1,339 research outputs found
The vulnerability of public spaces: challenges for UK hospitals under the 'new' terrorist threat
This article considers the challenges for hospitals in the United Kingdom that arise from the threats of mass-casualty terrorism. Whilst much has been written about the role of health care as a rescuer in terrorist attacks and other mass-casualty crises, little has been written about health care as a victim within a mass-emergency setting. Yet, health care is a key component of any nation's contingency planning and an erosion of its capabilities would have a significant impact on the generation of a wider crisis following a mass-casualty event. This article seeks to highlight the nature of the challenges facing elements of UK health care, with a focus on hospitals both as essential contingency responders under the United Kingdom's civil contingencies legislation and as potential victims of terrorism. It seeks to explore the potential gaps that exist between the task demands facing hospitals and the vulnerabilities that exist within them
Atomistic study on the pressure dependence of the melting point of NdFe12
We investigated, using molecular dynamics, how pressure affects the melting point of the recently theorised and epitaxially grown structure NdFe12. We modified Morse potentials using experimental constants and a genetic algorithm code, before running two-phase solid-liquid coexistence simulations of NdFe12 at various temperatures and pressures. The refitting of the Morse potentials allowed us to significantly improve the accuracy in predicting the melting temperature of the constituent elements
Gradient Representations and Affine Structures in AE(n)
We study the indefinite Kac-Moody algebras AE(n), arising in the reduction of
Einstein's theory from (n+1) space-time dimensions to one (time) dimension, and
their distinguished maximal regular subalgebras sl(n) and affine A_{n-2}^{(1)}.
The interplay between these two subalgebras is used, for n=3, to determine the
commutation relations of the `gradient generators' within AE(3). The low level
truncation of the geodesic sigma-model over the coset space AE(n)/K(AE(n)) is
shown to map to a suitably truncated version of the SL(n)/SO(n) non-linear
sigma-model resulting from the reduction Einstein's equations in (n+1)
dimensions to (1+1) dimensions. A further truncation to diagonal solutions can
be exploited to define a one-to-one correspondence between such solutions, and
null geodesic trajectories on the infinite-dimensional coset space H/K(H),
where H is the (extended) Heisenberg group, and K(H) its maximal compact
subgroup. We clarify the relation between H and the corresponding subgroup of
the Geroch group.Comment: 43 page
Measuring player’s behaviour change over time in public goods game
An important issue in public goods game is whether player's behaviour changes over time, and if so, how significant it is. In this game players can be classified into different groups according to the level of their participation in the public good. This problem can be considered as a concept drift problem by asking the amount of change that happens to the clusters of players over a sequence of game rounds. In this study we present a method for measuring changes in clusters with the same items over discrete time points using external clustering validation indices and area under the curve. External clustering indices were originally used to measure the difference between suggested clusters in terms of clustering algorithms and ground truth labels for items provided by experts. Instead of different cluster label comparison, we use these indices to compare between clusters of any two consecutive time points or between the first time point and the remaining time points to measure the difference between clusters through time points. In theory, any external clustering indices can be used to measure changes for any traditional (non-temporal) clustering algorithm, due to the fact that any time point alone is not carrying any temporal information. For the public goods game, our results indicate that the players are changing over time but the change is smooth and relatively constant between any two time points
Estimating the incidence, prevalence and true cost of asthma in the UK: secondary analysis of national stand-alone and linked databases in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales-a study protocol.
INTRODUCTION: Asthma is now one of the most common long-term conditions in the UK. It is therefore important to develop a comprehensive appreciation of the healthcare and societal costs in order to inform decisions on care provision and planning. We plan to build on our earlier estimates of national prevalence and costs from asthma by filling the data gaps previously identified in relation to healthcare and broadening the field of enquiry to include societal costs. This work will provide the first UK-wide estimates of the costs of asthma. In the context of asthma for the UK and its member countries (ie, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales), we seek to: (1) produce a detailed overview of estimates of incidence, prevalence and healthcare utilisation; (2) estimate health and societal costs; (3) identify any remaining information gaps and explore the feasibility of filling these and (4) provide insights into future research that has the potential to inform changes in policy leading to the provision of more cost-effective care.
METHODS AND ANALYSIS: Secondary analyses of data from national health surveys, primary care, prescribing, emergency care, hospital, mortality and administrative data sources will be undertaken to estimate prevalence, healthcare utilisation and outcomes from asthma. Data linkages and economic modelling will be undertaken in an attempt to populate data gaps and estimate costs. Separate prevalence and cost estimates will be calculated for each of the UK-member countries and these will then be aggregated to generate UK-wide estimates.
ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Approvals have been obtained from the NHS Scotland Information Services Division's Privacy Advisory Committee, the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage Collaboration Review System, the NHS South-East Scotland Research Ethics Service and The University of Edinburgh's Centre for Population Health Sciences Research Ethics Committee. We will produce a report for Asthma-UK, submit papers to peer-reviewed journals and construct an interactive map
Cohort profile: Scottish Health and Ethnicity Linkage Study of 4.65 million people exploring ethnic variations in disease in Scotland
Many countries require health services to show that
they are meeting the needs of ethnic minority
populations. This requires data on health status,
healthcare uptake and outcomes and population
denominators. Weaknesses in routine data collection
often make such requirements difficult to meet.
Routine data sources in Scotland, as in most countries,
may not include a patient’s ethnicity. In
Scotland, the need for such data is driven by both
policy and legislation responding to rapidly increasing
ethnic diversity. Fair For All (2003), Scotland’s policy,
provides a strategic approach to improve the health of
minority ethnic groups. The UK Race Relations
(Amendment) Act (2000) placed a duty on public
bodies to promote racial equality. These mandates
are reflected in guidance on ethnic monitoring.
Appropriate service and research is undermined by
the lack of data. Ethnic variations occur in all of
Scotland’s national health priority areas, including
coronary heart disease/stroke, cancer, maternal
and child health and mental health.
In view of the mismatch between need for and
availability of data by ethnic group, Bhopal proposed
a demonstration project to explore retrospective
approaches. The project tested proposals including
name search methods, analyses by country of birth,
modelling/extrapolation from other nations’ datasets,
and linkage methods. The demonstration project concluded
that census health records linkage methods—
in the context of this project first mooted by Povey—
held most promise. To our knowledge, attempting
matching of a national health dataset to a complete
national census using demographic identifiers rather
than national identity numbers had not been reported
though health data linkage is well-established in the
UK and internationally, including exploring ethnicity
and health
Ethnic differences in Glycaemic control in people with type 2 diabetes mellitus living in Scotland
Background and Aims:
Previous studies have investigated the association between ethnicity and processes of care and intermediate outcomes of diabetes, but there are limited population-based studies available. The aim of this study was to use population-based data to investigate the relationships between ethnicity and glycaemic control in men and women with diabetes mellitus living in Scotland.<p></p>
Methods:
We used a 2008 extract from the population-based national electronic diabetes database of Scotland. The association between ethnicity with mean glycaemic control in type 2 diabetes mellitus was examined in a retrospective cohort study, including adjustment for a number of variables including age, sex, socioeconomic status, body mass index (BMI), prescribed treatment and duration of diabetes.<p></p>
Results:
Complete data for analyses were available for 56,333 White Scottish adults, 2,535 Pakistanis, 857 Indians, 427 Chinese and 223 African-Caribbeans. All other ethnic groups had significantly (p<0.05) greater proportions of people with suboptimal glycaemic control (HbA1c >58 mmol/mol, 7.5%) compared to the White Scottish group, despite generally younger mean age and lower BMI. Fully adjusted odds ratios for suboptimal glycaemic control were significantly higher among Pakistanis and Indians (1.85, 95% CI: 1.68–2.04, and 1.62,95% CI: 1.38–1.89) respectively.<p></p>
Conclusions:
Pakistanis and Indians with type 2 diabetes mellitus were more likely to have suboptimal glycaemic control than the white Scottish population. Further research on health services and self-management are needed to understand the association between ethnicity and glycaemic control to address ethnic disparities in glycaemic control.<p></p>
Human behavior in Prisoner's Dilemma experiments suppresses network reciprocity
During the last few years, much research has been devoted to strategic
interactions on complex networks. In this context, the Prisoner's Dilemma has
become a paradigmatic model, and it has been established that imitative
evolutionary dynamics lead to very different outcomes depending on the details
of the network. We here report that when one takes into account the real
behavior of people observed in the experiments, both at the mean-field level
and on utterly different networks the observed level of cooperation is the
same. We thus show that when human subjects interact in an heterogeneous mix
including cooperators, defectors and moody conditional cooperators, the
structure of the population does not promote or inhibit cooperation with
respect to a well mixed population.Comment: 5 Pages including 4 figures. Submitted for publicatio
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