5,370 research outputs found
Organisational downsizing, sickness absence, and mortality: 10-town prospective cohort study
Objective To examine whether downsizing, the reduction of personnel in organisations, is a predictor of increased sickness absence and mortality among employees.Design Prospective cohort study over 7.5 years of employees grouped into categories on the basis of reductions of personnel in their occupation and workplace: no downsizing ( 18%).Setting Four towns in Finland.Participants 5909 male and 16 521 female municipal employees, aged 19-62 years, who kept their jobs.Main outcome measures Annual sickness absence rate based on employers' records before and after downsizing by employment contract; all cause and cause specific mortality obtained from the national mortality register.Results Major downsizing was associated with an increase in sickness absence (P for trend < 0.001) in permanent employees but not in temporary employees. The extent of downsizing was also associated with cardiovascular deaths (P for trend < 0.01) but not with deaths from other causes. Cardiovascular mortality was 2.0 (95% confidence interval 1.0 to 3.9) times higher after major downsizing than after no downsizing. Splitting the follow up period into two halves showed a 5.1 (1.4 to 19.3) times increase in cardiovascular mortality for major downsizing during the first four years after downsizing. The corresponding hazard ratio was 1.4 (0.6 to 3.1) during the second half of follow up.Conclusion Organisational downsizing may increase sickness absence and the risk of death from cardiovascular disease in employees who keep their jobs
Adaptive discontinuous Galerkin approximations to fourth order parabolic problems
An adaptive algorithm, based on residual type a posteriori indicators of
errors measured in and norms, for a numerical
scheme consisting of implicit Euler method in time and discontinuous Galerkin
method in space for linear parabolic fourth order problems is presented. The a
posteriori analysis is performed for convex domains in two and three space
dimensions for local spatial polynomial degrees . The a posteriori
estimates are then used within an adaptive algorithm, highlighting their
relevance in practical computations, which results into substantial reduction
of computational effort
Dynamically stable multiply quantized vortices in dilute Bose-Einstein condensates
Multiquantum vortices in dilute atomic Bose-Einstein condensates confined in
long cigar-shaped traps are known to be both energetically and dynamically
unstable. They tend to split into single-quantum vortices even in the ultralow
temperature limit with vanishingly weak dissipation, which has also been
confirmed in the recent experiments [Y. Shin et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 93,
160406 (2004)] utilizing the so-called topological phase engineering method to
create multiquantum vortices. We study the stability properties of multiquantum
vortices in different trap geometries by solving the Bogoliubov excitation
spectra for such states. We find that there are regions in the trap asymmetry
and condensate interaction strength plane in which the splitting instability of
multiquantum vortices is suppressed, and hence they are dynamically stable. For
example, the doubly quantized vortex can be made dynamically stable even in
spherical traps within a wide range of interaction strength values. We expect
that this suppression of vortex-splitting instability can be experimentally
verified.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure
Stochastic Acceleration in Relativistic Parallel Shocks
(abridged) We present results of test-particle simulations on both the first
and the second order Fermi acceleration at relativistic parallel shock waves.
We consider two scenarios for particle injection: (i) particles injected at the
shock front, then accelerated at the shock by the first order mechanism and
subsequently by the stochastic process in the downstream region; and (ii)
particles injected uniformly throughout the downstream region to the stochastic
process. We show that regardless of the injection scenario, depending on the
magnetic field strength, plasma composition, and the employed turbulence model,
the stochastic mechanism can have considerable effects on the particle spectrum
on temporal and spatial scales too short to be resolved in extragalactic jets.
Stochastic acceleration is shown to be able to produce spectra that are
significantly flatter than the limiting case of particle energy spectral index
-1 of the first order mechanism. Our study also reveals a possibility of
re-acceleration of the stochastically accelerated spectrum at the shock, as
particles at high energies become more and more mobile as their mean free path
increases with energy. Our findings suggest that the role of the second order
mechanism in the turbulent downstream of a relativistic shock with respect to
the first order mechanism at the shock front has been underestimated in the
past, and that the second order mechanism may have significant effects on the
form of the particle spectra and its evolution.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures (9 black/white and 2 color postscripts). To be
published in the ApJ (accepted 6 Nov 2004
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