Nursing and midwifery students' encounters with poor clinical practice:a systematic review

The aim of this paper was to systematically review evidence about nursing and midwifery students’ encounters with poor clinical care.We undertook a systematic review of English language empirical research using multiple databases from inception to April 2016. Hand searching was also undertaken. Included papers contained accounts of empirical research which reported on students’ encounters with poor care. These were quality-assessed, information was extracted into tables, and study results were synthesized using thematic analysis.N=14 papers met inclusion criteria; study quality was moderate to good. Study synthesis revealed four themes: i) encounters with poor practice: students encounter poor practice that is likely to be worthy of professional sanction; ii) while intention to report is high in hypothetical scenarios, this appears not always to translate to actual practice; iii) a range of influencing factors impact the likelihood of reporting; iv) the consequences of encountering and subsequently reporting poor practice appeared to have a lasting effect on students.Research is required to determine the frequency and nature of students' encounters with poor care, when and where they encounter it, how to increase the likelihood that they will report it, and how they can be supported in doing so

Transplanting tradition: The history of Kingswood College

Kingwood College was one of the residential colleges affiliated with the University of Western Australia. Originally established by the Methodist Church, the College had in recent years been run by the Uniting Church. Kingswood amalgamated with St Columba College (another Uniting Church college) in 2000, to form Trinity Residential College. Kingswood experienced nearly forty years of existence prior to its amalgamation. However its history began as far back as 1913, when the concept of a Methodist College at the infant University of Western Australia was raised at the annual Western Australian Conference of the Methodist Church. This thesis examines the history of Kingswood College, including the events leading up to its foundation and the years until amalgamation with St Columba College. It follows the development of Kingswood College in terms of the impact of massification, managerialism and marketing, along with the endeavour to establish a sense of commensality, or belonging, among its members. These factors help explain the ability of the College as an institution to adapt to social, academic and economic changes throughout a period of almost 40 years. Further, it will be seen that these changes often challenged the traditions brought to the College as a result of its background within the Methodist Church and the approach taken by the church to the provision of services to university students

The effect of signal noise on the remote sensing of Foliar biochemical concentration

Spectral measurements made using an imaging spectrometer contain systematic and random noise, while the former can be corrected the latter remains a source of error in the remotely sensed signal. A number of investigators have tried to determine the signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) of the instrument, or the resultant imagery. However, the level of noise at which spectra are too noisy to be useful is not usually determined. The first attempt was by Goetz and Calvin, who suggested that the depth of the absorption feature should be at least an order of magnitude greater than the noise and more recently Dekker suggested a SNR of around 600:1 was required in visible/near infrared wavelengths to measure a 1/gl change in chlorophyll a concentration water. The wide range of applications of imaging spectroscopy make it difficult to set SNR specifications as they are dependent on a number of factors, one of the most important being reflectance of a particular target. For example, the SNR of imagery for vegetated targets is relatively low simply because vegetation has a relatively low level of reflectance. The Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) is being used to estimate the concentration of biochemicals within vegetation canopies. This paper reports a study undertaken to identify first, wavebands that were highly correlated with foliar biochemical concentration and second, to determine how sensitive these correlations were to sensor noise

Exploring the remote sensing of foliar biochemical concentrations with AVIRIS data

Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) data shows promise for the estimation of foliar biochemical concentrations at the scale of the canopy. There are, however, several problems associated with the use of AVIRIS data in this way and these are detailed in recent Plant Biochemical Workshop Report. The research reported was concentrated upon three of these problems: field sampling of forest canopies, wet laboratory assay of foliar chemicals, and the visualization of AVIRIS data

AVIRIS spectra correlated with the chlorophyll concentration of a forest canopy

Imaging spectrometers have many potential applications in the environmental sciences. One of the more promising applications is that of estimating the biochemical concentrations of key foliar biochemicals in forest canopies. These estimates are based on spectroscopic theory developed in agriculture and could be used to provide the spatial inputs necessary for the modeling of forest ecosystem dynamics and productivity. Several foliar biochemicals are currently under investigation ranging from those with primary absorption features in visible to middle infrared wavelengths (e.g., water, chlorophyll) to those with secondary to tertiary absorption features in this part of the spectrum (e.g., nitrogen, lignin). The foliar chemical of interest in this paper is chlorophyll; this is a photoreceptor and catalyst for the conversion of sunlight into chemical energy and as such plays a vital role in the photochemical synthesis of carbohydrates in plants. The aim of the research reported here was to determine if the chlorophyll concentration of a forest canopy could be correlated with the reflectance spectra recorded by the Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS)

Evidence for Pre-Existing Dust in the Bright Type IIn SN 2010jl

SN 2010jl was an extremely bright, Type IIn SNe which showed a significant IR excess no later than 90 days after explosion. We have obtained Spitzer 3.6 and 4.5 \mum and JHK observations of SN 2010jl \sim90 days post explosion. Little to no reddening in the host galaxy indicated that the circumstellar material lost from the progenitor must lie in a torus inclined out of the plane of the sky. The likely cause of the high mid-IR flux is the reprocessing of the initial flash of the SN by pre-existing circumstellar dust. Using a 3D Monte Carlo Radiative Transfer code, we have estimated that between 0.03-0.35 Msun of dust exists in a circumstellar torus around the SN located 6 \times 10 ^17 cm away from the SN and inclined between 60-80\cdot to the plane of the sky. On day 90, we are only seeing the illumination of approximately 5% of this torus, and expect to see an elevated IR flux from this material up until day \sim 450. It is likely this dust was created in an LBV-like mass loss event of more than 3 Msun, which is large but consistent with other LBV progenitors such as {\eta} Carinae.Comment: Accepted in A

Fast spin exchange between two distant quantum dots

The Heisenberg exchange interaction between neighboring quantum dots allows precise voltage control over spin dynamics, due to the ability to precisely control the overlap of orbital wavefunctions by gate electrodes. This allows the study of fundamental electronic phenomena and finds applications in quantum information processing. Although spin-based quantum circuits based on short-range exchange interactions are possible, the development of scalable, longer-range coupling schemes constitutes a critical challenge within the spin-qubit community. Approaches based on capacitative coupling and cavity-mediated interactions effectively couple spin qubits to the charge degree of freedom, making them susceptible to electrically-induced decoherence. The alternative is to extend the range of the Heisenberg exchange interaction by means of a quantum mediator. Here, we show that a multielectron quantum dot with 50-100 electrons serves as an excellent mediator, preserving speed and coherence of the resulting spin-spin coupling while providing several functionalities that are of practical importance. These include speed (mediated two-qubit rates up to several gigahertz), distance (of order of a micrometer), voltage control, possibility of sweet spot operation (reducing susceptibility to charge noise), and reversal of the interaction sign (useful for dynamical decoupling from noise).Comment: 6 pages including 4 figures, plus 8 supplementary pages including 5 supplementary figure

Formation of the oxygen torus in the inner magnetosphere: Van Allen Probes observations

We study the formation process of an oxygen torus during the 12–15 November 2012 magnetic storm, using the magnetic field and plasma wave data obtained by Van Allen Probes. We estimate the local plasma mass density (ρL) and the local electron number density (neL) from the resonant frequencies of standing Alfvén waves and the upper hybrid resonance band. The average ion mass (M) can be calculated by M ∼ ρL/neL under the assumption of quasi-neutrality of plasma. During the storm recovery phase, both Probe A and Probe B observe the oxygen torus at L = 3.0–4.0 and L = 3.7–4.5, respectively, on the morning side. The oxygen torus has M = 4.5–8 amu and extends around the plasmapause that is identified at L∼3.2–3.9. We find that during the initial phase, M is 4–7 amu throughout the plasma trough and remains at ∼1 amu in the plasmasphere, implying that ionospheric O+ ions are supplied into the inner magnetosphere already in the initial phase of the magnetic storm. Numerical calculation under a decrease of the convection electric field reveals that some of thermal O+ ions distributed throughout the plasma trough are trapped within the expanded plasmasphere, whereas some of them drift around the plasmapause on the dawnside. This creates the oxygen torus spreading near the plasmapause, which is consistent with the Van Allen Probes observations. We conclude that the oxygen torus identified in this study favors the formation scenario of supplying O+ in the inner magnetosphere during the initial phase and subsequent drift during the recovery phase