The degree of polarization (DOP) is an important tool in many optical measurement and imaging applications. We address the problem of its estimation in images that are perturbed with both speckle and photon noise, by determining the Cramer-Rao lower bounds (CRLBs) when the illuminated materials are purely depolarizing. We demonstrate that the CRLBs are simply the sum of the CRLBs due to speckle...

The ability to quantify uncertainty in information extracted from spectroscopic measurements is important in numerous fields. The traditional approach of repetitive measurements may be impractical or impossible in some measurements scenarios, while chi-squared analysis does not provide insight into the sources of uncertainty. As such, a need exists for analytical expressions for estimating unce...

Home care aides are on the frontlines providing to vulnerable individuals in their homes during COVID-19 pandemic yet often excluded from policies protect health workers. The goal of this study was examine experiences agency-employed home and identify ways mitigate concerns. We used an innovative journaling approach with thirty-seven as well in-depth interviews fifteen leadership representative...

Introduction R egistered nurses (RNs) are the single largest group of health care professionals in the United States. Current and projected nursing shortages reflect the fact that fewer people are entering the profession. Shortages are difficult to estimate and project. In the past, shortages have tended to be resolved as wages rose in response to increased need for RNs. In addition, there is a...

The inside story of how Bill and Hillary Clinton fashioned the health-care plan. Their own aides often battled over the Clintons' approach.

We describe several results characterizing the Hubble Space Telescope from measured point spread functions by using phase-retrieval algorithms. The Cramer-Rao lower bounds show that point spread functions taken well out of focus result in smaller errors when aberrations are estimated and that, for those images, photon noise is not a limiting factor. Reconstruction experiments with both simulate...

BACKGROUND Sick leave due to neck, shoulder and back disorders (NSBD) is higher among health-care workers, especially nursing aides/assistant nurses, compared with employees in other occupations. More information is needed about predictors of sick leave among health care workers. The aim of the study was to assess whether self-reported factors related to health, work and leisure time could pred...

Aims To provide insight into the everyday realities facing care aides working in long-term residential (LTRC), and how they perceive their role society. Design A qualitative ethnographic case study. Methods Data were collected over. 10 months of fieldwork at one LTRC setting [September 2015 to June 2016] Western Canada; semi-structured interviews (70 h) with 31 aides; naturalistic observation (...

BACKGROUND The prevalence of smoking in nursing personnel remains high. The aim of this study was to identify work factors that predict smoking cessation among nurses' aides. METHODS Of 2720 randomly selected, Norwegian nurses' aides, who were smoking at least one cigarette per day when they completed a questionnaire in 1999, 2275 (83.6 %) completed a second questionnaire 15 months later. A w...