"It isn't just consultants that need a BSc": student experiences of an Intercalated BSc

More medical schools are moving towards a compulsory intercalated BSc. These courses have not traditionally been aimed at those students interested in general practice and have tended to have limited clinical relevance. This paper explores the perceptions of students who undertook a BSc in primary health care using qualitative methodology comprising semi-structured interviews with students just before completion of their course. Interviews were undertaken with 24 of the 26 students who started the course over a 4-year period. All the students have finished the course and have graduated with good honours degrees. Students refine existing skills and develop new, relevant skills for medicine. The students discussed the prestige (or lack) of a BSc in this field and how the course has impacted on their career decisions. A Primary Health Care BSc such as this appears to give students an in depth and to some, a positive view of general practice and primary care. The course allowed students to develop a more critical approach to medicine and enabled them to develop skills in addition to those acquired from their undergraduate medicine course. They perceived that these skills will serve them throughout their career in whatever branch of medicine they choose

Electron-drift driven ion-acoustic mode in a dusty plasma with collisional effects

Instabilities of ion-acoustic waves in a dusty plasma with electron-drift, collisional, and dust charge fluctuations effects, have been investigated. The regimes are clearly marked out where the theory is applicable. The critical electron-drift velocity required to drive the instability is predicted. It is also shown that electron thermal conductivity and charged grains concentration enhance the growth of the ion-acoustic mode whereas ion-viscosity, ion-thermal conductivity, and dust charge fluctuations have a stabilizing effect.Comment: 7 pages, 3 PS-LaTeX figures (to be published in Physics of Plasmas

Non-equilibrium breakdown of quantum Hall state in graphene

In this report we experimentally probe the non-equilibrium breakdown of the quantum Hall state in monolayer graphene by injecting a high current density ($\sim$1A/m). The measured critical currents for dissipationless transport in the vicinity of integer filling factors show a dependence on filling factor. The breakdown can be understood in terms of inter Landau level (LL) scattering resulting from mixing of wavefunctions of different LLs. To further study the effect of transverse electric field, we measured the transverse resistance between the $\nu=2$ to $\nu=6$ plateau transition for different bias currents and observed an invariant point.Comment: to appear in PRB Rapi