Health and cancer prevention: knowledge and beliefs of children and young people

Objective: To collect information from children and young people about their knowledge of and attitudes towards cancer and their understanding of health and health related behaviours to inform future health promotion work. Design: Questionnaire survey of 15-16 year olds, and interviews with play materials with 9-10 year old children. Setting: Six inner city, suburban, and rural schools. Subjects: 226 children aged 15-16 years and 100 aged 9-10 years. Main outcome measures: Knowledge about different types of cancer; beliefs about health; sources of information; quality of research data obtainable from young children about cancer and health. Results: Both samples knew most about lung cancer, but there was also some knowledge of breast and skin cancer and leukaemia. Smoking, together with pollution and other environmental factors, were seen as the dominant causes of cancer. Environmental factors were mentioned more often by the inner city samples. Television and the media were the most important sources of information. Young people were more worried about unemployment than about ill health. More than half the young people did not describe their health as good, and most said they did not have a healthy lifestyle. Children were able to provide detailed information about their knowledge and understanding by using drawings as well as interviews. Conclusions: Children and young people possess considerable knowledge about cancer, especially about lung cancer and smoking, and show considerable awareness of predominant health education messages. Despite this knowledge, many lead less than healthy lifestyles. Health is not seen as the most important goal in life by many young people; the circumstances in which many children and young people live are not experienced as health promoting

Information seeking in the Humanities: physicality and digitality

This paper presents a brief overview of a research project that is examining the information seeking practices of humanities scholars. The results of this project are being used to develop digital resources to better support these work activities. Initial findings from a recent set of interviews is offered, revealing the importance of physical artefacts in the humanities scholars’ research processes and the limitations of digital resources. Finally, further work that is soon to be undertaken is summarised, and it is hoped that after participation in this workshop these ideas will be refined

Mathematical Analysis and Simulations of the Neural Circuit for Locomotion in Lamprey

We analyze the dynamics of the neural circuit of the lamprey central pattern generator (CPG). This analysis provides insights into how neural interactions form oscillators and enable spontaneous oscillations in a network of damped oscillators, which were not apparent in previous simulations or abstract phase oscillator models. We also show how the different behaviour regimes (characterized by phase and amplitude relationships between oscillators) of forward/backward swimming, and turning, can be controlled using the neural connection strengths and external inputs.Comment: 4 pages, accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

"It feels like I'm managing myself": HIV+ people tracking their personal health information

Nearly 37 million people live with HIV globally and recent advances in medicine have transformed HIV to a chronic disease, if managed. Previous research in Personal Health Informatics has investigated how people self-manage other chronic conditions, such as diabetes, by tracking and reflecting on their health information but there is little knowledge of how people do so for complex and socially stigmatized diseases like HIV. A better understanding of their specialized needs could lead to the development of more appropriate tools to self-manage their condition. Our paper introduces an iterative process model of Personal Health Informatics. We then describe the results of an empirical study involving HIV+ adults aimed at understanding their issues, concerns and actions in each of the stages of this process model. We provide implications for the design of personal informatics tools and open research directions that can lead to better self-management for people living with HIV

Does dyslexia present barriers to information literacy in an online environment? A pilot studynformation Research

The skills and attributes required to become information literate have not been analysed from the perspective of information users with cognitive disabilities, such as dyslexia, and this research seeks to begin to address this gap in the literature. The initial objective of the research was to collect data showing the online search strategies of dyslexics and non-dyslexics who are in Higher Education, highlighting any areas of difference and difficulty. The results of a pilot study comparing the online search behaviour of seven dyslexic participants with that of seven who were non-dyslexic, are reported here. Participants were adult undergraduates, taken from all three levels of study. Participants were interviewed and their online information searching behaviour was observed through the collection of screen recording diaries over the completion period of one assignment. Within the dyslexic group, difficulties were reported and observed in the areas of keyword creation, use of appropriate tools to refine and expand searches and the evaluation of sources. The dyslexics' group low selfefficacy in many of the skills associated with information literacy was discovered to be notable barrier

Phonological working memory impacts on information searching: An investigation of dyslexia

A key aspect of searching is the ability of users to absorb information from documents read in order to resolve their ask. One group of users who have problems with reading are dyslexic users, who due to underlying cognitive impairments in phonological processing and working memory, tend to read more slowly and make reading errors. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of the dyslexia cognitive profile on information searching. Searches were logged for 8 dyslexic and 8 non-dyslexic university students, in order to examine the differences in searching behavior between the two groups. A set of literacy and phonological working memory tasks were also completed, in order to investigate the relationship between these cognitive variables and searching behavior. Results show that there is a significant difference between the two groups on the number of documents being judged irrelevant, and that this cannot be explained by a topic effect. Instead, the number of documents judged irrelevant is significantly correlated with a measure of working memory. This key result provides the research community the first real insight into impact of impaired short term memory on information searching

Inverse Scattering for Gratings and Wave Guides

We consider the problem of unique identification of dielectric coefficients for gratings and sound speeds for wave guides from scattering data. We prove that the "propagating modes" given for all frequencies uniquely determine these coefficients. The gratings may contain conductors as well as dielectrics and the boundaries of the conductors are also determined by the propagating modes.Comment: 12 page

WFPC2 LRF Imaging of Emission Line Nebulae in 3CR Radio Galaxies

We present HST/WFPC2 Linear Ramp Filter images of high surface brightness emission lines (either [OII], [OIII], or H-alpha+[NII]) in 80 3CR radio sources. We overlay the emission line images on high resolution VLA radio images (eight of which are new reductions of archival data) in order to examine the spatial relationship between the optical and radio emission. We confirm that the radio and optical emission line structures are consistent with weak alignment at low redshift (z < 0.6) except in the Compact Steep Spectrum (CSS) radio galaxies where both the radio source and the emission line nebulae are on galactic scales and strong alignment is seen at all redshifts. There are weak trends for the aligned emission line nebulae to be more luminous, and for the emission line nebula size to increase with redshift and/or radio power. The combination of these results suggests that there is a limited but real capacity for the radio source to influence the properties of the emission line nebulae at these low redshifts (z < 0.6). Our results are consistent with previous suggestions that both mechanical and radiant energy are responsible for generating alignment between the radio source and emission line gas.Comment: 80 pages, 54 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ