Zone center phonons of the orthorhombic RMnO3 (R = Pr, Eu, Tb, Dy, Ho) perovskites

A short range force constant model (SRFCM) has been applied for the first time to investigate the phonons in RMnO3 (R = Pr, Eu, Tb, Dy, Ho) perovskites in their orthorhombic phase. The calculations with 17 stretching and bending force constants provide good agreement for the observed Raman frequencies. The infrared frequencies have been assigned for the first time. PACS Codes: 36.20.Ng, 33.20.Fb, 34.20.CfComment: 8 pages, 1 figur

Interest in and use of person-centred pharmacy services - a Swiss study of people with diabetes

BACKGROUND: Diabetes is one of the most important chronic diseases and affects 9% of the world's population. To support these people in the day-to-day management of their treatments, pharmacies can offer professional pharmacy services. These are defined as one or more actions organized or provided in a pharmacy to optimize the process of care, with the goal of improving health outcomes and the value of healthcare. Such services have to be tailored to the needs and interests of patients. This study aimed to evaluate interest in and use of pharmacy services among people with diabetes in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland. METHODS: This cross-sectional study analysed self-reported data from 790 people with diabetes included in the CoDiab-VD cohort. Questions focused on sociodemographic and economic characteristics, diabetes and its management, and interest in and use of pharmacy services related to (1) medication intake and adherence and (2) diabetes and general health. Descriptive analyses were first conducted. Logistic regression analyses were then performed for pharmacy services that were of interest to ≥50% of respondents. RESULTS: The mean age of participants was 66 years, and the sample included more males (59%) than females. The pharmacy services that interested the most respondents were individual interview, pill boxes or weekly pill boxes, treatment plans, checks of all medications, first medical opinions from pharmacists and counselling on devices. Factors significantly associated with interest in pharmacy services were being older, having a lower self-efficacy score, taking more than three medications and having a positive opinion about pharmacists. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides key information on interest in and use of pharmacy services among patients with diabetes in Switzerland; it should help pharmacists individualize their services for patients

Current prevalence of self-reported interpersonal violence among adult patients seen at a university hospital emergency department in Switzerland.

To evaluate the current prevalence of self-reported interpersonal violence amongst patients consulting at the emergency department (ED) of a university hospital and to describe the characteristics of the violence sustained. Ours was a cross-sectional study using a modified version of the Partner Violence Screen questionnaire, which was distributed to every patient over 16 years old consulting at the ED between the 1st and 30th September 2016. Excluded were those incapable of decision-making, unable to understand owing to language difficulties, or in police detention. Questions pertained to violence endured during the year prior to their attendance at the ED and, where relevant, the date, place, and type of violence (physical or psychological), the perpetrator and the means used (firearms or other weapons). Demographic details were taken from the hospital records. Of 628 patients included (participation rate 86%), 19% were victims of violence, for 27% of whom it was the motive for ED attendance. The median age of these victims of violence was 28 years (interquartile range 22–43), 39% were female, 71% single and 38% foreign nationals. Typical characteristics of self-reported violence were: (1) violence sustained within the previous 24 h (26%); (2) perpetrators unknown (35%); (3) occurrence at a café, bar, restaurant or nightclub (32%); (4) use of knives (19%); (5) prior consumption of alcohol by the victims themselves (28%). Females were more susceptible to domestic violence than males (45 vs 7%), the latter mostly reporting public violence (64 vs 43% in women). The prevalence of self-reported interpersonal violence has reached one patient in five in our ED. Our results underline the importance of screening for this, as well as providing the means to offer specific follow-up. &nbsp

A 100-Year Sediment Budget for Chesapeake Bay

Chesapeake Bay is a depositional basin that is filling from both ends and the sides. During the century ended in the mid-1950s between 1.0 x 109 and 2.92 x 109 metric tons of sediment accumulated in the bay. The bay\u27s largest tributary, the Susquehanna River, is a major source of fine-grained sediments; its coarser load being trapped by dams. The continental shelf is the largest single source of sediment for the basin. A massive quantity of sand, perhaps as much of forty percent of the net deposition, enters the bay between the Virginia capes and works its way tens of kilometers upstream, potentially as far north as Tangier Island, near the Virginia-Maryland boundary. Other sources of sediment are shoreline erosion, biogenic production, preHolocene outcrops, and the other tributaries. These tributary estuaries do provide coarse sediment to the bay through longshore transport and bedload movement in the nearshore.shallows and, perhaps, in the channel bottom. The contribution of suspended or fine-grained sediment by the tributary estuaries is unknown. Indeed they may be sinks and not sources. \u27The contribution of the tributary estuaries and the quantification of the bay-mouth sand-source and uncertainties associated with the bathymetric comparisons in the determination of the net mass of sediment deposition, make it difficult to balance a sediment budget for Chesapeake Bay. Most of the imbalance is in the sand fraction within the Virginia portion of the system; with far more sand being deposited than can be accounted for by the independently quantifiable sources. Not considering the continental shelf as a source of sand, the budget fails to balance by a factor of between 2.7 and 7.6. Making certain assumptions about the quantity of sanQ entering the bay through its mouth (the continental shelf source), the difference can be sufficiently reduced that the budget more nearly balances

Weighted norm inequalities, off-diagonal estimates and elliptic operators. Part IV: Riesz transforms on manifolds and weights

This is the fourth article of our series. Here, we study weighted norm inequalities for the Riesz transform of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on Riemannian manifolds and of subelliptic sum of squares on Lie groups, under the doubling volume property and Gaussian upper bounds.Comment: 12 pages. Fourth of 4 papers. Important revision: improvement of main result by eliminating use of Poincar\'e inequalities replaced by the weaker Gaussian keat kernel bound

Magnetic switching in granular FePt layers promoted by near-field laser enhancement

Light-matter interaction at the nanoscale in magnetic materials is a topic of intense research in view of potential applications in next-generation high-density magnetic recording. Laser-assisted switching provides a pathway for overcoming the material constraints of high-anisotropy and high-packing density media, though much about the dynamics of the switching process remains unexplored. We use ultrafast small-angle x-ray scattering at an x-ray free-electron laser to probe the magnetic switching dynamics of FePt nanoparticles embedded in a carbon matrix following excitation by an optical femtosecond laser pulse. We observe that the combination of laser excitation and applied static magnetic field, one order of magnitude smaller than the coercive field, can overcome the magnetic anisotropy barrier between "up" and "down" magnetization, enabling magnetization switching. This magnetic switching is found to be inhomogeneous throughout the material, with some individual FePt nanoparticles neither switching nor demagnetizing. The origin of this behavior is identified as the near-field modification of the incident laser radiation around FePt nanoparticles. The fraction of not-switching nanoparticles is influenced by the heat flow between FePt and a heat-sink layer

Awareness and practices regarding eye diseases among patients with diabetes: a cross sectional analysis of the CoDiab-VD cohort.

The increasing prevalence of diabetes is leading to a rise of eye diseases, augmenting the risk of sight-threatening complications. The aim of this study was to evaluate prevalence, awareness and practices regarding eye diseases among patients with diabetes in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland. A cohort of 323 patients with diabetes completed a self-administered questionnaire assessing prevalence, awareness and practices regarding eye diseases, besides health status and quality of care measures. Descriptive analyses followed by exploratory subgroup analyses and linear regressions were performed to investigate factors associated with awareness and practices. While diabetic retinopathy was reported by 40.9% of patients with type 1 diabetes and 9.8% of patients with type 2 diabetes, 35.8% and 12.6% of all participants reported cataract and glaucoma, respectively. Awareness that diabetes could damage the eyes was reported by almost all participants; the majority was also aware of the importance of glycemic control and regular eye examination in preventing eye diseases. In contrast, only 70.5% of participants underwent an eye examination by an ophthalmologist during the past year. Eye examination was associated with better patients' awareness. Barriers mentioned by patients revealed a lack of knowledge about screening guidelines, in particular regarding the preventive nature of eye examinations. Despite high levels of awareness regarding diabetic eye diseases, a significant proportion of patients with diabetes did not report annual eye examination. Both healthcare strategic efforts targeting the promotion of regular eye examination and initiatives aiming at improving knowledge of screening guidelines should be encouraged. ClinicalTrials.gov on 9th July 2013, identifier NCT01902043 (retrospectively registered)

Cohorte CoDiab-VD : caractéristiques des patient·e·s diabétiques vaudois·e·s et évaluation de leur prise en charge : état des lieux en 2017 et comparaison avec 2011-2012

En 2017, un second recrutement de la cohorte des patient·e·s diabétiques vaudois·es (CoDiab-VD) a permis d’obtenir une nouvelle image populationnelle du diabète et de sa prise en charge dans le canton de Vaud. Bien que cette dernière fût déjà relativement satisfaisante lors du premier recrutement de 2011-2012, la marge d’amélioration qui demeurait n’a pas été comblée. Ainsi, les indicateurs de qualité des soins satisfaisants lors du recrutement initial le sont restés lors du second, et ceux non-satisfaisants le sont restés également pour la plupart. Six ans après le développement des premiers projets mis sur pieds dans le cadre du PcD, l’amélioration de la prise en charge du diabète, qui aurait pu être espérée et telle que mesurée dans notre étude, n’est pas encore perceptible parmi les participant·e·s de la cohorte CoDiab-VD, que nous espérons être représentatif·ve·s de la population générale des personnes diabétiques du canton de Vaud. Ces résultats ne doivent en revanche pas laisser penser que les activités du PcD n’ont eu aucun effet sur les patient·e·s et leur prise en charge. Parmi les raisons envisageables, on peut citer : la difficulté à mesurer les changements, une durée d’enquête encore trop courte pour les mesurer ou une pénétration trop restreinte des actions sur la totalité du canton pour observer des changements au niveau populationnelle. Il est en outre important de rappeler que les résultats 2017 ne sont pas uniquement le fruit des mesures mises en place dans le but d’améliorer la prise en charge et l’état de santé des patient·e·s. Ils sont en effet déterminés par une multitude d’autres facteurs externes aux actions du PcD, et non-mesurés dans le cadre de cette étude, tels que des phénomènes plus globaux d’ordre social ou politique par exemple