Multicultural Competencies of Healthcare Professionals and Disability-Inclusive in Telehealth during the COVID-19 Pandemic

There is evidence that people with disabilities are more likely to be discriminated against and to have disproportionate health care disparities compared to people who are able-bodied during the devastating COVID-19 pandemic. In light of COVID-19, telehealth has been transformed to the primary health care delivery due to social restrictions of most, globally. Disability-inclusive telehealth design can promote culturally diverse groups access and more accurate COVID-19 information, knowledge, public health measures, and guidelines of preventive strategies for acquiring COVID-19. Applying multicultural competencies is required for healthcare providers to maximize health engagement and outcomes of PWD. In many areas of health care, healthcare professionals recognize needs, expectations, and perceptions of diverse disability populations. That being said, healthcare professionals should implement appropriate interactions with a patient with a disability and provide culturally responsive telehealth services for other underrepresented groups as well. Hence, the multicultural competencies of healthcare professionals and disability responsive telehealth systems can assist PWD to mitigate health care disparities

Quantum Criticality and Global Phase Diagram of Magnetic Heavy Fermions

Quantum criticality describes the collective fluctuations of matter undergoing a second-order phase transition at zero temperature. It is being discussed in a number of strongly correlated electron systems. A prototype case occurs in the heavy fermion metals, in which antiferromagnetic quantum critical points have been explicitly observed. Here, I address two types of antiferromagnetic quantum critical points. In addition to the standard description based on the fluctuations of the antiferromagnetic order, a local quantum critical point is also considered. It contains inherently quantum modes that are associated with a critical breakdown of the Kondo effect. Across such a quantum critical point, there is a sudden collapse of a large Fermi surface to a small one. I also consider the proximate antiferromagnetic and paramagnetic phases, and these considerations lead to a global phase diagram. Finally, I discuss the pertinent experiments on the antiferromagnetic heavy fermions, briefly address the case of ferromagnetic heavy fermions, and outline some directions for future studies.Comment: (v2) reference added, and typos corrected; (v1) 10 pages, 2 figures, based on a plenary talk given at the International Conference on Quantum Criticality and Novel Phases (QCNP09, Dresden

Commentary on rainbow-ladder truncation for excited states and exotics

Ground-state, radially-excited and exotic scalar-, vector- and flavoured-pseudoscalar-mesons are studied in rainbow-ladder truncation using an interaction kernel that is consonant with modern DSE- and lattice-QCD results. The inability of this truncation to provide realistic predictions for the masses of excited- and exotic-states is confirmed and explained. On the other hand, its application does provide information that is potentially useful in proceeding beyond this leading-order truncation, e.g.: assisting with development of projection techniques that ease the computation of excited state properties; placing qualitative constraints on the long-range behaviour of the interaction kernel; and highlighting and illustrating some features of hadron observables that do not depend on details of the dynamics.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, 2 table

Contemporary hormone therapy with LHRH agonists for prostate cancer: avoiding osteoporosis and fracture.

© 2015 Polish Urological Association. All Rights Reserved.Introduction Prostate cancer is a large clinical burden across Europe. It is, in fact, the most common cancer in males, accounting for more than 92,300 deaths annually throughout the continent. Prostate cancer is androgen-sensitive; thus an androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) is often used for treatment by reducing androgen to castrate levels. Several ADT agents have achieved benefits with effective palliation, but, unfortunately, severe adverse events are frequent. Contemporary ADT (Luteinising Hormone Releasing Hormone agonist - LHRHa injections) can result in side effects that include osteoporosis and fractures, compromising quality of life and survival.  Methods In this review we analysed the associated bone toxicity consequent upon contemporary ADT and based on the literature and our own experience we present future perspectives that seek to mitigate this associated toxicity both by development of novel therapies and by better identification and prediction of fracture risk. Results Preliminary results indicate that parenteral oestrogen can mitigate associated osteoporotic risk and that CT scans could provide a more accurate indicator of overall bone quality and hence fracture risk.  Conclusions As healthcare costs increase globally, cheap and effective alternatives that achieve ADT, but mitigate or avoid such bone toxicities, will be needed. More so, innovative techniques to improve both the measurement and the extent of this toxicity, by assessing bone health and prediction of fracture risk, are also required

UNDERSTANDING THE DETERMINANTS OF BLOCKCHAIN ADOPTION IN SUPPLY CHAINS: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY IN CHINA

This study adopts affordance approach to understand how supply chain managers interpret the possible benefits that can be performed within blockchain-enabled supply chain applications. With a focus on governance efficiency improvement, the impacts of traceability and transparency affordance on uncertainty reduction were examined from the perspective of transaction cost theory in supply chain industry. Partial least squares – structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the data collected from 364 experienced supply chain managers in China. The results revealed that traceability affordance exerted significant impacts on environmental and trading partner uncertainty rather than transparency affordance, which in turn affected the adoption intention. This study contributes to the extant literature by embedding transaction cost in blockchain affordances. The findings are useful in guiding practitioners to improve blockchain system design for reducing uncertainties in supply chain environment, leading to a higher adoption rate of blockchain technology

Locally critical quantum phase transitions in strongly correlated metals

When a metal undergoes a continuous quantum phase transition, non-Fermi liquid behaviour arises near the critical point. It is standard to assume that all low-energy degrees of freedom induced by quantum criticality are spatially extended, corresponding to long-wavelength fluctuations of the order parameter. However, this picture has been contradicted by recent experiments on a prototype system: heavy fermion metals at a zero-temperature magnetic transition. In particular, neutron scattering from CeCu$_{6-x}$Au$_x$ has revealed anomalous dynamics at atomic length scales, leading to much debate as to the fate of the local moments in the quantum-critical regime. Here we report our theoretical finding of a locally critical quantum phase transition in a model of heavy fermions. The dynamics at the critical point are in agreement with experiment. We also argue that local criticality is a phenomenon of general relevance to strongly correlated metals, including doped Mott insulators.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures; extended version, to appear in Natur

Critical local-moment fluctuations, anomalous exponents, and omega/T scaling in the Kondo problem with a pseudogap

Experiments in heavy-fermion metals and related theoretical work suggest that critical local-moment fluctuations can play an important role near a zero-temperature phase transition. We study such fluctuations at the quantum critical point of a Kondo impurity model in which the density of band states vanishes as |E|^r at the Fermi energy (E = 0). The local spin response is described by a set of critical exponents that vary continuously with r. For 0 < r < 1, the dynamical susceptibility exhibits omega/T scaling with a fractional exponent, implying that the critical point is interacting.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures; enhanced figures, expanded discussion of small-r expansio

Baseline Severity as Predictor of Change in St George's Respiratory Questionnaire Scores in Trials of Long-acting Bronchodilators with COPD Patients.

Background: In trials oflong-acting bronchodilators, health status is an important trial outcome, however the influence of baseline severity on response measured by St George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) is not known. We have compared SGRQ changes between patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) of mild-moderate severity or dyspnea (Global initiative for chronic Obstructive Lung disease [GOLD] grades 1 and 2; modified Medical Research Council [mMRC] grades 1 and 2) to those with severe-very severe severity or dyspnea (GOLD grades 3 and 4; mMRC grades 3 and 4). Methods: Combined individual patient data from the COPD Biomarkers Qualification Consortium database (trials of long-acting bronchodilators) were used comprising of patients from short-term (≤1-year duration; n=10802) and medium-term (2-4 years' duration; n=8963) studies. A repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine the effects of baseline severity (GOLD/mMRC) on SGRQ response to treatment. All treatment arms were combined. Results: In short-term studies, milder patients showed a greater response than those with more severe disease in terms of GOLD grade (partial Eta(2) = 0.03, p < 0.0001) and mMRC grade (partial Eta(2) = 0.05, p < 0.0001). Similar results were seen in the medium-term studies (partial Eta(2) = 0.02, p < 0.0001; mMRC: partial Eta(2) = 0.05, p < 0.0001,). Conclusions: Patients with less severe airflow limitation and less severe dyspnea showed larger improvements in SGRQ score than more severely obstructed or dyspneic patients. Although these severity influences are small (2%-5% of the variance in SGRQ score), they do suggest that pre-specified separate analyses are warranted to test for differences in response, based on baseline severity

TiO₂-coated electrodes for pulsed electric field treatment of microorganisms

Pulsed electric fields (PEF) can cause irreversible damage to bio-membranes and may result in inactivation of microorganisms. The aim of this paper is to investigate the PEF treatment of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, using a novel treatment cell with parallel-plane electrodes coated with a 2 µm thin TiO2 film. Two different PEF waveforms, square and exponential, with magnitudes of 67 kV/cm and 80 kV/cm, were used in this study. The efficacy of the PEF treatment was assessed by comparison of the surviving treated and untreated yeast populations, and it was shown that a treatment cell with TiO2-coated electrodes can be successfully used for the PEF treatment of microorganisms: 3-log10 reduction in the yeast population was achieved with 100 impulses. The energy efficacy of the PEF process in the proposed treatment cell has been compared with the energy losses in the PEF treatment cell with uncoated, conductive electrodes. It is shown that the electrodes coated with TiO2 provide better performance as compared with the traditional uncoated electrodes