The effects of an individual, multistep intervention on adherence to treatment in hemodialysis patients

Purpose: The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of individual, multistep intervention on adherence to treatment in hemodialysis patients referred to a hemodialysis center in Shahrekord, Iran. Method: In this interventional study, hemodialysis patients referring the center of the study were randomly assigned into two control and intervention groups (each 33). The control group received routine treatment, recommended dietary and fluid restrictions. The intervention group participated in eight individual interventional sessions accompanied routine treatment. At the beginning and the end of the study, routine laboratory tests and end-stage renal disease-adherence questionnaire were filled out for patients in both groups. The data were analyzed using Mann-Whitney and Wilcoxon tests. Results: At the end of the study, the two groups showed a significant difference in all domains of adherence except adherence to diet and adherence was better in the intervention group (p < 0.05). In demographic characteristic, only age indicated a positive correlation with adherence to dialysis program (p = 0.04, r = 0.254). After intervention, serum phosphorus decreased significantly in the intervention group (p < 0.05). Conclusions: Adherence to treatment is one of the major problems in hemodialysis patients; however, comprehensive interventions are required in view of individual condition. ▸ Implications for Rehabilitation • Adherence to treatment means that all patients behaviors (diet, fluids and drugs intake) should be in line with the recommendations given by healthcare professionals. • There is evidence on the association between adherence to treatment and decreased risk of hospitalization in dialysis patients. • Individual structured programs are most likely to be successful in encouraging adherence to treatment. © 2015 Informa UK Ltd. All rights reserved

Determining Ratios of WIMP-Nucleon Cross Sections from Direct Dark Matter Detection Data

Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are one of the leading candidates for Dark Matter. So far the usual procedure for constraining the WIMP-nucleon cross sections in direct Dark Matter detection experiments have been to fit the predicted event rate based on some model(s) of the Galactic halo and of WIMPs to experimental data. One has to assume whether the spin-independent (SI) or the spin-dependent (SD) WIMP-nucleus interaction dominates, and results of such data analyses are also expressed as functions of the as yet unknown WIMP mass. In this article, I introduce methods for extracting information on the WIMP-nucleon cross sections by considering a general combination of the SI and SD interactions. Neither prior knowledge about the local density and the velocity distribution of halo WIMPs nor about their mass is needed. Assuming that an exponential-like shape of the recoil spectrum is confirmed from experimental data, the required information are only the measured recoil energies (in low energy ranges) and the number of events in the first energy bin from two or more experiments.Comment: 33 pages, 20 eps figures; v2: typos fixed, references added and updated, revised version for publicatio

Competition between the BCS superconductivity and ferromagnetic spin fluctuations in MgCNi3_3

The low temperature specific heat of the superconductor MgCNi$_3$ and a non-superconductor MgC$_{0.85}$Ni$_3$ is investigated in detail. An additional contribution is observed from the data of MgCNi$_3$ but absent in MgC$_{0.85}$Ni$_3$, which is demonstrated to be insensitive to the applied magnetic field even up to 12 Tesla. A detailed discussion on its origin is then presented. By subtracting this additional contribution, the zero field specific heat of MgCNi$_3$ can be well described by the BCS theory with the gap ratio ($\Delta/k_BT_c$) determined by the previous tunneling measurements. The conventional s-wave pairing state is further proved by the magnetic field dependence of the specific heat at low temperatures and the behavior of the upper critical field.Comment: To appear in Physical Review B, 6 pages, 7 figure

Phenomenological analysis of the double pion production in nucleon-nucleon collisions up to 2.2 GeV

With an effective Lagrangian approach, we analyze several NN \to NN\pi\pi channels by including various resonances with mass up to 1.72 GeV. For the channels with the pion pair of isospin zero, we confirm the dominance of N*(1440)\to N\sigma in the near threshold region. At higher energies and for channels with the final pion pair of isospin one, we find large contributions from N*(1440)\to \Delta\pi, double-Delta, \Delta(1600) \to N*(1440)\pi, \Delta(1600) \to \Delta\pi and \Delta(1620) \to \Delta\pi. There are also sizeable contributions from \Delta \to \Delta\pi, \Delta \to N\pi, N \to \Delta\pi and nucleon pole at energies close to the threshold. We well reproduce the total cross sections up to beam energies of 2.2 GeV except for the pp\to pp\pi^0\pi^0 channel at energies around 1.1 GeV and our results agree with the existing data of differential cross sections of pp \to pp\pi^+\pi^-, pp \to nn\pi^+\pi^+ and pp \to pp\pi^0\pi^0 which are measured at CELSIUS and COSY.Comment: 36 pages, 18 figure

Unconventional Spin Density Waves in Dipolar Fermi Gases

The conventional spin density wave (SDW) phase (Overhauser, 1962), as found in antiferromagnetic metal for example (Fawcett 1988), can be described as a condensate of particle-hole pairs with zero angular momentum, $\ell=0$, analogous to a condensate of particle-particle pairs in conventional superconductors. While many unconventional superconductors with Cooper pairs of finite $\ell$ have been discovered, their counterparts, density waves with non-zero angular momenta, have only been hypothesized in two-dimensional electron systems (Nayak, 2000). Using an unbiased functional renormalization group analysis, we here show that spin-triplet particle-hole condensates with $\ell=1$ emerge generically in dipolar Fermi gases of atoms (Lu, Burdick, and Lev, 2012) or molecules (Ospelkaus et al., 2008; Wu et al.) on optical lattice. The order parameter of these exotic SDWs is a vector quantity in spin space, and, moreover, is defined on lattice bonds rather than on lattice sites. We determine the rich quantum phase diagram of dipolar fermions at half-filling as a function of the dipolar orientation, and discuss how these SDWs arise amidst competition with superfluid and charge density wave phases.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Determining the Mass of Dark Matter Particles with Direct Detection Experiments

In this article I review two data analysis methods for determining the mass (and eventually the spin-independent cross section on nucleons) of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles with positive signals from direct Dark Matter detection experiments: a maximum likelihood analysis with only one experiment and a model-independent method requiring at least two experiments. Uncertainties and caveats of these methods will also be discussed.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures, 1 reference added, typos fixed, published version, to appear in the NJP Focus Issue on "Dark Matter and Particle Physics

Diffusion in a multi-component Lattice Boltzmann Equation model

Diffusion phenomena in a multiple component lattice Boltzmann Equation (LBE) model are discussed in detail. The mass fluxes associated with different mechanical driving forces are obtained using a Chapman-Enskog analysis. This model is found to have correct diffusion behavior and the multiple diffusion coefficients are obtained analytically. The analytical results are further confirmed by numerical simulations in a few solvable limiting cases. The LBE model is established as a useful computational tool for the simulation of mass transfer in fluid systems with external forces.Comment: To appear in Aug 1 issue of PR

What can(not) be measured with ton-scale dark matter direct detection experiments

Direct searches for dark matter have prompted in recent years a great deal of excitement within the astroparticle physics community, but the compatibility between signal claims and null results of different experiments is far from being a settled issue. In this context, we study here the prospects for constraining the dark matter parameter space with the next generation of ton-scale detectors. Using realistic experimental capabilities for a wide range of targets (including fluorine, sodium, argon, germanium, iodine and xenon), the role of target complementarity is analysed in detail while including the impact of astrophysical uncertainties in a self-consistent manner. We show explicitly that a multi-target signal in future direct detection facilities can determine the sign of the ratio of scalar couplings $f_n/f_p$, but not its scale. This implies that the scalar-proton cross-section is left essentially unconstrained if the assumption $f_p\sim f_n$ is relaxed. Instead, we find that both the axial-proton cross-section and the ratio of axial couplings $a_n/a_p$ can be measured with fair accuracy if multi-ton instruments using sodium and iodine will eventually come online. Moreover, it turns out that future direct detection data can easily discriminate between elastic and inelastic scatterings. Finally, we argue that, with weak assumptions regarding the WIMP couplings and the astrophysics, only the dark matter mass and the inelastic parameter (i.e. mass splitting) may be inferred from the recoil spectra -- specifically, we anticipate an accuracy of tens of GeV (tens of keV) in the measurement of the dark matter mass (inelastic parameter).Comment: 31 pages, 7 figures, 7 table