574 research outputs found
Viscoelastic deformation of articular cartilage during impact loading
Peer reviewedPostprin
Factors affecting contraceptive choice in women over 40: a qualitative study
Objective
To explore the views of women over 40 years in choosing and using contraception, and to inform how contraceptive counselling for this age group could be improved.
Design, setting and participants
Fourteen women aged 40–52 years were recruited through social media platforms to take part in online, semistructured, in-depth interviews. Transcripts were analysed using a qualitative thematic approach.
Results
(1) Participants were anxious about unplanned pregnancy, and still highly motivated to avoid this. (2) Changes of contraceptive method over the lifecourse were occasionally precipitated by emergent health conditions, but healthcare providers often recommended a change in method on the basis of age alone. (3) Participants were experiencing perimenopausal symptoms but were largely unaware of how hormonal contraception could be used to treat these symptoms. (4) Prior negative experiences with contraceptive methods, coercive experiences with healthcare providers, and traumatic life events all contributed to a narrowing of contraceptive preference in later life.
Conclusion
Women over 40 years may be highly motivated to avoid pregnancy. This age group may have complex contraceptive histories with emerging perimenopausal symptoms. Women over 40 years may have accumulated adverse experiences which impact their contraceptive choices. These factors need to be explored by clinicians, to facilitate shared decision-making
Crocodiles and grey nomads: a deadly combination?
Increasing numbers of retirees seek individual, extended, unstructured activities in
remote, non-commercial locations. Travel is predominantly by self-drive 4WD vehicle
towing a caravan/campervan. These ‘grey nomads’ often prefer remote bush camping
sites/caravan parks to commercial resorts. The tropics – a popular destination – are
inhabited by Australia’s only large semi-terrestrial carnivore, the estuarine crocodile
Crocodylus porosus. Conservation programmes of recent decades have resulted in a
substantial increase in numbers. With naive grey nomads increasingly encroaching on
crocodile territory, attacks are expected to increase. Review of conservation programmes
to incorporate awareness education targeting grey nomads is therefore required
Impact testing to determine the mechanical properties of articular cartilage in isolation and on bone
The original publication is available at www.springerlink.comNon peer reviewedPostprin
Technical constraints on interstellar interferometry and spatially resolving the pulsar magnetosphere
Scintillation of pulsar radio signals caused by the interstellar medium can
in principle be used for interstellar interferometry. Changes of the dynamic
spectra as a function of pulsar longitude were in the past interpreted as
having spatially resolved the pulsar magnetosphere. Guided by this prospect we
used VLBI observations of PSR B1237+25 with the Arecibo and Green Bank radio
telescopes at 324 MHz and analyzed such scintillation at separate longitudes of
the pulse profile. We found that the fringe phase characteristics of the
visibility function changed quasi-sinusoidally as a function of longitude.
Also, the dynamic spectra from each of the telescopes shifted in frequency as a
function of longitude. Similar effects were found for PSR B1133+16. However, we
show that these effects are not signatures of having resolved the pulsar
magnetosphere. Instead the changes can be related to the effect of low-level
digitizing of the pulsar signal. After correcting for these effects the
frequency shifts largely disappeared. Residual effects may be partly due to
feed polarization impurities. Upper limits for the pulse emission altitudes of
PSR B1237+25 would likely be well below the pulsar light cylinder radius. In
view of our analysis we think that observations with the intent of spatially
resolving the pulsar magnetosphere need to be critically evaluated in terms of
these constraints on interstellar interferometry.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures, published in The Astrophysical Journa
Advanced Three Level Approximation for Numerical Treatment of Cosmological Recombination
New public numerical code for fast calculations of the cosmological
recombination of primordial hydrogen-helium plasma is presented. The code is
based on the three-level approximation (TLA) model of recombination and allows
us to take into account some fine physical effects of cosmological
recombination simultaneously with using fudge factors. The code can be found at
http://www.ioffe.ru/astro/QC/CMBR/atlant/atlant.htmlComment: 10 pages, 7 figures, 1 table, to be submitted to MNRA
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