Social work education, training and standards in the Asia-Pacific region

This article discusses the joint project between the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) and the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) to establish guidelines for the training and standard setting that elucidates what social work represents on a global level. While it is impossible to address all the issues that might be significant in such a large scope, attention is given to the challenges establishing global standards might encounter in a region as diverse as the Asia-Pacific

The coevolution of costly heterogeneities and cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma game

This paper discusses the co-evolution of social strategies and an efficiency trait in spatial evolutionary games. The continuous efficiency trait determines how well a player can convert gains from a prisoner's dilemma game into evolutionary fitness. It is assumed to come at a cost proportional to its magnitude and this cost is deducted from payoff. We demonstrate that cost ranges exist such that the regime in which cooperation can persist is strongly extended by the co-evolution of efficiencies and strategies. We find that cooperation typically associates with large efficiencies while defection tends to pair with lower efficiencies. The simulations highlight that social dilemma situations in structured populations can be resolved in a natural way: the nature of the dilemma itself leads to differential pressures for efficiency improvement in cooperator and defector populations. Cooperators benefit by larger improvements which allow them to survive even in the face of inferior performance in the social dilemma. Importantly, the mechanism is possible with and without the presence of noise in the evolutionary replication process

Solenoid construction Patent

Water cooled solenoid capable of producing magnetic field intensities up to 100 kilogaus

Serotonin reuptake inhibitors and cardiovascular disease

Selective serotonin re-uptake inhibiting drugs (SSRIs) are widely used for endogenous depression. In addition to depleting the nerve terminals of serotonin they also lower blood platelet serotonin levels. Platelet aggregation is a major component of acute coronary syndromes, including sudden death, and also of limb ischaemia. Platelet-released serotonin causes constriction of diseased blood vessels. The recent literature has revealed a number of reports of association between the treatment of depression with SSRIs and reduced events caused by intra-arterial thrombosis. The effects of serotonin and serotonin depletion upon intracoronary thrombosis, diseased blood vessels, blood platelets and bleeding are discussed with recommendations for future research into the potential cardiovascular benefits of SSRIs and serotonin 5HT2A antagonists

Generalized Householder Transformations for the Complex Symmetric Eigenvalue Problem

We present an intuitive and scalable algorithm for the diagonalization of complex symmetric matrices, which arise from the projection of pseudo--Hermitian and complex scaled Hamiltonians onto a suitable basis set of "trial" states. The algorithm diagonalizes complex and symmetric (non--Hermitian) matrices and is easily implemented in modern computer languages. It is based on generalized Householder transformations and relies on iterative similarity transformations T -> T' = Q^T T Q, where Q is a complex and orthogonal, but not unitary, matrix, i.e, Q^T equals Q^(-1) but Q^+ is different from Q^(-1). We present numerical reference data to support the scalability of the algorithm. We construct the generalized Householder transformations from the notion that the conserved scalar product of eigenstates Psi_n and Psi_m of a pseudo-Hermitian quantum mechanical Hamiltonian can be reformulated in terms of the generalized indefinite inner product [integral of the product Psi_n(x,t) Psi_m(x,t) over dx], where the integrand is locally defined, and complex conjugation is avoided. A few example calculations are described which illustrate the physical origin of the ideas used in the construction of the algorithm.Comment: 14 pages; RevTeX; font mismatch in Eqs. (3) and (15) is eliminate