A model of hope as a protective measure to lower burnout and secondary traumatic stress among employees working in developmental and intellectual disabilities services.

BACKGROUND: Burnout and secondary traumatic stress (STS) are problems for the workforce supporting people with developmental disabilities. This study investigated hope as a potential protective resource for burnout and STS among the developmental disability services workforce. METHOD: One hundred and fifty-two non-supervisor caseworkers from a state agency, developmental disabilities division were recruited to participate in an anonymous web-based survey. RESULTS: The analyses showed that hope was negatively associated with the three dimensions of STS (intrusion, avoidance, and arousal) and burnout. Controlling for tenure in the workforce and STS, the results of the hierarchical regression analyses showed that hope accounted for a significant incremental variance to burnout. CONCLUSION: These findings provide support for emerging literature showing hope as a protective resource to workforce burnout.

Orderly disorder in magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene.

Magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene (TTG) has recently emerged as a platform to engineer strongly correlated flat bands. We reveal the normal-state structural and electronic properties of TTG using low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy at twist angles for which superconductivity has been observed. Real trilayer samples undergo a strong reconstruction of the moiré lattice, which locks layers into near-magic-angle, mirror symmetric domains comparable in size with the superconducting coherence length. This relaxation introduces an array of localized twist-angle faults, termed twistons and moiré solitons, whose electronic structure deviates strongly from the background regions, leading to a doping-dependent, spatially granular electronic landscape. The Fermi-level density of states is maximally uniform at dopings for which superconductivity has been observed in transport measurements.

Doping-Induced Superconductivity in the van der Waals Superatomic Crystal Re6Se8Cl2.

Superatomic crystals are composed of discrete modular clusters that emulate the role of atoms in traditional atomic solids. Owing to their unique hierarchical structures, these materials are promising candidates to host exotic phenomena, such as doping-induced superconductivity and magnetism. Low-dimensional superatomic crystals in particular hold great potential as electronic components in nanocircuits, but the impact of doping in such compounds remains unexplored. Here we report the electrical transport properties of Re6Se8Cl2, a two-dimensional superatomic semiconductor. We find that this compound can be n-doped in situ through Cl dissociation, drastically altering the transport behavior from semiconducting to metallic and giving rise to superconductivity with a critical temperature of ∼8 K and upper critical field exceeding 30 T. This work is the first example of superconductivity in a van der Waals superatomic crystal; more broadly, it establishes a new chemical strategy to manipulate the electronic properties of van der Waals materials with labile ligands.

Effect of the Hofmeister anions upon the swelling of a self-assembled pH-responsive hydrogel.

We report the effect of a range of monovalent sodium salts on the molecular equilibrium swelling of a simple synthetic microphase separated poly(methyl methacrylate)-block-poly(2-(diethylamino)ethyl methacrylate)-block-poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA(88)-b-PDEA(223)-b-PMMA(88)) pH-responsive hydrogel. Sodium acetate, sodium chloride, sodium bromide, sodium iodide, sodium nitrate and sodium thiocyanate were selected for study at controlled ionic strength and pH; all salts are taken from the Hofmeister series (HS). The influence of the anions on the expansion of the hydrogel was found to follow the reverse order of the classical HS. The expansion ratio of the gel measured in solutions containing the simple sodium halide salts (NaCl, NaBr, and NaI) was found to be strongly related to parameters which describe the interaction of the ion with water; surface charge density, viscosity coefficient, and entropy of hydration. A global study which also included nonspherical ions (NaAce, NaNO(3) and NaSCN) showed the strongest correlation with the viscosity coefficient. Our results are interpreted in terms of the Collins model, where larger ions have more mobile water in the first hydration cage immediately surrounding the gel, therefore making them more adhesive to the surface of the stationary phase of the gel and ultimately reducing the level of expansion.