A New Consultation Service for Community Pharmacies? An Investigation of Pharmacists\u27 Perspective on Implementing a Weight Management Program

Pharmacists are capable and interested in providing a targeted weight management intervention addressing the high rates, and associated risk, of obesity. A series of in-depth phone interviews with Mississippi community pharmacists were used to gain their perspective on a systematic approach for delivering a weight and obesity management service to patients. Using qualitative content analysis, three themes were identified and analyzed. These themes included: pharmacist’s perceptions of patient’s needs, program structural components, and pharmacist’s implementational needs. These findings can be used to expand the role of pharmacists, serve as a model for the development of other consultation services, improve health outcomes for patients with obesity, and save the healthcare system money. This investigation of pharmacists’ perspectives on the development of a weight management service could be used to design a program to minimize implementation barriers and become sustainable for the long term

TU Graz: Course: 707.000 Web Science and Web Technology: Lecture 2: Small World Problem

We will discuss several examples and research efforts related to the small world problem and set the ground for our discussion of network theory and social network analysis. Readings: An Experimental Study of the Small World Problem, J. Travers and S. Milgram Sociometry 32 425-443 (1969) [Protected Access] Optional: The Strength of Weak Ties, M.S. Granovetter The American Journal of Sociology 78 1360--1380 (1973) [Protected Access] Optional: Worldwide Buzz: Planetary-Scale Views on an Instant-Messaging Network, J. Leskovec and E. Horvitz MSR-TR-2006-186. Microsoft Research, June 2007. [Web Link, the most recent and comprehensive study on the subject!] Originally from: http://kmi.tugraz.at/staff/markus/courses/SS2008/707.000_web-science

A New Consultation Service for Community Pharmacies? An Investigation of Pharmacists' Perspective on Implementing a Weight Management Program

Pharmacists are capable and interested in providing a targeted weight management intervention addressing the high rates, and associated risk, of obesity. A series of in-depth phone interviews with Mississippi community pharmacists were used to gain their perspective on a systematic approach for delivering a weight and obesity management service to patients. Using qualitative content analysis, three themes were identified and analyzed. These themes included: pharmacist’s perceptions of patient’s needs, program structural components, and pharmacist’s implementational needs. These findings can be used to expand the role of pharmacists, serve as a model for the development of other consultation services, improve health outcomes for patients with obesity, and save the healthcare system money. This investigation of pharmacists’ perspectives on the development of a weight management service could be used to design a program to minimize implementation barriers and become sustainable for the long term

Effects of a strength and stretching program, combined or Iisolated, on active flexibility in physical education setting.

Purpose. To examine the effects of a two-session-per-week strength and stretching program on sit and reach score among high-school students in the physical education setting. Methods. A sample of 46 high-school students (16 girls and 30 boys) aged 12-14 years from four classes were clustered and randomly assigned to a strength group (n=8), a stretching group (n=12), a strength + stretching group (n=16) or a control group (n=10). During physical education classes, the experimental students performed a 1-minute stretching, a 1-minute strength or a 2-minutes strength + stretching program twice a week a total of 20 weeks. Control students performed the same physical education classes, but they did not follow any strength and/or stretching program. Active flexibility (estimated by the classic sit-and-reach test) was assessed at the beginning and at the end of the intervention program. Results. The Wilcoxon test results showed that students that performed a combined strength and stretching program increased statistically significantly their active flexibility levels from pre-intervention to post-intervention (∆ = 1.8 ± 3.2 cm; p 0.05). Conclusiones. Since in physical education many curricular contents need to be developed each academic year and the subject is also restricted by its limited curriculum time allocation, teachers could improve students’ flexibility combining stretching and strength workout. Therefore, in addition to the improvement of students’ flexibility levels, this intervention program might permit regular development of other physical education curricular contents.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Relative Strength

We heard a lot during the 2000 presidential campaign about the importance of working families. Each party has done its best to demonstrate that it will be the better friend to these households. Ironically, the nation's workforce development policies have not only not paid much attention to families, but they have made it considerably more difficult to implement family-oriented employment programs. Relative Strength attempts to shed some light on why developing such programs is so challenging, how some organizations have managed to do it, and how their experiences can inform the field. We do not expect, nor would we recommend, that the employment field abandon its focus on individuals in favor of families. But it does seem that there is a need and considerable interest in undertaking such efforts if more flexible workforce development policies can be developed

Wet Strength Resins

Wet strength is defined as a paper which has extraordinary resistance to rupture or disintegration when saturated with water. This definition has been interpreted as if a paper sample retains more than 15% of its dry strength when wetted, it can be considered to have wet strength properties. Wet strength resins are chemicals that aid in wet strength, and they have been around since the 1940\u27s. These wet strength resins help to protect paper and paper products from breaking down in the presence of water and high humidity. There are many uses for wet strength resins these days, Some of these are: To protect from outdoor weather, to aid in drying and wiping, to wrap up food products, and to help in things that must be totally submerged in water. The resins compared are urea formaldehyde, melamine formaldehyde, polyamide epichlorohydrin, and polyamine epichiorohydrin. These resins when compared showed that the newer PAE resins had better wet strength properties than the older formaldehydes. Because of this reason and that formaldehyde is a public hazard and is regulated by OSHA, the PAE resins came out better in cost and overall usage

Gaussian Discriminating Strength

We present a quantifier of non-classical correlations for bipartite, multi-mode Gaussian states. It is derived from the Discriminating Strength measure, introduced for finite dimensional systems in A. Farace et al., New. J. Phys. 16, 073010 (2014). As the latter the new measure exploits the Quantum Chernoff Bound to gauge the susceptibility of the composite system with respect to local perturbations induced by unitary gates extracted from a suitable set of allowed transformations (the latter being identified by posing some general requirements). Closed expressions are provided for the case of two-mode Gaussian states obtained by squeezing or by linearly mixing via a beam-splitter a factorized two-mode thermal state. For these density matrices, we study how non-classical correlations are related with the entanglement present in the system and with its total photon number.Comment: 11+6 pages, 4 figure

Biexciton oscillator strength

Our goal is to provide a physical understanding of the elementary coupling between photon and biexciton and to derive the physical characteristics of the biexciton oscillator strength, following the procedure we used for trion. Instead of the more standard two-photon absorption, this work concentrates on molecular biexciton created by photon absorption in an exciton gas. We first determine the appropriate set of coordinates in real and momentum spaces to describe one biexciton as two interacting excitons. We then turn to second quantization and introduce the "Fourier transform in the exciton sense" of the biexciton wave function which is the relevant quantity for oscillator strength. We find that, like for trion, the oscillator strength for the formation of one biexciton out of one photon plus a \emph{single} exciton is extremely small: it is one biexciton volume divided by one sample volume smaller than the exciton oscillator strength. However, due to their quantum nature, trion and biexciton have absorption lines which behave quite differently. Electrons and trions are fermionic particles impossible to pile up all at the same energy. This would make the weak trion line spread with electron density, the peak structure only coming from singular many-body effects. By contrast, the bosonic nature of exciton and biexciton makes the biexciton peak mainly rise with exciton density, this rise being simply linear if we forget many-body effects between the photocreated exciton and the excitons present in the sample