1,558 research outputs found
Mental health impacts of flooding: a controlled interrupted time series analysis of prescribing data in England.
BACKGROUND: There is emerging evidence that people affected by flooding suffer adverse impacts on their mental well-being, mostly based on self-reports. METHODS: We examined prescription records for drugs used in the management of common mental disorder among primary care practices located in the vicinity of recent large flood events in England, 2011-2014. A controlled interrupted time series analysis was conducted of the number of prescribing items for antidepressant drugs in the year before and after the flood onset. Pre-post changes were compared by distance of the practice from the inundated boundaries among 930 practices located within 10 km of a flood. RESULTS: After control for deprivation and population density, there was an increase of 0.59% (95% CI 0.24 to 0.94) prescriptions in the postflood year among practices located within 1 km of a flood over and above the change observed in the furthest distance band. The increase was greater in more deprived areas. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests an increase in prescribed antidepressant drugs in the year after flooding in primary care practices close to recent major floods in England. The degree to which the increase is actually concentrated in those flooded can only be determined by more detailed linkage studies
On a new conformal functional for simplicial surfaces
We introduce a smooth quadratic conformal functional and its weighted version
where
is the extrinsic intersection angle of the circumcircles of the
triangles of the mesh sharing the edge and is the valence of
vertex . Besides minimizing the squared local conformal discrete Willmore
energy this functional also minimizes local differences of the angles
. We investigate the minimizers of this functionals for simplicial
spheres and simplicial surfaces of nontrivial topology. Several remarkable
facts are observed. In particular for most of randomly generated simplicial
polyhedra the minimizers of and are inscribed polyhedra. We
demonstrate also some applications in geometry processing, for example, a
conformal deformation of surfaces to the round sphere. A partial theoretical
explanation through quadratic optimization theory of some observed phenomena is
presented.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, to appear in the proceedings of "Curves and
Surfaces, 8th International Conference", June 201
Effects of and molecules on photoproduction
In the present work, we re-analyze the available data for and by considering the
contributions from the and molecules instead of
any nucleon resonances in the channel, where the was
proposed to be a molecule as the strange partner of the
hadronic molecular state, and the was assumed to
be a molecule as the strange partner of the bound states that are predicated as members in the same
heavy-quark spin symmetry multiplet as the states. It turns out that all
the available cross-section data can be well reproduced, indicating that the
molecular structures of the possible and states
are compatible with the available data for photoproduction
reactions. Further analysis shows that for both and reactions, the
exchange provides dominant contributions to the cross-sections
in the near-threshold energy region, and significant contributions from the
exchange to the cross-sections in the higher energy region are
also found. Predictions of the beam asymmetry , target asymmetry ,
and recoil baryon asymmetry are presented and compared with those from our
previous work. Measurements of the data on these observables are called on to
further constrain the reaction mechanisms of photoproduction
reactions and to verify the molecular scenario of the and
states.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure
Change in prescriptions for antidepressant drugs after flooding in England, 2011–14: a controlled, interrupted time-series study
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An Evolutionarily Threat-Relevant Odor Strengthens Human Fear Memory.
Olfaction is an evolutionary ancient sense, but it remains unclear to what extent it can influence routine human behavior. We examined whether a threat-relevant predator odor (2-methyl-2-thiazoline) would contextually enhance the formation of human fear memory associations. Participants who learned to associate visual stimuli with electric shock in this predator odor context later showed stronger fear responses to the visual stimuli than participants who learned in an aversiveness-matched control odor context. This effect generalized to testing in another odor context, even after extinction training. Results of a separate experiment indicate that a possible biological mechanism for this effect may be increased cortisol levels in a predator odor context. These results suggest that innate olfactory processes can play an important role in human fear learning. Modulatory influences of odor contexts may partly explain the sometimes maladaptive persistence of human fear memory, e.g., in post-traumatic stress disorders
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Corrigendum: An Evolutionarily Threat-Relevant Odor Strengthens Human Fear Memory
Graphene-based photovoltaic cells for near-field thermal energy conversion
Thermophotovoltaic devices are energy-conversion systems generating an
electric current from the thermal photons radiated by a hot body. In far field,
the efficiency of these systems is limited by the thermodynamic
Schockley-Queisser limit corresponding to the case where the source is a black
body. On the other hand, in near field, the heat flux which can be transferred
to a photovoltaic cell can be several orders of magnitude larger because of the
contribution of evanescent photons. This is particularly true when the source
supports surface polaritons. Unfortunately, in the infrared where these systems
operate, the mismatch between the surface-mode frequency and the semiconductor
gap reduces drastically the potential of this technology. Here we show that
graphene-based hybrid photovoltaic cells can significantly enhance the
generated power paving the way to a promising technology for an intensive
production of electricity from waste heat.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
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Methods to estimate acclimatization to urban heat island effects on heat- and cold-related mortality
Background: Investigators have examined whether heat mortality risk is increased in neighborhoods subject to the urban heat island (UHI) effect but have not identified degrees of difference in susceptibility to heat and cold between cool and hot areas, which we call acclimatization to the UHI.
Objectives: We developed methods to examine and quantify the degree of acclimatization to heat- and cold-related mortality in relation to UHI anomalies and applied these methods to London, UK.
Methods: Case–crossover analyses were undertaken on 1993–2006 mortality data from London UHI decile groups defined by anomalies from the London average of modeled air temperature at a 1-km grid resolution. We estimated how UHI anomalies modified excess mortality on cold and hot days for London overall and displaced a fixed-shape temperature-mortality function (“shifted spline” model). We also compared the observed associations with those expected under no or full acclimatization to the UHI.
Results: The relative risk of death on hot versus normal days differed very little across UHI decile groups. A 1°C UHI anomaly multiplied the risk of heat death by 1.004 (95% CI: 0.950, 1.061) (interaction rate ratio) compared with the expected value of 1.070 (1.057, 1.082) if there were no acclimatization. The corresponding UHI interaction for cold was 1.020 (0.979, 1.063) versus 1.030 (1.026, 1.034) (actual versus expected under no acclimatization, respectively). Fitted splines for heat shifted little across UHI decile groups, again suggesting acclimatization. For cold, the splines shifted somewhat in the direction of no acclimatization, but did not exclude acclimatization.
Conclusions: We have proposed two analytical methods for estimating the degree of acclimatization to the heat- and cold-related mortality burdens associated with UHIs. The results for London suggest relatively complete acclimatization to the UHI effect on summer heat–related mortality, but less clear evidence for cold–related mortality
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