QCD strings ending on domain walls --- a complete wetting phenomenon in SUSY QCD

In the context of M-theory, Witten has argued that an intriguing phenomenon occurs, namely that QCD strings can end on domain walls. We present a simpler explanation of this effect using effective field theory to describe the behavior of the Polyakov loop and the gluino condensate in N = 1 supersymmetric QCD. We describe how domain walls separating distinct confined phases appear in this effective theory and how these interfaces are completely wet by a film of deconfined phase at the high-temperature phase transition. This gives the Polyakov loop a non-zero expectation value on the domain wall. Consequently, a static test quark which is close to the interface has a finite free energy and the string emanating from it can end on the wall.Comment: LATTICE98(hightemp), 3 pages, 2 figure

The robustness of medical professional ethics when times are changing: a comparative study of general practitioner ethics and surgery ethics in the Netherlands

Society in the 21st century is in many ways different from society in the 1950s, the 1960s or the 1970s. Two of the most important changes relate to the level of education in the population and the balance between work and private life. These days a large percentage of people are highly educated. Partly as a result of economic progress in the 1950s and the 1960s and partly due to the fact that many women entered the labour force, people started searching for ways to combine their career with family obligations and a private life (including hobbies, outings and holidays). Medical professional ethics, more specifically: professional attitudes towards patients and colleagues, is influenced by developments such as these, but how much and in what way? It was assumed that surgery ethics would be more robust, resistant to change and that general practitioner (GP) ethics would change more readily in response to a changing society, because surgeons perform technical work in operating theatres in hospitals whereas GPs have their offices in the midst of society. The journals of Dutch surgeons and GPs from the 1950s onwards were studied so as to detect traces of change in medical professional ethics in The Netherlands. GP ethics turned out to be malleable compared with surgery ethics. In fact, GP medicine proved to be an agent of change rather than merely responding to it, both with regard to the changing role of patients and with regard to the changing work life balance

Genoeg is genoeg

Since some years there has been a significant trend in the democratization of health care in the Netherlands. Where in the old days patients used to be able to just rest and receive care, nowadays they have to get active. Not only do they have to keep working as much as possible, they are expected to actively participate in their own treatment, like finding out where you can get the best doctor or how to give yourself injections. Also they have to participate in client councils of the hospital. In this book, Margo Trappenburg discusses the positive but foremost the negative aspects of this hyper- democratization of health care