O demente, a família e as suas necessidades

A população idosa duplicou nos últimos quarenta anos devido à melhoria da qualidade de vida e aos progressos da Medicina, aumentando não só a longevidade, como a esperança média de vida sem incapacidade. No entanto, é o mau envelhecimento, a incapacidade, a dependência e a demência que causam medos e angústias por vezes superiores à própria morte. A Psicologia da Saúde tem um papel fundamental junto do idoso e em particular do demente à volta de um eixo individual e outro colectivo, que abordaremos neste trabalho. As famílias dos dementes isoladas chegam por vezes ao esgotamento. Tentaremos dar alternativas possíveis para melhorar a qualidade de vida do demente e da família, dando um especial relevo às suas necessidades.In the last forty years, the percentage of the elderly in the population doubled due to a better quality of life and to a higher medical efficiency, resulting in a longer life and an improved expectation of life without disability. Still, aging in bad conditions such as a handicap, disability, dependency and dementia frequently causes fear and anguish, sometimes superior to those caused by death itself. Health Psychology is essential for aging people, and specially the demented, in two ways: individually and, as shown hereafter, collectively. Isolated families of demented people sometimes get totally “burnt out”. The purpose of this work is to focus on the needs of the demented and their families in order to improve their quality of life.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Strain and correlation of self-organized Ge_(1-x)Mn_x nanocolumns embedded in Ge (001)

We report on the structural properties of Ge_(1-x)Mn_x layers grown by molecular beam epitaxy. In these layers, nanocolumns with a high Mn content are embedded in an almost-pure Ge matrix. We have used grazing-incidence X-ray scattering, atomic force and transmission electron microscopy to study the structural properties of the columns. We demonstrate how the elastic deformation of the matrix (as calculated using atomistic simulations) around the columns, as well as the average inter-column distance can account for the shape of the diffusion around Bragg peaks.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

Controlled switching of N\'eel caps in flux-closure magnetic dots

While magnetic hysteresis usually considers magnetic domains, the switching of the core of magnetic vortices has recently become an active topic. We considered Bloch domain walls, which are known to display at the surface of thin films flux-closure features called N\'eel caps. We demonstrated the controlled switching of these caps under a magnetic field, occurring via the propagation of a surface vortex. For this we considered flux-closure states in elongated micron-sized dots, so that only the central domain wall can be addressed, while domains remain unaffected.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Electrical and thermal spin accumulation in germanium

In this letter, we first show electrical spin injection in the germanium conduction band at room temperature and modulate the spin signal by applying a gate voltage to the channel. The corresponding signal modulation agrees well with the predictions of spin diffusion models. Then by setting a temperature gradient between germanium and the ferromagnet, we create a thermal spin accumulation in germanium without any tunnel charge current. We show that temperature gradients yield larger spin accumulations than pure electrical spin injection but, due to competing microscopic effects, the thermal spin accumulation in germanium remains surprisingly almost unchanged under the application of a gate voltage to the channel.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

Crossover from spin accumulation into interface states to spin injection in the germanium conduction band

Electrical spin injection into semiconductors paves the way for exploring new phenomena in the area of spin physics and new generations of spintronic devices. However the exact role of interface states in spin injection mechanism from a magnetic tunnel junction into a semiconductor is still under debate. In this letter, we demonstrate a clear transition from spin accumulation into interface states to spin injection in the conduction band of $n$-Ge. We observe spin signal amplification at low temperature due to spin accumulation into interface states followed by a clear transition towards spin injection in the conduction band from 200 K up to room temperature. In this regime, the spin signal is reduced down to a value compatible with spin diffusion model. More interestingly, we demonstrate in this regime a significant modulation of the spin signal by spin pumping generated by ferromagnetic resonance and also by applying a back-gate voltage which are clear manifestations of spin current and accumulation in the germanium conduction band.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure