The primary purpose of this study was to explore the relationships among vulnerability, self-transcendence, and well-being in Japanese hospitalized elders. With their declining functional health and diminishing social network, elderly people are considered as a vulnerable population, which require special care and attention in the field of nursing. Self-Transcendence is identified as one of the developmental resources that promote well-being in later adulthood during increased vulnerability; however, applicability of the concept of self-transcendence as well as its theory has never been tested in Japanese population. Thus, the current study specifically tested and refined a theoretical model of self-transcendence in Japanese elders.In this study, a nonexperimental descriptive design was used to examine relationships among the variables. A total of 105 elderly patients were recruited from 4 hospitals in Sapporo, Japan. The respondents' level of vulnerability was assessed by three aspects: vulnerability in health status, vulnerability in resource availability, and past vulnerable experience. Well-being was examined from the level of depression and life satisfaction. Besides psychosocial self-transcendence, spiritual self-transcendence from Japanese perspective was conceptualized and evaluated.Reliability testing provided adequate supports for all the study instruments. Findings of multiple regression analyses indicated mediating effects of psychosocial self-transcendence on the relationship between vulnerability in resource availability and well-being variables. Psychosocial self-transcendence also demonstrated direct effects on well-being. Spiritual self-transcendence did not show any mediating and moderating effect in the relationship between vulnerability and well-being; however, it was found to be the strongest predictor for the level of life satisfaction. In addition, the findings revealed that vulnerability in health status had a direct effect on the level of depression, but past vulnerable experience had no effect on both self-transcendence and well-being.Findings of this study provided further evidence of universality of the concept of self-transcendence and applicability of its theory to Japanese hospitalized elders. This study not only contributes to Japanese nursing research by adding the body of knowledge about self-transcendence and spirituality but also can be a basis for formulating interventions that help enhance well-being in vulnerable elderly patients.

One way to engage with ethics is in a thoughtful way. Chapter 1 shows that there is disagreement about the value of ethical thoughtfulness. Chapter 2 gives a careful account of ethical thoughtfulness in terms of four norms. Chapter 3 shows that being ethically thoughtful is possible for many of us, but is also likely to be costly. Chapter 4 argues that connections between ethical thoughtfulness and behavior do not provide compelling reasons to pursue ethical thoughtfulness. Chapter 5 argues that ethical thoughtfulness is not significant because of connections to moral epistemology, moral accountability, or moral standing. Chapter 6 argues that it is unlikely that ethical thoughtfulness is good for all humans, but that it may be a good for some people in some circumstances.

Optically pumped semiconductor lasers (OPSLs) combine features including an engineerable emission wavelength, good beam quality, and scalable output power and are desirable for a wide variety of applications. Power scaling of OPSLs requires a combination of accurate epitaxial quantum design, accurate wafer growth and good thermal management. Here a fabrication process for OPSL devices was developed to ensure efficient OPSL device cooling and minimum surface scattering. A systematic thermal analysis was performed to optimize thermal management. Strategies for optimizing power extraction were developed; including increasing the gain/micro-cavity detuning that increases the threshold but also increases the slope efficiency and the roll-over temperature, recycling the excess pump via reflection from a metalized reflector at the back of a transparent DBR, anti-reflection coating at the pump wavelength while preserving the signal micro-cavity resonance. With optimized thermal management and the strategy of using large gain/micro-cavity detuning structure, a CW output power of 103 W from a single OPSL device was achieved. 42% optical-to-optical efficiency from the net pump power was obtained from the OPSL device with the double pass pump design and 39% optical-to-optical efficiency with respect to the total pump power was obtained with the new pump anti-reflection coating. For the fundamental mode operation, over 27 W of CW output power was achieved. To our knowledge, this is the highest 1 µm TEM₀₀ mode power reported to date for an OPSL. Finally, strategies for generating high peak power are also discussed. A maximum peak power of over 270 W was achieved using 750 ns pump pulses.

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