79 research outputs found
Clinical placements in private practice for physiotherapy students are perceived as safe and beneficial for students, private practices and universities: a national mixed-methods study
Question: What are the extent and characteristics of clinical placements in private practice for physiotherapy students? What do university clinical education managers perceive to be the benefits, risks, barriers and enablers of clinical placements in private practice for physiotherapy students? What training and support are available for private practitioners?
Design: Mixed methods study combining a national survey and in-depth, semi-structured focus group interviews. Participants: Twenty clinical education managers from Australian universities who had graduating students in entry-level physiotherapy programs in 2017 (95% response rate) responded to the survey with data on 2,000 students. Twelve clinical education managers participated in the focus groups.
Results: It was found that 44% of physiotherapy graduates in Australia in 2017 completed a 5-week private practice placement. Private practice placement experiences were perceived to be safe and beneficial for students, private practices and universities. The main risks identified by clinical education managers were related to the quality and consistency of the student's experience on placement and not risks to service or clients. The main perceived barriers were time costs (both practitioner and university clinical education managers) and perceived lost earning capacity. Clinical education managers emphasised that more time and resources to establish and support private practitioners would enable them to reduce risk and overcome barriers to increasing private practice placement capacity and quality. Engaging private practitioners and working collaboratively appear vital for establishing, monitoring and supporting private practice placements.
Conclusion: By working collaboratively, universities and private practice physiotherapists can enhance private practice placement capacity and quality
CMB Power Spectrum from Noncommutative Spacetime
Very recent CMB data of WMAP offers an opportunity to test inflation models,
in particular, the running of spectral index is quite new and can be used to
rule out some models. We show that an noncommutative spacetime inflation model
gives a good explanation of these new results. In fitting the data, we also
obtain a relationship between the noncommutative parameter (string scale) and
the ending time of inflation.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures; v2: refs. added and minor corrections; v3:
further minor correctio
Moduli Instability in Warped Compactifications of the Type IIB Supergravity
We show that the conifold and deformed-conifold warped compactifications of
the ten-dimensional type IIB supergravity, including the Klebanov-Strassler
solution, are dynamically unstable in the moduli sector representing the scale
of a Calabi-Yau space, although it can be practically stable for a quite long
time in a region with a large warp factor. This instability is associated with
complete supersymmetry breaking except for a special case and produces
significant time-dependence in the structure of the four-dimensional base
spacetime as well as of the internal space.Comment: 24 pages, no figure. Typos corrected, and some arguments in section 5
are adde
The Energy Density of "Wound" Fields in a Toroidal Universe
The observational limits on the present energy density of the Universe allow
for a component that redshifts like and can contribute significantly to
the total. We show that a possible origin for such a contribution is that the
universe has a toroidal topology with "wound" scalar fields around its cycles.Comment: 11 pages, 1figur
Probing the primordial power spectra with inflationary priors
We investigate constraints on power spectra of the primordial curvature and
tensor perturbations with priors based on single-field slow-roll inflation
models. We stochastically draw the Hubble slow-roll parameters and generate the
primordial power spectra using the inflationary flow equations. Using data from
recent observations of CMB and several measurements of geometrical distances in
the late Universe, Bayesian parameter estimation and model selection are
performed for models that have separate priors on the slow-roll parameters. The
same analysis is also performed adopting the standard parameterization of the
primordial power spectra. We confirmed that the scale-invariant
Harrison-Zel'dovich spectrum is disfavored with increased significance from
previous studies. While current observations appear to be optimally modeled
with some simple models of single-field slow-roll inflation, data is not enough
constraining to distinguish these models.Comment: 23 pages, 3 figures, 7 tables, accepted for publication in JCA
Confronting hybrid inflation in supergravity with CMB data
-term GUT inflation coupled to N=1 Supergravity is confronted with CMB
data. Corrections to the string mass-per-unit-length away from the Bogomolny
limit are taken into account. We find that a superpotential coupling
10^{-7}/\mcN \lesssim \kappa \lesssim 10^{-2}/\mcN, with \mcN the dimension
of the Higgs-representation, is still compatible with the data. The parameter
space is enlarged in warm inflation, as well as in the curvaton and
inhomogeneous reheat scenario. -strings formed at the end of -term
inflation are also considered. Because these strings satisfy the Bogomolny
bound the bounds are stronger: the gauge coupling is constrained to the range
.Comment: 36 pages, 15 figure
Single-field inflation constraints from CMB and SDSS data
We present constraints on canonical single-field inflation derived from WMAP
five year, ACBAR, QUAD, BICEP data combined with the halo power spectrum from
SDSS LRG7. Models with a non-scale-invariant spectrum and a red tilt n_s < 1
are now preferred over the Harrison-Zel'dovich model (n_s = 1, tensor-to-scalar
ratio r = 0) at high significance. Assuming no running of the spectral indices,
we derive constraints on the parameters (n_s, r) and compare our results with
the predictions of simple inflationary models. The marginalised credible
intervals read n_s = 0.962^{+0.028}_{-0.026} and r < 0.17 (at 95% confidence
level). Interestingly, the 68% c.l. contours favour mainly models with a convex
potential in the observable region, but the quadratic potential model remains
inside the 95% c.l. contours. We demonstrate that these results are robust to
changes in the datasets considered and in the theoretical assumptions made. We
then consider a non-vanishing running of the spectral indices by employing
different methods, non-parametric but approximate, or parametric but exact.
With our combination of CMB and LSS data, running models are preferred over
power-law models only by a Delta chi^2 ~ 5.8, allowing inflationary stages
producing a sizable negative running -0.063^{+0.061}_{-0.049} and larger
tensor-scalar ratio r < 0.33 at the 95% c.l. This requires large values of the
third derivative of the inflaton potential within the observable range. We
derive bounds on this derivative under the assumption that the inflaton
potential can be approximated as a third order polynomial within the observable
range.Comment: 32 pages, 7 figures. v2: additional references, some typos corrected,
passed to JCAP style. v3: minor changes, matches published versio
Correlated Hybrid Fluctuations from Inflation with Thermal Dissipation
We investigate the primordial scalar perturbations in the thermal dissipative
inflation where the radiation component (thermal bath) persists and the density
fluctuations are thermally originated. The perturbation generated in this model
is hybrid, i.e. it consists of both adiabatic and isocurvature components. We
calculate the fractional power ratio () and the correlation coefficient
() between the adiabatic and the isocurvature perturbations at the
commencing of the radiation regime. Since the adiabatic/isocurvature
decomposition of hybrid perturbations generally is gauge-dependent at
super-horizon scales when there is substantial energy exchange between the
inflaton and the thermal bath, we carefully perform a proper decomposition of
the perturbations. We find that the adiabatic and the isocurvature
perturbations are correlated, even though the fluctuations of the radiation
component is considered uncorrelated with that of the inflaton. We also show
that both and depend mainly on the ratio between the
dissipation coefficient and the Hubble parameter during inflation.
The correlation is positive () for strong dissipation cases
where , and is negative for weak dissipation instances where
. Moreover, and in this model are not
independent of each other. The predicted relation between and
is consistent with the WMAP observation. Other testable predictions are also
discussed.Comment: 18 pages using revtex4, accepted for publication in PR
Second-order corrections to slow-roll inflation in the brane cosmology
We calculate the power spectrum, spectral index, and running spectral index
for the RS-II brane inflation in the high-energy regime using the slow-roll
expansion. There exist several modifications. As an example, we take the
power-law inflation by choosing an inverse power-law potential. When comparing
these with those arisen in the standard inflation, we find that the power
spectrum is enhanced and the spectral index is suppressed, while the running
spectral index becomes zero as in the standard inflation. However, since
second-order corrections are rather small, these could not play a role of
distinguishing between standard and brane inflations.Comment: 6 page
String Imprints from a Pre-inflationary Era
We derive the equations governing the dynamics of cosmic strings in a flat
anisotropic universe of Bianchi type I and study the evolution of simple cosmic
string loop solutions. We show that the anisotropy of the background can have a
characteristic effect in the loop motion. We discuss some cosmological
consequences of these findings and, by extrapolating our results to cosmic
string networks, we comment on their ability to survive an inflationary epoch,
and hence be a possible fossil remnant (still visible today) of an anisotropic
phase in the very early universe.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
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