Measurement of spark probability of GEM detector for CBM muon chamber (MUCH)

The stability of triple GEM detector setups in an environment of high energetic showers is studied. To this end the spark probability in a shower environment is compared to the spark probability in a pion beam.Comment: 5 pages, 10 figure

The professional journey of Saudi nurse graduates: A lived experience

Objective: To illuminate the lived experience of Saudi Nurse graduates during their early years in the workplace as professional nurses encompassing their experiences from being nurse students, preparations to become registered nurses, their struggles from being a student to a professional nurse, their cultural competence towards colleagues and patients in their new workplace, their impression of Nursing as a profession and other challenges they faced in especially on language and communication with their patients and colleagues. Methods: An interpretive phenomenological inquiry was utilized to inquire and discover the lived experiences of Saudi Nurse graduates to their job as nurses in different hospitals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. A total of 12 nurses were interviewed for this study in the course of 5 months. The interviews conducted with the 12 nurses were audiotaped recorded and subsequently transcribed in verbatim form and the Collaizi Method was used for the extraction of meanings from the interviews. Results: Five major themes were identified in the transcribed form of the interview and 11 subthemes emerged as well. The five major themes were educational preparation, transition into practice, cultural competence, image of nursing and language and communication. Conclusions: The study described the different challenges faced by Saudi nurse graduates from being students to professionals based from their experiences as newly employed staff nurses in different hospitals in Saudi Arabia. Their stories captured the story of novice nurses not only as a Saudi but may be true for other nationalities. These stories are shared by all nurses across the world who struggle to meet the demands of the nursing profession.Mohammad Alboliteeh, Judy Magarey, Richard Wiechul

The ALICE TPC, a large 3-dimensional tracking device with fast readout for ultra-high multiplicity events

The design, construction, and commissioning of the ALICE Time-Projection Chamber (TPC) is described. It is the main device for pattern recognition, tracking, and identification of charged particles in the ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC. The TPC is cylindrical in shape with a volume close to 90 m^3 and is operated in a 0.5 T solenoidal magnetic field parallel to its axis. In this paper we describe in detail the design considerations for this detector for operation in the extreme multiplicity environment of central Pb--Pb collisions at LHC energy. The implementation of the resulting requirements into hardware (field cage, read-out chambers, electronics), infrastructure (gas and cooling system, laser-calibration system), and software led to many technical innovations which are described along with a presentation of all the major components of the detector, as currently realized. We also report on the performance achieved after completion of the first round of stand-alone calibration runs and demonstrate results close to those specified in the TPC Technical Design Report.Comment: 55 pages, 82 figure

The future shape of the nursing workforce: a synthesis of the evidence of factors that impact on quality nursing care

BACKGROUND To effectively respond to the growing demand for healthcare, governments need to consider how to recruit and retain their healthcare staff. This challenge is recognised by the nursing and midwifery professions. This umbrella review, supported by a group of nurse leaders in Australia, aimed to identify those elements known to support a high quality workforce by drawing on the best available Australian and international evidence. The findings provided recommendations that relate to practice, research, education and policy initiatives to help shape the future nursing workforce in Australia and internationally. METHOD An umbrella review of published systematic reviews was undertaken focusing on the Australian and international evidence for factors that are known to impact upon the ability of nurses and midwives to deliver high quality patient care. A total of 79 systematic reviews published between 1995 and 2012 met the inclusion criteria and of these 50 were considered of sufficient quality and were included in the results.Alison L. Kitson, Rick Wiechula, Tiffany Conroy, Åsa Muntlin Athlin, Nancy Whitake

Improving older people's care in one acute hospital setting: a realist evaluation of a KT intervention

Background: Older people make up an increasingly large group using acute care facilities yet the nature of the care is often not conducive to their personal needs, wellbeing and recovery. This research explored how a structured intervention (called the KT Toolkit) could help frontline clinical staff improve the care for older people going through one acute hospital setting in South Australia. Methods/Design: The case study approach used draws on the overarching framework of realist evaluation, a methodology designed to test, refine and explain what is happening in complex situations. Seven parallel teams within the organisation selected one discrete clinical area each for improvement through the introduction of evidence based practice guidelines. Each improvement team’s progress was recorded using multiple data sources including ethnographic observations, semi structured interviews, document reviews and other routinely collected data on nursing care. Each of the seven journeys was analysed and synthesised according to the principles of realist evaluation where the role of the researchers (and stakeholders) is to elucidate what things work for which teams in what particular circumstances thus arriving at a set of explanatory statements. Results: Four broad mechanisms appeared to be affecting the way improvements were being introduced into the clinical areas by the seven different teams: building on existing structures and support; optimising existing human potential; focus on the older person and on-going support through facilitation. Within these mechanisms a range of different actions and behaviours were noted but collectively the teams were able to show how these mechanisms enabled them to make progress in improving discrete aspects of care for their older patients. Conclusions: The use of realist evaluation as the overarching methodological framework enabled the research team to document and interpret the complex interactions happening at the level of everyday practice. Such interpretations enabled the research team to engage the clinical teams and work with them on on-going improvements. We found that even trying to improve the so-called simplest of aspects of care (e.g. weighing patients as part of nutritional care) was fraught with challenges. Also, our use of the realist method raised a number of theoretical and methodological questions that need further refining and in particular how realist evaluation relates to knowledge translation (KT) conceptual frameworks.Alison Kitson, Rick Wiechula, Kathryn Zeitz, Danni Marcoionni, Tammy Page and Heidi Silversto

FIRE (facilitating implementation of research evidence) : a study protocol

Research evidence underpins best practice, but is not always used in healthcare. The Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (PARIHS) framework suggests that the nature of evidence, the context in which it is used, and whether those trying to use evidence are helped (or facilitated) affect the use of evidence. Urinary incontinence has a major effect on quality of life of older people, has a high prevalence, and is a key priority within European health and social care policy. Improving continence care has the potential to improve the quality of life for older people and reduce the costs associated with providing incontinence aids

Isotopic Dependence of the Nuclear Caloric Curve

The A/Z dependence of projectile fragmentation at relativistic energies has been studied with the ALADIN forward spectrometer at SIS. A stable beam of 124Sn and radioactive beams of 124La and 107Sn at 600 MeV per nucleon have been used in order to explore a wide range of isotopic compositions. Chemical freeze-out temperatures are found to be nearly invariant with respect to the A/Z of the produced spectator sources, consistent with predictions for expanded systems. Small Coulomb effects (\Delta T \approx 0.6 MeV) appear for residue production near the onset of multifragmentation.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publ. in Phys. Rev. Let

Tracing a phase transition with fluctuations of the largest fragment size: Statistical multifragmentation models and the ALADIN S254 data

A phase transition signature associated with cumulants of the largest fragment size distribution has been identified in statistical multifragmentation models and examined in analysis of the ALADIN S254 data on fragmentation of neutron-poor and neutron-rich projectiles. Characteristics of the transition point indicated by this signature are weakly dependent on the A/Z ratio of the fragmenting spectator source. In particular, chemical freeze-out temperatures are estimated within the range 5.9 to 6.5 MeV. The experimental results are well reproduced by the SMM model.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, Proceedings of the International Workshop on Multifragmentation and Related Topics (IWM2009), Catania, Italy, November 2009

Discriminant Analysis and Secondary-Beam Charge Recognition

The discriminant-analysis method has been applied to optimize the exotic-beam charge recognition in a projectile fragmentation experiment. The experiment was carried out at the GSI using the fragment separator (FRS) to produce and select the relativistic secondary beams, and the ALADIN setup to measure their fragmentation products following collisions with Sn target nuclei. The beams of neutron poor isotopes around 124La and 107Sn were selected to study the isospin dependence of the limiting temperature of heavy nuclei by comparing with results for stable 124Sn projectiles. A dedicated detector to measure the projectile charge upstream of the reaction target was not used, and alternative methods had to be developed. The presented method, based on the multivariate discriminant analysis, allowed to increase the efficacy of charge recognition up to about 90%, which was about 20% more than achieved with the simple scalar methods.Comment: 6 pages, 7 eps figures, elsart, submitted to Nucl. Instr. and Meth.

Gross Properties and Isotopic Phenomena in Spectator Fragmentation

A systematic study of isotopic effects in the break-up of projectile spectators at relativistic energies has been performed with the ALADiN spectrometer at the GSI laboratory. Searching for signals of criticality in the fragment production we have applied the model independent universal fluctuations theory already proposed to track criticality signals in multifragmentation to our data. The fluctuation of the largest fragment charge and of the asymmetry of the two and three largest fragments and their bimodal distribution have also been analysed.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, IX International Conference on Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 28 - September 1, 200