Benefits and losses: a qualitative study exploring healthcare staff perceptions of teamworking

ABSTRACT Objectives: To examine staff perceptions of teamworking practice in the field of stroke care. Design: Qualitative interview study. Setting: Three teams providing care to patients with stroke across a typical care pathway of acute hospital ward, specialist stroke unit, and community rehabilitation. Participants: 37 staff members from a range of professions. Main outcome measures: Healthcare staff perceptions of teamworking. Results: Through detailed coding and analysis of the transcripts, five perceptions regarding the impact of teamworking on staff and patients were identified. These were: (1) mutual staff support, (2) knowledge and skills sharing, (3) timely intervention/discharge, (4) reduced individual decision-making and responsibility and (5) impact on patient contact time. Conclusions: Teamworking practice may be associated with a number of perceived benefits for staff and patient care; however, the potential for losses resulting from reduced patient contact time and ill-defined responsibility needs further investigation

Corner transfer matrices in statistical mechanics

Corner transfer matrices are a useful tool in the statistical mechanics of simple two-dimensinal models. They can be very effective way of obtaining series expansions of unsolved models, and of calculating the order parameters of solved ones. Here we review these features and discuss the reason why the method fails to give the order parameter of the chiral Potts model.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, for Proceedings of Conference on Symmetries and Integrability of Difference Equations. (SIDE VII), Melbourne, July 200

New Q matrices and their functional equations for the eight vertex model at elliptic roots of unity

The Q matrix invented by Baxter in 1972 to solve the eight vertex model at roots of unity exists for all values of N, the number of sites in the chain, but only for a subset of roots of unity. We show in this paper that a new Q matrix, which has recently been introduced and is non zero only for N even, exists for all roots of unity. In addition we consider the relations between all of the known Q matrices of the eight vertex model and conjecture functional equations for them.Comment: 20 pages, 2 Postscript figure

The order parameter of the chiral Potts model

An outstanding problem in statistical mechanics is the order parameter of the chiral Potts model. An elegant conjecture for this was made in 1983. It has since been successfully tested against series expansions, but as far as the author is aware there is as yet no proof of the conjecture. Here we show that if one makes a certain analyticity assumption similar to that used to derive the free energy, then one can indeed verify the conjecture. The method is based on the ``broken rapidity line'' approach pioneered by Jimbo, Miwa and Nakayashiki.Comment: 29 pages, 7 figures. Citations made more explicit and some typos correcte

Planar lattice gases with nearest-neighbour exclusion

We discuss the hard-hexagon and hard-square problems, as well as the corresponding problem on the honeycomb lattice. The case when the activity is unity is of interest to combinatorialists, being the problem of counting binary matrices with no two adjacent 1's. For this case we use the powerful corner transfer matrix method to numerically evaluate the partition function per site, density and some near-neighbour correlations to high accuracy. In particular for the square lattice we obtain the partition function per site to 43 decimal places.Comment: 16 pages, 2 built-in Latex figures, 4 table

Integrability of qq-oscillator lattice model

A simple formulation of an exactly integrable $q$-oscillator model on two dimensional lattice (in 2+1 dimensional space-time) is given. Its interpretation in the terms of 2d quantum inverse scattering method and nested Bethe Ansatz equations is discussed.Comment: Talk given at the conference ``New frontiers in exactly solved models'', ANU, July 21-22, 200

Free field constructions for the elliptic algebra Aq,p(sl^2){\cal A}_{q,p}(\hat{sl}_2) and Baxter's eight-vertex model

Three examples of free field constructions for the vertex operators of the elliptic quantum group ${\cal A}_{q,p}(\hat{sl}_2)$ are obtained. Two of these (for $p^{1/2}=\pm q^{3/2},p^{1/2}=-q^2$) are based on representation theories of the deformed Virasoro algebra, which correspond to the level 4 and level 2 $Z$-algebra of Lepowsky and Wilson. The third one ($p^{1/2}=q^{3}$) is constructed over a tensor product of a bosonic and a fermionic Fock spaces. The algebraic structure at $p^{1/2}=q^{3}$, however, is not related to the deformed Virasoro algebra. Using these free field constructions, an integral formula for the correlation functions of Baxter's eight-vertex model is obtained. This formula shows different structure compared with the one obtained by Lashkevich and Pugai.Comment: 23 pages. Based on talks given at "MATHPHYS ODYSSEY 2001-Integrable Models and Beyond" at Okayama and Kyoto, February 19-23, 2001, et

A computer solution for the dynamic load, lubricant film thickness, and surface temperatures in spiral-bevel gears

A computer method for determining the dynamic load between spiral bevel pinion and gear teeth contact along the path of contact is described. The dynamic load analysis governs both the surface temperature and film thickness. Computer methods for determining the surface temperature, and film thickness are presented along with results obtained for a pair of typical spiral bevel gears

Water quality monitor

The preprototype water quality monitor (WQM) subsystem was designed based on a breadboard monitor for pH, specific conductance, and total organic carbon (TOC). The breadboard equipment demonstrated the feasibility of continuous on-line analysis of potable water for a spacecraft. The WQM subsystem incorporated these breadboard features and, in addition, measures ammonia and includes a failure detection system. The sample, reagent, and standard solutions are delivered to the WQM sensing manifold where chemical operations and measurements are performed using flow through sensors for conductance, pH, TOC, and NH3. Fault monitoring flow detection is also accomplished in this manifold assembly. The WQM is designed to operate automatically using a hardwired electronic controller. In addition, automatic shutdown is incorporated which is keyed to four flow sensors strategically located within the fluid system