The 'Square Root' of the Interacting Dirac Equation

The 'square root' of the interacting Dirac equation is constructed. The obtained equations lead to the Yang-Mills superfield with the appropriate equations of motion for the component fields.Comment: 6 page

Quark-gluon structure of diffractive bumps

The diffractive dissociation of hadrons is interpreted as production of the gluonic excitations of incident particles. Regge trajectories of such gluonic excitations are calculated in the bag models and in the dual model. Good agreement is round with the observed spectra of diffractive bumps

Investigating the availability of 3D-printed firearm designs on the clear web.

The release of the plans of the 3D-printed Liberator firearm sparked a wave of new designs from creators worldwide, resulting in an extensive collection of 3D-printed firearm plans, in particular blueprints, and parts available for almost unrestricted download on the internet. Identifying and categorizing the diverse range of 3D-printed firearms and components pose a challenge due to the abundance of designs available. Between 2021 and April 2023, data was collected on over 2,100 3D-printed firearm plans. While blueprints of fully 3D-printed firearms initially dominated the scene, hybrid designs and parts kit completions / conversions (PKC) have gained popularity for their improved reliability and performance. The now highly networked community offers considerable support with detailed instructions and procedures, providing precise guidance for construction. This systematic classification, grouping and structuration of the recorded data on the Clear Web supported the identification of patterns of the main threat trends related to 3D-printed firearms

Seeking for a fingerprint: analysis of point processes in actigraphy recording

Motor activity of humans displays complex temporal fluctuations which can be characterized by scale-invariant statistics, thus documenting that structure and fluctuations of such kinetics remain similar over a broad range of time scales. Former studies on humans regularly deprived of sleep or suffering from sleep disorders predicted change in the invariant scale parameters with respect to those representative for healthy subjects. In this study we investigate the signal patterns from actigraphy recordings by means of characteristic measures of fractional point processes. We analyse spontaneous locomotor activity of healthy individuals recorded during a week of regular sleep and a week of chronic partial sleep deprivation. Behavioural symptoms of lack of sleep can be evaluated by analysing statistics of duration times during active and resting states, and alteration of behavioural organization can be assessed by analysis of power laws detected in the event count distribution, distribution of waiting times between consecutive movements and detrended fluctuation analysis of recorded time series. We claim that among different measures characterizing complexity of the actigraphy recordings and their variations implied by chronic sleep distress, the exponents characterizing slopes of survival functions in resting states are the most effective biomarkers distinguishing between healthy and sleep-deprived groups.Comment: Communicated at UPON2015, 14-17 July 2015, Barcelona. 21 pages, 11 figures; updated: figures 4-7, text revised, expanded Sec. 1,3,

Stres w pracy pielęgniarek a podejmowane zachowania zdrowotne

Wstęp. Stres jest czynnikiem powszechnie spotykanym w życiu człowieka. Powstaje na skutek oddziaływania różnego rodzajów stresorów, zdarzeń. Stresowi mogą towarzyszyć negatywne emocje, takie jak: lęk, strach, złość czy agresja. Natomiast skutkiem jego działania mogą być zmiany fizjologiczne i biochemiczne w organizmie człowieka. Cel pracy. Celem pracy była ocena natężenia stresu odczuwanego przez personel pielęgniarski pracujący w oddziałach Intensywnej Terapii oraz wpływ na podejmowane zachowania zdrowotne. Materiał i metody. Badaniem objęto grupę 100 pielęgniarek pracujących na oddziałach Anestezjologii i Intensywnej Terapii Szpitala Uniwersyteckiego w Krakowie. Badanie przeprowadzono przy użyciu kwestionariusza ankiety własnej konstrukcji oraz Inwentarza Zachowań Zdrowotnych (IZZ) i Skali Odczuwanego Stresu PSS-10. Analizę statystyczną wykonano w pro-gramie Stat Soft. W przeprowadzonych analizach za poziom istotności przyjęto wartość p<0,05. Wyniki. Uzyskane wyniki wykazały iż 86% przebadanych pielęgniarek odczuwa stres podczas pracy. Zaobserwowano obecność istotnych statystycznie korelacji między poziomem odczuwanego przez badanych stresu a ogólnym poziomem zachowań zdrowotnych (p=0,002; r=-0,30). Im wyższy poziom stresu od-czuwają pielęgniarki, tym w mniejszym stopniu zwracają uwagę na podejmowane zachowania zdrowotne. Wnioski. Pielęgniarki pracujące na oddziałach Intensywnej Terapii są narażone na oddziaływanie wielu stresogennych bodźców (nagła czy trudna intubacja, reanimacja). Pielęgniarki w wyniku oddziaływania stresu nie przestrzegają prawidłowych zachowań zdrowotnych, co może powodować uszczerbki na ich zdrowiu. Badane osoby głównie przestrzegają zachowania zdrowotne w zakresie prawidłowych nawyków żywieniowych oraz pozytywnego nastawienia psychicznego. Natomiast w niskim stopniu dbają o prawidłowe zachowania profilaktyczne.Introduction. Stress is a common phenomenon in human life. It results from a variety of stressors and experiences. Stress may be accompanied by negative emotions such as anxiety, fear, anger or aggression. The exposure to stress, in turn, may lead to physiological and biochemical changes in human organism. Aim of the study. The objective of the study was to assess the intensity of stress experienced by nursing staff working in intensive care units and to examine its influence on nurses’ health behaviours. Materials and methods. The study was carried out in a group of 100 nurses working in anaesthesiology and intensive care units of the University Hospital in Cracow. The following research tools were applied in the study: a self-designed questionnaire, Health-Related Behaviour Inventory and Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10). A statistical analysis was carried out with the application of Stat Soft programme. The significance level in the analyses was assumed at the value of p<0.05. Results. The results of the study show that 86% of the examined nurses experience stress at work. Statistically significant correlations were observed between the intensity of perceived stress and general health behaviours (p=0.002; r=-0.30). The higher stress nurses experience, the less attention they pay to health behaviours. Conclusions. Nurses working in intensive care units are exposed to numerous stress-inducing factors (sudden or difficult intubation, reanimation). As a result of stress nurses do not follow proper health behaviour routines, which may be detrimental to their health. The respondents tend to follow proper health behaviour routines as far as proper eating habits and positive mental attitude are concerned. However, they care very little about proper preventive measures

Blind individuals’ enhanced ability to sense their own heartbeat is related to the thickness of their occipital cortex

Blindness is associated with heightened sensory abilities, such as improved hearing and tactile acuity. Moreover, recent evidence suggests that blind individuals are better than sighted individuals at perceiving their own heartbeat, suggesting enhanced interoceptive accuracy. Structural changes in the occipital cortex have been hypothesized as the basis of these behavioral enhancements. Indeed, several studies have shown that congenitally blind individuals have increased cortical thickness within occipital areas compared to sighted individuals, but how these structural differences relate to behavioral enhancements is unclear. This study investigated the relationship between cardiac interoceptive accuracy and cortical thickness in 23 congenitally blind individuals and 23 matched sighted controls. Our results show a significant positive correlation between performance in a heartbeat counting task and cortical thickness only in the blind group, indicating a connection between structural changes in occipital areas and blind individuals’ better ability to perceive heartbeats

Climate change and its effect on agriculture, water resources and human health sectors in Poland

Multi-model ensemble climate projections in the ENSEMBLES Project of the EU allowed the authors to quantify selected extreme-weather indices for Poland, of importance to climate impacts on systems and sectors. Among indices were: number of days in a year with high value of the heat index; with high maximum and minimum temperatures; length of vegetation period; and number of consecutive dry days. Agricultural, hydrological, and human health indices were applied to evaluate the changing risk of weather extremes in Poland in three sectors. To achieve this, model-based simulations were compared for two time horizons, a century apart, i.e., 1961–1990 and 2061–2090. Climate changes, and in particular increases in temperature and changes in rainfall, have strong impacts on agriculture via weather extremes – droughts and heat waves. The crop yield depends particularly on water availability in the plant development phase. To estimate the changes in present and future yield of two crops important for Polish agriculture i.e., potatoes and wheat, some simple empirical models were used. For these crops, decrease of yield is projected for most of the country, with national means of yield change being: –2.175 t/ha for potatoes and –0.539 t/ha for wheat. Already now, in most of Poland, evapotranspiration exceeds precipitation during summer, hence the water storage (in surface water bodies, soil and ground) decreases. Summer precipitation deficit is projected to increase considerably in the future. The additional water supplies (above precipitation) needed to use the agro-potential of the environment would increase by half. Analysis of water balance components (now and in the projected future) can corroborate such conclusions. As regards climate and health, a composite index, proposed in this paper, is a product of the number of senior discomfort days and the number of seniors (aged 65+). The value of this index is projected to increase over 8-fold during 100 years. This is an effect of both increase in the number of seniors (over twofold) and the number of senior-discomfort days (nearly fourfold)

Is flood defense changing in nature? Shifts in the flood defense strategy in six European countries

In many countries, flood defense has historically formed the core of flood risk management but this strategy is now evolving with the changing approach to risk management. This paper focuses on the neglected analysis of institutional changes within the flood defense strategies formulated and implemented in six European countries (Belgium, England, France, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden). The evolutions within the defense strategy over the last 30 years have been analyzed with the help of three mainstream institutional theories: a policy dynamics-oriented framework, a structure-oriented institutional theory on path dependency, and a policy actors-oriented analysis called the advocacy coalitions framework. We characterize the stability and evolution of the trends that affect the defense strategy in the six countries through four dimensions of a policy arrangement approach: actors, rules, resources, and discourses. We ask whether the strategy itself is changing radically, i.e., toward a discontinuous situation, and whether the processes of change are more incremental or radical. Our findings indicate that in the European countries studied, the position of defense strategy is continuous, as the classical role of flood defense remains dominant. With changing approaches to risk, integrated risk management, climate change, urban growth, participation in governance, and socioeconomic challenges, the flood defense strategy is increasingly under pressure to change. However, these changes can be defined as part of an adaptation of the defense strategy rather than as a real change in the nature of flood risk management