Examining the physiological and psychological impact of smoking cessation on patients with acute myocardial infarction

This study examined the physiological and psychological stressors of hospitalized acute myocardial infarction (AMI) patients who abruptly ceased smoking. A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 57 AMI patients (29 smokers and 29 non-smokers) on day two following admission to the coronary care unit. Psychological stress was measured using the Profile of Mood States and the Insomnia Severity Index. Retrospective chart abstraction was conducted to examine the impact of smoking cessation on the physiological outcomes. MANCOVA suggested that after adjusting for age, smokers experienced significantly higher levels of depression, anxiety and anger as compared to the non-smokers. Student \u27t\u27-tests and chi-square analyses revealed no differences in length of stay, ischemia and arrhythmia between the two groups. The findings support some propositions of the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping, and offer support for continued assessment and research related to the management of nicotine withdrawal following AMI

A Cross-Sectional Study of Palliative Care Nurse Attitudes Toward Medical Assistance in Dying

Background: In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada decriminalized physician assisted dying for persons suffering grievous and irremediable medical conditions. In Canada, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) is not provided by professional nurses; however, nurses are involved in providing physical care, education, and support for persons who are in various stages of the process. Its integration in palliative care settings has been controversial as MAiD is philosophically at odds with a palliative care approach that seeks to neither hasten nor prolong natural death. Therefore, it has potential to create moral and ethical distress among palliative care nurses who respect adherence to the tenets of palliative care. Objectives: The objectives of this study were to explore the attitudes of palliative care nurses toward MAiD and to identify their professional support needs. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional survey of palliative care registered nurses and registered practical nurses in Ontario, Canada. Letters that provided a link to an online survey were sent to participants by standard mail. Participants completed a novel instrument, the Nurse Attitudes Toward MAiD Scale (NATMS) that included 24 items ranked on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1= ‘strongly disagree’ to 5= ‘strongly agree’). Data analyses included univariate and bivariate statistics, and linear regression. Results: The final sample (N=239) included 173 registered nurses and 66 registered practical nurses who had worked in nursing for \u3e20 years, and in palliative care for \u3e10 years. The overall score on the NATMS was 3.42 + 0.62. Perceived expertise in the social domain of palliative care (β = 0.16; p=0.02), personal importance of religion/faith (β = -0.40; p=0.00), professional importance of religion/faith (β = -0.22; p=0.01) and nursing designation (β=-.18; p=0.03) predicted the NATMS score. Ethics training and clear policies for MAiD integration were reported as required supports in palliative care work environments. Conclusions: This is the first study to reveal the perceived importance of religion, versus religious affiliation alone, as significant in influencing provider attitudes toward assisted dying. Organizations are encouraged to address the professional needs of palliative care nurses. To support MAiD integration, further research is needed to understand differences in attitudes between registered nurses and registered practical nurses, and how the social domain of palliative care influences nurse attitudes toward MAiD

The Montana Coroner System: An Archaic Inadequacy in Need of Reform

The Montana Coroner System: An Archaic Inadequacy In Need Of Refor

It’s About Quality: Private Confinement Facilities in Juvenile Justice

The youth justice system in the United States has always depended on nongovernmental organizations to provide some of the services, supports, and sanctions for youth after juvenile court adjudication. As the use of state-operated youth confinement declined in recent years, primarily as a result of falling rates of serious juvenile crime, the relative importance of private facilities increased. The number of juveniles held in privately operated secure confinement facilities is now larger than the number confined in state institutions

Dataplane Specialization for High-performance OpenFlow Software Switching

OpenFlow is an amazingly expressive dataplane program- ming language, but this expressiveness comes at a severe performance price as switches must do excessive packet clas- sification in the fast path. The prevalent OpenFlow software switch architecture is therefore built on flow caching, but this imposes intricate limitations on the workloads that can be supported efficiently and may even open the door to mali- cious cache overflow attacks. In this paper we argue that in- stead of enforcing the same universal flow cache semantics to all OpenFlow applications and optimize for the common case, a switch should rather automatically specialize its dat- aplane piecemeal with respect to the configured workload. We introduce ES WITCH , a novel switch architecture that uses on-the-fly template-based code generation to compile any OpenFlow pipeline into efficient machine code, which can then be readily used as fast path. We present a proof- of-concept prototype and we demonstrate on illustrative use cases that ES WITCH yields a simpler architecture, superior packet processing speed, improved latency and CPU scala- bility, and predictable performance. Our prototype can eas- ily scale beyond 100 Gbps on a single Intel blade even with complex OpenFlow pipelines

Wigner Molecules in Nanostructures

The one-- and two-- particle densities of up to four interacting electrons with spin, confined within a quasi one--dimensional ``quantum dot'' are calculated by numerical diagonalization. The transition from a dense homogeneous charge distribution to a dilute localized Wigner--type electron arrangement is investigated. The influence of the long range part of the Coulomb interaction is studied. When the interaction is exponentially cut off the ``crystallized'' Wigner molecule is destroyed in favor of an inhomogeneous charge distribution similar to a charge density wave .Comment: 10 pages (excl. Figures), Figures available on request LaTe

Raman and fluorescence contributions to resonant inelastic soft x-ray scattering on LaAlO3_3/SrTiO3_3 heterostructures

We present a detailed study of the Ti 3$d$ carriers at the interface of LaAlO$_3$/SrTiO$_3$ heterostructures by high-resolution resonant inelastic soft x-ray scattering (RIXS), with special focus on the roles of overlayer thickness and oxygen vacancies. Our measurements show the existence of interfacial Ti 3$d$ electrons already below the critical thickness for conductivity and an increase of the total interface charge up to a LaAlO$_3$ overlayer thickness of 6 unit cells before it levels out. By comparing stoichiometric and oxygen deficient samples we observe strong Ti 3$d$ charge carrier doping by oxygen vacancies. The RIXS data combined with photoelectron spectroscopy and transport measurements indicate the simultaneous presence of localized and itinerant charge carriers. However, it is demonstrated that the relative amount of localized and itinerant Ti $3d$ electrons in the ground state cannot be deduced from the relative intensities of the Raman and fluorescence peaks in excitation energy dependent RIXS measurements, in contrast to previous interpretations. Rather, we attribute the observation of either the Raman or the fluorescence signal to the spatial extension of the intermediate state reached in the RIXS excitation process.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure