Causality in Schwinger's Picture of Quantum Mechanics.

This paper begins the study of the relation between causality and quantum mechanics, taking advantage of the groupoidal description of quantum mechanical systems inspired by Schwinger's picture of quantum mechanics. After identifying causal structures on groupoids with a particular class of subcategories, called causal categories accordingly, it will be shown that causal structures can be recovered from a particular class of non-selfadjoint class of algebras, known as triangular operator algebras, contained in the von Neumann algebra of the groupoid of the quantum system. As a consequence of this, Sorkin's incidence theorem will be proved and some illustrative examples will be discussed.

Evolution of Classical and Quantum States in the Groupoid Picture of Quantum Mechanics.

The evolution of states of the composition of classical and quantum systems in the groupoid formalism for physical theories introduced recently is discussed. It is shown that the notion of a classical system, in the sense of Birkhoff and von Neumann, is equivalent, in the case of systems with a countable number of outputs, to a totally disconnected groupoid with Abelian von Neumann algebra. The impossibility of evolving a separable state of a composite system made up of a classical and a quantum one into an entangled state by means of a unitary evolution is proven in accordance with Raggio's theorem, which is extended to include a new family of separable states corresponding to the composition of a system with a totally disconnected space of outcomes and a quantum one.

[Educational curriculum and occupational status of nurses and midwives after second level degree (MNsc) at Catholic University of Rome]. / Curriculum formativo del laureato specialista e mondo del lavoro: Indagine su infermieri e ostetriche dell'Università Cattolica.

Our society requires health professionals of increasingly competence, able to modulate their skills according to the needs and the requirements of the context. This survey (cross - sectional) has as primary aim to collect information on employment status of individuals who have a Master degree in Nursing and Midwifery, and as secondary objective to describe if and how the post graduation education has affected the quality and the outcomes of nursing work. A questionnaire devised for the purpose has been used. The survey was conducted from May to August 2011 on all individuals who have a Master in Nursing and Midwifery at the UCSC (from 2004-2005 to 2009-2010). Results show that in 44 cases out of 111 (= 40%) there was a change of employment status after obtaining the Master's Degree and of these 68% (30 out of 44) state that the change is definitely linked to the Post graduation education. All respondents state that the University curriculum has certainly helped to modify some professional behaviors: research utilization (93%), skills in problem solving at work (68%); greater ease to communicate the reasons underlying their organizational choices or decision making (70%); self-training abilities (63%). Within the Italian context, however it seems that those individuals are involved in a managerial progression of their career rather than in the core nursing activities despite the fact that educational programs have important subjects for Advanced Nursing Practice and Nursing Science.