Is Quality of Life a Healthy Concept? Measuring and Understanding Life Experiences of Older People.

The concept of quality of life has received considerable attention as an inclusive notion of health and as a basis for health interventions. The authors' argument in this article is that notwithstanding this attention, little consensus exists as to definition of the term. In addition, a focus on measurement has led to the neglect of wider aspects of quality of life. Such difficulties are particularly relevant to the study of quality of life of older people. Analysis of interview data suggests that older people's understandings of quality of life are not readily measurable and should be viewed in terms of phenomenological experience. The authors discuss the implications for studying quality of life of this group and difficulties for the concept itself.div_PaSAddington-Hall, J., & Kalra, L. (2001). Who should measure quality of life? British Medical Journal, 322, 1417-1420. Albrecht, G. L.,&Devlieger, P. J. (1999).The disability paradox: High quality of life against all odds. 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Higgs, P., Hyde, M., Wiggins, R., & Blane, D. (2003). Researching quality of life in early old age: The importance of the sociological dimension. Social Policy & Administration, 37(3), 239-252. Jirojanakul, P., & Skevington, S. (2000). Developing a quality of life measure for children aged 5-8 years. British Journal of Health Psychology, 5, 299-321. Jones, P.W.,&Kaplan, R. M. (2003). Methodological issues in evaluatingmeasures of health as outcomes for COPD. European Respiratory Journal, 21(Suppl. 41), 13S-18S. Joyce, C. R. B, McGee, H. M., & O'Boyle, C. A. (Eds.). (1999). Individual quality of life: Approaches to conceptualisation and assessment. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic. King, N., Carroll, C., Newton, P., & Dornan, T. (2002). You can't cure it so you have to endure it-: The experience of adaptation to diabetic renal disease. Qualitative Health Research, 12, 329-346. Koch, T. (2000). The illusion of paradox. Social Science & Medicine, 50, 757-759. Langer, E. J.,&Rodin, J. (1976). The effects of choice and enhanced personal responsibility for the aged:A field experiment in an institutional setting. Journal of Personality&Social Psychology, 34(2), 191-198. Lawton, M. P. (1999). Quality of life in chronic illness. Gerontology, 45, 181-183. 974 QUALITATIVE HEALTH RESEARCH / September 2004 Downloaded from qhr.sagepub.com at Queen Margaret Univ College on April 16, 2012 Lundh, U., & Nolan, M. (1996). Ageing and quality of life 2: Understanding successful ageing. British Journal of Nursing, 5(21), 1291-1295. Mallinson, S. (1998). The Short-Form 36 and older people: Some problems encountered when using postal administration. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 52(5), 324-328. McKee, K. J., Houston, D. M., & Barnes, S. (2002). Methods for assessing quality of life and well-being in frail older people. Psychology & Health, 17(6), 737-751. McMillan, S. C., &Weitzner, M. (1999). Quality of life in cancer patients: Use of a revised hospice index. 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London: Sage.14pub1251pub

Irritable Bowel Syndrome patients exhibit depressive and anxiety scores in the subsyndromal range

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) patients frequently experience affective disorders and psychiatric outpatients frequently meet criteria for IBS. The exact nature of this co-morbidity is not clear. 34 patients with Rome-II diagnosed IBS were recruited from a Gastroenterology clinic. Patients with social anxiety disorder (10 SSRI-remitted and 7 untreated subjects) were used as a psychiatric comparison, 28 normal subjects from our register were included as a fourth group (Volunteers). Depressive and anxiety symptoms were measured by the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and Spielberger Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), respectively. Personality traits were measured with the Swedish universities Scales of Personality (SSP). IBS subjects had BDI and STAI scores intermediate between those of volunteers and patients, despite their lack of a co-morbid psychiatric diagnosis. A principle component factor analysis of the SSP dataset corresponded closely to the solution published with other samples. ANOVA revealed significant between-group differences for 7 of the 13 SSP variables

Binary Neutron Star Mergers and Third Generation Detectors: Localization and Early Warning

For third generation gravitational wave detectors, such as the Einstein Telescope, gravitational wave signals from binary neutron stars can last up to a few days before the neutron stars merge. To estimate the measurement uncertainties of key signal parameters, we develop a Fisher matrix approach which accounts for effects on such long duration signals of the time-dependent detector response and the earths rotation. We use this approach to characterize the sky localization uncertainty for gravitational waves from binary neutron stars at 40, 200, 400, 800 and 1600Mpc, for the Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer individually and operating as a network. We find that the Einstein Telescope alone can localize the majority of detectable binary neutron stars at a distance of $\leq200$Mpc to within $100\text{deg}^2$ with 90% confidence. A network consisting of the Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer can enhance the sky localization performance significantly - with the 90% credible region of $\mathcal{O}(1) \text{deg}^2$ for most sources at $\leq200$Mpc and $\leq100\text{deg}^2$ for most sources at $\leq1600$Mpc. We also investigate the prospects for third generation detectors identifying the presence of a signal prior to merger. To do this, we require a signal to have a network signal-to-noise ratio of $\geq12$ and $\geq5.5$ for at least two interferometers, and to have a 90% credible region for the sky localization that is no larger than $100 \text{deg}^2$. We find that the Einstein Telescope can send out such "early-warning" detection alerts 1 - 20 hours before merger for 100% of detectable binary neutron stars at 40Mpc and for $\sim58\%$ of sources at 200Mpc. For sources at a distance of 400Mpc, a network of the Einstein telescope and Cosmic Explorer can produce detection alerts up to $\sim 3$ hours prior to merger for 98% of detectable binary neutron stars

Influence of nanotube length and density on the plasmonic terahertz response of single-walled carbon nanotubes

We measure the conductivity spectra of thin films comprising bundled single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) of different average lengths in the frequency range 0.3-1000 THz and temperature interval 10-530 K. The observed temperature-induced changes in the terahertz conductivity spectra are shown to depend strongly on the average CNT length, with a conductivity around 1 THz that increases/decreases as the temperature increases for short/long tubes. This behaviour originates from the temperature dependence of the electron scattering rate, which we obtain from Drude fits of the measured conductivity in the range 0.3-2 THz for 10 $\mu$m length CNTs. This increasing scattering rate with temperature results in a subsequent broadening of the observed THz conductivity peak at higher temperatures and a shift to lower frequencies for increasing CNT length. Finally, we show that the change in conductivity with temperature depends not only on tube length, but also varies with tube density. We record the effective conductivities of composite films comprising mixtures of WS$_2$ nanotubes and CNTs vs CNT density for frequencies in the range 0.3-1 THz, finding that the conductivity increases/decreases for low/high density films as the temperature increases. This effect arises due to the density dependence of the effective length of conducting pathways in the composite films, which again leads to a shift and temperature dependent broadening of the THz conductivity peak.Comment: Submitted to Journal of Physics D. Main manuscript: 9 pages, 8 figures. Supplementary material: 5 pages, 6 figure

Strategies for the Follow-up of Gravitational Wave Transients with the Cherenkov Telescope Array

The observation of the electromagnetic counterpart of gravitational-wave (GW) transient GW170817 demonstrated the potential in extracting astrophysical information from multimessenger discoveries. The forthcoming deployment of the first telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) observatory will coincide with Advanced LIGO/Virgo's next observing run, O3, enabling the monitoring of gamma-ray emission at E > 20 GeV, and thus particle acceleration, from GW sources. CTA will not be greatly limited by the precision of GW localization as it will be be capable of rapidly covering the GW error region with sufficient sensitivity. We examine the current status of GW searches and their follow-up effort, as well as the status of CTA, in order to identify some of the general strategies that will enhance CTA's contribution to multimessenger discoveries.Comment: 10 page

Inference on inspiral signals using LISA MLDC data

In this paper we describe a Bayesian inference framework for analysis of data obtained by LISA. We set up a model for binary inspiral signals as defined for the Mock LISA Data Challenge 1.2 (MLDC), and implemented a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm to facilitate exploration and integration of the posterior distribution over the 9-dimensional parameter space. Here we present intermediate results showing how, using this method, information about the 9 parameters can be extracted from the data.Comment: Accepted for publication in Classical and Quantum Gravity, GWDAW-11 special issu