"Do Not Protect Us, Train Us."-Swiss Healthcare Students' Attitudes Toward Caring for Terminally Ill Patients

Positive attitudes and a sense of competence toward end-of-life care are the key to adequately support terminally ill patients. This qualitative study aims to explore healthcare students' attitudes toward caring for terminally ill patients. Eleven students from the University of Applied Health Sciences in Switzerland participated in focus groups. Attitudes were overall positive. Most participants felt that supporting dying patients was a way to achieve professional fulfillment. However, most students felt not competent in palliative care and lacking experience. They wanted to receive better training, more specifically in good practices and appropriate behaviors. Our study fills a knowledge gap regarding the opinions and pedagogical needs of healthcare students, and highlights the importance of experiencing end-of-life care during the educational process. We recommend early exposure to terminally ill patients and appropriate attitudes toward death and dying as part of the bachelor's curriculum, accompanied by benevolent guidance from teachers and health professionals

Optimality of private quantum channels

We addressed the question of optimality of private quantum channels. We have shown that the Shannon entropy of the classical key necessary to securely transfer the quantum information is lower bounded by the entropy exchange of the private quantum channel $\cal E$ and von Neumann entropy of the ciphertext state $\varrho^{(0)}$. Based on these bounds we have shown that decomposition of private quantum channels into orthogonal unitaries (if exists) is optimizing the entropy. For non-ancillary single qubit PQC we have derived the optimal entropy for arbitrary set of plaintexts. In particular, we have shown that except when the (closure of the) set of plaintexts contains all states, one bit key is sufficient. We characterized and analyzed all the possible single qubit private quantum channels for arbitrary set of plaintexts. For the set of plaintexts consisting of all qubit states we have characterized all possible approximate private quantum channels and we have derived the relation between the security parameter and the corresponding minimal entropy.Comment: no commen

Crossover from commensurate to incommensurate antiferromagnetism in stoichiometric NaFeAs revealed by single-crystal 23Na,75As-NMR experiments

We report results of 23Na and 75As nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments on a self-flux grown high-quality single crystal of stoichiometric NaFeAs. The NMR spectra revealed a tetragonal to twinned-orthorhombic structural phase transition at T_O = 57 K and an antiferromagnetic (AF) transition at T_AF = 45 K. The divergent behavior of nuclear relaxation rate near T_AF shows significant anisotropy, indicating that the critical slowing down of stripe-type AF fluctuations are strongly anisotropic in spin space. The NMR spectra at low enough temperatures consist of sharp peaks showing a commensurate stripe AF order with a small moment \sim 0.3 muB. However, the spectra just below T_AF exhibits highly asymmetric broadening pointing to an incommensurate modulation. The commensurate-incommensurate crossover in NaFeAs shows a certain similarity to the behavior of SrFe2As2 under high pressure.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, revised version to appear in J. Phys. Soc. Jp

Non-adaptive Measurement-based Quantum Computation and Multi-party Bell Inequalities

Quantum correlations exhibit behaviour that cannot be resolved with a local hidden variable picture of the world. In quantum information, they are also used as resources for information processing tasks, such as Measurement-based Quantum Computation (MQC). In MQC, universal quantum computation can be achieved via adaptive measurements on a suitable entangled resource state. In this paper, we look at a version of MQC in which we remove the adaptivity of measurements and aim to understand what computational abilities still remain in the resource. We show that there are explicit connections between this model of computation and the question of non-classicality in quantum correlations. We demonstrate this by focussing on deterministic computation of Boolean functions, in which natural generalisations of the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) paradox emerge; we then explore probabilistic computation, via which multipartite Bell Inequalities can be defined. We use this correspondence to define families of multi-party Bell inequalities, which we show to have a number of interesting contrasting properties.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, final version accepted for publicatio

Social marketing and social influences: Using social ecology as a theoretical framework

Social marketing has traditionally been dominated by an individualistic model of design. In this work, the authors apply a social ecology model to the theory and practice of social marketing, demonstrating that a multilevel framework is required to fully expose and account for the complexity of sociocultural and environmental effects. The authors have generated a diagnostic tool for this use. The paper then provides a detailed demonstration of the potential power of the tool by applying it to three illustrative case studies: one on encouraging safer driving, the second promoting sustainable travel, and the third increasing early detection of lung cancer. © 2010 Westburn Publishers Ltd

Tuberculosis in Dr Granville's mummy: a molecular re-examination of the earliest known Egyptian mummy to be scientifically examined and given a medical diagnosis

‘Dr Granville's mummy’ was described to the Royal Society of London in 1825 and was the first ancient Egyptian mummy to be subjected to a scientific autopsy. The remains are those of a woman, Irtyersenu, aged about 50, from the necropolis of Thebes and dated to about 600 BC. Augustus Bozzi Granville (1783–1872), an eminent physician and obstetrician, described many organs still in situ and attributed the cause of death to a tumour of the ovary. However, subsequent histological investigations indicate that the tumour is a benign cystadenoma. Histology of the lungs demonstrated a potentially fatal pulmonary exudate and earlier studies attempted to associate this with particular disease conditions. Palaeopathology and ancient DNA analyses show that tuberculosis was widespread in ancient Egypt, so a systematic search for tuberculosis was made, using specific DNA and lipid biomarker analyses. Clear evidence for Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex DNA was obtained in lung tissue and gall bladder samples, based on nested PCR of the IS6110 locus. Lung and femurs were positive for specific M. tuberculosis complex cell-wall mycolic acids, demonstrated by high-performance liquid chromatography of pyrenebutyric acid–pentafluorobenzyl mycolates. Therefore, tuberculosis is likely to have been the major cause of death of Irtyersenu

Some Directions beyond Traditional Quantum Secret Sharing

We investigate two directions beyond the traditional quantum secret sharing (QSS). First, a restriction on QSS that comes from the no-cloning theorem is that any pair of authorized sets in an access structure should overlap. From the viewpoint of application, this places an unnatural constraint on secret sharing. We present a generalization, called assisted QSS (AQSS), where access structures without pairwise overlap of authorized sets is permissible, provided some shares are withheld by the share dealer. We show that no more than $\lambda-1$ withheld shares are required, where $\lambda$ is the minimum number of {\em partially linked classes} among the authorized sets for the QSS. Our result means that such applications of QSS need not be thwarted by the no-cloning theorem. Secondly, we point out a way of combining the features of QSS and quantum key distribution (QKD) for applications where a classical information is shared by quantum means. We observe that in such case, it is often possible to reduce the security proof of QSS to that of QKD.Comment: To appear in Physica Scripta, 7 pages, 1 figure, subsumes arXiv:quant-ph/040720

Nutritional factors and gender influence age-related DNA methylation in the human rectal mucosa

Aberrant methylation of CpG islands (CGI) occurs in many genes expressed in colonic epithelial cells, and may contribute to the dysregulation of signalling pathways associated with carcinogenesis. This cross-sectional study assessed the relative importance of age, nutritional exposures and other environmental factors in the development of CGI methylation. Rectal biopsies were obtained from 185 individuals (84 male, 101 female) shown to be free of colorectal disease, and for whom measurements of age, body size, nutritional status and blood cell counts were available. We used quantitative DNA methylation analysis combined with multivariate modelling to investigate the relationships between nutritional, anthropometric and metabolic factors and the CGI methylation of 11 genes, together with LINE-1 as an index of global DNA methylation. Age was a consistent predictor of CGI methylation for 9/11 genes but significant positive associations with folate status and negative associations with vitamin D and selenium status were also identified for several genes. There was evidence for positive associations with blood monocyte levels and anthropometric factors for some genes. In general, CGI methylation was higher in males than in females and differential effects of age and other factors on methylation in males and females were identified. In conclusion, levels of age-related CGI methylation in the healthy human rectal mucosa are influenced by gender, the availability of folate, vitamin D and selenium, and perhaps by factors related to systemic inflammatio

Practitioner accounts and knowledge production: an analysis of three marketing discourses

Responding to repeated calls for marketing academicians to connect with marketing actors, we offer an empirically-sourced discourse analysis of the ways in which managers portray their practices. Focusing on the micro-discourses and narratives that marketing actors draw upon to represent their work we argue that dominant representations of marketing knowledge production present a number of critical concerns for marketing theory and marketing education. We also evidence that the often promoted idea of a need to close the gap between theory - as a dominant discourse - and practice, as a way of doing marketing, is problematic to pursue. We suggest that a more fruitful agenda resides in the development of a range of polyphonic and creative micro-discourses of management, promoting context, difference and individual meaning in marketing knowledge production

2010 YCAP Needs Assessment Report

This report outlines the Yamhill Community Action Partnership (YCAP) areas of need, strength, and improvement. Low income and unemployed individuals receive significant support through YCAP programs, including transportation, housing, and bill pay assistance. YCAP programs were assessed during the spring of 2010 through a client survey