Observation of Phase-Filling Singularities in the Optical Dielectric Function of Highly Doped n-Type Ge.

Phase-filling singularities in the optical response function of highly doped (>10^{19}  cm^{-3}) germanium are theoretically predicted and experimentally confirmed using spectroscopic ellipsometry. Contrary to direct-gap semiconductors, which display the well-known Burstein-Moss phenomenology upon doping, the critical point in the joint density of electronic states associated with the partially filled conduction band in n-Ge corresponds to the so-called E_{1} and E_{1}+Δ_{1} transitions, which are two-dimensional in character. As a result of this reduced dimensionality, there is no edge shift induced by Pauli blocking.

Management of early- and late-stage rheumatoid arthritis: are physiotherapy students' intended behaviours consistent with canadian best practice guidelines?

Purpose: This study examined whether physiotherapy students in a problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum intend to implement best practices for management of clients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

Method: Physiotherapy students (n=49) completed a subsection of the ACREU Primary Care Survey to evaluate the concordance between intended behaviours and Canadian best practices for early- and late-stage RA, before and after completing the relevant PBL content. Changes in scores were assessed using McNemar's test for dependent proportions.

The feasibility of vibration as a tool to assess spinal integrity.

As the majority of back pain is thought to be mechanical in origin, quantitative tests designed to assess spinal mechanics may provide information about its etiology and treatment. This paper describes the application of structural vibration testing in the spine, its reliability and ability to discriminate between different structural states. In each of five cadaveric pigs, tri-axial accelerometers were fixed to the spinouses of L1-5 and short-duration vibrations (0-2000Hz) were applied to the L3 spinous exclusively.