraft position radius vector in the YZ plane in MSE coordinate system (${\theta}$ E ). All passes were divided into 3 angular sectors near 0{\deg}, 90{\deg} and 180{\deg} ${\theta}$ E angles in order to estimate the role of IMF direction in plasma and magnetic properties of dayside Martian magnetosphere. The time interval chosen was from January 17 through February 4, 2016 when MAVEN was crossing the dayside magnetosphere at SZA ~ 70{\deg}. Magnetosphere as the region with prevailing energetic planetary ions is always found between the magnetosheath and the ionosphere. 3 angular sectors of dayside interaction region in MSE coordinate system with different orientation of the solar wind electric field vector E = -1/c V x B showed that for each sector one can find specific profiles of the magnetosheath, the magnetic barrier and the magnetosphere. Plume ions originate in the northern MSE sector where motion electric field is directed from the planet. This electric field ejects magnetospheric ions leading to dilution of magnetospheric heavy ions population, and this effect is seen in some magnetospheric profiles. Magnetic barrier forms in front of the magnetosphere, and relative magnetic field magnitudes in these two domains vary. The average height of the boundary with ionosphere is ~530 km and the average height of the magnetopause is ~730 km. We discuss the implications of the observed magnetosphere structure to the planetary ions loss mechanism.Comment: 24 pages, 13 figure