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The impact of secondary fluorescence on the material compositions measured by X-ray analysis for layered semiconductor thin films is assessed using simulations performed by the DTSA-II and CalcZAF software tools. Three technologically important examples are investigated: AlxGa1−xN layers on either GaN or AlN substrates, InxAl1−xN on GaN, and Si-doped (SnxGa1−x)2O3 on Si. Trends in the differences caused by secondary fluorescence are explained in terms of the propensity of different elements to reabsorb either characteristic or bremsstrahlung X-rays and then to re-emit the characteristic X-rays used to determine composition of the layer under investigation. Under typical beam conditions (7–12 keV), the quantification of dopants/trace elements is found to be susceptible to secondary fluorescence and care must be taken to prevent erroneous results. The overall impact on major constituents is shown to be very small with a change of approximately 0.07 molar cation percent for Al0.3Ga0.7N/AlN layers and a maximum change of 0.08 at% in the Si content of (SnxGa1−x)2O3/Si layers. This provides confidence that previously reported wavelength-dispersive X-ray compositions are not compromised by secondary fluorescence.
To describe 12-month outcomes for beneficiaries in the 100% Medicare Fee-for-Service (FFS) population with primary and recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI).
Design:
A retrospective, descriptive, cohort study of CDI claims from the 100% Medicare FFS population, with a first CDI diagnosis between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2016.
Setting:
Any US-based provider that submitted inpatient or outpatient CDI diagnosis claims to Medicare FFS.
Patients:
The study included patients aged ≥65 years with continuous enrollment in Medicare Parts A, B, and D during 12 months before and 12 months after the index period.
Methods:
The number of CDI and recurrent (rCDI) episodes, healthcare resource utilization, treatments, complications, and procedures were calculated for pre-index and follow-up periods. The data were stratified by number of rCDI episodes (ie, no rCDI, 1 rCDI, 2 rCDI, and ≥3 rCDI).
Results:
Of 268,762 patients with an index CDI, 34.7% had at least 1 recurrence. Of those who had 1 recurrence, 59.1% had a second recurrence and of those who had 2 recurrences, 58.4% had ≥3 recurrences. Incident psychiatric conditions occurred in 11.3%–18.2% of each rCDI cohort; 6.0% of patients with rCDI underwent subtotal colectomy, and 1.1% of patients underwent diverting loop ileostomy. After each CDI episode, ∼1 in 5 patients had a documented sepsis event. Over the 12-month follow-up, 30% of patients experienced sepsis, and sepsis occurred in 27.0% of the cohort with no rCDI, compared to 35.5% of patients in the rCDI cohorts.
Conclusions:
Elderly patients with CDI and rCDI experienced a significant clinical burden and complications.
What does Paul have to do with religion? The very question seems strange. Should it not be, what does Paul not have to do with religion? Is he not the most important of all the early followers of Jesus of Nazareth? Is he not considered the architect of the religion called Christianity?
Religion is very good at deciding who is in and who is out. In fact, it might be said of the religious form of life that it often legitimizes with claims of divine approval the human tendency to categorize as ‘others’ those who do not share one’s own beliefs and practices. A catalogue of examples is unnecessary; it would include intra-religious splinters within faith traditions and inter-religious hostility, even murderous conflict. It is small wonder that religious fervour is not always considered a virtue in others.
Some conversations end, but are not finished. We may run out of time or energy. We may give up and walk away. We may realize that the issues are more complex, the feelings more sensitive, than can be helped by continuing the talking right now.
When a reputation has suffered the accretions of twenty centuries, it is difficult to know how to chop off the distorting bits. The hope that one could get to the ‘real’ Paul underneath the layers must inevitably be abandoned. For one thing, the evidence available from his own hand is limited, and for another, he will always have to be located somehow in relation to our time and place. We understand him, not as his own spirit or God’s spirit understands him (as he notes in 1 Corinthians 2), but in response to the assumptions and concerns of our day.
We undoubtably live in a digitally infused world. From government administrative processes to financial transactions and social media posts, digital technologies automatically collect, collate, combine and circulate digital traces of our actions and thoughts, which are in turn used to construct digital personas of us. More significantly, government decisions are increasingly automated with real world effect; companies subvert human workers to automated processes; while social media algorithms prioritise outrage and ‘fake news’ with destabilizing and devastating effects for public trust in social institutions. Accordingly, what it means to be a person, a citizen, and a consumer, and what constitutes society and the economy in the 21st century is profoundly different to that in the 20th century.
What does it mean to be ‘in Christ’ for social and ethical relationships? This ‘new life’ is not so much individual conversion into being a different person as it is belonging to a ‘new creation’, being granted status as members of something that did not previously exist. We need to consider the ways in which Paul describes this community, asking what holds it together. In Chapter 6 we will consider how its members should behave towards each other. Chapter 7 asks about marks of membership: what practices identify who belongs? Questions about the relationship between insiders and outsiders come in Chapter 8.
Those ‘in Christ’ should see themselves not as separate independent individuals, but as members of a body, the ‘body of Christ’. They are not merely collections of people put together for specific and limited purposes; they are also family members. What binds them, though, is not blood or genes. They belong together because they experience the love of God in Christ. God’s Spirit is poured out in them, flowing over into agapic love for each other. At least that is how Paul argues it should be.
Paul and Religion demonstrates the continuing and contemporary relevance of the most important, and most controversial, figure of early Christianity. Paul Gooch interrogates the Pauline writings for their meaning as well as implications for religion as an entire form of life, a stance on the world expressed in distinctive practices. Bringing a philosophical approach to this topic, he connects Paul's ideas to lived experience. In a conversational style, Gooch explores Paul's experience of grace and his dismissal of distinctive markers of religious identity in favour of love as binding together a community. Contrary to common expectations, he finds within Paul's letters material for conversations about issues in our day, such as gender and sexuality. From his close reading of the Letters, Gooch argues that the Pauline religious form of life is not identical with institutional Christianity. Indeed, his conclusions may be welcome to those who belong to other faiths.
The question of how we should live is a perennial concern. Immanuel Kant asked ‘What ought I to do?’ as the second of three questions crucial to humanity. This what-to-do question belongs, he says, to ethics. The first question, ‘What can I know?’, Kant gives to metaphysics, and the third, ‘What may I hope?’, to religion. However, when it comes to helping people resolve their questions about how to live, religions are only too happy to spend more time on ethics than on hope. Indeed, among the functions religions carry out assiduously is telling their adherents how they should behave. Moreover, religious edicts range wider than ethics: they encompass religious practices, social relations, and civic duties. The answers to ‘what must I do religiously?’ set out the qualities of a virtuous life, but they are also intended to create and express distinctive identity, to reinforce what our group does as opposed to other groups.