70,876 research outputs found
Reporting of Clinical Adverse Events Scale: a measure of doctor and nurse attitudes to adverse event reporting
Objective: To develop a validated measure of professionals' attitudes towards clinical adverse event reporting (CAER). Design: Cross-sectional survey with follow-up. Participants: 201 doctors and nurse/nurse-midwives undergoing postqualification training in Leeds, York and Hull Universities in 2003. Materials: A questionnaire which comprised 73 items extracted from interviews with professionals; a second, statistically reduced version of this questionnaire. Results: The analysis supported a 25-item questionnaire comprising five factors: blame as a consequence of reporting (six items); criteria for reporting (six items); colleagues' expectations (six items); perceived benefits of reporting events (five items); and clarity of reporting procedures (two items). The resulting questionnaire, the Reporting of Clinical Adverse Effects Scale (RoCAES), had satisfactory internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.83) and external reliability (Spearman's correlation = 0.65). The construct validity hypothesis -doctors have less positive attitudes towards CAER than nurses -was supported (t = 5.495; p < 0.0001). Conclusion: Initial development of an evidence-based, psychometrically rigorous measure of attitudes towards CAER has been reported. Following additional testing, RoCAES may be used to systematically elicit professionals' views about, and inform interventions to improve, reporting behaviour
Heavy metal bioaccumulation by the important food plant, olea europaea L., in an ancient metalliferous polluted area of Cyprus
Aspects of the bioaccumulation of heavy metals are reviewed and possible evidence of homeostasis is highlighted. Examination and analysis of olive (Olea europaea L.) trees growing in close proximity to a copper dominated spoil tip dating from at least 2000 years BP, on the island of Cyprus, revealed both bioaccumulation and partitioning of copper, lead and zinc in various parts of the tree. A factor to quantify the degree of accumulation is illustrated and a possible seed protective mechanism suggested
New Phases of Water Ice Predicted at Megabar Pressures
Based on density functional calculations we predict water ice to attain two
new crystal structures with Pbca and Cmcm symmetry at 7.6 and 15.5 Mbar,
respectively. The known high pressure ice phases VII, VIII, X, and Pbcm as well
as the Pbca phase are all insulating and composed of two interpenetrating
hydrogen bonded networks, but the Cmcm structure is metallic and consists of
corrugated sheets of H and O atoms. The H atoms are squeezed into octahedral
positions between next-nearest O atoms while they occupy tetrahedral positions
between nearest O atoms in the ice X, Pbcm, and Pbca phases.Comment: submitted to Physical Review Letters on Jan 25, 201
The dimension of loop-erased random walk in 3D
We measure the fractal dimension of loop-erased random walk (LERW) in 3
dimensions, and estimate that it is 1.62400 +- 0.00005. LERW is closely related
to the uniform spanning tree and the abelian sandpile model. We simulated LERW
on both the cubic and face-centered cubic lattices; the corrections to scaling
are slightly smaller for the face-centered cubic lattice.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. v2 has more data, minor additional change
Top, Bottom Quarks and Higgs Bosons
In this talk, I will discuss possible new physics effects that modify the
interaction of Higgs boson(s) with top and bottom quarks, and discuss how to
detect such effects in current and future high energy colliders.Comment: LaTeX, 16 pages including 5 figure
Maternal short stature does not predict their children's fatness indicators in a nutritional dual-burden sample of urban Mexican Maya.
The co-existence of very short stature due to poor chronic environment in early life and obesity is becoming a public health concern in rapidly transitioning populations with high levels of poverty. Individuals who have very short stature seem to be at an increased risk of obesity in times of relative caloric abundance. Increasing evidence shows that an individual is influenced by exposures in previous generations. This study assesses whether maternal poor early life environment predicts her child's adiposity using cross sectional design on Maya schoolchildren aged 7-9 and their mothers (n = 57 pairs). We compared maternal chronic early life environment (stature) with her child's adiposity (body mass index [BMI] z-score, waist circumference z-score, and percentage body fat) using multiple linear regression, controlling for the child's own environmental exposures (household sanitation and maternal parity). The research was performed in the south of Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, a low socioeconomic urban area in an upper middle income country. The Maya mothers were very short, with a mean stature of 147 cm. The children had fairly high adiposity levels, with BMI and waist circumference z-scores above the reference median. Maternal stature did not significantly predict any child adiposity indicator. There does not appear to be an intergenerational component of maternal early life chronic under-nutrition on her child's obesity risk within this free living population living in poverty. These results suggest that the co-existence of very short stature and obesity appears to be primarily due to exposures and experiences within a generation rather than across generations
Kinetic Theory and Fast Wind Observations of the Electron Strahl
We develop a model for the strahl population in the solar wind -- a narrow,
low-density and high-energy electron beam centered on the magnetic field
direction. Our model is based on the solution of the electron drift-kinetic
equation at heliospheric distances where the plasma density, temperature, and
the magnetic field strength decline as power-laws of the distance along a
magnetic flux tube. Our solution for the strahl depends on a number of
parameters that, in the absence of the analytic solution for the full electron
velocity distribution function (eVDF), cannot be derived from the theory. We
however demonstrate that these parameters can be efficiently found from
matching our solution with observations of the eVDF made by the Wind
satellite's SWE strahl detector. The model is successful at predicting the
angular width (FWHM) of the strahl for the Wind data at 1 AU, in particular by
predicting how this width scales with particle energy and background density.
We find the strahl distribution is largely determined by the local temperature
Knudsen number , which parametrizes solar wind
collisionality. We compute averaged strahl distributions for typical Knudsen
numbers observed in the solar wind, and fit our model to these data. The model
can be matched quite closely to the eVDFs at 1 AU, however, it then
overestimates the strahl amplitude at larger heliocentric distances. This
indicates that our model may be improved through the inclusion of additional
physics, possibly through the introduction of "anomalous diffusion" of the
strahl electrons
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