The Impact of Intermittent Auscultation and Physiologic Labor Support Education for Nurses on Patient Satisfaction and Nurse Self-Efficacy

Knowledge and implementation of intermittent fetal auscultation (IA)and labor support mechanisms in the hospital setting are becoming a lost art. Nurses are well-trained on how to utilize technology and perform medical interventions for laboring patients, but are losing the confidence and skills necessary to promote normal, physiologic births for low-risk women. In order to address these concerns, an evidence-based practice project was piloted in a hospital in Virginia. Nurses were trained on the science, clinical application, and outcomes of both intermittent auscultation and continuous electronic fetal monitoring for low-risk women; education was also focused on labor support mechanisms and the effects of the birth environment on laboring women. The program was structured in a pre-test/post-test format, and nurses were given a three-month implementation period to apply learned practices. Nurses also filled out a survey to measure self-efficacy of labor-support mechanisms; the survey was administered prior to the seminar and following the three-month implementation period. Results from the surveys demonstrated an increase in nurse’s self-efficacy after implementation, as well as an increase in labor support knowledge following the educational seminar. To obtain patient views, all patients who gave birth were given a birth satisfaction survey during the three-month implementation period; patients were asked to specify if they had continuous fetal monitoring or intermittent auscultation, and whether any medical interventions were needed during labor and birth. Overall program results suggest that nurses benefit from continued education on normal labor and birth practices, but that the culture of the hospital unit, beliefs and values of individual patients, and provider practices affect the implementation of IA and the potential reduction of medical interventions in labor

An Experimental Investigation of the Structural Properties of High Modulus Aluminium Alloy

The purpose of this report is to give the results of an experimental investigation of the structural properties of high modulus aluminium alloy. The tests carried out consisted of tension, compression, hardness, bending and compression panel investigations. It was found that high modulus material is difficult to form and very prone to cracking on failure. Thus although the material has a definite structural application, in view of the forming and cracking problems it is doubtful whether further development is worthwhile

Heavy Quark Production and PDF's Subgroup Report

We present a status report of a variety of projects related to heavy quark production and parton distributions for the Tevatron Run II.Comment: Latex. 8 pages, 7 eps figures. Contribution to the Physics at Run II Workshops: QCD and Weak Boson Physic

Color transparency in deeply inelastic diffraction

We suggest a simple physical picture for the diffractive parton distributions that appear in diffractive deeply inelastic scattering. In this picture, partons impinging on the proton can have any transverse separation, but only when the separation is small can they penetrate the proton without breaking it up. By comparing the predictions from this picture with the diffractive data from HERA, we determine rough values for the small separations that dominate the diffraction process.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures; v2: citations added, two comments revised and expanded, results unchange

Spin operator and spin states in Galilean covariant Fermi field theories

Spin degrees of freedom of the Galilean covariant Dirac field in (4+1) dimensions and its nonrelativistic counterpart in (3+1) dimensions are examined. Two standard choices of spin operator, the Galilean covariant and Dirac spin operators, are considered. It is shown that the Dirac spin of the Galilean covariant Dirac field in (4+1) dimensions is not conserved, and the role of non-Galilean boosts in its nonconservation is stressed out. After reduction to (3+1) dimensions the Dirac field turns into a nonrelativistic Fermi field with a conserved Dirac spin. A generalized form of the Levy-Leblond equations for the Fermi field is given. One-particle spin states are constructed. A particle-antiparticle system is discussed.Comment: Minor corrections in the text; journal versio

Two-hadron interference fragmentation functions. Part I: general framework

We investigate the properties of interference fragmentation functions measurable from the distribution of two hadrons produced in the same jet in the current fragmentation region of a hard process. We discuss the azimuthal angular dependences in the leading order cross section of two-hadron inclusive lepton-nucleon scattering as an example how these interference fragmentation functions can be addressed separately.Comment: RevTeX, 7 figures, first part of a work split in two, second part forthcoming in few day

Fluctuations of company yearly profits versus scaled revenue: Fat tail distribution of Levy type

We analyze annual revenues and earnings data for the 500 largest-revenue U.S. companies during the period 1954-2007. We find that mean year profits are proportional to mean year revenues, exception made for few anomalous years, from which we postulate a linear relation between company expected mean profit and revenue. Mean annual revenues are used to scale both company profits and revenues. Annual profit fluctuations are obtained as difference between actual annual profit and its expected mean value, scaled by a power of the revenue to get a stationary behavior as a function of revenue. We find that profit fluctuations are broadly distributed having approximate power-law tails with a Levy-type exponent $\alpha \simeq 1.7$, from which we derive the associated break-even probability distribution. The predictions are compared with empirical data.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

Analytic Perturbation Theory: A New Approach to the Analytic Continuation of the Strong Coupling Constant αS\alpha_S into the Timelike Region

The renormalization group applied to perturbation theory is ordinarily used to define the running coupling constant in the spacelike region. However, to describe processes with timelike momenta transfers, it is important to have a self-consistent determination of the running coupling constant in the timelike region. The technique called analytic perturbation theory (APT) allows a consistent determination of this running coupling constant. The results are found to disagree significantly with those obtained in the standard perturbative approach. Comparison between the standard approach and APT is carried out to two loops, and threshold matching in APT is applied in the timelike region.Comment: 16 pages, REVTeX, 7 postscript figure

Diffractive deeply inelastic scattering of hadronic states with small transverse size

Diffractive deeply inelastic scattering from a hadron is described in terms of diffractive quark and gluon distributions. If the transverse size of the hadronic state is sufficiently small, these distributions are calculable using perturbation theory. We present such a calculation and discuss the underlying dynamics. We comment on the relation between this dynamics and the pattern of scaling violation observed in the hard diffraction of large-size states at HERA.Comment: 8 pages including 3 figures, REVTE