Proceedings of the Spacecraft Charging Technology Conference: Executive Summary

Aerospace environments are reviewed in reference to spacecraft charging. Modelling, a theoretical scheme which can be used to describe the structure of the sheath around the spacecraft and to calculate the charging currents within, is discussed. Materials characterization is considered for experimental determination of the behavior of typical spacecraft materials when exposed to simulated geomagnetic substorm conditions. Materials development is also examined for controlling and minimizing spacecraft charging or at least for distributing the charge in an equipotential manner, using electrical conductive surfaces for materials exposed to space environment

Setting priorities to inform assessment of care homes’ readiness to participate in healthcare innovation: a systematic mapping review and consensus process

© 2020 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly citedOrganisational context is known to impact on the successful implementation of healthcare initiatives in care homes. We undertook a systematic mapping review to examine whether researchers have considered organisational context when planning, conducting, and reporting the implementation of healthcare innovations in care homes. Review data were mapped against the Alberta Context Tool, which was designed to assess organizational context in care homes. The review included 56 papers. No studies involved a systematic assessment of organisational context prior to implementation, but many provided post hoc explanations of how organisational context affected the success or otherwise of the innovation. Factors identified to explain a lack of success included poor senior staff engagement, non-alignment with care home culture, limited staff capacity to engage, and low levels of participation from health professionals such as general practitioners (GPs). Thirty-five stakeholders participated in workshops to discuss findings and develop questions for assessing care home readiness to participate in innovations. Ten questions were developed to initiate conversations between innovators and care home staff to support research and implementation. This framework can help researchers initiate discussions about health-related innovation. This will begin to address the gap between implementation theory and practice.Peer reviewe

Is there a link between overactive bladder and the metabolic syndrome in women? : A systematic review of observational studies

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.To conduct a systematic review to determine whether there is an association between metabolic syndrome (MetS) and lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) or overactive bladder (OAB) in women. We systematically reviewed English language observational studies on the effect of MetS (or component factors) on the presence of OAB or LUTS in women. We searched PubMed, Web of Science and The Cochrane Library with no date restrictions, checked reference lists and undertook citation searches in PubMed and Google Scholar. Studies were assessed for risk of bias. Because of heterogeneity, results were not pooled, but are reported narrativelyPeer reviewe

Systematic Errors in Cosmic Microwave Background Interferometry

Cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization observations will require superb control of systematic errors in order to achieve their full scientific potential, particularly in the case of attempts to detect the B modes that may provide a window on inflation. Interferometry may be a promising way to achieve these goals. This paper presents a formalism for characterizing the effects of a variety of systematic errors on interferometric CMB polarization observations, with particular emphasis on estimates of the B-mode power spectrum. The most severe errors are those that couple the temperature anisotropy signal to polarization; such errors include cross-talk within detectors, misalignment of polarizers, and cross-polarization. In a B mode experiment, the next most serious category of errors are those that mix E and B modes, such as gain fluctuations, pointing errors, and beam shape errors. The paper also indicates which sources of error may cause circular polarization (e.g., from foregrounds) to contaminate the cosmologically interesting linear polarization channels, and conversely whether monitoring of the circular polarization channels may yield useful information about the errors themselves. For all the sources of error considered, estimates of the level of control that will be required for both E and B mode experiments are provided. Both experiments that interfere linear polarizations and those that interfere circular polarizations are considered. The fact that circular experiments simultaneously measure both linear polarization Stokes parameters in each baseline mitigates some sources of error.Comment: 19 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Infrared Observations of the Helix Planetary Nebula

We have mapped the Helix (NGC 7293) planetary nebula (PN) with the IRAC instrument on the Spitzer Space Telescope. The Helix is one of the closest bright PNs and therefore provides an opportunity to resolve the small-scale structure in the nebula. The emission from this PN in the 5.8 and 8 μm IRAC bands is dominated by the pure rotational lines of molecular hydrogen, with a smaller contribution from forbidden line emission such as [Ar III] in the ionized region. The IRAC images resolve the "cometary knots," which have been previously studied in this PN. The "tails" of the knots and the radial rays extending into the outer regions of the PN are seen in emission in the IRAC bands. IRS spectra on the main ring and the emission in the IRAC bands are consistent with shock-excited H_2 models, with a small (~10%) component from photodissociation regions. In the northeast arc, the H_2 emission is located in a shell outside the Hα emission

Care home readiness: a rapid review and consensus workshops on how organisational context affects care home engagement with health care innovation

Summary The NHS Five-Year Forward view recognises that the NHS needs to do more to support older people living with frailty in care homes. This paper presents the findings from a rapid review and consensus events that explored how organisational context affects uptake of healthcare innovation in long term care settings. Care home managers and front line staff, care home researchers, NHS commissioners and NHS practitioners participated in the workshops. The review found that uptake is likely to be better when contextual factors are addressed. Leadership and care home culture were important but there was a limited consensus about how to identify this or, for example, what kind of leadership made a difference. A few studies highlighted the importance of making sure that the priorities of care home and health care practitioners were aligned and establishing that care home staff had the resources and time to implement the change. Workshop participants agreed that the different contextual factors discussed in the literature were important and resonated with their experience. NHS services and practitioners had not however, structured their work with care homes to take these factors into account. Also discussed was the need to consider if NHS services understood how to work with care homes. In deciding how and when to allocate resources to care homes to support new initiatives, the NHS needs to consider carefully the organisational contexts and assess them appropriately. Based on the combined findings we suggest ten key questions for commissioners and service providers working with care home providers. Ideally these questions can be used prior to working with care homes. They can also help to structure reviews of uptake of innovations to enhance health in care homes. 1. Does this intervention align with care home priorities? Or are there other potential interventions that care homes identify as more pressing? 2. What evidence is there of senior management interest and enthusiasm for this intervention at organisation & unit level? Are they willing and able on a daily basis to take a leadership role in supporting the proposed change? 3. Do care home staff have enough “slack and flexibility” to accommodate the change into their current workload, is this recognised as core to their work? 4. How is change discussed (formally and informally) in the care home setting? Who needs to be involved in decision-making about what is being proposed and how it is implemented? 5. What are the recent changes or health related projects this care home has been involved with? 6. Is there a champion in both the care home and in the linked NHS service with protected time to help facilitate change? 7. What are the pre-existing working relationships between NHS services and care home staff and networks of care and support around the care home? ( e.g. GPs, visiting specialists, links with local hospital) 8. Could the intervention appear judgemental by signalling in a negative way that the care home needs to change? 9. How well do existing care home training programmes and work schedules fit with what is proposed? 10. Will care home staff have to collect and enter new data or is it held in existing systems? The report concludes by suggesting some strategies that might support how NHS practitioners and care home staff address their capacity and readiness to work together

A Combining Forecasting Modeling and Its Application

Part 5: Modelling and SimulationInternational audienceThe supply chain coordination has abstracted more and more attention from industries and academics. This paper studies a Bayesian combination forecasting model to integrate multiple forecasting resources and coordinate forecasting process among partners in retail supply chain. The simulation results based on the retail sales data show the effectiveness of this Bayesian combination forecasting model to coordinate the collaborative forecasting process. This Bayesian combination forecasting model can improve demand forecasting accuracy of supply chain

How Anisotropic is our Universe?

Large-scale cosmic microwave background anisotropies in homogeneous, globally anisotropic cosmologies are investigated. We perform a statistical analysis in which the four-year data from the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite is searched for the specific anisotropy patterns predicted by these models and thereby set definitive upper limits on the amount of shear, $(\sigma/H)_0$ and vorticity, $(\omega/H)_0$, which are orders of magnitude stronger than previous constraints. We comment on how these results might impact our understanding of primordial global anisotropy.Comment: 12 pages (1 figure), uses RevTex and psfig, submitted to PR