Improving primary healthcare access for asylum seekers and refugees: a qualitative study from a swiss family physician perspective

Since 2015 the need for evidence-based guidance in primary health care management of refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants has dramatically increased. The aims of this study were to identify the challenges met by primary care physicians in Switzerland, by performing semi-structured interviews and to identify possible approaches and interventions. Between January 2019 and January 2020, 20 GPs in 3 Swiss cantons were interviewed. The interviews were transcribed, coded with MAXQDA 18, and analyzed using the framework methodology. Following relevant findings were highlighted; (i) problems relating to health insurance companies among (health-insured) asylum seekers and refugees were negligible; (ii) there is a high acceptance for vaccination by refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants; (iii) limitations in time for consultations and adequate reimbursement for practitioners pose a serious challenge; (iv) the majority of consultations are complaint-oriented, preventive consultations are rare; and (v) the language barrier is a major challenge for psychosocial consultations, whereas this appears less relevant for somatic complaints. The following issues were identified as high priority needs by the study participants; (i) increased networking between GPs, that is, establishing bridging services with asylum centers, (ii) improved training opportunities for GPs in Migration Medicine with regular updates of current guidelines, and (iii) a standardisation of health documentation facilitating exchange of medical data, that is, digital/paper-based "health booklet" or "health pass.

Mental health and resilience among Eritrean refugees at arrival and one-year post-registration in Switzerland: a cohort study

OBJECTIVE: Eritrea is the most frequent country of origin among asylum seekers in Switzerland. On their journey through the desert and across the Mediterranean Sea, Eritrea refugees are often exposed to traumatizing experiences. The aim of this study is to assess the mental health status and resilience of Eritrean migrants in Switzerland upon arrival and one-year post-arrival, using standardized mental health screening and resilience assessment tools. RESULTS: At baseline, 107 refugees (11.2% female, median age 25) were interviewed: 52 (48.6%) screened positive for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (score ≥ 30), 10.3% for anxiety (≥ 10) and 15.0% for depression (≥ 10); 17.8% scored as risk/hazardous drinkers (≥ 8). The majority (94.4%) had a high resilience score (≥ 65). For one-year follow-up, 48 asylum seekers could be reached. In interviews 18 (38%) of these reported imprisonment in a transit country and 28 (58%) that they had witnessed the death of a close person along the migration route. At the one year assessment, rates of risky/hazardous alcohol use remained unchanged, rates of positive PTSD screening tended to be lower (50.0% (24/48) at baseline vs 25.0% (12/48) at follow-up), as were rates of positive screening for anxiety (8.3% vs 4.2%) and depression (14.6 vs 6.3%)

Generalized stacking fault energy surfaces and dislocation properties of aluminum

We have employed the semidiscrete variational generalized Peierls-Nabarro model to study the dislocation core properties of aluminum. The generalized stacking fault energy surfaces entering the model are calculated by using first-principles Density Functional Theory (DFT) with pseudopotentials and the embedded atom method (EAM). Various core properties, including the core width, splitting behavior, energetics and Peierls stress for different dislocations have been investigated. The correlation between the core energetics and dislocation character has been explored. Our results reveal a simple relationship between the Peierls stress and the ratio between the core width and atomic spacing. The dependence of the core properties on the two methods for calculating the total energy (DFT vs. EAM) has been examined. The EAM can give gross trends for various dislocation properties but fails to predict the finer core structures, which in turn can affect the Peierls stress significantly (about one order of magnitude).Comment: 25 pages, 12 figure

Stochastic analysis of surface roughness

For the characterization of surface height profiles we present a new stochastic approach which is based on the theory of Markov processes. With this analysis we achieve a characterization of the complexity of the surface roughness by means of a Fokker-Planck or Langevin equation, providing the complete stochastic information of multiscale joint probabilities. The method was applied to different road surface profiles which were measured with high resolution. Evidence of Markov properties is shown. Estimations for the parameters of the Fokker-Planck equation are based on pure, parameter free data analysis

BENCHOP - The BENCHmarking project in Option Pricing

The aim of the BENCHOP project is to provide the finance community with a common suite of benchmark problems for option pricing. We provide a detailed description of the six benchmark problems together with methods to compute reference solutions. We have implemented fifteen different numerical methods for these problems, and compare their relative performance. All implementations are available on line and can be used for future development and comparison

BENCHOP–SLV: the BENCHmarking project in Option Pricing–Stochastic and Local Volatility problems

In the recent project BENCHOP–the BENCHmarking project in Option Pricing we found that Stochastic and Local Volatility problems were particularly challenging. Here we continue the effort by introducing a set of benchmark problems for this type of problems. Eight different methods targeted for the Stochastic Differential Equation (SDE) formulation and the Partial Differential Equation (PDE) formulation of the problem, as well as Fourier methods making use of the characteristic function, were implemented to solve these problems. Comparisons are made with respect to time to reach a certain error level in the computed solution for the different methods. The implemented Fourier method was superior to all others for the two problems where it was implemented. Generally, methods targeting the PDE formulation of the problem outperformed the methods for the SDE formulation. Among the methods for the PDE formulation the ADI method stood out as the best performing one

Abnormal cognition, sleep, EEG and brain metabolism in a novel knock-in Alzheimer mouse, PLB1

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

An architecture for the autonomic curation of crowdsourced knowledge

Human knowledge curators are intrinsically better than their digital counterparts at providing relevant answers to queries. That is mainly due to the fact that an experienced biological brain will account for relevant community expertise as well as exploit the underlying connections between knowledge pieces when offering suggestions pertinent to a specific question, whereas most automated database managers will not. We address this problem by proposing an architecture for the autonomic curation of crowdsourced knowledge, that is underpinned by semantic technologies. The architecture is instantiated in the career data domain, thus yielding Aviator, a collaborative platform capable of producing complete, intuitive and relevant answers to career related queries, in a time effective manner. In addition to providing numeric and use case based evidence to support these research claims, this extended work also contains a detailed architectural analysis of Aviator to outline its suitability for automatically curating knowledge to a high standard of quality

Signatures of three-nucleon interactions in few-nucleon systems

Recent experimental results in three-body systems have unambiguously shown that calculations based only on nucleon-nucleon forces fail to accurately describe many experimental observables and one needs to include effects which are beyond the realm of the two-body potentials. This conclusion owes its significance to the fact that experiments and calculations can both be performed with a high accuracy. In this review, both theoretical and experimental achievements of the past decade will be underlined. Selected results will be presented. The discussion on the effects of the three-nucleon forces is, however, limited to the hadronic sector. It will be shown that despite the major successes in describing these seemingly simple systems, there are still clear discrepancies between data and the state-of-the-art calculations.Comment: accepted for publication in Rep. Prog. Phy