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AlN thin films have been sputtered on top of the on-axis and 4° off-axis 3C-SiC (111)/Si (111) substrates at various substrate temperatures. The grazing angle incident XRD scans show that all films have major peak at (002) plane and minor peaks at (101) and (102) planes. The AlN films are further characterized in terms of the FWHM of the rocking curve, surface morphology and deposition rate. We observed that the increasing substrate temperature improve the crystal quality of the AlN (002) films, but it has minimal impact on the surface roughness and deposition rate. We also extracted the values for the bi-axial stress, the grain size and the piezoelectric coefficient. Overall, the off-axis 3C-SiC/Si (111) substrates provide a better template for the sputtering of AlN (002) films in term of better crystal quality, lower surface roughness and lower bi-axial stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Large international humanitarian actors support and directly deliver health services for millions of people in crises annually, and wield considerable power to decide which health services to provide, how and to whom, across a vast spectrum of health areas. Despite decades of reform aiming to improve accountability in the sector, public health practice among humanitarian actors is not heavily scrutinized in either the countries where they are headquartered or those where they provide healthcare. We surveyed current healthcare governance practice among large international humanitarian actors to better understand what organisations are doing to ensure oversight and accountability for health services in humanitarian responses. Methods The term ‘healthcare governance’ was defined and categorised into seven domains: implementation of health management information systems (HMIS) and use of resulting data; professional development of health sector staff; audits of health service performance; management of clinical incidents; evidence-based practice; pharmaceutical supply; and beneficiary engagement. Senior health professionals at 32 leading international actors providing humanitarian health services were contacted between July and August 2019 to complete a 109-question online survey about their organisation’s practice in these domains. Results Respondents from 13 organisations completed the questionnaire. Healthcare governance practices were undertaken to varying degrees by all organisations but were often driven by donor requirements and external factors rather than improvement of programme performance. Common strengths were the inclusion of governance in organisational policies, high availability of technical guidelines, and close monitoring of pharmaceutical services. Recurring weaknesses were poor beneficiary engagement, inconsistent use of health information for decision making, unsystematic implementation of healthcare audits, inconsistent management of clinical incidents, and lack of training and professional development opportunities. Conclusions To our knowledge, this is the first study to describe healthcare governance practice among humanitarian actors. Leading international humanitarian healthcare providers are already implementing many healthcare governance activities; however, these are inconsistently applied and generally not reflective of systematic policies or earmarked organisational resources. There is a need for sector-wide consensus on how the humanitarian sector defines healthcare governance, the domains that constitute it, which actors in the humanitarian system are implicated, and how malpractice should be systematically addressed.

BackgroundWhile frontline nurses employ coping alternatives to help deal with occupational stress resulting from unprecedented challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, their access to necessary resources is unclear.ObjectiveThis study aims to explore nurses' mental health in Alabama hospitals during the COVID-19 outbreak and investigate the impact of organizational and community support on nurse stressor levels, physio-psychosocial responses, and coping strategies employed.MethodsA cross-sectional survey was developed to bridge our understanding of stress, support, and coping mechanisms and distributed to nurses working with COVID-19-infected patients in hospital settings in Alabama. A total of 232 frontline nurses responded to 79 items in four domains (stressors, physio-psychosocial symptoms, coping, and support) between May 6, 2020, and June 30, 2020. A two-way ANOVA, regression analysis, and mediation of effects were used to analyze the data.ResultsThis study found that both social support and use of coping strategies contributed to the reduction of physio-psychosocial symptoms. Differences were found in how older frontline nurses perceived the efficacy of social support and certain coping strategies. This study provides further evidence of the importance of organizational support in addressing the harmful physio-psychosocial symptoms experienced by nurses.

The oomycete pathogen Phytophthora infestans causes potato late blight, and as a potato and tomato specialist pathogen, is seemingly poorly adapted to infect plants outside the Solanaceae. Here, we report the unexpected finding that P. infestans can infect Arabidopsis thaliana when another oomycete pathogen, Albugo laibachii, has colonized the host plant. The behaviour and speed of P. infestans infection in Arabidopsis pre-infected with A. laibachii resemble P. infestans infection of susceptible potato plants. Transcriptional profiling of P. infestans genes during infection revealed a significant overlap in the sets of secreted-protein genes that are induced in P. infestans upon colonization of potato and susceptible Arabidopsis, suggesting major similarities in P. infestans gene expression dynamics on the two plant species. Furthermore, we found haustoria of A. laibachii and P. infestans within the same Arabidopsis cells. This Arabidopsis- A. laibachii-P. infestans tripartite interaction opens up various possibilities to dissect the molecular mechanisms of P. infestans infection and the processes occurring in co-infected Arabidopsis cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three-dimensional time history analysis has become a demand for the majority of updated building codes. A vast literature has addressed the selecting and scaling of horizontal component of earthquake ground motion. Meanwhile, the scaling of vertical component has been less of a concern. This paper investigates the suggestion of using the same scaling factor of horizontal component of ground motion to scale its vertical counterpart. A data set consists of 6409 mainshock records with vertical and orientation independent geometric rotated (GMRotD50) response spectra with 5% damping is used. Even though ASCE7-16 among other international codes recommends to use the same scaling factor for horizontal component and its vertical counterpart, this paper shows that scaling factor of vertical component trends an extreme variation from its horizontal counterpart for various soil classes, different magnitudes and over a wide range of Joyner-Boore distances. Results illustrate that the ratio of vertical to horizontal scaling factors has a strong negative relationship with the ratio of vertical to horizontal peak ground acceleration. Earthquake magnitude has no significant role on the ratio of vertical to horizontal scaling factors. A gradual increase is observed in the studied ratio over a wide range of Joyner-Boore distances. The paper ends up with simplified equations to calculate the scaling factor of vertical component in regards with the scaling factor of its GMRotD50 horizontal counterpart based on the (V/H)PGA ratio of the recorded components. Robust statistics manifest the goodness of the developed equations.

In this paper, a new recursive structure based on the convolution model of discrete cosine transform (DCT) for designing of a finite impulse response (FIR) digital filter is proposed. In our derivation, we start with the convolution model of DCT-II to use its Z-transform for the proposed filter structure perspective. Moreover, using the same algorithm, a filter base implementation of the inverse DCT (IDCT) for image reconstruction is developed. The computational time experiments of the proposed DCT/IDCT filter(s) demonstrate that the proposed filters achieve faster elapsed CPU time compared to the direct recursive structures and recursive algorithms for the DCT/IDCT with Arbitrary Length. Experimental results on clinical ultrasound images and comparisons with classical Wiener filter, non-local mean (NLM) filter and total variation (TV) algorithms are used to validate the improvements of the proposed approaches in both noise reduction and reconstruction performance for ultrasound images.

Group Theory is the mathematical application of symmetry to an object to obtain knowledge of its physical properties. The symmetry of a molecule provides us with the various information, such as - orbitals energy levels, orbitals symmetries, type of transitions than can occur between energy levels, even bond order, all that without rigorous calculations. The fact that so many important physical aspects can be derived from symmetry is a very profound statement and this is what makes group theory so powerful. In group theory, a finite group is a mathematical group with a finite number of elements. A group is a set of elements together with an operation which associates, to each ordered pair of elements, an element of the set. In the case of a finite group, the set is finite. The Fischer groups Fi22, Fi23 and Fi24‘ are introduced by Bernd Fischer and there are 25 maximal subgroups of Fi24‘. It is an open problem to find the generators of maximal subgroups of Fi24‘. In this paper we provide the generators of 10 maximal subgroups of Fi24‘.

Group theory, the ultimate theory for symmetry, is a powerful tool that has a direct impact on research in robotics, computer vision, computer graphics and medical image analysis. Symmetry is very important in chemistry research and group theory is the tool that is used to determine symmetry. Usually, it is not only the symmetry of molecule but also the symmetries of some local atoms, molecular orbitals, rotations and vibrations of bonds, etc. that are important. Harada-Norton group is an example of a sporadic simple group. There are 14 maximal subgroups of Harada-Norton group. Generators (also known as words) of 11 maximal subgroups are already known. The aim of this note is to give generators of the remaining 3 maximal subgroups, which is an open problem mentioned on A World-wide-web Atlas of Group Representations (http://brauer.maths.qmul.ac.uk/Atlas) [1]. In this report we compute the generators of A6 × A6.D8, 23+2+6.(3 × L3(2)) and 34 : 2.(A4 × A4).4. Moreover we also compute the generators for the Maximal subgroups of some linear groups.

Background: Pediatric patients can provide feedback about their healthcare experiences. However, most do not and are instead represented by their parents. A widely accepted notion is that pediatric patients lack the capacity, vocabulary, and preferences needed to answer meaningful questions related to their healthcare. However, because the pediatric patients’ experience can differ from the perspective of their parents, the use of proxy reporting ultimately reduces the hospital’s ability to address the concerns of pediatric patients directly. Objectives: The overall goals of this survey study were (1) to identify the key domains whereby pediatric patient and parent preferences differ and (2) to investigate the extent to which pediatric patients perceive their healthcare experiences differently from their parents. Methods: This study employed an adult version, an older child version, and a younger child version of a 47-question survey instrument divided into seven key domains: experience with the admission process, interactions with nurses, interactions with doctors, care in the hospital, hospital environment, experience before discharge, and overall score. The instrument was developed to survey children (ages 4–17) recently discharged from the hospital and their parents or guardian. Results: The findings suggest pediatric patients reported interest in engaging with their doctors about their healthcare. However, pediatric patients younger than 13 years old reported having fewer pediatric doctors ask them about their healthcare, with the youngest group reporting the worst experiences. Moreover, differences in perceptions were identified between pediatric patients and their parents regarding hospital quality and performance. Pediatric patients reported less pain and higher satisfaction regarding the cleanliness of the room and their experience in the admission process than their parents. Patient and parent responses were significantly different within each of the seven domains. Conclusion: The results speak to the larger discussion of whether current hospital settings can engage with small children at the level necessary to capture meaningful feedback about their healthcare experience. By providing additional evidence to the contrary, this survey study brings further context to misconceptions regarding pediatric patients’ involvement as crucial actors in the patient-and-family-centered care model.

The physicochemical characteristics of the crude oil and its flow behaviour is an essential and is a significant part of the flow assurance study. One of the critical issues in flow assurance management is the restrictions to the fluid flow ability caused by the formation of deposits in well tubing and crude oil pipeline systems. In this paper, investigation results on the behaviour of waxy crudes in Malaysian oil basins are presented. Wax Appearance Temperature (WAT), Total Acid Number (TAN), pour point, wax content, water by distillation, density, API gravity, kinematic viscosity, SARA content, heavy metals, carbon number distribution and hydrocarbons recovery of three waxy crude oil samples from different field locations named as PN01, PT03 and SP01 were carried out. Results show that crude oils SP01, PN01 and PT03 have wax content between 20.50 to 37.10% and WAT in the range of 43.40 to 69.90oC. The presence of heavy metals in the analysed crude oils were found to be relatively low in concentration. The crude oils PT03 and PN01 have higher mole percent of carbon distribution between C20 and C40 compared to crude oil SP01. Crude oil PT03 and PN01 also recorded higher content of wax which results in higher WAT compared to crude oil SP01. By studying the crude oil characteristics from different oilfield locations, better understanding on the characteristics of Malaysian waxy crude oils is achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]