17,295 research outputs found
Is it too late to turn back the clock of managerialism and neoliberalism?
The esteemed health economist, Gavin Mooney, who died in tragic circumstances in December 2012, devoted his last book The Health of Nations: Towards a New Political Economy[1] to exposing the pernicious effects of neoliberalism on healthcare. He argued compellingly that the consequences of âneoliberalismâ â in his usage, the reliance on market mechanisms to address all the needs of a society in the areas of healthcare, education, social welfare and even the arts â have been disastrous for the health system and have exacerbated inequalities in access to care at both the national and global levels. They have led to inappropriate and perverse social outcomes, distorted the kinds of medicines and technologies that are employed, increased the equity gap, and exacerbated environmental destruction. He posed the question of whether it is possible to reverse what has, until now, been largely assumed to be an inexorable trend and, using case studies drawn from both developed and developing countries, drew attention to several possible alternative strategies for designing and delivering the sort of healthcare that may enrich communities, increase equity and properly address the social determinants of health
Orbital moment of a single Co atom on a Pt(111) surface - a view from correlated band theory
The orbital magnetic moment of a Co adatom on a Pt(111) surface is calculated
in good agreement with experimental data making use of the LSDA+U method. It is
shown that both electron correlation induced orbital polarization and
structural relaxation play essential roles in orbital moment formation. The
microscopic origins of the orbital moment enhancement are discussed
Low EUV Luminosities Impinging on Protoplanetary Disks
The amount of high-energy stellar radiation reaching the surface of
protoplanetary disks is essential to determine their chemistry and physical
evolution. Here, we use millimetric and centimetric radio data to constrain the
EUV luminosity impinging on 14 disks around young (~2-10Myr) sun-like stars.
For each object we identify the long-wavelength emission in excess to the dust
thermal emission, attribute that to free-free disk emission, and thereby
compute an upper limit to the EUV reaching the disk. We find upper limits lower
than 10 photons/s for all sources without jets and lower than photons/s for the three older sources in our sample. These latter
values are low for EUV-driven photoevaporation alone to clear out
protoplanetary material in the timescale inferred by observations. In addition,
our EUV upper limits are too low to reproduce the [NeII] 12.81 micron
luminosities from three disks with slow [NeII]-detected winds. This indicates
that the [NeII] line in these sources primarily traces a mostly neutral wind
where Ne is ionized by 1 keV X-ray photons, implying higher photoevaporative
mass loss rates than those predicted by EUV-driven models alone. In summary,
our results suggest that high-energy stellar photons other than EUV may
dominate the dispersal of protoplanetary disks around sun-like stars.Comment: Accepted for publication to The Astrophysical Journa
Development of a carbon fibre composite active mirror: Design and testing
Carbon fibre composite technology for lightweight mirrors is gaining
increasing interest in the space- and ground-based astronomical communities for
its low weight, ease of manufacturing, excellent thermal qualities and
robustness. We present here first results of a project to design and produce a
27 cm diameter deformable carbon fibre composite mirror. The aim was to produce
a high surface form accuracy as well as low surface roughness. As part of this
programme, a passive mirror was developed to investigate stability and coating
issues. Results from the manufacturing and polishing process are reported here.
We also present results of a mechanical and thermal finite element analysis, as
well as early experimental findings of the deformable mirror. Possible
applications and future work are discussed.Comment: Accepted by Optical Engineering. Figures 1-7 on
http://www.star.ucl.ac.uk/~sk/OEpaper_files
Medium Modifications of Hadron Properties and Partonic Processes
Chiral symmetry is one of the most fundamental symmetries in QCD. It is
closely connected to hadron properties in the nuclear medium via the reduction
of the quark condensate , manifesting the partial restoration of
chiral symmetry. To better understand this important issue, a number of
Jefferson Lab experiments over the past decade have focused on understanding
properties of mesons and nucleons in the nuclear medium, often benefiting from
the high polarization and luminosity of the CEBAF accelerator. In particular, a
novel, accurate, polarization transfer measurement technique revealed for the
first time a strong indication that the bound proton electromagnetic form
factors in 4He may be modified compared to those in the vacuum. Second, the
photoproduction of vector mesons on various nuclei has been measured via their
decay to e+e- to study possible in-medium effects on the properties of the rho
meson. In this experiment, no significant mass shift and some broadening
consistent with expected collisional broadening for the rho meson has been
observed, providing tight constraints on model calculations. Finally, processes
involving in-medium parton propagation have been studied. The medium
modifications of the quark fragmentation functions have been extracted with
much higher statistical accuracy than previously possible.Comment: to appear in J. Phys.: Conf. Proc. "New Insights into the Structure
of Matter: The First Decade of Science at Jefferson Lab", eds. D.
Higinbotham, W. Melnitchouk, A. Thomas; added reference
The Effects of High Liquid Water Content on Thunderstorm Charging
Charge transfer to a riming graupel target during interactions with ice crystals has been investigated in the laboratory. When liquid water contents sufficiently high to cause wet growth are achieved, the charge transfer falls to values which are insignificant to thunderstorm electrification. The implications of this null result to a recent analysis of thunderstorm-charging processes by Wiliams et al. (1991) are discussed
Lorentz harmonics and superfield action. D=10, N=1 superstring
We propose a new version of the superfield action for a closed D=10, N=1
superstring where the Lorentz harmonics are used as auxiliary superfields. The
incorporation of Lorentz harmonics into the superfield action makes possible to
obtain superfield constraints of the induced worldsheet supergravity as
equations of motion. Moreover, it becomes evident that a so-called 'Wess-Zumino
part' of the superfield action is basically a Lagrangian form of the
generalized action principle. We propose to use the second Noether theorem to
handle the essential terms in the transformation lows of hidden gauge
symmetries, which remove dynamical degrees of freedom from the Lagrange
multiplier superfield.Comment: 23 pages, latex, no figures. V.2, minor corrections, a reference
adde
Synthesis of new chiral organosulfur donors with hydrogen bonding functionality and their first charge transfer salts
The syntheses of a range of enantiopure organosulfur donors with hydrogen bonding groups are described including TTF related materials with two, four, six and eight hydroxyl groups and multiple stereogenic centres and a pair of chiral N-substituted BEDT-TTF acetamides. Three charge transfer salts of enantiopure poly-hydroxy-substituted donors are reported, including a 4:1 salt with the meso stereoisomer of the dinuclear [Fe2(oxalate)5 ]4- anion in which both cation and anion have chiral components linked together by hydrogen bonding, and a semiconducting salt with triiodide
Walk in my shoes: college students\u27 and their parents\u27 predictions of their own health practices if they were each others\u27 age
College students and their parents completed a survey of their present health practices. They then completed the same survey for health behaviors they thought they would practice if they were either between the ages of 18 - 22 (for the parent respondents) or 45 - 55 (for the student respondents). The results generally showed the students predicted they would lead healthier lifestyles if older than their parents actually do, and the parents would lead less healthy lifestyles if younger than their children actually do. This distortion of each others\u27 health practices, however, depended to some extent on the specific health practices surveyed. The results also supported previous research showing a tendency to follow a healthier lifestyle as one ages, although once again, this finding depended on the specific health behavior surveyed
Modelling of Multi-Agent Systems: Experiences with Membrane Computing and Future Challenges
Formal modelling of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) is a challenging task due to
high complexity, interaction, parallelism and continuous change of roles and
organisation between agents. In this paper we record our research experience on
formal modelling of MAS. We review our research throughout the last decade, by
describing the problems we have encountered and the decisions we have made
towards resolving them and providing solutions. Much of this work involved
membrane computing and classes of P Systems, such as Tissue and Population P
Systems, targeted to the modelling of MAS whose dynamic structure is a
prominent characteristic. More particularly, social insects (such as colonies
of ants, bees, etc.), biology inspired swarms and systems with emergent
behaviour are indicative examples for which we developed formal MAS models.
Here, we aim to review our work and disseminate our findings to fellow
researchers who might face similar challenges and, furthermore, to discuss
important issues for advancing research on the application of membrane
computing in MAS modelling.Comment: In Proceedings AMCA-POP 2010, arXiv:1008.314
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