2,596 research outputs found
Floor Mapping: A Novel Method of Integrating Anatomical Structure with Immunological Function
Session - Assessment (Abstract)This free journal suppl. entitled: Special Issue: Abstracts of the 13th Asia Pacific Medical Education Conference (APMEC) ... 2016The Biomedical Common Year 1 occurs prior to admission to the
medical programme. Students achieving a grade point average
over 6.0 are eligible for an admissions interview. The research
question of the study was, “If students have a definite interest in
becoming a future doctor in their premedical course, does this
relate to their levels of motivation, competitiveness, perceived
stress, quality of life and grade attainment?” A total of 1369
students who completed a high stakes biosciences assessment
were asked to disclose their grade (converted to a numerical
value) and to complete the Motivated Strategies for Learning
Questionnaire, a World Health Organisation Quality Of Life
(QoL) questionnaire, Perceived Stress Scale, and Revised
Competitiveness Index. To explore differences between those
students who aimed to be doctors vs those who did not, a binary
logistic regression was conducted. Twenty five percent of students
participated in the research. Significant predictors of course
intention (medicine; other) were academic attainment, perceived
stress, and physical and environmental QoL. Post hoc analyses
revealed that perceived stress and physical QoL were moderating
variables. Students with an intention to become a doctor tend to
attain higher grades and have better environmental quality of life
scores. This may indicate that students who are admitted into
medical school gain higher grades but also likely come from
more affluent and well-resourced backgrounds. Physical health
problems and perceived stress are likely to moderate the impact
of grade achievement, environmental QoL, competition and
motivation.link_to_OA_fulltex
An evaluation of key challenges of CO2 transportation with a novel Subsea Shuttle Tanker
Recently, a novel Subsea Shuttle Tanker (SST) concept has been proposed to transport carbon dioxide (CO2) from ports to offshore oil and gas fields for either permanent storage or enhanced oil recovery (EOR). SST is a large autonomous underwater vehicle that travels at a constant water depth away from waves. SST has some key advantages over subsea pipelines and tanker ships when employed at marginal fields. It enables carbon storage in marginal fields which do not have sufficient volumes to justify pipelines. Further, in contrast to ships, SST does not require the use of a permanently installed riser base. This paper will evaluate the key challenges of using such vessel for CO2 transportation. It discusses the most important properties such as thermodynamic properties, purity, and hydrate formation of CO2 at different vessel-transportation states in relation to cargo sizing, material selection, and energy consumption.publishedVersio
Motivation to Learn, Quality of Life and Estimated Academic Achievement: Medical Students Studying in New Zealand
The quality of life of medical students and their motivation to learn are critical factors that have an impact on their ability to learn. The aim of this study was to investigate the associations between medical students' perceptions of their quality of life, motivation to learn, and estimated grade at the end of the academic year. Two hundred and seventy-four medical students at years four and five of medical school participated in the study. Students filled in a demographic survey form, and shortened versions of the World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire and the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire. Significant correlations between quality of life and motivation to learn measures were obtained. Second, students who scored high on aspects of quality of life and motivation to learn also scored significantly higher on estimates of written grade. In conclusion, the results suggest that medical students’ perceptions about quality of life and motivation to learn are linked to estimation of academic achievement. The findings of this study further resonate with a key conceptual model in the motivation literature, which promotes the importance of creating opportunities for mastery learning, engaging task value, producing optimal learning contexts, and creating mechanisms for coping with and managing the inevitable anxiety-provoking learning experiences that medical students face.The quality of life of medical students and their motivation to learn are critical factors that have an impact on
their ability to learn. The aim of this study was to investigate the associations between medical students‟
perceptions of their quality of life, motivation to learn, and estimated grade at the end of the academic year. Two hundred and seventy-four medical students at years four and five of medical school participated in the study. Students filled in a demographic survey form, and shortened versions of the World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire and the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire. Significant correlations between quality of life and motivation to learn measures were obtained. Second, students who scored high on aspects of quality of life and motivation to learn also scored significantly higher on estimates of written grade. In conclusion, the results suggest that medical students‟ perceptions about quality of life and motivation to learn are linked to estimation of academic achievement. The findings of this study further resonate with a key conceptual model in the motivation literature, which promotes the importance of creating opportunities for mastery learning, engaging task value, producing optimal learning contexts, and creating mechanisms for coping with and managing the inevitable anxiety-provoking learning experiences that medical students face
Topological Protection of Coherence in Noisy Open Quantum Systems
We consider topological protection mechanisms in dissipative quantum systems
in the presence of quenched disorder, with the intent to prolong coherence
times of qubits. The physical setting is a network of qubits and dissipative
cavities whose coupling parameters are tunable, such that topological edge
states can be stabilized. The evolution of a fiducial qubit is entirely
determined by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian which thus emerges from a bona-fide
physical process. It is shown how even in the presence of disorder winding
numbers can be defined and evaluated in real space, as long as certain
symmetries are preserved. Hence we can construct the topological phase diagrams
of noisy open quantum models, such as the non-Hermitian disordered
Su-Schrieffer- Heeger dimer model and a trimer model that includes longer-range
couplings. In the presence of competing disorder parameters, interesting
re-entrance phenomena of topologically non-trivial sectors are observed. This
means that in certain parameter regions, increasing disorder drastically
increases the coherence time of the fiducial qubit
Physical wellbeing, competitiveness, motivation, and academic achievement in First Year Biomedical or Health Science Students
Conference Theme: From Globalisation of Education to Global Healthcare – Trends ● Issues ● Priorities ● Strategies (TIPS)E-Poster Presentation - Session 1: no. D1005AIMS: To explore the relationships among stress, quality of life (QOL), motivation, competitiveness and grade attainment in pre-medical and health science students ...postprin
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Quasi ALE finite element method for nonlinear water waves
This paper presents a newly developed quasi arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian finite element method (QALE-FEM) for simulating water waves based on fully nonlinear potential theory. The main difference of this method from the conventional finite element method developed by one of authors of this paper and others (see, e.g., [11] and [22]) is that the complex mesh is generated only once at the beginning and is moved at all other time steps in order to conform to the motion of the free surface and structures. This feature allows one to use an unstructured mesh with any degree of complexity without the need of regenerating it every time step, which is generally inevitable and very costly. Due to this feature, the QALE-FEM has high potential in enhancing computational efficiency when applied to problems associated with the complex interaction between large steep waves and structures since the use of an unstructured mesh in such a case is likely to be necessary. To achieve overall high efficiency, the numerical techniques involved in the QALE-FEM are developed, including the method to move interior nodes, technique to re-distribute the nodes on the free surface, scheme to calculate velocities and so on. The model is validated by water waves generated by a wavemaker in a tank and the interaction between water waves and periodic bars on the bed of tank. Satisfactory agreement is achieved with analytical solutions, experimental data and numerical results from other methods
Quantum Eavesdropping without Interception: An Attack Exploiting the Dead Time of Single Photon Detectors
The security of quantum key distribution (QKD) can easily be obscured if the
eavesdropper can utilize technical imperfections of the actual implementation.
Here we describe and experimentally demonstrate a very simple but highly
effective attack which even does not need to intercept the quantum channel at
all. Only by exploiting the dead time effect of single photon detectors the
eavesdropper is able to gain (asymptotically) full information about the
generated keys without being detected by state-of-the-art QKD protocols. In our
experiment, the eavesdropper inferred up to 98.8% of the key correctly, without
increasing the bit error rate between Alice and Bob significantly. Yet, we find
an evenly simple and effective countermeasure to inhibit this and similar
attacks
Hygroscopic properties of aerosol particles at high relative humidity and their diurnal variations in the North China Plain
The hygroscopic properties of submicron aerosol particles were determined at a suburban site (Wuqing) in the North China Plain among a cluster of cities during the period 17 July to 12 August, 2009. A High Humidity Tandem Differential Mobility Analyser (HH-TDMA) instrument was applied to measure the hygroscopic growth factor (GF) at 90%, 95% and 98.5% relative humidity (RH) for particles with dry diameters between 50 and 250 nm. The probability distribution of GF (GF-PDF) averaged over the period shows a distinct bimodal pattern, namely, a dominant more-hygroscopic (MH) group and a smaller nearly-hydrophobic (NH) group. The MH group particles were highly hygroscopic, and their GF was relatively constant during the period with average values of 1.54 ± 0.02, 1.81 ± 0.04 and 2.45 ± 0.07 at 90%, 95% and 98.5% RH (D0 = 100 nm), respectively. The NH group particles grew very slightly when exposed to high RH, with GF values of 1.08 ± 0.02, 1.13 ± 0.06 and 1.24 ± 0.13 respectively at 90%, 95% and 98.5% RH (D0 = 100 nm). The hygroscopic growth behaviours at different RHs were well represented by a single-parameter Köhler model. Thus, the calculation of GF as a function of RH and dry diameter could be facilitated by an empirical parameterization of κ as function of dry diameter. A strong diurnal pattern in number fraction of different hygroscopic groups was observed. The average number fraction of NH particles during the day was about 8%, while during the nighttime fractions up to 20% were reached. Correspondingly, the state of mixing in terms of water uptake varied significantly during a day. Simulations using a particle-resolved aerosol box model (PartMC-MOSAIC) suggest that the diurnal variations of aerosol hygroscopicity and mixing state were mainly caused by the evolution of the atmospheric mixing layer. The shallow nocturnal boundary layer during the night facilitated the accumulation of freshly emitted carbonaceous particles (mainly hydrophobic) near the surface while in the morning turbulence entrained the more aged and more hygroscopic particles from aloft and diluted the NH particles near the surface resulting in a decrease in the fraction of NH particles
Trigonometric Parallaxes of 6.7 GHz Methanol Masers
Emission from the 6.7 GHz methanol maser transition is very strong, is
relatively stable, has small internal motions, and is observed toward numerous
massive star-forming regions in the Galaxy. Our goal is to perform
high-precision astrometry using this maser transition to obtain accurate
distances to their host regions. Eight strong masers were observed during five
epochs of VLBI observations with the European VLBI Network between 2006 June,
and 2008 March. We report trigonometric parallaxes for five star-forming
regions, with accuracies as good as as. Distances to these
sources are kpc for ON 1, kpc
for L 1206, kpc for L 1287,
kpc for NGC 281-W, and kpc for S 255. The distances and
proper motions yield the full space motions of the star-forming regions hosting
the masers, and we find that these regions lag circular rotation on average by
17 km s, a value comparable to those found recently by similar
studies.Comment: 17 pages, 21 figures, 5 tables, accepted for publication in A&A,
corrected typo
Viral Hepatitis and Rapid Diagnostic Test Based Screening for HBsAg in HIV-infected Patients in Rural Tanzania.
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Co-infection with hepatitis B virus (HBV) is highly prevalent in people living with HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa. Screening for HBV surface antigen (HBsAg) before initiation of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) is recommended. However, it is not part of diagnostic routines in HIV programs in many resource-limited countries although patients could benefit from optimized antiretroviral therapy covering both infections. Screening could be facilitated by rapid diagnostic tests for HBsAg. Operating experience with these point of care devices in HIV-positive patients in Sub-Saharan Africa is largely lacking. We determined the prevalence of HBV and Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection as well as the diagnostic accuracy of the rapid test device Determine HBsAg in an HIV cohort in rural Tanzania. Prospectively collected blood samples from adult, HIV-1 positive and antiretroviral treatment-naïve patients in the Kilombero and Ulanga antiretroviral cohort (KIULARCO) in rural Tanzania were analyzed at the point of care with Determine HBsAg, a reference HBsAg EIA and an anti-HCV EIA. Samples of 272 patients were included. Median age was 38 years (interquartile range [IQR] 32-47), 169/272 (63%) subjects were females and median CD4+ count was 250 cells/µL (IQR 97-439). HBsAg was detected in 25/272 (9.2%, 95% confidence interval [CI] 6.2-13.0%) subjects. Of these, 7/25 (28%) were positive for HBeAg. Sensitivity of Determine HBsAg was rated at 96% (95% CI 82.8-99.6%) and specificity at 100% (95% CI, 98.9-100%). Antibodies to HCV (anti-HCV) were found in 10/272 (3.7%, 95% CI 2.0-6.4%) of patients. This study reports a high prevalence of HBV in HIV-positive patients in a rural Tanzanian setting. The rapid diagnostic test Determine HBsAg is an accurate assay for screening for HBsAg in HIV-1 infected patients at the point of care and may further help to guide cART in Sub-Saharan Africa
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