14,053 research outputs found
Secondary traumatic stress in the emergency department
Aim:
To investigate the prevalence of secondary traumatic stress among Emergency nurses in the West of Scotland and explore their experiences of this.
Background:
Unexpected death, trauma and violence are regular occurrences that contribute to the stressful environment nurses working in the Emergency department experience. A potential consequence of repeated exposure to such stressors can be referred to as secondary traumatic stress.
Design:
Triangulation of methods of data collection, using two distinct phases:
Phase 1 – quantitative
Phase 2 – qualitative
Methods:
Quantitative data were collated via postal questionnaire, from a convenience sample of Emergency nurses. Qualitative data were subsequently collated from a focus group constituting of a random sample of these Emergency nurses. Descriptive statistics were computed and thematic analysis conducted. All data were collated during February 2013.
Results/findings:
75% of the sampled Emergency nurses reported at least one secondary traumatic stress symptom in the last week. Participants said that acute occupational stressors such as resuscitation and death were the influencing factors towards this. Strategies such as formal debriefing and social support were cited as beneficial tools for the management of secondary traumatic stress; however, barriers such as time and experience were found to inhibit their common use.
Conclusion:
Secondary traumatic stress is a prevalent phenomenon among Emergency nurses in the West of Scotland and if not managed appropriately, could represent a significant barrier to the mental health of this group and their capacity to provide quality care
Integrated Chest Image Analysis System "BU-MIA"
We introduce "BU-MIA," a Medical Image Analysis system that integrates various advanced chest image analysis methods for detection, estimation, segmentation, and registration. BU-MIA evaluates repeated computed tomography (CT) scans of the same patient to facilitate identification and evaluation of pulmonary nodules for interval growth. It provides a user-friendly graphical user interface with a number of interaction tools for development, evaluation, and validation of chest image analysis methods. The structures that BU-MIA processes include the thorax, lungs, and trachea, pulmonary structures, such as lobes, fissures, nodules, and vessels, and bones, such as sternum, vertebrae, and ribs
The effect of background knowledge on young children's comprehension of explicit and implicit information
Bibliography: leaves 15-16Supported in part by the National Institute of Educatio
Mode-matching without root-finding: Application to a dissipative silencer
This article presents an analytic mode-matching approach suitable for modelling the propagation of sound in a two-dimensional, three-part, ducting system. The approach avoids the need to the find roots of the characteristic equation for the middle section of the duct (the component) and is readily applicable to a broad class of problems. It is demonstrated that the system of equations, derived via analytic mode-matching, exhibits certain features which ensure that they can be re-cast into a form that is independent of the roots of the characteristic equation for the component. The precise details of the component are irrelevant to the procedure; it is required only that there exists an orthogonality relation, or similar, for the eigenmodes corresponding to the propagating wave-forms in this region. The method is applied here to a simple problem involving acoustic transmission through a dissipative silencer of the type commonly found in heating ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) ducts. With reference to this example, the silencer transmission loss is computed, and the power balance for the silencer is investigated and is shown to be an identity that is necessarily satisfied by the system of equations, regardless of the level of truncation
Prenatal programming of neuroendocrine reproductive function
It is now well recognized that the gestational environment can have long-lasting effects not only on the life span and health span of an individual but also, through potential epigenetic changes, on future generations. This article reviews the “prenatal programming” of the neuroendocrine systems that regulate reproduction, with a specific focus on the lessons learned using ovine models. The review examines the critical roles played by steroids in normal reproductive development before considering the effects of prenatal exposure to exogenous steroid hormones including androgens and estrogens, the effects of maternal nutrition and stress during gestation, and the effects of exogenous chemicals such as alcohol and environment chemicals. In so doing, it becomes evident that, to maximize fitness, the regulation of reproduction has evolved to be responsive to many different internal and external cues and that the GnRH neurosecretory system expresses a degree of plasticity throughout life. During fetal life, however, the system is particularly sensitive to change and at this time, the GnRH neurosecretory system can be “shaped” both to achieve normal sexually differentiated function but also in ways that may adversely affect or even prevent “normal function”. The exact mechanisms through which these programmed changes are brought about remain largely uncharacterized but are likely to differ depending on the factor, the timing of exposure to that factor, and the species. It would appear, however, that some afferent systems to the GnRH neurons such as kisspeptin, may be critical in this regard as it would appear to be sensitive to a wide variety of factors that can program reproductive function. Finally, it has been noted that the prenatal programming of neuroendocrine reproductive function can be associated with epigenetic changes, which would suggest that in addition to direct effects on the exposed offspring, prenatal programming could have transgenerational effects on reproductive potential
Fracture mechanics concepts in reliability analysis of monolithic ceramics
Basic design concepts for high-performance, monolithic ceramic structural components are addressed. The design of brittle ceramics differs from that of ductile metals because of the inability of ceramic materials to redistribute high local stresses caused by inherent flaws. Random flaw size and orientation requires that a probabilistic analysis be performed in order to determine component reliability. The current trend in probabilistic analysis is to combine linear elastic fracture mechanics concepts with the two parameter Weibull distribution function to predict component reliability under multiaxial stress states. Nondestructive evaluation supports this analytical effort by supplying data during verification testing. It can also help to determine statistical parameters which describe the material strength variation, in particular the material threshold strength (the third Weibull parameter), which in the past was often taken as zero for simplicity
Rethinking the International Monetary System: an overview
Monetary policy ; International finance
Self-mixing interference effects in tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy
We report the effects of self-mixing interference on gas detection using tunable
diode laser spectroscopy. For very weak feedback, the laser diode output
intensity gains a sinusoidal modulation analogous to that caused by low finesse
etalons in the optical path. Our experiments show that self-mixing interference
can arise from both specular reflections (e.g. cell windows) and diffuse
reflections (e.g. Spectralon™ and retroreflective tape), potentially in a wider
range of circumstances than etalon-induced interference. The form and magnitude
of the modulation is shown to agree with theory. We have quantified the effect
of these spurious signals on methane detection using wavelength modulation
spectroscopy and discuss the implications for real gas detecto
How to play a disc brake
We consider a gyroscopic system under the action of small dissipative and
non-conservative positional forces, which has its origin in the models of
rotating bodies of revolution being in frictional contact. The spectrum of the
unperturbed gyroscopic system forms a "spectral mesh" in the plane "frequency
-gyroscopic parameter" with double semi-simple purely imaginary eigenvalues at
zero value of the gyroscopic parameter. It is shown that dissipative forces
lead to the splitting of the semi-simple eigenvalue with the creation of the
so-called "bubble of instability" - a ring in the three-dimensional space of
the gyroscopic parameter and real and imaginary parts of eigenvalues, which
corresponds to complex eigenvalues. In case of full dissipation with a
positive-definite damping matrix the eigenvalues of the ring have negative real
parts making the bubble a latent source of instability because it can "emerge"
to the region of eigenvalues with positive real parts due to action of both
indefinite damping and non-conservative positional forces. In the paper, the
instability mechanism is analytically described with the use of the
perturbation theory of multiple eigenvalues. As an example stability of a
rotating circular string constrained by a stationary load system is studied in
detail. The theory developed seems to give a first clear explanation of the
mechanism of self-excited vibrations in the rotating structures in frictional
contact, that is responsible for such well-known phenomena of acoustics of
friction as the squealing disc brake and the singing wine glass.Comment: 25 pages, 9 figures, Presented at BIRS 07w5068 Workshop "Geometric
Mechanics: Continuous and discrete, finite and infinite dimensional", August
12-17, 2007, Banff, Canad
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