Workplace Violence in the Healthcare Setting

Workplace Violence (WPV) is an all-encompassing term used to describe abusive behaviours directed at another with the intent to cause harm. Although the definition varies according to situations and practice settings, there is agreement that WPV has a negative impact on the health and wellbeing of nurses and the delivery of quality nursing care (Choiniere, MacDonnell, & Shamonda, 2010; Higgins & MacIntosh, 2010; Registered Nurses Association of Ontario [RNAO], 2008; Hsinag-Chu & Lee, 2011; Vessey, DeMarco, Gaffney, & Budin, 2009). The growing epidemic of violence in the workplace is of great concern for employees, employers and government agencies and is recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Council of Nurses (ICN) as a major health priority (Hinchberger, 2009). WPV occurs between nurses, between nurses and physicians and between nurses and patients and their families. In order to implement effective strategies aimed at diminishing WPV an investigation of the multi-layered risk factors must first be explored. The RNAO (2008) suggests taking “a broad approach, examining societal, workplace, and individual factors and recognizing the dynamic relationship between them” (p.2). This literature review aims at identifying and examining the risk factors for WPV; the psychological and physical effects experienced by nurses due to WPV; the strategies nurses employ to decrease violence in the workplace; and the personal and professional costs associated with WPV. Understanding the risk factors and associated consequences of WPV on the healthcare sector could potentially lead to effective interventions aimed at decreasing WPV and increasing productivity within the health sector

A Political Economy of Privatization Contracts : The Case of Water and Sanitation in Ghana and Argentina

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Hulya Dagdeviren, Simon A. Robertson, 'A Political Economy of Privatization Contracts: The Case of Water and Sanitation in Ghana and Argentina', Competition & Change, Vol. 18 (2): 150-163, April 2014. The final, published version is available online at DOI: https://doi.org/10.1179/1024529414Z.00000000053. Published by SAGE.In general, the process and outcomes of privatization have been studied from the point of view of efficiency. In this article, we consider issues in the course of contract design, implementation, management and enforcement in privatized public services and utilities. The study is based on two case studies, involving several water concessions in Argentina and a management contract in the urban water sector in Ghana. Three key arguments are presented on the basis of these case studies. The first is that an individualistic analytical framework is often utilized by the mainstream economic perspectives, but these are inadequate for a comparative assessment of private versus public provision in public services where there are distinct collective or group interests and hence a wider socio-economic context and representation of different interests becomes highly important. Instead, the article proposes a political economy perspective, which pays due attention to distributional issues, group interests, ideology of states and power relations for the assessment of privatization contracts. Second, the administrative capacity of states and their resources play a key role for the outcomes of privatization. Finally, while some contractual issues could be resolved through resourcing and experience over time, others are inherent to the contractual relations with little prospect of remedy.Peer reviewe

Self-consistent calculation of total energies of the electron gas using many-body perturbation theory

The performance of many-body perturbation theory for calculating ground-state properties is investigated. We present fully numerical results for the electron gas in three and two dimensions in the framework of the GW approximation. The overall agreement with very accurate Monte Carlo data is excellent, even for those ranges of densities for which the GW approach is often supposed to be unsuitable. The latter seems to be due to the fulfillment of general conservation rules. These results open further prospects for accurate calculations of ground-state properties circumventing the limitations of standard density-functional theory

OPTIMIZING DISCHARGEABLE EFFLUENT PRODUCTION FROM PALM OIL MILL EFFLUENT: AN EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH

This paper describes the research findings conducted with palm oil mill effluent and Nano membrane. This research investigated the performance of the Nano membrane (NM) in separating total organic materials (TOM) from POME. The performance of NM is measured in the scale of productivity and efficiency in producing dischargeable effluent from POME. Three NM of different pore sizes and primary POME treatment machinery have been used for the conducting of the experiment. The feed pressure of POME to NM was from 60 psi to 120 psi. The research findings demonstrated the optimum performance of NM in separating TOM about 90% at operating pressure 80 psi. The findings of this research would be useful in producing environmentally friendly effluent from POME. The novelty of this research is to use a POME feedstock of pH 7.0 with a Nanomembranes system in optimizing dischargeable effluent production performance

Phenolic composition and cell-based biological activities of ten coloured potato peels (Solanum tuberosum L.)

The present study provides an in-depth characterisation of the non-anthocyanin and anthocyanin phenolic compounds of potato peels from ten coloured potato varieties. Furthermore, the underexplored bioactive potential (antioxidant, cytotoxic and anti-inflammatory capacities) of the studied peels is comprehensively analysed. Among non-anthocyanin phenolics, caffeic and a caffeoylquinic acid were found in the highest concentrations in all samples, which also showed the presence of O-glycosylated flavonol derivatives and polyamine derivatives. Acylated anthocyanins were identified in red and purple varieties, being pelargonidin, peonidin, and malvidin the most prominent aglycones. All samples revealed antioxidant and antitumor activities, and no toxic effect. The extract of the Rosemary variety presented the best antioxidant and antitumor outcomes and was the only sample to reveal anti-inflammatory activity. These results are valuable for the food-industry by adding value to an important bio-residue, particularly concerning its potential as natural ingredients in novel food and pharmaceutical formulations.The authors are grateful to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support by national funds FCT/ MCTES to CIMO (UIDB/00690/2020); the national funding by FCT, P.I., through the institutional scientific employment program-contract for L. Barros, Maria Inês Dias and C. Pereira contracts; to FEDER-Interreg España-Portugal programme through the project TRANSCoLAB 0612_TRANS_CO_LAB_2_P; to the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Regional Operational Program North 2020, within the scope of Project Mobilizador Norte-01-0247-FEDER-024479: ValorNatural ®; and also to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of Republic of Serbia (451-03-68/2020-14/200007). GIP-USAL is financially supported by the Spanish Government through the project AGL2015-64522-C2-2-R. S. Sampaio acknowledges CAPES Foundation (Ministry of Education, Brazil) for her PhD grant no. 99999.001423/2015-00.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Location of crossings in the Floquet spectrum of a driven two-level system

Calculation of the Floquet quasi-energies of a system driven by a time-periodic field is an efficient way to understand its dynamics. In particular, the phenomenon of dynamical localization can be related to the presence of close approaches between quasi-energies (either crossings or avoided crossings). We consider here a driven two-level system, and study how the locations of crossings in the quasi-energy spectrum alter as the field parameters are changed. A perturbational scheme provides a direct connection between the form of the driving field and the quasi-energies which is exact in the limit of high frequencies. We firstly obtain relations for the quasi-energies for some common types of applied field in the high-frequency limit. We then show how the locations of the crossings drift as the frequency is reduced, and find a simple empirical formula which describes this drift extremely well in general, and appears to be exact for the specific case of square-wave driving.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures. Minor changes to text, this version to be published in Physical Review

Genome-Wide Association Study in BRCA1 Mutation Carriers Identifies Novel Loci Associated with Breast and Ovarian Cancer Risk

BRCA1-associated breast and ovarian cancer risks can be modified by common genetic variants. To identify further cancer risk-modifying loci, we performed a multi-stage GWAS of 11,705 BRCA1 carriers (of whom 5,920 were diagnosed with breast and 1,839 were diagnosed with ovarian cancer), with a further replication in an additional sample of 2,646 BRCA1 carriers. We identified a novel breast cancer risk modifier locus at 1q32 for BRCA1 carriers (rs2290854, P = 2.7×10-8, HR = 1.14, 95% CI: 1.09-1.20). In addition, we identified two novel ovarian cancer risk modifier loci: 17q21.31 (rs17631303, P = 1.4×10-8, HR = 1.27, 95% CI: 1.17-1.38) and 4q32.3 (rs4691139, P = 3.4×10-8, HR = 1.20, 95% CI: 1.17-1.38). The 4q32.3 locus was not associated with ovarian cancer risk in the general population or BRCA2 carriers, suggesting a BRCA1-specific associat