Augmenting the living plant mesophyll into a photonic capacitor.

Living plants provide an opportunity to rethink the design and fabrication of devices ordinarily produced from plastic and circuit boards and ultimately disposed of as waste. The spongy mesophyll is a high -surface area composition of parenchyma cells that supports gas and liquid exchange through stomata pores within the surface of most leaves. Here, we investigate the mesophyll of living plants as biocompatible substrates for the photonic display of thin nanophosphorescent films for photonic applications.

Reducing Primary Cesareans: An Innovative Multipronged Approach to Supporting Physiologic Labor and Vaginal Birth.

Primary cesarean birth increases a woman's risk for hemorrhage, infection, pain, and cesarean births with subsequent pregnancies. A woman may experience difficulties with breastfeeding, bonding, and incorporating the newborn into the family structure. One urban, academic hospital in the Midwest participated in the American College of Nurse-Midwives Healthy Birth Initiative: Reducing Primary Cesarean Births Project.

Supporting family carers in home-based end-of-life care: using participatory action research to develop a training programme for support workers and volunteers.

Background: Family carers are crucial in enabling dying people to stay at home, but are often not prepared for their caring role, receiving little support from formal health and social care services. It is increasingly likely that any help or support family carers receive will be provided by a third sector organisation on either a voluntary basis or by untrained carer support workers.

Objectives: To produce a training programme designed to equip carer support workers and volunteers with the basic skills and knowledge needed to support family carers.

Public attitudes to death and dying in the UK: a review of published literature.

Background: Public attitudes are important in shaping public policy and the political will that determines future service provision. They also help to identify priorities for public education. This paper presents a review and synthesis of published literature on public attitudes to death and dying in the UK from 1990.

Peer education for advance care planning: volunteers' perspectives on training and community engagement activities.

Background: Peer education by volunteers may aid attitudinal change, but there is little understanding of factors assisting the preparation of peer educators. This study contributes to conceptual understandings of how volunteers may be prepared to work as peer educators by drawing on an evaluation of a training programme for peer education for advance care planning (ACP).

Objectives: To report on volunteers' perspectives on the peer education training programme, their feelings about assuming the role of volunteer peer educators and the community engagement activities with which they engaged during the year after training.

Implementing advance care planning: a qualitative study of community nurses' views and experiences.

Background: Advance care planning (ACP) is a process of discussion about goals of care and a means of setting on record preferences for care of patients who may lose capacity or communication ability in the future. Implementation of ACP is widely promoted by policy makers. This study examined how community palliative care nurses in England understand ACP and their roles within ACP.

Snake oil, ethics, and the first amendment: what's a profession to do?

This article considers the appropriate legal and ethical response to those whose advocacy of "alternative" or unvalidated therapies places people at risk of harm. What are our professional responsibilities with respect to such advocacy, and what sorts of harm will justify government intervention?