PHP64 Reorganisation of Hospital Emergency Services: A Business Case for Quality Improvement

In Switzerland, emergency care has no gatekeeping system and emergency wards are increasingly overcrowded by walk-in patients. This leads to inefficient use of spezialised resources. Treatment costs are paid by public sources and, beyond some co-payment, reimbursed by health care insurances via tariffs. Given the problems above, a public hospital (Stadtspital Waid; Zurich; catchment population 180'000 people) reorganised its emergency service in 2008. A nurse led triage system and a General Practitioner-led emergency service was implemented beside the conventional emergency ward

The Role of Fission in Neutron Star Mergers and Its Impact on the r-Process Peaks

Comparing observational abundance features with nucleosynthesis predictions of stellar evolution or explosion simulations, we can scrutinize two aspects: (a) the conditions in the astrophysical production site and (b) the quality of the nuclear physics input utilized. We test the abundance features of r-process nucleosynthesis calculations for the dynamical ejecta of neutron star merger simulations based on three different nuclear mass models: The Finite Range Droplet Model, the (quenched version of the) Extended Thomas Fermi Model with Strutinsky Integral, and the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov mass model. We make use of corresponding fission barrier heights and compare the impact of four different fission fragment distribution models on the final r-process abundance distribution. In particular, we explore the abundance distribution in the second r-process peak and the rare-earth sub-peak as a function of mass models and fission fragment distributions, as well as the origin of a shift in the third r-process peak position. The latter has been noticed in a number of merger nucleosynthesis predictions. We show that the shift occurs during the r-process freeze-out when neutron captures and β-decays compete and an (n,γ)-(γ,n) equilibrium is no longer maintained. During this phase neutrons originate mainly from fission of material above A = 240. We also investigate the role of β-decay half-lives from recent theoretical advances, which lead either to a smaller amount of fissioning nuclei during freeze-out or a faster (and thus earlier) release of fission neutrons, which can (partially) prevent this shift and has an impact on the second and rare-earth peak as well.Peer reviewe

A parametric symmetry breaking transducer

Force detectors rely on resonators to transduce forces into a readable signal. Usually these resonators operate in the linear regime and their signal appears amidst a competing background comprising thermal or quantum fluctuations as well as readout noise. Here, we demonstrate that a parametric symmetry breaking transduction leads to a novel and robust nonlinear force detection in the presence of noise. The force signal is encoded in the frequency at which the system jumps between two phase states which are inherently protected against phase noise. Consequently, the transduction effectively decouples from readout noise channels. For a controlled demonstration of the method, we experiment with a macroscopic doubly-clamped string. Our method provides a promising new paradigm for high-precision force detection.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Characterizing Quantum Microwave Radiation and its Entanglement with Superconducting Qubits using Linear Detectors

Recent progress in the development of superconducting circuits has enabled the realization of interesting sources of nonclassical radiation at microwave frequencies. Here, we discuss field quadrature detection schemes for the experimental characterization of itinerant microwave photon fields and their entanglement correlations with stationary qubits. In particular, we present joint state tomography methods of a radiation field mode and a two-level system. Including the case of finite quantum detection efficiency, we relate measured photon field statistics to generalized quasi-probability distributions and statistical moments for one-channel and two-channel detection. We also present maximum-likelihood methods to reconstruct density matrices from measured field quadrature histograms. Our theoretical investigations are supported by the presentation of experimental data, for which microwave quantum fields beyond the single-photon and Gaussian level have been prepared and reconstructed.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure

O uso de objetos lúdicos no Ensino de Ciências: A utilização do Bingo Químico nas aulas de Química

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Electronic structure and magnetism of Mn doped GaN

Mn doped semiconductors are extremely interesting systems due to their novel magnetic properties suitable for the spintronics applications. It has been shown recently by both theory and experiment that Mn doped GaN systems have a very high Curie temperature compared to that of Mn doped GaAs systems. To understand the electronic and magnetic properties, we have studied Mn doped GaN system in detail by a first principles plane wave method. We show here the effect of varying Mn concentration on the electronic and magnetic properties. For dilute Mn concentration, $d$ states of Mn form an impurity band completely separated from the valence band states of the host GaN. This is in contrast to the Mn doped GaAs system where Mn $d$ states in the gap lie very close to the valence band edge and hybridizes strongly with the delocalized valence band states. To study the effects of electron correlation, LSDA+U calculations have been performed. Calculated exchange interaction in (Mn,Ga)N is short ranged in contrary to that in (Mn,Ga)As where the strength of the ferromagnetic coupling between Mn spins is not decreased substantially for large Mn-Mn separation. Also, the exchange interactions are anisotropic in different crystallographic directions due to the presence or absence of connectivity between Mn atoms through As bonds.Comment: 6 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.