Personal experiences of dementia and care: the views of people with dementia and their relatives.

This study examined the possibilities of empowering people of a range of severity of dementia, by eliciting accurate views and feelings from them about services and including them in service evaluation. The study was underpinned by a four tier empowerment framework, which incorporated issues relating to the individual, the organisation, the service user and society. An ethnographic approach to data collection and analysis was employed. Twenty-seven people with dementia from Jewish Care residential and day care settings were interviewed and their daily lives videotaped and observed and interviews conducted with next of kin. Efforts were made to empower and involve participants in the research process as far as possible. Triangulation of interview, video and observational data reveal that with appropriate methods and skills it is possible to elicit accurate information from people in various stages of dementia, and thereby involve them in service evaluation. A number of techniques for communication are highlighted. Findings also show that although relatives' views are frequently taken as proxy for those of people with dementia, they may lack knowledge about services and the perceptions of people with dementia. In residential care their views differed considerably to those of people with dementia, suggesting that is important to consult with the person with dementia themselves. The data suggest that the experience of dementia was disempowering for both people with dementia and their relatives. In addition, although day care services were perceived more positively, people with dementia were disempowered by a lack of influence, control, communication and social aspects of care in residential settings and relatives by a lack of support and information in the community. Although participants were of Jewish origin and from Jewish settings only, it is considered that the results are more widely applicable to other groups of people in other settings. A number of recommendations are made about creating a more empowering workforce and environment and a model of empowerment for dementia research and practice is outlined

Positional estimation techniques for an autonomous mobile robot

Techniques for positional estimation of a mobile robot navigation in an indoor environment are described. A comprehensive review of the various positional estimation techniques studied in the literature is first presented. The techniques are divided into four different types and each of them is discussed briefly. Two different kinds of environments are considered for positional estimation; mountainous natural terrain and an urban, man-made environment with polyhedral buildings. In both cases, the robot is assumed to be equipped with single visual camera that can be panned and tilted and also a 3-D description (world model) of the environment is given. Such a description could be obtained from a stereo pair of aerial images or from the architectural plans of the buildings. Techniques for positional estimation using the camera input and the world model are presented

Size versus truthfulness in the house allocation problem

We study the House Allocation problem (also known as the Assignment problem), i.e., the problem of allocating a set of objects among a set of agents, where each agent has ordinal preferences (possibly involving ties) over a subset of the objects. We focus on truthful mechanisms without monetary transfers for finding large Pareto optimal matchings. It is straightforward to show that no deterministic truthful mechanism can approximate a maximum cardinality Pareto optimal matching with ratio better than 2. We thus consider randomized mechanisms. We give a natural and explicit extension of the classical Random Serial Dictatorship Mechanism (RSDM) specifically for the House Allocation problem where preference lists can include ties. We thus obtain a universally truthful randomized mechanism for finding a Pareto optimal matching and show that it achieves an approximation ratio of eovere-1. The same bound holds even when agents have priorities (weights) and our goal is to find a maximum weight (as opposed to maximum cardinality) Pareto optimal matching. On the other hand we give a lower bound of 18 over 13 on the approximation ratio of any universally truthful Pareto optimal mechanism in settings with strict preferences. In the case that the mechanism must additionally be non-bossy, an improved lower bound of eovere-1 holds. This lower bound is tight given that RSDM for strict preference lists is non-bossy. We moreover interpret our problem in terms of the classical secretary problem and prove that our mechanism provides the best randomized strategy of the administrator who interviews the applicants

On fixed linear systems with a generalized performance criteria

Fixed linear systems with generalized performance criteri

Quantum computing on long-lived donor states of Li in Si

We predict a gigantically long lifetime of the first excited state of an interstitial lithium donor in silicon. The nature of this effect roots in the anomalous level structure of the {\em 1s} Li manifold under external stress. Namely, the coupling between the lowest two states of the opposite parity is very weak and occurs via intervalley phonon transitions only. We propose to use these states under the controlled ac and dc stress to process quantum information. We find an unusual form of the elastic-dipole interaction between %the electronic transitions in different donors. This interaction scales with the inter-donor distance $R$ as $R^{-3}$ or $R^{-5}$ for the transitions between the states of the same or opposite parity, respectively. The long-range $R^{-3}$ interaction provides a high fidelity mechanism for 2-qubit operations

Event anisotropy in 4.2A GeV/c C+C collisions

The directed and elliptic flow of protons and negative pions in 4.2A GeV/c C+C collisions is studied using the Fourier analysis of azimuthal distributions. It is found that the protons exhibit pronounced directed flow, while the flow of pions is either non existent or too weak to be detected experimentally. Also, it is found that in the entire rapidity interval the elliptic flow is very small if not zero. These results are confirmed by the Quark-Gluon-String Model (QGSM) and the relativistic transport model (ART 1.0), except that these models predict very weak antiflow of pions. The more detailed comparison with the QGSM suggests that the decay of resonances and rescattering of secondaries dominantly determine the proton and negative pion flow at this energy.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, TeX file changed from double to single-spacin

Synthesis and Characterization of some First Row Transition Metal Picrates

Transition metal picrates of the empirical compositions Ti(Picrate) CI/Sub3, Ti (Picrate)/Sub2CI/Sub2, Cr (OH) (H/Sub2O)/Sub6 (Pierate)/Sub2 and M(H/Sub2O)x (Picrate)/Sub2 (where M=Mn (II), Fe (II), Co(II), Ni(II), Cu(II) and Zn(II) and x=4for Cu(II), 8 for Fe(II) & 6 for others) have been prepared and characterized by elemental analysis, molar conductance, magnetic susceptibility measurements, infrared and electronic spectral studies. Molar conductances and molecular weights of the soluble metal picrates show that TiCI/Sub2 (Picrate)/Sub2 is non electrolyte whereas others are 1:2 electrolytes. Magnetic susceptibility and electronic spectral I studies indicate that(II) picrate is square planar, whereas those of Cr(III) Mn(II0, Fe(II),Co(II) and NI(II) are spin free octahedral. The infrared spectral studies of the hydrated and anhydrous metal picrates show: (i) that phenolic group of the picric acid is involved in bounding with the metals;(ii) the water molecules in the hydrated metal picrates coordinated and (iii) the-NO/Sub2 groups do not participate in bonding with the metals