Trauma during humanitarian work: the effects on intimacy, wellbeing and PTSD-symptoms.

Background: Organizations assisting refugees are over burdened with the Syrian humanitarian catastrophe and encounter diverse difficulties facing the consequences of this massive displacement. Aid-workers experience the horrors of war through their efforts to alleviate suffering of Syrian refugees. Objective: This study of Syrian refugee aid-workers in Jordan examined work-stressors identified as secondary traumatic stress (STS), number of refugees assisted, worker feelings towards the organization, and their associations to PTSD-symptoms, wellbeing and intimacy. It also examined whether self-differentiation, physical health, and physical pain were associated with these variables. Method: Syrian refugee aid-workers (N = 317) in Jordans NGOs were surveyed. Univariate statistics and structural equation modeling (SEM) were utilized to test study hypotheses. Results: Increased STS was associated with lower self-differentiation, decreased physical health and increased physical pain, as well as elevated PTSD-symptoms and decreased intimacy. Decreased connection to the NGO was associated with lower self-differentiation, decreased physical health, increased physical pain, and with decreased intimacy and wellbeing. Lower self-differentiation was associated with increased PTSD-symptoms, decreased wellbeing and intimacy. Elevated physical pain was associated with increased PTSD-symptoms, and decreased wellbeing. Diverse mediation effects of physical health, physical pain and self-differentiation were found among the studys variables. Conclusions: Aid-workers who assist refugees were at risk of physical and mental sequelae as well as suffering from degraded self-differentiation, intimacy and wellbeing. Organizations need to develop prevention policies and tailor interventions to better support their aid-workers while operating in such stressful fieldwork

Quintic threefolds and Fano elevenfolds

The derived category of coherent sheaves on a general quintic threefold is a central object in mirror symmetry. We show that it can be embedded into the derived category of a certain Fano elevenfold. Our proof also generates related examples in different dimensions.Comment: V1: 12 pages. V2: added reference to work of Iliev and Manivel. V3: persistent sign error corrected. Other minor changes following referee's suggestions. To appear in Crell

War can harm intimacy: consequences for refugees who escaped Syria.

BackgroundSyrians seeking refuge have been exposed to atrocities and trauma beyond comprehension. This study examines how personal, interpersonal, displacement and war-related factors have impacted married refugees' intimate lives.MethodsData included 158 married Syrian refugee individuals who live in the host communities of Jordan. Refugees reported on their personal, interpersonal, current-displacement and past-war related experiences. Traumatic impacts were assessed using the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ), K6 screening scale for serious mental illness (SMI), The War Events Questionnaire (WEQ), and Personal Assessment of Intimacy in Relationships (PAIR). Stepwise multiple regressions were used to determine the factors associated with refugees' intimacy-total score and its six dimensions.ResultsMost refugees (94.2%) experienced war events, and 34% screened positive on the PTSD-HTQ scale. Overall intimacy scores were low, scoring M (±standard deviation) = 2.4 (±1.1) of a possible five on average. Intimacy scores were lower for refugees who screened positive on the PTSD-HTQ (M = 1.95 ± 65) compared to the ones screening negative, respectively (M = 2.23 ± 66). Furthermore, the higher the PTSD symptoms reported, the lower the couples' intimacy. PTSD and forced marriage were the strongest factors to predict decreased total-intimacy scores (β = -0.23, P = 0.002; β = -0.32, P < 0.001), and decreased scores on four dimensions of intimacy (emotional, sexual, intellectual and recreational). Whereas gender was the second strongest factor associated with decreased total-intimacy scores (β = -0.29, P < 0.001), and decreased scores on three dimensions of intimacy (emotional, social and anger), meaning that women reported suffering more than men from deteriorated intimacy in their marital relationships. Other displacement and war-related factors associated with intimacy were: decreased sexual intimacy associated with having been raped; increased intellectual intimacy associated with escaped from Syria with one's spouse; decreased recreational intimacy associated with the number of family members lived with; decreased sexual, emotional and total-intimacy scores associated with number of children; and years of education as a seemingly personal protective factor associated with increased intellectual and recreational intimacy.ConclusionsAddressing Syrian refugees' intimacy issues in interventions is essential, as well as raising the awareness of stakeholders and community leaders to the negative impacts of PTSD, forced marriage, rape, and displacement difficulties endured by the already challenged and distressed married refugees

Stochastic pumping of heat: Approaching the Carnot efficiency

Random noise can generate a unidirectional heat current across asymmetric nano objects in the absence (or against) a temperature gradient. We present a minimal model for a molecular-level stochastic heat pump that may operate arbitrarily close to the Carnot efficiency. The model consists a fluctuating molecular unit coupled to two solids characterized by distinct phonon spectral properties. Heat pumping persists for a broad range of system and bath parameters. Furthermore, by filtering the reservoirs' phonons the pump efficiency can approach the Carnot limit

The body in the library: adventures in realism

This essay looks at two aspects of the virtual ‘material world’ of realist fiction: objects encountered by the protagonist and the latter’s body. Taking from Sartre two angles on the realist pact by which readers agree to lend their bodies, feelings, and experiences to the otherwise ‘languishing signs’ of the text, it goes on to examine two sets of first-person fictions published between 1902 and 1956 — first, four modernist texts in which banal objects defy and then gratify the protagonist, who ends up ready and almost able to write; and, second, three novels in which the body of the protagonist is indeterminate in its sex, gender, or sexuality. In each of these cases, how do we as readers make texts work for us as ‘an adventure of the body’

Quantum effects in thermal conduction: Nonequilibrium quantum discord and entanglement

We study the process of heat transfer through an entangled pair of two-level system, demonstrating the role of quantum correlations in this nonequilibrium process. While quantum correlations generally degrade with increasing the temperature bias, introducing spatial asymmetry leads to an intricate behavior: Connecting the qubits unequally to the reservoirs one finds that quantum correlations persist and increase with the temperature bias when the system is more weakly linked to the hot reservoir. In the reversed case, linking the system more strongly to the hot bath, the opposite, more natural behavior is observed, with quantum correlations being strongly suppressed upon increasing the temperature bias

The Utility of Outpatient Commitment: I. A Need for Treatment and a Least Restrictive Alternative to Psychiatric Hospitalization.

ObjectivesThis study examined whether psychiatric patients assigned to community treatment orders (CTOs), outpatient commitment in Victoria, Australia, have a greater need for treatment to protect their health and safety than patients not assigned to CTOs. It also considered whether such treatment is provided in a least restrictive manner-that is, in a way that contributes to reduced use of psychiatric hospitalization.MethodsThe sample included 11,424 patients first placed on a CTO between 2000 and 2010, and 16,161 patients not placed on a CTO. Need for treatment was independently assessed with the Health of the Nation Outcome Scales (HoNOS) at hospital admission and at discharge. Ordinary least-squares and Poisson regressions were used to assess savings in hospital days attributable to CTO placement.ResultsHoNOS ratings indicated that at admission and discharge, the CTO cohort's need for treatment exceeded that of the non-CTO cohort, particularly in areas indicating potential dangerous behavior. When analyses adjusted for the propensity to be selected into the CTO cohort and other factors, the mean duration of an inpatient episode was 4.6 days shorter for the CTO cohort than for the non-CTO cohort, and a reduction of 10.4 days per inpatient episode was attributable to each CTO placement.ConclusionsCTO placement may have helped patients with a greater need for treatment to experience shorter hospital stays. Whether the CTO directly enabled the fulfillment of unsought but required treatment needs that protected patient health and safety is a question that needs to be addressed in future research

Noncommutative differential calculus for Moyal subalgebras

We build a differential calculus for subalgebras of the Moyal algebra on R^4 starting from a redundant differential calculus on the Moyal algebra, which is suitable for reduction. In some cases we find a frame of 1-forms which allows to realize the complex of forms as a tensor product of the noncommutative subalgebras with the external algebra Lambda^*.Comment: 13 pages, no figures. One reference added, minor correction