Health and sustainable development

If sustainable development is to mean anything, people must be healthy enough to benefit from it and not have their lives cut off prematurely. Development without health is meaningless. But the processes which are likely to occur in a world undergoing globalisation, climate change, urbanisation, population increase and many other changes, will impact upon human health in complex ways. Some of them will benefit us, others will create new or augmented threats to survival and health, while many others will have a complex mixture of effects

Richard Sidney Sayers (1908–1989)

Richard Sayers’s greatest strength was as an economic historian of institutional changes within the British financial system, especially relating to the Bank of England, for which he became the second official historian covering the years 1891-1944; but also writing the histories of Lloyds and Gilletts, and a wider study entitled Financial Policy, 1939-45. Nevertheless, he is best known for two other contributions. First, his textbook, Modern Banking, remained required reading on this subject for all British undergraduates from 1937 until the early 1970s; second, he played the major role in the domestic monetary analysis of the Radcliffe Report (1959). This latter role was often not well received, and his historical and institutional approach to the subject began to be treated as unfashionable and outdated, so that Sayers, always a lone introvert, had a somewhat sad end to his lif

Richard Sidney Sayers (1908–1989)

Richard Sayers’s greatest strength was as an economic historian of institutional changes within the British financial system, especially relating to the Bank of England, for which he became the second official historian covering the years 1891-1944; but also writing the histories of Lloyds and Gilletts, and a wider study entitled Financial Policy, 1939-45. Nevertheless, he is best known for two other contributions. First, his textbook, Modern Banking, remained required reading on this subject for all British undergraduates from 1937 until the early 1970s; second, he played the major role in the domestic monetary analysis of the Radcliffe Report (1959). This latter role was often not well received, and his historical and institutional approach to the subject began to be treated as unfashionable and outdated, so that Sayers, always a lone introvert, had a somewhat sad end to his lif

Mental health treatment: Reaching more kids

Background: Nearly 70% of children who are in need of specialized mental health services do not access them. We set out to identify effective self-delivered interventions as a way to help bridge the gap between those in need and those being serviced. Methods: We used systematic review methods to identify randomized control trials (RCTs) evaluating self-delivered treatments. After applying our rigorous inclusion criteria, we accepted five RCTs evaluating five treatment interventions. Results: Three self-directed family interventions reduced anxiety diagnoses and symptoms for school age children. One self-directed parenting intervention reduced ADHD diagnoses for school age children. Additionally, one self-directed youth invention reduced depression symptoms for adolescents. Conclusions: Strong research evidence supports the use of self-directed treatments to address three common childhood mental disorders. Greater use of these interventions can expand the number of children who are reached with effective treatments

Transverse Demagnetization Dynamics of a Unitary Fermi Gas

Understanding the quantum dynamics of strongly interacting fermions is a problem relevant to diverse forms of matter, including high-temperature superconductors, neutron stars, and quark-gluon plasma. An appealing benchmark is offered by cold atomic gases in the unitary limit of strong interactions. Here we study the dynamics of a transversely magnetized unitary Fermi gas in an inhomogeneous magnetic field. We observe the demagnetization of the gas, caused by diffusive spin transport. At low temperatures, the diffusion constant saturates to the conjectured quantum-mechanical lower bound $\simeq \hbar/m$, where $m$ is the particle mass. The development of pair correlations, indicating the transformation of the initially non-interacting gas towards a unitary spin mixture, is observed by measuring Tan's contact parameter.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures. Accepted versio

Project Energize: intervention development and 10 years of progress in preventing childhood obesity

Prevention of childhood obesity is a global priority. The school setting offers access to large numbers of children and the ability to provide supportive environments for quality physical activity and nutrition. This article describes Project Energize, a through-school physical activity and nutrition programme that celebrated its 10-year anniversary in 2015 so that it might serve as a model for similar practices, initiatives and policies elsewhere. The programme was envisaged and financed by the Waikato District Health Board of New Zealand in 2004 and delivered by Sport Waikato to 124 primary schools as a randomised controlled trial from 2005 to 2006. The programme has since expanded to include all 242 primary schools in the Waikato region and 70 schools in other regions, including 53,000 children. Ongoing evaluation and development of Project Energize has shown it to be sustainable (ongoing for >10 years), both effective (lower obesity, higher physical fitness) and cost effective (one health related cost quality adjusted life year between $18,000 and$30,000) and efficient ($45/child/year) as a childhood 'health' programme. The programme's unique community-based approach is inclusive of all children, serving a population that is 42 % Ma¯ori, the indigenous people of New Zealand. While the original nine healthy eating and seven quality physical activity goals have not changed, the delivery and assessment processes has been refined and the health service adapted over the 10 years of the programme existence, as well as adapted over time to other settings including early childhood education and schools in Cork in Ireland. Evaluation and research associated with the programme delivery and outcomes are ongoing. The dissemination of findings to politicians and collaboration with other service providers are both regarded as priorities

Imaging correlates of molecular signatures in oligodendrogliomas.

Molecular subsets of oligodendroglioma behave in biologically distinct ways. Their locations in the brain, rates of growth, and responses to therapy differ with their genotypes. Retrospectively, we inquired whether allelic loss of chromosomal arms 1p and 19q, an early molecular event and favorable prognostic marker in oligodendrogliomas, were reflected in their appearance on magnetic resonance imaging. Loss of 1p and 19q was associated with an indistinct border on T(1) images and mixed intensity signal on T(1) and T(2). Loss of 1p and 19q was also associated with paramagnetic susceptibility effect and with calcification, a common histopathological finding in oligodendrogliomas. These data encourage prospective evaluation of molecular alterations and magnetic resonance imaging characteristics of glial neoplasms