Insider Action research as an approach and a method – Exploring institutional encounters from within a birthing context

The aim of this paper was to describe the first person perspective of being a peer midwife and a novice researcher initiating collaborative AR in her own organization to develop knowledge about the first encounters between the labouring woman and her care-givers in a hospital birthing context. It was motivated by the author’s longstanding professional clinical experience of observing and hearing parents’ stories of vulnerability and fear of childbirth, and how staff’s attitudes affected the childbirth experience negatively. Data were collected between 2010 and 2013 and included the researcher’s log with reflections from clinical work, as well as interviews, participant observation, and research group communications. A reflective interpretative lifeworld research approach was used to analyze the data. The experience of being a novice insider action researcher (IARr) consisted of three thematic meanings: ‘‘the struggle to initiate a clinical insider action research project,’’ ‘‘standing alone at the messy front line,’’ and ‘‘being a catalytic counterbalance to the prevailing medico technical focus.’’ The comprehensive understanding was ‘‘learning how to clinically reflect on and to voice the tacit components of care.’’ The strategy used in undertaking this study was influenced by the philosophies of both midwifery care and AR

The Coldest Place in the Universe: Probing the Ultra-Cold Outflow and Dusty Disk in the Boomerang Nebula

Our Cycle 0 ALMA observations confirmed that the Boomerang Nebula is the coldest known object in the Universe, with a massive high-speed outflow that has cooled significantly below the cosmic background temperature. Our new CO 1-0 data reveal heretofore unseen distant regions of this ultra-cold outflow, out to $\gtrsim120,000$ AU. We find that in the ultra-cold outflow, the mass-loss rate (dM/dt) increases with radius, similar to its expansion velocity ($V$) - taking $V\propto r$, we find $dM/dt \propto r^{0.9-2.2}$. The mass in the ultra-cold outflow is $\gtrsim3.3$ Msun, and the Boomerang's main-sequence progenitor mass is $\gtrsim4$ Msun. Our high angular resolution ($\sim$0".3) CO J=3-2 map shows the inner bipolar nebula's precise, highly-collimated shape, and a dense central waist of size (FWHM) $\sim$1740 AU$\times275$ AU. The molecular gas and the dust as seen in scattered light via optical HST imaging show a detailed correspondence. The waist shows a compact core in thermal dust emission at 0.87-3.3 mm, which harbors $(4-7)\times10^{-4}$ Msun~of very large ($\sim$mm-to-cm sized), cold ($\sim20-30$ K) grains. The central waist (assuming its outer regions to be expanding) and fast bipolar outflow have expansion ages of $\lesssim1925$ yr and $\le1050$ yr: the "jet-lag" (i.e., torus age minus the fast-outflow age) in the Boomerang supports models in which the primary star interacts directly with a binary companion. We argue that this interaction resulted in a common-envelope configuration while the Boomerang's primary was an RGB or early-AGB star, with the companion finally merging into the primary's core, and ejecting the primary's envelope that now forms the ultra-cold outflow.Comment: accepted ApJ, 12 Apr, 201

A New Component in the Radio Continua of PNe

A byproduct of experiments designed to map the CMB is the recent detection of a new component of foreground galactic emission. The anomalous foreground at 10–30 GHz, unexplained by traditional emission mechanisms, correlates with 100 mum dust emission, and is thus presumably due to dust.Is the anomalous foreground ubiquitous in the Galaxy? I will present evidence obtained with the CBI and SIMBA+SEST supporting the existence of the new component in the ISM at large, and in specific objects, in the form of a 31 GHz excess over free-free emission in PNe

The Breathing Modes of the B=2B=2 Skyrmion and the Spin-Orbit Interaction

The coupling of the breathing and rotational modes of the skyrmion-skyrmion system leads to a nucleon-nucleon spin-orbit interaction of short range, as well as to spin-orbit potentials for the transitions $NN \to N(1440)N$, $NN \to NN(1440)$ and $NN \to N(1440)N(1440)$. The longest range behaviour of these spin-orbit potentials is calculated in closed form.Comment: Latex, figures not include

ALMA view of the circumstellar environment of the post-common-envelope-evolution binary system HD101584

We study the circumstellar evolution of the binary HD101584, consisting of a post-AGB star and a low-mass companion, which is most likely a post-common-envelope-evolution system. We used ALMA observations of the 12CO, 13CO, and C18O J=2-1 lines and the 1.3mm continuum to determine the morphology, kinematics, masses, and energetics of the circumstellar environment. The circumstellar medium has a bipolar hour-glass structure, seen almost pole-on, formed by an energetic jet, about 150 km/s. We conjecture that the circumstellar morphology is related to an event that took place about 500 year ago, possibly a capture event where the companion spiraled in towards the AGB star. However, the kinetic energy of the accelerated gas exceeds the released orbital energy, and, taking into account the expected energy transfer efficiency of the process, the observed phenomenon does not match current common-envelope scenarios. This suggests that another process must augment, or even dominate, the ejection process. A significant amount of material resides in an unresolved region, presumably in the equatorial plane of the binary system.Comment: A&A Letter, accepte

PhosFox: a bioinformatics tool for peptide-level processing of LC-MS/MS-based phosphoproteomic data

Background: It is possible to identify thousands of phosphopeptides and -proteins in a single experiment with mass spectrometry-based phosphoproteomics. However, a current bottleneck is the downstream data analysis which is often laborious and requires a number of manual steps.Results: Toward automating the analysis steps, we have developed and implemented a software, PhosFox, which enables peptide-level processing of phosphoproteomic data generated by multiple protein identification search algorithms, including Mascot, Sequest, and Paragon, as well as cross-comparison of their identification results. The software supports both qualitative and quantitative phosphoproteomics studies, as well as multiple between-group comparisons. Importantly, PhosFox detects uniquely phosphorylated peptides and proteins in one sample compared to another. It also distinguishes differences in phosphorylation sites between phosphorylated proteins in different samples. Using two case study examples, a qualitative phosphoproteome dataset from human keratinocytes and a quantitative phosphoproteome dataset from rat kidney inner medulla, we demonstrate here how PhosFox facilitates an efficient and in-depth phosphoproteome data analysis. PhosFox was implemented in the Perl programming language and it can be run on most common operating systems. Due to its flexible interface and open source distribution, the users can easily incorporate the program into their MS data analysis workflows and extend the program with new features. PhosFox source code, implementation and user instructions are freely available from https://bitbucket.org/phintsan/phosfox.Conclusions: PhosFox facilitates efficient and more in-depth comparisons between phosphoproteins in case-control settings. The open source implementation is easily extendable to accommodate additional features for widespread application use cases

Effect of Defocused CO(2 )Laser on Equine Tissue Perfusion

Treatment with defocused CO(2 )laser can have a therapeutic effect on equine injuries, but the mechanisms involved are unclear. A recent study has shown that laser causes an increase in equine superficial tissue temperature, which may result in an increase in blood perfusion and a stimulating effect on tissue regeneration. However, no studies have described the effects on equine tissue perfusion. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of defocused CO(2 )laser on blood perfusion and to correlate it with temperature in skin and underlying muscle in anaesthetized horses. Differences between clipped and unclipped haircoat were also assessed. Eight horses and two controls received CO(2 )laser treatment (91 J/cm(2)) in a randomised order, on a clipped and unclipped area of the hamstring muscles, respectively. The significant increase in clipped skin perfusion and temperature was on average 146.3 ± 33.4 perfusion units (334%) and 5.5 ± 1.5°C, respectively. The significant increase in perfusion and temperature in unclipped skin were 80.6 ± 20.4 perfusion units (264%) and 4.8 ± 1.4°C. No significant changes were seen in muscle perfusion or temperature. In conclusion, treatment with defocused CO(2 )laser causes a significant increase in skin perfusion, which is correlated to an increase in skin temperature