First, Do Less Harm: Confronting the Inconvenient Problems of Patient Safety

[Excerpt] This book is an exploration of why patient safety is advancing at what seems to be an almost glacial pace, despite the often vast and determined efforts of health care workers and managers. A collection of essays from prominent researchers, scholars, and even patients, this book aims to identify some of the gaps in the patient safety movement, the disconnected dots that do not coalesce despite decades of hard work and billions of dollars. It also identifies concerns that have not been integrated into the patient safety discourse or agenda of more established groups

Transform of Riccati equation of constant coefficients through fractional procedure

We use a particular fractional generalization of the ordinary differential equations that we apply to the Riccati equation of constant coefficients. By this means the latter is transformed into a modified Riccati equation with the free term expressed as a power of the independent variable which is of the same order as the order of the applied fractional derivative. We provide the solutions of the modified equation and employ the results for the case of the cosmological Riccati equation of FRW barotropic cosmologies that has been recently introduced by FaraoniComment: 7 pages, 2 figure

BlogForever: D3.1 Preservation Strategy Report

This report describes preservation planning approaches and strategies recommended by the BlogForever project as a core component of a weblog repository design. More specifically, we start by discussing why we would want to preserve weblogs in the first place and what it is exactly that we are trying to preserve. We further present a review of past and present work and highlight why current practices in web archiving do not address the needs of weblog preservation adequately. We make three distinctive contributions in this volume: a) we propose transferable practical workflows for applying a combination of established metadata and repository standards in developing a weblog repository, b) we provide an automated approach to identifying significant properties of weblog content that uses the notion of communities and how this affects previous strategies, c) we propose a sustainability plan that draws upon community knowledge through innovative repository design

Not fitting in and getting out : psychological type and congregational satisfaction among Anglican churchgoers in England

Listening to the motivations reported by individuals for ceasing church attendance and becoming church leavers, Francis and Richter identified high on the list the sense of "not fitting in". Drawing on psychological type theory, several recent studies have documented the way in which some psychological types are over-represented in church congregations and other psychological types are under-represented. Bringing these two observations together, the present study tested the hypothesis that church congregations have created type-alike communities within which individuals displaying the opposite type preferences are more likely to feel marginalised and to display lower levels of satisfaction with the congregations they attend. Data were provided by 1867 churchgoers who completed a measure of psychological type, together with measures of frequency of attendance and congregational satisfaction. These data confirmed that congregations were weighted towards preferences for introversion, sensing, feeling and judging, and that individuals displaying the opposite preferences (especially intuition, thinking and perceiving) recorded lower levels of congregational satisfaction. The implications of these findings are discussed for promoting congregational retention by enhancing awareness of psychological type preferences among those who attend

'Little Story Books' and 'Small Pamphlets' in Edinburgh, 1680-1760:the Making of the Scottish Chapbook

This article considers the development of the ‘chapbook’ in Scotland between 1680 and 1760. Chapbook is here defined as a publication using a single sheet of paper, printed on both sides, and folded into octavo size or smaller. The discussion focuses on production in Edinburgh which at this time was the centre of the Scottish book trade. While very few works were produced in these small formats in the city before the last quarter of the seventeenth century, the three generations thereafter witnessed their emergence as an important part of the market. This chapbook literature included ‘penny godlies’ and ‘story books’, poems and songs, which had long been staples of the London trade. Indeed, much output north of the border comprised titles pirated from the south. It is suggested, however, that an independent repertoire of distinctively Scottish material also began to flourish during this period which paved the way for the heyday of the nation's chapbook in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Edinburgh trade is shown to be much more extensive than has been appreciated hitherto. Discovery of the testament of Robert Drummond, the Edinburgh printer who died in 1752, reveals that he produced many such works that are no longer extant. It demonstrates not only that a number of classic English chapbooks were being reprinted in Scotland much earlier than otherwise known, but also that an indigenous Scottish output was well established before the reign of George III

Large-Mass Ultra-Low Noise Germanium Detectors: Performance and Applications in Neutrino and Astroparticle Physics

A new type of radiation detector, a p-type modified electrode germanium diode, is presented. The prototype displays, for the first time, a combination of features (mass, energy threshold and background expectation) required for a measurement of coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering in a nuclear reactor experiment. The device hybridizes the mass and energy resolution of a conventional HPGe coaxial gamma spectrometer with the low electronic noise and threshold of a small x-ray semiconductor detector, also displaying an intrinsic ability to distinguish multiple from single-site particle interactions. The present performance of the prototype and possible further improvements are discussed, as well as other applications for this new type of device in neutrino and astroparticle physics (double-beta decay, neutrino magnetic moment and WIMP searches).Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev.

Twinning superlattices in indium phosphide nanowires

Here, we show that we control the crystal structure of indium phosphide (InP) nanowires by impurity dopants. We have found that zinc decreases the activation barrier for 2D nucleation growth of zinc-blende InP and therefore promotes the InP nanowires to crystallise in the zinc blende, instead of the commonly found wurtzite crystal structure. More importantly, we demonstrate that we can, by controlling the crystal structure, induce twinning superlattices with long-range order in InP nanowires. We can tune the spacing of the superlattices by the wire diameter and the zinc concentration and present a model based on the cross-sectional shape of the zinc-blende InP nanowires to quantitatively explain the formation of the periodic twinning.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figure

Redox linked flavin sites in extracellular decaheme proteins involved in microbe-mineral electron transfer

Extracellular microbe-mineral electron transfer is a major driving force for the oxidation of organic carbon in many subsurface environments. Extracellular multi-heme cytochromes of the Shewenella genus play a major role in this process but the mechanism of electron exchange at the interface between cytochrome and acceptor is widely debated. The 1.8 Å x-ray crystal structure of the decaheme MtrC revealed a highly conserved CX8C disulfide that, when substituted for AX8A, severely compromised the ability of S. oneidensis to grow under aerobic conditions. Reductive cleavage of the disulfide in the presence of flavin mononucleotide (FMN) resulted in the reversible formation of a stable flavocytochrome. Similar results were also observed with other decaheme cytochromes, OmcA, MtrF and UndA. The data suggest that these decaheme cytochromes can transition between highly reactive flavocytochromes or less reactive cytochromes, and that this transition is controlled by a redox active disulfide that responds to the presence of oxygen

J D Bernal: philosophy, politics and the science of science

This paper is an examination of the philosophical and political legacy of John Desmond Bernal. It addresses the evidence of an emerging consensus on Bernal based on the recent biography of Bernal by Andrew Brown and the reviews it has received. It takes issue with this view of Bernal, which tends to be admiring of his scientific contribution, bemused by his sexuality, condescending to his philosophy and hostile to his politics. This article is a critical defence of his philosophical and political position