Positive spiritual climate supports transformational leadership as means to reduce nursing burnout and intent to leave

AimTo explore the relationship between spiritual climate and transformational leadership, and examine their impact on nurses perceived emotional exhaustion and intentions to quit.BackgroundTransformational leadership is known to have a significant positive effect on work environment and job satisfaction. Additionally, promoting spiritual climate amongst staff can benefit workers by increasing self‐worth. The relationship between the two is unknown.MethodsNurse clinicians from 2 sites in the Jiangsu Province of China completed self‐report questionnaires based on spiritual climate, emotional exhaustion, clinical leadership and Turnover Intention Scales. Mediation analysis was applied to evaluate impact of spiritual climate.ResultsPerceived positive spirituality amongst nurse clinicians reinforces transformational leadership to reduce emotional exhaustion (indirect effect of −0.089, p < .01). Burnout and intention to leave showed significantly positive correlation with lower levels of perceived spirituality (r = .545, p < .01).ConclusionTransformational leadership in the workplace can reduce nurses' burnout, and a positive spiritual climate increases meaningfulness in their work. This may help in nurse retention.Implications for Nursing ManagementHealth care leaders must look beyond transformational leadership to maintain a positive and supportive clinical climate, and this may involve acknowledgement of nurses' spiritual needs

Design and Fabrication of a MEMS Flow Sensor and Its Application in Precise Liquid Dispensing

A high speed MEMS flow sensor to enhance the reliability and accuracy of a liquid dispensing system is proposed. Benefitting from the sensor information feedback, the system can self-adjust the open time of the solenoid valve to accurately dispense desired volumes of reagent without any pre-calibration. First, an integrated high-speed liquid flow sensor based on the measurement of the pressure difference across a flow channel is presented. Dimensions of the micro-flow channel and two pressure sensors have been appropriately designed to meet the static and dynamic requirements of the liquid dispensing system. Experiments results show that the full scale (FS) flow measurement ranges up to 80 μL/s, with a nonlinearity better than 0.51% FS. Secondly, a novel closed-loop control strategy is proposed to calculate the valve open time in each dispensing cycle, which makes the system immune to liquid viscosity, pressure fluctuation, and other sources of error. Finally, dispensing results show that the system can achieve better dispensing performance, and the coefficient of variance (CV) for liquid dispensing is below 3% at 1 μL and below 4% at 100 nL

The roles and mechanisms of gut microbiome and metabolome in patients with cerebral infarction

As the most common type of stroke, ischemic stroke, also known as cerebral infarction (CI), with its high mortality and disability rate, has placed a huge burden on social economy and public health. Treatment methods for CI mainly include thrombectomy, thrombolysis, drug therapy, and so on. However, these treatments have certain timeliness and different side effects. In recent years, the gut-brain axis has become a hot topic, and its role in nervous system diseases has been confirmed by increasing evidences. The intestinal microbiota, as an important part of the gut-brain axis, has a non-negligible impact on the progression of CI through mechanisms such as inflammatory response and damage-associated molecular patterns, and changes in the composition of intestinal microbiota can also serve as the basis for predicting CI. At the same time, the diagnosis of CI requires more high-throughput techniques, and the analysis method of metabolomics just fits this demand. This paper reviewed the changes of intestinal microbiota in patients within CI and the effects of the intestinal microbiota on the course of CI, and summarized the therapeutic methods of the intervention with the intestinal microbiota. Furthermore, metabolic changes of CI patients were also discussed to reveal the molecular characteristics of CI and to elucidate the potential pathologic pathway of its interference

The transition from incoherent to coherent random laser in defect waveguide based on organic/inorganic hybrid laser dye

This paper systematically demonstrated a variety of experimental phenomena of random lasers (RLs) of N,N′-di-(3-(isobutyl polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes)propyl) perylene diimide (DPP) organic/inorganic hybrid laser dye, which is composed of perylene diimide (PDI) as gain media and polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes (POSS) as scattering media at a mole ratio of 1:2. In this work, we observe the transition from incoherent RL in the DPP-doped solutions and polymer membrane systems using dip-coating method to coherent RL in the polymer membrane system with defect waveguide using semi-polymerization (SP) coating method. Meanwhile, we found that the hybrid dye-DPP has a long lasing lifetime compared with the traditional laser dyes, which indicates that the POSS group can suppress the photo-bleaching effect to extend the working life of laser dyes

Nonrelativistic and nonmagnetic control of terahertz charge currents via electrical anisotropy in RuO2 and IrO2

Precise and ultrafast control over photo-induced charge currents across nanoscale interfaces could lead to important applications in energy harvesting, ultrafast electronics, and coherent terahertz sources. Recent studies have shown that several relativistic mechanisms, including inverse spin-Hall effect, inverse Rashba-Edelstein effect and inverse spin-orbit-torque effect, can convert longitudinally injected spin-polarized currents from magnetic materials to transverse charge currents, thereby harnessing these currents for terahertz generation. However, these mechanisms typically require external magnetic fields and suffer from low spin-polarization rates and low efficiencies of relativistic spin-to-charge conversion. In this work, we present a novel nonrelativistic and nonmagnetic mechanism that directly utilizes the photo-excited high-density charge currents across the interface. We demonstrate that the electrical anisotropy of conductive oxides RuO2 and IrO2 can effectively deflect injected charge currents to the transverse direction, resulting in efficient and broadband terahertz radiation. Importantly, this new mechanism has the potential to offer much higher conversion efficiency compared to previous methods, as conductive materials with large electrical anisotropy are readily available, whereas further increasing the spin-Hall angle of heavy-metal materials would be challenging. Our new findings offer exciting possibilities for directly utilizing these photo-excited high-density currents across metallic interfaces for ultrafast electronics and terahertz spectroscopy

The association between diabetes-related distress and fear of hypoglycaemia in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus: A cross-sectional descriptive study

Aim: The study aimed to explore the association between diabetes-related distress as a dependent variable and fear of hypoglycaemia as a independent variable in Chinese individuals with type 2 diabetes, which can provide a basis for the development of effective nursing interventions. Design: A cross-sectional descriptive study. Methods: Pre-piloted scales were used to determine whether they experienced fear of hypoglycaemia and whether this impacted upon their management of the disease. From June–October 2019, participants were asked to complete the “hypoglycaemia fear survey” and “diabetes distress scales” to assess levels of fear and distress. Stepwise multivariate regression analysis was applied to reveal relationship between distress as a dependent variable and fear as a independent variable. Covariates included demographic, clinical or lifestyle factors. Results: A total of 258 participants were recruited for the survey, and they were characterized by little or no distress (39.53%), moderate distress (45.35%) and high distress (15.12%). The prevalence of moderate to severe distress in patients was 60.47%. Increased diabetes-related distress was strongly correlated with increased fear of hypoglycaemia and closely associated with the scores of the worry and behaviour subscales. These results indicated that 62.3% of diabetes-related distress may be explained by fear of hypoglycaemia. Conclusion: Increased diabetes-related distress is associated with increased fear of hypoglycaemia in individuals with type 2 diabetes

Construction and Bioavailability Analysis of 6-Shogaol-Loaded Zein Nanoparticles

In order to solve the problem of the low bioavailability of 6-shogaol (6S), in this study, zein-sodium caseinate nanoparticles (ZCP) were constructed by the anti-solvent precipitation method as a nano-delivery carrier for 6S. The physicochemical properties of 6S-loaded zein nanoparticles (ZCP-6S) were characterized and the bioavailability was investigated by in vitro simulated digestion, Caco-2 cell model and pharmacokinetic studies in rats. The particle size distribution, microstructure and chemical structure of ZCP-6S were characterized by laser particle size analyzer, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. The results indicated that the nanoparticles were spherical in shape, with small particle size and uniform distribution. 6S might interact with zein through non-covalent bonds. The in vitro simulated digestion results showed that ZCP-6S increased the bioaccessibility of 6S to (75.34 ± 9.82)%. Moreover, ZCP-6S significantly enhanced the uptake and transport of 6S by Caco-2 cells. After 4 h treatment, the cell uptake increased by (0.36 ± 0.06) μg/mg. The concentration of 6S in the basolateral side of the Caco-2 cell model increased by (1.06 ± 0.06) μg/mL. In addition, pharmacokinetic studies showed that the relative oral bioavailability of 6S increased by 3.28 times after nanoparticle encapsulation. In summary, the bioaccessibility, cellular absorption and oral bioavailability of 6S were effectively improved by its encapsulation into zein nanoparticles