Ethnography of technological competence in clinical midwifery practice

Background. Concept analysis has identified three domains in the competent use of birth technology â?? interpersonal skills, professional knowledge and clinical proficiency â?? and tentative criteria for birth technology competence. Aim. Fieldwork was undertaken to observe, confirm and explore pre-defined attributes of birth technology competence. Method. The Swartz-Barcott and Kim (2000) hybrid model of concept development was expanded to include an ethnographic observation of theory in action. Findings. Key attributes of birth technology competence found in â??real-worldâ?? midwifery practice were skills in using the machines, decision-making and traditional midwifery skills. Conclusions. The confusion surrounding the use of technology in midwifery practice needs to be addressed by both professionals and educationalists. Midwives should be taught to value traditional midwifery skills alongside those of machine skills. The identification of a model of appropriate technology use is needed in midwifery.

Turbulent diffusion and mixing in interstellar dark clouds with adsorption onto grains

This paper reports the results of models of dark cloud chemistry incorporating a depth dependent density distribution with diffusive mixing and adsorption onto grains. The model is based on the approach taken by Xie et al. (1995), with the addition of grain accretion effects. Without diffusion, the central regions of the cloud freeze out in less than 10(7) years. Freeze-out time is dependent on density, so the diffuse outer region of the cloud remains abundant in gas for about an order of magnitude longer. We find that fairly small amounts of diffusive mixing can delay freeze-out at the centre of the model cloud for a time up to an order of magnitude greater than without diffusion, due to material diffusing inward from the edges of the cloud. The gas-phase lifetime of the cloud core can thus be increased by up to an order of magnitude or more by this process. We have run three different grain models with various diffusion coefficients to investigate the effects of changing the sticking parameters.

Technological regimes, Schumpeterian patterns of innovation and firm-level productivity growth

The article investigates the relationships between technological regimes and firm-level productivity performance, and it explores how such a relationship differs in different Schumpeterian patterns of innovation. The analysis makes use of a rich dataset containing data on innovation and other economic characteristics of a large representative sample of Norwegian firms in manufacturing and service industries for the period 1998–2004. First, we decompose TFP growth into technical progress and efficiency changes by means of data envelopment analysis. We then estimate an empirical model that relates these two productivity components to the characteristics of technological regimes and a set of other firm-specific factors. The results indicate that: (i) TFP growth has mainly been achieved through technical progress, while technical efficiency has on average decreased; (ii) the characteristics of technological regimes are important determinants of firm-level productivity growth, but their impacts on technical progress are different from the effects on efficiency change; (iii) the estimated model works differently in the two Schumpeterian regimes. Technical progress has been more dynamic in Schumpeter Mark II industries, while efficiency change has been more important in Schumpeter Mark I markets.

Localized excitations of charged dust grains in dusty plasma lattices

The nonlinear aspects of charged dust grain motion in a one-dimensional dusty plasma (DP) monolayer are discussed. Both horizontal (longitudinal, acoustic mode) and vertical (transverse, optic mode) displacements are considered, and various types of localized excitations are reviewed, in a continuum approximation. Dust crystals are shown to support nonlinear kink-shaped supersonic longitudinal solitary excitations, as well as modulated envelope (either longitudinal or transverse) localized modes. The possibility for Discrete Breather (DB-) type excitations (Intrinsic Localized Modes, ILMs) to occur is investigated, from first principles. These highly localized excitations owe their existence to lattice discreteness, in combination with the interaction and/or
substrate (sheath) potential nonlinearity. This possibility may open new directions in DP- related research. The relation to previous results on atomic chains as well as to experimental results on strongly-coupled dust layers in gas discharge plasmas is discussed.