Making Family Under A Shiftwork Schedule: Air Force Security Guards And Their Wives

Through 90 in-depth interviews with 44 rotating shiftworkers and their spouses, this study examines how couples adjust their routines in order to interact as a family unit. We suggest that their views of marital roles are a critical force shaping their practices of daily family life. Wives, even when employed, are responsible for coordinating the individual schedules of family members to match that of the shift-working husband. Wives pay a price for this adjustment work in the form of biological, and emotional symptoms similar to those previously reported only for shiftworkers. Despite their efforts to be providers, husbands pay a price in terms of guilt and anger when work demands limit their ability to fully participate in family life. Further, dual-earner couples rely on husbands ( father care ) and informal arrangements to cover child care for economical and social reasons, not simply to provide husbands with an opportunity to interact with children. Yet, despite higher levels of father care, traditional gender roles have not been altered in that working wives still retain primary responsibility for children

Palliative care for people with non-malignant lung disease: summary of current evidence and future direction

Background: The physical and psychosocial needs of patients with chronic non-malignant lung disease are comparable to those with lung cancer. This article will focus on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, interstitial lung disease and cystic fibrosis as examples of life-limiting, non-curable and non-malignant lung diseases. The need for supportive and palliative care: Recent national guidance has demanded that palliative care is inclusive of all patients with life-limiting disease, irrespective of diagnosis, and that specialist palliative care teams are involved in the management of patients on a basis of need rather than prognosis. What is known: Despite medical therapy, most patients with moderate to severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, interstitial lung disease and cystic fibrosis experience pain, fatigue and dyspnoea, with the majority not getting relief from dyspnoea towards the end of life. Furthermore, dyspnoea causes social isolation and difficulty performing activities of daily living and impairs quality of life. There is an increasing evidence base for the assessment of supportive and palliative care needs, symptom interventions, prognostication, models of service delivery and implications of these for clinical practice and research in non-malignant lung diseases. What is unknown: Despite advances, much still remains unknown regarding assessment, management and prognostication in individual chronic non-malignant lung diseases. Although different service models are being used in clinical practice, the optimal model(s) of service delivery remain unknown. Implication for future research, policy and practice: We describe key areas for further research, which include the need for large, high-quality trials of pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions and their combinations as well as evaluation of the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of models of care. As access to palliative care is poor for these patients, the barriers to referral need to be understood and reduced, which along with effective working between palliative care teams, with respiratory services backup, should optimise delivery of care in patients with life-limiting non-malignant lung disease

Examination of a culturable microbial population from the gastrointestinal tract of the wood-eating loricariid catfish Panaque nigrolineatus

Fish play a critical role in nutrient cycling and organic matter flow in aquatic environments. However, little is known about the microbial diversity within the gastrointestinal tracts that may be essential in these degradation activities. Panaque nigrolineatus is a loricariid catfish found in the Neotropics that have a rare dietary strategy of consuming large amounts of woody material in its natural environment. As a consequence, the gastrointestinal (GI) tract of P. nigrolineatus is continually exposed to high levels of cellulose and other recalcitrant wood compounds and is, therefore, an attractive, uncharacterized system to study microbial community diversity. Our previous 16S rRNA gene surveys demonstrated that the GI tract microbial community includes phylotypes having the capacity to degrade cellulose and fix molecular nitrogen. In the present study we verify the presence of a resident microbial community by fluorescence microscopy and focus on the cellulose-degrading members by culture-based and 13C-labeled cellulose DNA stable-isotope probing (SIP) approaches. Analysis of GI tract communities generated from anaerobic microcrystalline cellulose enrichment cultures by 16S rRNA gene analysis revealed phylotypes sharing high sequence similarity to known cellulolytic bacteria including Clostridium, Cellulomonas, Bacteroides, Eubacterium and Aeromonas spp. Related bacteria were identified in the SIP community, which also included nitrogen-fixing Azospirillum spp. Our ability to enrich for specialized cellulose-degrading communities suggests that the P. nigrolineatus GI tract provides a favorable environment for this activity and these communities may be involved in providing assimilable carbon under challenging dietary conditions

Despite Regulatory Changes, Hospitals Cautious in Helping Physicians Purchase Electronic Medical Records

Examines hospitals' strategies to aid physicians' adoption of electronic medical records (EMRs) following regulatory changes facilitating hospital-subsidized EMRs. Looks at factors determining support for physicians' EMR adoption and their implications

Phylogenetic analysis of microbial communities in different regions of the gastrointestinal tract in Panaque nigrolineatus, a wood-eating fish

The Neotropical detritivorous catfish Panaque nigrolineatus imbibes large quantities of wood as part of its diet. Due to the interest in cellulose, hemi-cellulose and lignin degradation pathways, this organism provides an interesting model system for the detection of novel microbial catabolism. In this study, we characterize the microbial community present in different regions of the alimentary tract of P. nigrolineatus fed a mixed diet of date palm and palm wood in laboratory aquaria. Analysis was performed on 16S rRNA gene clone libraries derived from anterior and posterior regions of the alimentary tract and the auxiliary lobe (AL), an uncharacterized organ that is vascularly attached to the midgut. Sequence analysis and phylogenetic reconstruction revealed distinct microbial communities in each tissue region. The foregut community shared many phylotypes in common with aquarium tank water and included Legionella and Hyphomicrobium spp. As the analysis moved further into the gastrointestinal tract, phylotypes with high levels of 16S rRNA sequence similarity to nitrogen-fixing Rhizobium and Agrobacterium spp. and Clostridium xylanovorans and Clostridium saccharolyticum, dominated midgut and AL communities. However, the hindgut was dominated almost exclusively by phylotypes with the highest 16S rRNA sequence similarity to the Cytophaga-Flavobacterium-Bacteroides phylum. Species richness was highest in the foregut (Chao(1) = 26.72), decreased distally through the midgut (Chao(1) = 25.38) and hindgut (Chao(1) = 20.60), with the lowest diversity detected in the AL (Chao(1) = 18.04), indicating the presence of a specialized microbial community. Using 16S rRNA gene phylogeny, we report that the P. nigrolineatus gastrointestinal tract possesses a microbial community closely related to microorganisms capable of cellulose degradation and nitrogen fixation. Further studies are underway to determine the role of this resident microbial community in Panaque nigrolineatus

Sixty day manned evaluation of zero gravity humidity control system

Manned evaluation of zero gravity humidity control system in potable water recovery unit for simulated spacecraft cabin

Automated progress identification and feedback in large experimental laboratories

In this work we describe a novel web-based system whose aim is to enhance the learning environment within experimental laboratories, and report on its deployment in undergraduate computer architecture modules. Student progress is tracked and recorded throughout the practical work, and supervisory facilities are provided including the visualisation of the progress of everyone in the laboratory on a management console. The system delivers information concerning the practical work to be undertaken, and uses carefully designed sets of questions based on the observations to be made by students in the laboratory. The responses made in this system are used to feedback further specific information to the student to aid their individual progress

Organic matter responses to radiation under lunar conditions

Large bodies, such as the Moon, which have remained relatively unaltered for long periods of time have the potential to preserve a record of organic chemical processes from early in the history of the solar system. A record of volatiles and impactors may be preserved in buried lunar regolith layers that have been capped by protective lava flows. Of particular interest is the possible preservation of prebiotic organic materials delivered by ejected fragments of other bodies, including those originating from the surface of the early Earth. Lava flow layers would shield the underlying regolith and any carbon-bearing materials within them from most of the effects of space weathering, but the encapsulated organic materials would still be subject to irradiation before they were buried by regolith formation and capped with lava. We have performed a study to simulate the effects of solar radiation on a variety of organic materials mixed with lunar and meteorite analogue substrates. A fluence of ~3 x 1013 protons cm-2 at 4-13 MeV, intended to be representative of solar energetic particles, has little detectable effect on low molecular weight (≤C30) hydrocarbon structures that can be used to indicate biological activity (biomarkers) or the high molecular weight hydrocarbon polymer poly(styrene-co-divinylbenzene), and has little apparent effect on a selection of amino acids (≤C9). Inevitably, more lengthy durations of exposure to solar energetic particles may have more deleterious effects and rapid burial and encapsulation will always be more favourable to organic preservation. Our data indicate that biomarker compounds that may be used to infer biological activity on their parent planet can be relatively resistant to the effects of radiation, and may have a high preservation potential in paleoregolith layers on the Moon

Shock propagation in locally driven granular systems

We study shock propagation in a system of initially stationary hard-spheres that is driven by a continuous injection of particles at the origin. The disturbance created by the injection of energy spreads radially outwards through collision between particles. Using scaling arguments, we determine the exponent characterizing the power law growth of this disturbance in all dimensions. The scaling functions describing the various physical quantities are determined using large scale event driven simulations in two and three dimensions for both the elastic and the inelastic system. The results are shown to describe well the data from two different experiments on granular systems that are similarly driven.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure