#cutting: non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) on Instagram

Social media presents an important means for social interaction, especially among adolescents, with Instagram being the most popular platform in this age-group. Pictures and communication about non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) can frequently be found on the internet. During 4 weeks in April 2016, n = 2826 (from n = 1154 accounts) pictures which directly depicted wounds on Instagram were investigated. Those pictures, associated comments, and user accounts were independently rated for content. Associations between characteristics of pictures and comments as well as weekly and daily trends of posting behavior were analyzed. Most commonly, pictures depicted wounds caused by cutting on arms or legs and were rated as mild or moderate injuries. Pictures with increasing wound grades and those depicting multiple methods of NSSI generated elevated amounts of comments. While most comments were neutral or empathic with some offering help, few comments were hostile. Pictures were mainly posted in the evening hours, with a small peak in the early morning. While there was a slight peak of pictures being posted on Sundays, postings were rather evenly spread across the week. Pictures of NSSI are frequently posted on Instagram. Social reinforcement might play a role in the posting of more severe NSSI pictures. Social media platforms need to take appropriate measures for preventing online social contagion

BHUNT: automatic discovery of fuzzy algebraic constraints in relational data

We present the BHUNT scheme for automatically discovering algebraic constraints between pairs of columns in relational data. The constraints may be “fuzzy” in that they hold for most, but not all, of the records, and the columns may be in the same table or different tables. Such constraints are of interest in the context of both data mining and query optimization, and the BHUNT methodology can potentially be adapted to discover fuzzy functional dependencies and other useful relationships. BHUNT first identifies candidate sets of column value pairs that are likely to satisfy an algebraic constraint. This discovery process exploits both system catalog information and data samples, and employs pruning heuristics to control processing costs. For each candidate, BHUNT constructs algebraic constraints by applying statistical histogramming, segmentation, or clustering techniques to samples of column values. Using results from the theory of tolerance intervals, the sample sizes can be chosen to control the number of “exception” records that fail to satisfy the discovered constraints. In query-optimization mode, BHUNT can automatically partition the data into normal and exception records. During subsequent query processing, queries can be modified to incorporate the constraints; the optimizer uses the constraints to identify new, more efficient access paths. The results are then combined with the results of executing the original query against the (small) set of exception records. Experiments on a very large database using a prototype implementation of BHUNT show reductions in table accesses of up to two orders of magnitude, leading to speedups in query processing by up to a factor of 6.8

Demographic characteristics and perceptions of supply and demand of chiropractic services in Australia: Results from stage 1 of the work force study survey

Objectives: The aim of this report is to describe the demographic characteristics including the age profile, gender differences, income and perceptions of supply and demand of the chiropractic profession in Australia. This workforce study (WFS) was divided into three components, Australian Chiropractors (Stage 1), their patients (Stage 2), and members of the general public (Stage 3). Methods: A web-based, 64-item, cross-sectional survey questionnaire was issued to registered chiropractors (CAA and non-CAA members) throughout Australia in 2010. At the time of the survey there were 3,892 registered chiropractors. Survey invitations were sent to those who were registered chiropractors, and had provided email addresses (n=1,917). Results: Demographic Characteristics: There is evidence to suggest that the profession may be becoming increasingly female over time. Income exclusively from chiropractic care included 27.9% who reported an annual pre-tax net income of $115,000 or less and 32.3$115,000. Of the latter group, 12% indicated that they were earning more than $215,000. Income was not related to the hours worked per week particularly for males. Supply and Demand: When considering their home state and their local region, more chiropractors thought that there was undersupply in their state, but an adequate supply in their local region. A large proportion (40%) of the sample felt that universities in Australia were graduating the correct number of chiropractors per year, and 32% reported that too many were being produced in Australia. Very few reported that the Universities were not graduating enough chiropractors. Conclusion: This paper reflects some of the findings from Stage 1 of the three stage Workforce study, showing a profession heading towards a more even gender balance and characterised by a higher than average annual income. Future research should include the impact on supply and demand of the possibility of an increasingly female profession. In addition to this, although there is a perception that there is under-utilisation of chiropractic services in inland, rural and remote areas, the extent of which should be further explored. Information from this study will assist with strategic decision making and planning. A strategic framework for the profession should not only consider the findings from this study but also explore other factors that may have an impact on supply and demand, for example general trends in health and aging from local and national government reports

Chiropractic in Australia: A survey of the general public

Background: An increase in the use of complementary and alternative medicine was identified in several countries including Australia. There is a need to assess the current position of chiropractic within the Australian health system. Objectives: To estimate the lifetime prevalence of the use of chiropractic in Australia; to investigate the perceptions and attitudes of Australian general public about: their health status, the chiropractic profession, chiropractic and health services in general. Methods: A survey was carried out in which a novel 21-item questionnaire was utilised. To obtain a sample whose opinions would be representative of the Australian general population with a 95% level of significance and 4% margin of error, 600 respondents were required. Descriptive statistics, the chi-squared test and logistic regression were used to present and analyse the data. Results: 757 respondents completed the survey. A high prevalence of pain and discomfort relating to the musculoskeletal system were found, particularly in the lower back (71.1 % of the respondents) and neck (55.6%). The first contact with respect to therapy for the greatest proportion of respondents was general medicine (35.5%), followed by chiropractic (16%), physiotherapy (13.8%) and massage (10.2%). Physiotherapy was rated highest in its ability to relieve the symptoms (18%) followed by chiropractic (15.9%), massage (15.5%) and medicine (14%). In our sample 302 (39.9%) participants used chiropractic before and 75.9% of these consumers were satisfied or highly satisfied with the services provided. No significant differences in income, age and gender were found with regards to those individuals who reported a previous use of chiropractic services. The main reasons for not using chiropractic were: that there was no perceived need for a chiropractic intervention, associated cost, lack of information about chiropractic, lack of referral, being attended by another health professional, and concern about the safety and efficacy of the treatment. Most of the respondents considered that attending to general health and well-being was more important than simply alleviating symptoms and their personal philosophy was a major determinant when it came to the choice of health services. Conclusions: This study suggests that chiropractic is a thriving profession in Australia. It would appear that there is a need for chiropractic services in Australia, particularly in attending to the highly prevalent realm of musculoskeletal disorders. A considerable number of Australians already utilise chiropractic services. Encouragingly, the vast majority of these consumers are satisfied with the service provided. Chiropractic could play an even greater role within the Australian health if better integrated with the mainstream and allied medicine. A more active approach should be taken by chiropractic practitioners and institutions to improve the general public's knowledge about chiropractic

SSIMS Molecular Selective Imaging: a new diagnostic tool to investigate metal passivators in scrapped transformers

In every high voltage grid, the replacement of assets is a slow but steady process that guarantees long-term reliability of the power distribution networks. The prioritisation of such interventions is based on complex rating criteria specifically designed to highlight potential issues of certain machines (or families of machines) in need of care. Given the tremendous costs of operations such as the replacement of a power transformer it is not surprising to observe constant efforts devoted to finding new and better monitoring and diagnostic tools. These are capable of delivering invaluable information about the conditions of a transformer, in service or after it is either failed or proactively scrapped, allowing a better comprehension of underlying chemical-physical phenomena occurring. Ideally, advanced monitoring and diagnostic tools should ultimately result in improved rating parameters to be applied in the evaluation of future interventions. This feasibility study evaluates the use of static secondary ion mass spectrometry (SSIMS) molecular selective imaging as a diagnostic tool for power transformer. SSIMS is herein demonstrated to be able to assess, without doubts, the presence and integrity of the passivation layer produced by Irgamet®39 on copper surfaces in laboratory tests. The technique has also been tested on real samples collected from one of the phases of a 400/275kV autotransformer proactively scrapped and proved to be applicable without significant sample preparation. The possibility of its use in the study of the distribution of Irgamet®39 across the windings is also demonstrated. Further development of SSIMS as a diagnostic tool would be significantly increasing the grade of detail at which scrapped/failed units could be inspected. A better understanding on how the operating conditions or the design of a transformer can affect the anticorrosion protection layer at the molecular level would open the way to significant ad hoc improvements of both operative guidelines and rating criteria for power transformers

Charge form factor of π\pi and KK mesons

The charge form factor of $\pi$ and $K$ mesons is evaluated adopting a relativistic constituent quark model based on the light-front formalism. The relevance of the high-momentum components of the meson wave function, for values of the momentum transfer accessible to $CEBAF$ energies, is illustrated. The predictions for the elastic form factor of $\pi$ and $K$ mesons are compared with the results of different relativistic approaches, showing that the measurements of the pion and kaon form factors planned at $CEBAF$ could provide information for discriminating among various models of the meson structure.Comment: 8 pages, latex, 4 figures available as separate .uu fil

Low field vortex matter in YBCO: an atomic beam magnetic resonance study

We report measurements of the low field structure of the magnetic vortex lattice in an untwinned YBCO single-crystal platelet. Measurements were carried out using a novel atomic beam magnetic resonance (ABMR) technique. For a 10.7 G field applied parallel to the c-axis of the sample, we find a triangular lattice with orientational order extending across the entire sample. We find the triangular lattice to be weakly distorted by the a-b anisotropy of the material and measure a distortion factor, f = 1.16. Model-experiment comparisons determine a penetration depth, lambda_ab = 140 (+-20) nm. The paper includes the first detailed description of the ABMR technique. We discuss both technical details of the experiment and the modeling used to interpret the measurements.Comment: 44 pages, 13 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. B Revision includes Postscript wrapped figures + minor typo

Brane Induced Gravity, its Ghost and the Cosmological Constant Problem

"Brane Induced Gravity" is regarded as a promising framework for addressing the cosmological constant problem, but it also suffers from a ghost instability for parameter values that make it phenomenologically viable. We carry out a detailed analysis of codimension > 2 models employing gauge invariant variables in a flat background approximation. It is argued that using instead a curved background sourced by the brane would not resolve the ghost issue, unless a very specific condition is satisfied (if satisfiable at all). As for other properties of the model, from an explicit analysis of the 4-dimensional graviton propagator we extract a mass, a decay width and a momentum dependent modification of the gravitational coupling for the spin 2 mode. In the flat space approximation, the mass of the problematic spin 0 ghost is instrumental in filtering out a brane cosmological constant. The mass replaces a background curvature that would have had the same function. The optical theorem is used to demonstrate the suppression of graviton leakage into the uncompactified bulk. Then, we derive the 4-dimensional effective action for gravity and show that general covariance is spontaneously broken by the bulk-brane setup. This provides a natural realization of the gravitational Higgs mechanism. We also show that the addition of extrinsic curvature dependent terms has no bearing on linearized brane gravity.Comment: v2: LaTeX, JHEP style, 41 pages, 3 eps figures. Partly rewritten to improve presentation, results unchanged, published versio