506 research outputs found
Post-cataract eye drops can be avoided by depot steroid injections.
There are over 400 000 cataract operations now being performed annually in the UK. With the majority of those patients being older people, comorbidities such as dementia or arthritis can prevent patients putting in their own post-operative eye drops. Where there is a lack of family or other support, district nursing services are often called upon to administer these eye drops, which are typically prescribed four times a day for 4 weeks, thus potentially totalling 112 visits for drop instillation per patient. To reduce the burden of these post-operative eye drops on district nursing services, administration of an intra-operative sub-Tenon's depot steroid injection is possible for cataract patients who then do not require any post-operative drop instillation. As a trial of this practice, 16 such patients were injected in one year, thus providing a reduction of 1792 in the number of visits requested. Taking an estimated cost of each district nurse visit of £38, this shift in practice potentially saved more than £68 000; the additional cost of the injection over the cost of eye drops was just £8.80 for the year. This practice presents an opportunity to protect valuable community nursing resources, but advocacy for change in practice would be needed with secondary care, or via commissioners
Identities for hyperelliptic P-functions of genus one, two and three in covariant form
We give a covariant treatment of the quadratic differential identities
satisfied by the P-functions on the Jacobian of smooth hyperelliptic curves of
genera 1, 2 and 3
Serre's "formule de masse" in prime degree
For a local field F with finite residue field of characteristic p, we
describe completely the structure of the filtered F_p[G]-module K^*/K^*p in
characteristic 0 and $K^+/\wp(K^+) in characteristic p, where K=F(\root{p-1}\of
F^*) and G=\Gal(K|F). As an application, we give an elementary proof of Serre's
mass formula in degree p. We also determine the compositum C of all degree p
separable extensions with solvable galoisian closure over an arbitrary base
field, and show that C is K(\root p\of K^*) or K(\wp^{-1}(K)) respectively, in
the case of the local field F. Our method allows us to compute the contribution
of each character G\to\F_p^* to the degree p mass formula, and, for any given
group \Gamma, the contribution of those degree p separable extensions of F
whose galoisian closure has group \Gamma.Comment: 36 pages; most of the new material has been moved to the new Section
Ambiguity Uncertainty and Risk: Reframing the task of suicide risk assessment and prevention in acute in-patient mental health
The work of the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide by People with Mental Illness has served to draw attention to the issue of suicide amongst users of mental health services including inpatient and provided the basis for a series of recommendations aimed at improving practice (Appleby et al., 2001, NIMHE 2003). Such recommendations include further training on risk assessment for practitioners. However, representing the problem of suicide as one which can be 'managed' by risk assessment particularly quantitative actuarial approaches implicitly misrepresents the phenomena of suicidality as something which can predicted and therefore managed may be inherently unpredictable at the level of the individual over the short term. We need instead to acknowledge that our work with service users who may be contemplating suicide embraces and acknowledges both uncertainty and ambiguity and seeks to assess risk phenomenologically at the level of the individual such that by understanding their reasons for living and dying we can work in partnership with them to find hope
The arithmetic of hyperelliptic curves
We summarise recent advances in techniques for solving Diophantine problems on hyperelliptic curves; in particular, those for finding the rank of the Jacobian, and the set of rational points on the curve
Dense Packings of Superdisks and the Role of Symmetry
We construct the densest known two-dimensional packings of superdisks in the
plane whose shapes are defined by |x^(2p) + y^(2p)| <= 1, which contains both
convex-shaped particles (p > 0.5, with the circular-disk case p = 1) and
concave-shaped particles (0 < p < 0.5). The packings of the convex cases with p
1 generated by a recently developed event-driven molecular dynamics (MD)
simulation algorithm [Donev, Torquato and Stillinger, J. Comput. Phys. 202
(2005) 737] suggest exact constructions of the densest known packings. We find
that the packing density (covering fraction of the particles) increases
dramatically as the particle shape moves away from the "circular-disk" point (p
= 1). In particular, we find that the maximal packing densities of superdisks
for certain p 6 = 1 are achieved by one of the two families of Bravais lattice
packings, which provides additional numerical evidence for Minkowski's
conjecture concerning the critical determinant of the region occupied by a
superdisk. Moreover, our analysis on the generated packings reveals that the
broken rotational symmetry of superdisks influences the packing characteristics
in a non-trivial way. We also propose an analytical method to construct dense
packings of concave superdisks based on our observations of the structural
properties of packings of convex superdisks.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure
Renormalisation scheme for vector fields on T2 with a diophantine frequency
We construct a rigorous renormalisation scheme for analytic vector fields on
the 2-torus of Poincare type. We show that iterating this procedure there is
convergence to a limit set with a ``Gauss map'' dynamics on it, related to the
continued fraction expansion of the slope of the frequencies. This is valid for
diophantine frequency vectors.Comment: final versio
Generalised Elliptic Functions
We consider multiply periodic functions, sometimes called Abelian functions,
defined with respect to the period matrices associated with classes of
algebraic curves. We realise them as generalisations of the Weierstras
P-function using two different approaches. These functions arise naturally as
solutions to some of the important equations of mathematical physics and their
differential equations, addition formulae, and applications have all been
recent topics of study.
The first approach discussed sees the functions defined as logarithmic
derivatives of the sigma-function, a modified Riemann theta-function. We can
make use of known properties of the sigma function to derive power series
expansions and in turn the properties mentioned above. This approach has been
extended to a wide range of non hyperelliptic and higher genus curves and an
overview of recent results is given.
The second approach defines the functions algebraically, after first
modifying the curve into its equivariant form. This approach allows the use of
representation theory to derive a range of results at lower computational cost.
We discuss the development of this theory for hyperelliptic curves and how it
may be extended in the future.Comment: 16 page
Optimal Packings of Superballs
Dense hard-particle packings are intimately related to the structure of
low-temperature phases of matter and are useful models of heterogeneous
materials and granular media. Most studies of the densest packings in three
dimensions have considered spherical shapes, and it is only more recently that
nonspherical shapes (e.g., ellipsoids) have been investigated. Superballs
(whose shapes are defined by |x1|^2p + |x2|^2p + |x3|^2p <= 1) provide a
versatile family of convex particles (p >= 0.5) with both cubic- and
octahedral-like shapes as well as concave particles (0 < p < 0.5) with
octahedral-like shapes. In this paper, we provide analytical constructions for
the densest known superball packings for all convex and concave cases. The
candidate maximally dense packings are certain families of Bravais lattice
packings. The maximal packing density as a function of p is nonanalytic at the
sphere-point (p = 1) and increases dramatically as p moves away from unity. The
packing characteristics determined by the broken rotational symmetry of
superballs are similar to but richer than their two-dimensional "superdisk"
counterparts, and are distinctly different from that of ellipsoid packings. Our
candidate optimal superball packings provide a starting point to quantify the
equilibrium phase behavior of superball systems, which should deepen our
understanding of the statistical thermodynamics of nonspherical-particle
systems.Comment: 28 pages, 16 figure
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