749 research outputs found
The effectiveness of a bibliotherapy in increasing the self-management ability of slightly to moderately frail older people
Increasing condom use in heterosexual men: development of a theory-based interactive digital intervention
Increasing condom use to prevent sexually transmitted infections is a key public health goal. Interventions are more likely to be effective if they are theory- and evidence-based. The Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW) provides a framework for intervention development. To provide an example of how the BCW was used to develop an intervention to increase condom use in heterosexual men (the MenSS website), the steps of the BCW intervention development process were followed, incorporating evidence from the research literature and views of experts and the target population. Capability (e.g. knowledge) and motivation (e.g. beliefs about pleasure) were identified as important targets of the intervention. We devised ways to address each intervention target, including selecting interactive features and behaviour change techniques. The BCW provides a useful framework for integrating sources of evidence to inform intervention content and deciding which influences on behaviour to target
Self-reported health and functional limitations among older people in the Kassena-Nankana District, Ghana
Background: Ghana is experiencing significant increases in its ageing population, yet research on the health and quality of life of older people is limited. Lack of data on the health and well-being of older people in the country makes it difficult to monitor trends in the health status of adults and the impact of social policies on their health and welfare. Research on ageing is urgently required to provide essential data for policy formulation and programme implementation. Objective: To describe the health status and identify factors associated with self-rated health (SRH) among older adults in a rural community in northern Ghana. Methods: The data come from a survey on Adult Health and Ageing in the Kassena-Nankana District involving 4,584 people aged 50 and over. Survey participants answered questions pertaining to their health status, including self-rated overall health, perceptions of well-being and quality of life, and self-reported assessment of functioning on a range of different health domains. Socio-demographic information such as age, sex, marital status and education were obtained from a demographic surveillance database. Results: The majority of older people rated their health status as good, with the oldest old reporting poorer health. Multivariate regression analysis showed that functional ability and sex are significant factors in SRH status. Adults with higher levels of functional limitations were much more likely to rate their health as being poorer compared with those having lower disabilities. Household wealth was significantly associated with SRH, with wealthier adults more likely to rate their health as good. Conclusion: The depreciation in health and daily functioning with increasing age is likely to increase people's demand for health care and other services as they grow older. There is a need for regular monitoring of the health status of older people to provide public health agencies with the data they need to assess, protect and promote the health and well-being of older people
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All-sky search for short gravitational-wave bursts in the second Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo run
We present the results of a search for short-duration gravitational-wave transients in the data from the second observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo. We search for gravitational-wave transients with a duration of milliseconds to approximately one second in the 32-4096 Hz frequency band with minimal assumptions about the signal properties, thus targeting a wide variety of sources. We also perform a matched-filter search for gravitational-wave transients from cosmic string cusps for which the waveform is well modeled. The unmodeled search detected gravitational waves from several binary black hole mergers which have been identified by previous analyses. No other significant events have been found by either the unmodeled search or the cosmic string search. We thus present the search sensitivities for a variety of signal waveforms and report upper limits on the source rate density as a function of the characteristic frequency of the signal. These upper limits are a factor of 3 lower than the first observing run, with a 50% detection probability for gravitational-wave emissions with energies of ∼10-9 Mc2 at 153 Hz. For the search dedicated to cosmic string cusps we consider several loop distribution models, and present updated constraints from the same search done in the first observing run
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Search for gravitational waves from Scorpius X-1 in the second Advanced LIGO observing run with an improved hidden Markov model
We present results from a semicoherent search for continuous gravitational
waves from the low-mass X-ray binary Scorpius X-1, using a hidden Markov model
(HMM) to track spin wandering. This search improves on previous HMM-based
searches of LIGO data by using an improved frequency domain matched filter, the
-statistic, and by analysing data from Advanced LIGO's second
observing run. In the frequency range searched, from to
, we find no evidence of gravitational radiation. At
, the most sensitive search frequency, we report an upper
limit on gravitational wave strain (at 95\% confidence) of when marginalising over source inclination angle. This is the
most sensitive search for Scorpius X-1, to date, that is specifically designed
to be robust in the presence of spin wandering
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Search for Eccentric Binary Black Hole Mergers with Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo during Their First and Second Observing Runs
When formed through dynamical interactions, stellar-mass binary black holes (BBHs) may retain eccentric orbits (e > 0.1 at 10 Hz) detectable by ground-based gravitational-wave detectors. Eccentricity can therefore be used to differentiate dynamically formed binaries from isolated BBH mergers. Current template-based gravitational-wave searches do not use waveform models associated with eccentric orbits, rendering the search less efficient for eccentric binary systems. Here we present the results of a search for BBH mergers that inspiral in eccentric orbits using data from the first and second observing runs (O1 and O2) of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo. We carried out the search with the coherent WaveBurst algorithm, which uses minimal assumptions on the signal morphology and does not rely on binary waveform templates. We show that it is sensitive to binary mergers with a detection range that is weakly dependent on eccentricity for all bound systems. Our search did not identify any new binary merger candidates. We interpret these results in light of eccentric binary formation models. We rule out formation channels with rates ⪆100 Gpc-3 yr-1 for e > 0.1, assuming a black hole mass spectrum with a power-law index ≲2
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Search for intermediate mass black hole binaries in the first and second observing runs of the Advanced LIGO and Virgo network
Gravitational-wave astronomy has been firmly established with the detection of gravitational waves from the merger of ten stellar-mass binary black holes and a neutron star binary. This paper reports on the all-sky search for gravitational waves from intermediate mass black hole binaries in the first and second observing runs of the Advanced LIGO and Virgo network. The search uses three independent algorithms: two based on matched filtering of the data with waveform templates of gravitational-wave signals from compact binaries, and a third, model-independent algorithm that employs no signal model for the incoming signal. No intermediate mass black hole binary event is detected in this search. Consequently, we place upper limits on the merger rate density for a family of intermediate mass black hole binaries. In particular, we choose sources with total masses M=m1+m2ϵ[120,800] M and mass ratios q=m2/m1ϵ[0.1,1.0]. For the first time, this calculation is done using numerical relativity waveforms (which include higher modes) as models of the real emitted signal. We place a most stringent upper limit of 0.20 Gpc-3 yr-1 (in comoving units at the 90% confidence level) for equal-mass binaries with individual masses m1,2=100 M and dimensionless spins χ1,2=0.8 aligned with the orbital angular momentum of the binary. This improves by a factor of ∼5 that reported after Advanced LIGO's first observing run
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