264 research outputs found
Organizational issues and major problems of palliative care concerning treatment of end-stage renal disease in Polish residential hospices and hospital- -based palliative medicine wards
Copyright © Via Medica. Background. Patients diagnosed with end-stage renal disease experience a significant level of symptom burden, including pain, nausea and vomiting, inability to urinate, fatigue etc. At this point in disease progression, it is important to establish what types and choices of therapy are most suitable for these patients, in particular, the value of continuing dialysis treatment. Material and methods. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed among Polish residential hospices and hospital based palliative medicine wards. All responses obtained underwent statistical analysis using Pearson's Chi Square test. Results. Permanent palliative care facilities, from which 73 out of 166 registered in Poland, took part in the survey. ESRD patients were identified to be cared by 81% of the aforementioned institutions. The most common treatment approach for these patients was highlighted as conservative treatment (68%), followed by hemodialysis (47%), whereas merely 11% provided peritoneal dialysis. Differences between facilities were identified relating to therapeutic recommendations for terminal ESRD patients with residential hospices more likely to recommend dialysis in conjunction with palliative care, whereas palliative wards advocated a withdrawal from dialysis followed by the initiation of palliative care. Conclusion. All surveyed facilities considered ESRD patients eligible for guaranteed hospice and palliative care services. However, certain changes are needed to improve care for ESRD patients, including: The development of collaborative partnerships between hospices, dialysis centers and nephrologists, development of guidelines for withdrawing dialysis and applying conservative treatment, introducing better renal-based training for medical personnel as well as the introduction of transparency within rules relating to the financing of these services
Quantum constraints, Dirac observables and evolution: group averaging versus Schroedinger picture in LQC
A general quantum constraint of the form (realized in particular in Loop Quantum Cosmology models) is
studied. Group Averaging is applied to define the Hilbert space of solutions
and the relational Dirac observables. Two cases are considered. In the first
case, the spectrum of the operator is assumed to be
discrete. The quantum theory defined by the constraint takes the form of a
Schroedinger-like quantum mechanics with a generalized Hamiltonian
. In the second case, the spectrum is absolutely continuous
and some peculiar asymptotic properties of the eigenfunctions are assumed. The
resulting Hilbert space and the dynamics are characterized by a continuous
family of the Schroedinger-like quantum theories. However, the relational
observables mix different members of the family. Our assumptions are motivated
by new Loop Quantum Cosmology models of quantum FRW spacetime. The two cases
considered in the paper correspond to the negative and, respectively, positive
cosmological constant. Our results should be also applicable in many other
general relativistic contexts.Comment: RevTex4, 32 page
Macroscopically local correlations can violate information causality
Although quantum mechanics is a very successful theory, its foundations are
still a subject of intense debate. One of the main problems is the fact that
quantum mechanics is based on abstract mathematical axioms, rather than on
physical principles. Quantum information theory has recently provided new ideas
from which one could obtain physical axioms constraining the resulting
statistics one can obtain in experiments. Information causality and macroscopic
locality are two principles recently proposed to solve this problem. However
none of them were proven to define the set of correlations one can observe. In
this paper, we present an extension of information causality and study its
consequences. It is shown that the two above-mentioned principles are
inequivalent: if the correlations allowed by nature were the ones satisfying
macroscopic locality, information causality would be violated. This gives more
confidence in information causality as a physical principle defining the
possible correlation allowed by nature.Comment: are welcome. 6 pages, 4 figs. This is the originally submitted
version. The published version contains some bounds on quantum realizations
of d2dd isotropic boxes (table 1), found by T. Vertesi, who kindly shared
them with u
On the connection between mutually unbiased bases and orthogonal Latin squares
We offer a piece of evidence that the problems of finding the number of
mutually unbiased bases (MUB) and mutually orthogonal Latin squares (MOLS)
might not be equivalent. We study a particular procedure which has been shown
to relate the two problems and generates complete sets of MUBs in
power-of-prime dimensions and three MUBs in dimension six. For these cases,
every square from an augmented set of MOLS has a corresponding MUB. We show
that this no longer holds for certain composite dimensions.Comment: 6 pages, submitted to Proceedings of CEWQO 200
A Unified Conformal Model for Fundamental Interactions without Dynamical Higgs Field
A Higgsless model for strong, electro-weak and gravitational interactions is
proposed. This model is based on the local symmetry group SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1)xC
where C is the local conformal symmetry group. The natural minimal conformally
invariant form of total lagrangian is postulated. It contains all Standard
Model fields and gravitational interaction. Using the unitary gauge and the
conformal scale fixing conditions we can eliminate all four real components of
the Higgs doublet in this model. However the masses of vector mesons, leptons
and quarks are automatically generated and are given by the same formulas as in
the conventional Standard Model. The gravitational sector is analyzed and it is
shown that the model admits in the classical limit the Einsteinian form of
gravitational interactions. No figures.Comment: 25 pages, preprin
Monogamy of Correlations vs. Monogamy of Entanglement
A fruitful way of studying physical theories is via the question whether the
possible physical states and different kinds of correlations in each theory can
be shared to different parties. Over the past few years it has become clear
that both quantum entanglement and non-locality (i.e., correlations that
violate Bell-type inequalities) have limited shareability properties and can
sometimes even be monogamous. We give a self-contained review of these results
as well as present new results on the shareability of different kinds of
correlations, including local, quantum and no-signalling correlations. This
includes an alternative simpler proof of the Toner-Verstraete monogamy
inequality for quantum correlations, as well as a strengthening thereof.
Further, the relationship between sharing non-local quantum correlations and
sharing mixed entangled states is investigated, and already for the simplest
case of bi-partite correlations and qubits this is shown to be non-trivial.
Also, a recently proposed new interpretation of Bell's theorem by Schumacher in
terms of shareability of correlations is critically assessed. Finally, the
relevance of monogamy of non-local correlations for secure quantum key
distribution is pointed out, although, and importantly, it is stressed that not
all non-local correlations are monogamous.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures. Invited submission to a special issue of Quantum
Information Processing. v2: Published version. Open acces
Solid-Phase Synthesis of Arylpiperazine Derivatives and Implementation of the Distributed Drug Discovery (D3) Project in the Search for CNS Agents
We have successfully implemented the concept of Distributed Drug Discovery (D3) in the search for CNS agents. Herein, we demonstrate, for the first time, student engagement from different sites around the globe in the development of new biologically active compounds. As an outcome we have synthesized a 24-membered library of arylpiperazine derivatives targeted to 5-HT1A and 5-HT2A receptors. The synthesis was simultaneously performed on BAL-MBHA-PS resin in Poland and the United States, and on BAL-PS-SynPhase Lanterns in France. The D3 project strategy opens the possibility of obtaining potent 5-HT1A/5-HT2A agents in a distributed fashion. While the biological testing is still centralized, this combination of distributed synthesis with screening will enable a D3 network of students world-wide to participate, as part of their education, in the synthesis and testing of this class of biologically active compounds
Evidence for Spinodal Decomposition in Nuclear Multifragmentation
Multifragmentation of a ``fused system'' was observed for central collisions
between 32 MeV/nucleon 129Xe and natSn. Most of the resulting charged products
were well identified thanks to the high performances of the INDRA 4pi array.
Experimental higher-order charge correlations for fragments show a weak but non
ambiguous enhancement of events with nearly equal-sized fragments. Supported by
dynamical calculations in which spinodal decomposition is simulated, this
observed enhancement is interpreted as a ``fossil'' signal of spinodal
instabilities in finite nuclear systems.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev. Letter
The ALPS project release 1.3: open source software for strongly correlated systems
We present release 1.3 of the ALPS (Algorithms and Libraries for Physics
Simulations) project, an international open source software project to develop
libraries and application programs for the simulation of strongly correlated
quantum lattice models such as quantum magnets, lattice bosons, and strongly
correlated fermion systems. Development is centered on common XML and binary
data formats, on libraries to simplify and speed up code development, and on
full-featured simulation programs. The programs enable non-experts to start
carrying out numerical simulations by providing basic implementations of the
important algorithms for quantum lattice models: classical and quantum Monte
Carlo (QMC) using non-local updates, extended ensemble simulations, exact and
full diagonalization (ED), as well as the density matrix renormalization group
(DMRG). Changes in the new release include a DMRG program for interacting
models, support for translation symmetries in the diagonalization programs, the
ability to define custom measurement operators, and support for inhomogeneous
systems, such as lattice models with traps. The software is available from our
web server at http://alps.comp-phys.org/
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