The impact of mindfulness‐based interventions on doctors’ well‐being and performance: A systematic review

Objectives: The well-being of doctors is at risk, as evidenced by high burnout rates amongst doctors around the world. Alarmingly, burned-out doctors are more likely to exhibit low levels of professionalism and provide suboptimal patient care. Research suggests that burnout and the well-being of doctors can be improved by mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs). Furthermore, MBIs may improve doctors’ performance (eg in empathy). However, there are no published systematic reviews that clarify the effects of MBIs on doctor well-being or performance to inform future research and professional development programmes. We therefore systematically reviewed and narratively synthesised findings on the impacts of MBIs on doctors’ well-being and performance. Methods: We searched PubMed and PsycINFO from inception to 9 May 2018 and independently reviewed studies investigating the effects of MBIs on doctor well-being or performance. We systematically extracted data and assessed study quality according to the Medical Education Research Study Quality Instrument (MERSQI), and narratively reported study findings. Results: We retrieved a total of 934 articles, of which 24 studies met our criteria; these included randomised, (un)controlled o

Representations of integers by certain positive definite binary quadratic forms

We prove part of a conjecture of Borwein and Choi concerning an estimate on the square of the number of solutions to n=x^2+Ny^2 for a squarefree integer N.Comment: 8 pages, submitte

A banking union of ideas? The impact of ordoliberalism and the vicious circle on the EU banking union

The establishment of the EU banking union reveals two major shortcomings of liberal intergovernmentalism. First, it fails to explain the preference formation of the most important actor – the German government. The banking sector was divided between public and private banks, and there is no clear-cut pattern about whose interests the German government promoted. Second, material bargaining power cannot account for German concessions despite favourable power asymmetries. This article seeks to demonstrate how an ideational frame can convincingly fill these gaps. Ordoliberal ideas were constitutive for German preferences. The manipulative use of ideas as strategic resources by the German government’s opponents explains why it made significant concessions. Germany’s government publicly acknowledged that breaking the ‘vicious circle’ between banks and sovereigns was the main objective of the banking union. This became a rhetorical trap used by a coalition of Southern European member states to force the German government to make concessions

Ethical Assumptions in Economic Theory: Some Lessons from the History of Credit and Bankruptcy

This paper evaluates the economic assumptions of economic theory via an examination of the capitalist transformation of creditor–debtor relations in the 18th century. This transformation enabled masses of people to obtain credit without moral opprobrium or social subordination. Classical 18th century economics had the ethical concepts to appreciate these facts. Ironically, contemporary economic theory cannot. I trace this fault to its abstract representations of freedom, efficiency, and markets. The virtues of capitalism lie in the concrete social relations and social meanings through which capital and commodities are exchanged. Contrary to laissez faire capitalism, the conditions for sustaining these concrete capitalist formations require limits on freedom of contract and the scope of private property rights.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/42724/1/10677_2004_Article_2202.pd

Approximability of the Subset Sum Reconfiguration Problem

The subset sum problem is a well-known NP-complete problem in which we wish to find a packing (subset) of items (integers) into a knapsack with capacity so that the sum of the integers in the packing is at most the capacity of the knapsack and at least a given integer threshold. In this paper, we study the problem of reconfiguring one packing into another packing by moving only one item at a time, while at all times maintaining the feasibility of packings. First we show that this decision problem is strongly NP-hard, and is PSPACE-complete if we are given a conflict graph for the set of items in which each vertex corresponds to an item and each edge represents a pair of items that are not allowed to be packed together into the knapsack. We then study an optimization version of the problem: we wish to maximize the minimum sum among all packings in the reconfiguration. We show that this maximization problem admits a polynomial-time approximation scheme (PTAS), while the problem is APX-hard if we are given a conflict graph

Quantum inequalities and `quantum interest' as eigenvalue problems

Quantum inequalities (QI's) provide lower bounds on the averaged energy density of a quantum field. We show how the QI's for massless scalar fields in even dimensional Minkowski space may be reformulated in terms of the positivity of a certain self-adjoint operator - a generalised Schroedinger operator with the energy density as the potential - and hence as an eigenvalue problem. We use this idea to verify that the energy density produced by a moving mirror in two dimensions is compatible with the QI's for a large class of mirror trajectories. In addition, we apply this viewpoint to the `quantum interest conjecture' of Ford and Roman, which asserts that the positive part of an energy density always overcompensates for any negative components. For various simple models in two and four dimensions we obtain the best possible bounds on the `quantum interest rate' and on the maximum delay between a negative pulse and a compensating positive pulse. Perhaps surprisingly, we find that - in four dimensions - it is impossible for a positive delta-function pulse of any magnitude to compensate for a negative delta-function pulse, no matter how close together they occur.Comment: 18 pages, RevTeX. One new result added; typos fixed. To appear in Phys. Rev.

A Single Laser System for Ground-State Cooling of 25-Mg+

We present a single solid-state laser system to cool, coherently manipulate and detect $^{25}$Mg$^+$ ions. Coherent manipulation is accomplished by coupling two hyperfine ground state levels using a pair of far-detuned Raman laser beams. Resonant light for Doppler cooling and detection is derived from the same laser source by means of an electro-optic modulator, generating a sideband which is resonant with the atomic transition. We demonstrate ground-state cooling of one of the vibrational modes of the ion in the trap using resolved-sideband cooling. The cooling performance is studied and discussed by observing the temporal evolution of Raman-stimulated sideband transitions. The setup is a major simplification over existing state-of-the-art systems, typically involving up to three separate laser sources

Circumpolar Arctic vegetation: a hierarchic review and roadmap toward an internationally consistent approach to survey, archive and classify tundra plot data

Satellite-derived remote-sensing products are providing a modern circumpolar perspective of Arctic vegetation and its changes, but this new view is dependent on a long heritage of ground-based observations in the Arctic. Several products of the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna are key to our current understanding. We review aspects of the PanArctic Flora, the Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map, the Arctic Biodiversity Assessment, and the Arctic Vegetation Archive (AVA) as they relate to efforts to describe and map the vegetation, plant biomass, and biodiversity of the Arctic at circumpolar, regional, landscape and plot scales. Cornerstones for all these tools are ground-based plant-species and plant-community surveys. The AVA is in progress and will store plot-based vegetation observations in a public-accessible database for vegetation classification, modeling, diversity studies, and other applications. We present the current status of the Alaska Arctic Vegetation Archive (AVA-AK), as a regional example for the panarctic archive, and with a roadmap for a coordinated international approach to survey, archive and classify Arctic vegetation. We note the need for more consistent standards of plot-based observations, and make several recommendations to improve the linkage between plot-based observations biodiversity studies and satellite-based observations of Arctic vegetation