The laws of thermodynamics put limits to the efficiencies of thermal machines. Analogues of these laws are now established for quantum engines weakly and passively coupled to the environment ...providing a framework to find improvements to their performance. Systems whose interaction with the environment is actively controlled do not fall in that framework. Here we consider systems actively and locally coupled to the environment, evolving with a so-called boundary-driven Lindblad equation. Starting from a unitary description of the system plus the environment we simultaneously obtain the Lindblad equation and the appropriate expressions for heat, work and entropy-production of the system extending the framework for the analysis of new, and some already proposed, quantum heat engines. We illustrate our findings in spin 1/2 chains and explain why an XX chain coupled in this way to a single heat bath relaxes to thermodynamic-equilibrium while and XY chain does not. Additionally, we show that an XX chain coupled to a left and a right heat baths behaves as a quantum engine, a heater or refrigerator depending on the parameters, with efficiencies bounded by Carnot efficiencies.
To develop an evidence-based practice project to evaluate the effect of delaying a newborn's first bath on exclusive breastfeeding rates at discharge.
A pre- and post-implementation evaluation of the ...effect of delaying the first bath on exclusive breastfeeding rates at discharge.
A postpartum unit in a southern California community hospital.
Breastfeeding dyads of women and newborns (>37 weeks gestational age) who were admitted to the postpartum unit.
Postpartum nurses involved in the unit practice council, in collaboration with unit leadership, changed the newborn's first bath practice through development of a bathing guideline, nurse education, and mother education. Measurements of the practice change included time of the first bath and exclusive breastfeeding rates at discharge.
We observed an increased time for the newborn's first bath from 6.88 hours to 13.71 hours (p ≤ .001). The number of times women chose not to bathe their newborns while in the hospital also increased by approximately seven times, from 0.16% to 1.1%. The rate of exclusive breastfeeding at discharge did not change significantly after implementation (p ≥ .05), regardless of when the first bath was given.
Delaying a newborn's first bath was not associated with an increase in exclusive breastfeeding rates. More research is needed to determine the effect of bath times.
Insomnia is a major public health problem. Due to the side effects of pharmacological therapy, people are seeking to choose complementary and alternative therapies for insomnia disorder. Traditional ...Chinese herbal bath therapy is an important complementary therapy which combines advantages of Chinese herbs and bathing therapy. This protocol describes the methodology of a systematic review assessing the effectiveness and safety of traditional Chinese herbal bath therapy for insomnia.
Reporting of this review will be adherent to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement. We will electronically search the following seven databases from inception to January 23, 2020: PubMed, Cochrane database (CENTRAL), EMBASE, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM), VIP Database, and Wanfang Database. Parallel randomized controlled trials evaluating the effectiveness and safety of traditional Chinese herbal bath therapy for insomnia will be included. Study selection, data extraction and assessment of risk of bias will be performed independently by two researchers. The sleep quality will be assessed as the primary outcome. Global symptom improvement, anxiety and depression, and adverse events will be evaluated as secondary outcomes. The Cochrane's risk of bias tool will be utilized for assessing the methodological quality of included studies. Revman software (v.5.3) will be used for data synthesis and statistical analysis. Data will be synthesized by either fixed-effects or random-effects model according to a heterogeneity test. If it is not appropriate for a meta-analysis, a descriptive analysis will be conducted. GRADE system will be used to assess the quality of evidence.
CRD42020168507.
The latest guidelines of the American Academy of Dermatology suggest bathing as an advantageous nonpharmacologic intervention for regular skin care of patients with atopic dermatitis. Regular bathing ...with water can hydrate the skin, remove scale, crust, irritants, and allergens, enhance penetration of topical agents, and potentially reduce bacterial colonization. However, it is still unclear whether the addition of oils, emollients, and other additives to bath water may produce further benefits for the management of atopic dermatitis. This article will review current pearls and pitfalls of adding salts and nonirritating, nonsensitizing substances to water baths for the long-term maintenance treatment of atopic dermatitis in children.
In 2008 a fatal case of primary amoebic meningoencephalitis, due to the amoeboflagellate Naegleria fowleri, occurred in Guadeloupe, French West Indies, after a child swam in a bath fed with ...geothermal water. In order to improve the knowledge on free-living amoebae in this tropical part of France, we investigated on a monthly basis, the presence of Naegleria spp. in the recreational baths, and stream waters which feed them. A total of 73 water samples, 48 sediments and 54 swabs samples were collected from 6 sampling points between June 2011 and July 2012. The water samples were filtered and the filters transferred to non-nutrient agar plates seeded with a heat-killed suspension of Escherichia coli while sediment and swab samples were placed directly on these plates. The plates were incubated at 44°C for the selective isolation of thermophilic Naegleria. To identify the Naegleria isolates the internal transcribed spacers, including the 5.8S rDNA, were amplified by polymerase chain reaction and the sequence of the PCR products was determined. Thermophilic amoebae were present at nearly all collection sites. The pathogenic N. fowleri was the most frequently encountered thermophilic species followed by N. lovaniensis. The concentration of N. fowleri was rather low in most water samples, ranging from 0 to 22 per liter. Sequencing revealed that all N. fowleri isolates belonged to a common Euro-American genotype, the same as detected in the human case in Guadeloupe. These investigations need to be continued in order to counsel the health authorities about prevention measures, because these recreational thermal baths are used daily by local people and tourists.
Bed and shower hygiene measures are performed by the nursing staff in patients admitted with Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS). Few studies have evaluated the difference in energy consumption between the ...two types of bath.
To analyse and compare the variation in Heart Rate (HR), Systolic Blood Pressure (SBP) and rate-pressure-product (RPP) between bed and shower bath in ACS patients.
Quantitative, analytical, prospective study.
This study was conducted in a Coronary Intensive Care Unit, including patients over 18 years admitted for ACS in Killip classes I and II.
The level of myocardial oxygen consumption was assessed by calculating the RPP before, immediately after and 5 minutes after the first bed bath and the first shower bath. Differences in mean RPP before, during and 5 minutes after each body hygiene were compared using the paired-samples Student’s t-test.
Seventy patients were included. No important clinical variation was found in HR, SBP and RPP during bed bath and during shower bath. The comparison of HR, SBP and RPP between bed bath and shower showed no statistically significant difference.
Bed bath and shower bath did not significantly increase energy expenditure in patients with acute coronary syndrome and there was no difference in energy expenditure between the two types of body hygiene.
We consider the direct s-channel gravitational production of dark matter during the reheating process. Independent of the identity of the dark matter candidate or its nongravitational interactions, ...the gravitational process is always present and provides a minimal production mechanism. During reheating, a thermal bath is quickly generated with a maximum temperature Tmax , and the temperature decreases as the inflaton continues to decay until the energy densities of radiation and inflaton oscillations are equal, at TRH. During these oscillations, s -channel gravitational production of dark matter occurs. We show that the abundance of dark matter (fermionic or scalar) depends primarily on the combination T4max/TRHM3P. We find that a sufficient density of dark matter can be produced over a wide range of dark matter masses: from 1 GeV to 1 ZeV.
We compare dark matter production from the thermal bath in the early universe with its direct production through the decay of the inflaton. We show that even if dark matter does not possess a direct ...coupling with the inflaton, Standard Model loop processes may be sufficient to generate the correct relic abundance.
Open systems of coupled qubits are ubiquitous in quantum physics. Finding a suitable master equation to describe their dynamics is therefore a crucial task that must be addressed with utmost ...attention. In the recent past, many efforts have been made toward the possibility of employing local master equations, which compute the interaction with the environment neglecting the direct coupling between the qubits, and for this reason may be easier to solve. Here, we provide a detailed derivation of the Markovian master equation for two coupled qubits interacting with common and separate baths, considering pure dephasing as well as dissipation. Then, we explore the differences between the local and global master equation, showing that they intrinsically depend on the way we apply the secular approximation. Our results prove that the global approach with partial secular approximation always provides the most accurate choice for the master equation when Born-Markov approximations hold, even for small inter-system coupling constants. Using different master equations we compute the stationary heat current between two separate baths, the entanglement dynamics generated by a common bath, and the emergence of spontaneous synchronization, showing the importance of the accurate choice of approach.
Diverse models of engines energised by quantum-coherent, hence non-thermal, baths allow the engine efficiency to transgress the standard thermodynamic Carnot bound. These transgressions call for an ...elucidation of the underlying mechanisms. Here we show that non-thermal baths may impart not only heat, but also mechanical work to a machine. The Carnot bound is inapplicable to such a hybrid machine. Intriguingly, it may exhibit dual action, concurrently as engine and refrigerator, with up to 100% efficiency. We conclude that even though a machine powered by a quantum bath may exhibit an unconventional performance, it still abides by the traditional principles of thermodynamics.
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