6,313 research outputs found
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Morale is high in acute inpatient psychiatry
Background: Morale on acute psychiatric wards has been considered to be problematic, and is reported to contribute to low quality patient care.
Aim: To assess the relationship of staff morale to patient, service environment, physical environment, patient routines, conflict, containment, staff demographics, and staff group variables.
Method: A multivariate cross sectional study was undertaken collecting data on morale and other variables on 136 acute admission psychiatric wards in England.
Results: Morale was higher than published comparison samples. Length of time in post was correlated with low morale, and qualified nurses had higher emotional exhaustion but also higher personal accomplishment. The level of verbal abuse on a ward was associated with low morale, as was a higher level of social deprivation among patients. Higher levels of order and organisation correlated with better morale.
Conclusions: Clear policies relating to the management of verbal abuse by patients, high levels of order and organisation, and staff rotation and education, may all support high morale. Acute inpatient psychiatry is generally a happy and rewarding work environment, and identified problems are likely to be due to other factors
Universal reshaping of arrested colloidal gels via active doping
Colloids that interact via a short-range attraction serve as the primary
building blocks for a broad range of self-assembled materials. However, one of
the well-known drawbacks to this strategy is that these building blocks rapidly
and readily condense into a metastable colloidal gel. Using computer
simulations, we illustrate how the addition of a small fraction of purely
repulsive self-propelled colloids, a technique referred to as active doping,
can prevent the formation of this metastable gel state and drive the system
toward its thermodynamically favored crystalline target structure. The
simplicity and robust nature of this strategy offers a systematic and generic
pathway to improving the self-assembly of a large number of complex colloidal
structures. We discuss in detail the process by which this feat is accomplished
and provide quantitative metrics for exploiting it to modulate self-assembly.
We provide evidence for the generic nature of this approach by demonstrating
that it remains robust under a number of different anisotropic short-ranged
pair interactions in both two and three dimensions. In addition, we report on a
novel microphase in mixtures of passive and active colloids. For a broad range
of self-propelling velocities, it is possible to stabilize a suspension of
fairly monodisperse finite-size crystallites. Surprisingly, this microphase is
also insensitive to the underlying pair interaction between building blocks.
The active stabilization of these moderately-sized monodisperse clusters is
quite remarkable and should be of great utility in the design of hierarchical
self-assembly strategies. This work further bolsters the notion that active
forces can play a pivotal role in directing colloidal self-assembly.Comment: Supplemental Material available here:
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/suppl/10.1063/5.001651
Universal reshaping of arrested colloidal gels via active doping
Colloids that interact via a short-range attraction serve as the primary building blocks for a broad range of self-assembled materials. However, one of the well-known drawbacks to this strategy is that these building blocks rapidly and readily condense into a metastable colloidal gel. Using computer simulations, we illustrate how the addition of a small fraction of purely repulsive self-propelled colloids, a technique referred to as active doping, can prevent the formation of this metastable gel state and drive the system toward its thermodynamically favored crystalline target structure. The simplicity and robust nature of this strategy offers a systematic and generic pathway to improving the self-assembly of a large number of complex colloidal structures. We discuss in detail the process by which this feat is accomplished and provide quantitative metrics for exploiting it to modulate the self-assembly. We provide evidence for the generic nature of this approach by demonstrating that it remains robust under a number of different anisotropic short-ranged pair interactions in both two and three dimensions. In addition, we report on a novel microphase in mixtures of passive and active colloids. For a broad range of self-propelling velocities, it is possible to stabilize a suspension of fairly monodisperse finite-size crystallites. Surprisingly, this microphase is also insensitive to the underlying pair interaction between building blocks. The active stabilization of these moderately sized monodisperse clusters is quite remarkable and should be of great utility in the design of hierarchical self-assembly strategies. This work further bolsters the notion that active forces can play a pivotal role in directing colloidal self-assembly
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Identifying Key Factors Associated with Aggression on Acute Inpatient Psychiatric Wards
Aggressive behaviour is a critical issue for modern acute psychiatric services, not just because of the adverse impact it has on patients and staff, but also because it puts a financial strain on service providers. The aim of this study was to assess the relationship of patient violence to other variables: patient characteristics, features of the service and physical environment, patient routines, staff factors, the use of containment methods, and other patient behaviours. A multivariate cross sectional design was utilised. Data were collected for a six month period on 136 acute psychiatric wards in 26 NHS Trusts in England. Multilevel modelling was conducted to ascertain those factors most strongly associated with verbal aggression, aggression toward objects, and physical aggression against others. High levels of aggression were associated with a high proportion of patients formally detained under mental health legislation, high patient turnover, alcohol use by patients, ward doors being locked, and higher staffing numbers (especially qualified nurses). The findings suggest that the imposition of restrictions on patients exacerbates the problem of violence, and that alcohol management strategies may be a productive intervention. Insufficient evidence is available to draw conclusions about the nature of the link between staffing numbers and violence
The Lemaitre-Schwarzschild Problem Revisited
The Lemaitre and Schwarzschild analytical solutions for a relativistic
spherical body of constant density are linked together through the use of the
Weyl quadratic invariant. The critical radius for gravitational collapse of an
incompressible fluid is shown to vary continuously from 9/8 of the
Schwarzschild radius to the Schwarzschild radius itself while the internal
pressures become locally anisotropic.Comment: Final version as accepted by GR&G (to appear in vol. 34, september
2002
Tackling Exascale Software Challenges in Molecular Dynamics Simulations with GROMACS
GROMACS is a widely used package for biomolecular simulation, and over the
last two decades it has evolved from small-scale efficiency to advanced
heterogeneous acceleration and multi-level parallelism targeting some of the
largest supercomputers in the world. Here, we describe some of the ways we have
been able to realize this through the use of parallelization on all levels,
combined with a constant focus on absolute performance. Release 4.6 of GROMACS
uses SIMD acceleration on a wide range of architectures, GPU offloading
acceleration, and both OpenMP and MPI parallelism within and between nodes,
respectively. The recent work on acceleration made it necessary to revisit the
fundamental algorithms of molecular simulation, including the concept of
neighborsearching, and we discuss the present and future challenges we see for
exascale simulation - in particular a very fine-grained task parallelism. We
also discuss the software management, code peer review and continuous
integration testing required for a project of this complexity.Comment: EASC 2014 conference proceedin
Observation of enhanced rate coefficients in the H + H H + H reaction at low collision energies
The energy dependence of the rate coefficient of the H reaction has been measured in the range of
collision energies between K and
mK. A clear deviation of the rate coefficient from the value expected on the
basis of the classical Langevin-capture behavior has been observed at collision
energies below K, which is attributed to the joint
effects of the ion-quadrupole and Coriolis interactions in collisions involving
ortho-H molecules in the rotational level, which make up 75% of the
population of the neutral H molecules in the experiments. The experimental
results are compared to very recent predictions by Dashevskaya, Litvin, Nikitin
and Troe (J. Chem. Phys., in press), with which they are in agreement.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure
Coherent control of enrichment and conversion of molecular spin isomers
A theoretical model of nuclear spin conversion in molecules controlled by an
external electromagnetic radiation resonant to rotational transition has been
developed. It has been shown that one can produce an enrichment of spin isomers
and influence their conversion rates in two ways, through coherences and
through level population change induced by radiation. Influence of conversion
is ranged from significant speed up to almost complete inhibition of the
process by proper choice of frequency and intensity of the external field.Comment: REVTEX, 13 pages + 6 eps figure
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