Survey of psychosocial support provided by UK paediatric oncology centres

Aim: To obtain a comprehensive overview of current patterns of psychosocial support provided by National Health Service ( NHS) paediatric oncology treatment centres across the UK. Methods: A postal questionnaire was sent to co-ordinators in the UK Children's Cancer Study Group ( a professional body that is responsible for the organisation of treatment and management of childhood cancer in the UK) in 21 treatment centres and three separate Teenage Cancer Trus units. A range of psychosocial topics were explored, including ratio of staff providing support to patients; facilities provided for children and families; psychosocial support services such as support groups; information provision; and transition support. Results: There were many good areas of support provided by centres, but there was also a lack of standard practices and procedures. All centres employed social workers, play specialists, and paediatric oncology outreach nurses, but patient to staff ratios varied across centres. The poorest staff provision was among psychologists, where patient to staff ratios ranged from 132:1 to 1100:1. Written information was standard practice, while provision of other types of information (audiovisual, online) varied; none of the centres provided audio information specifically for children/young people. Conclusion: This variability in practices among centres frequently occurred, as centres rarely had procedures formally agreed or recorded in writing. British government policy currently seeks to develop standards and guidelines of care throughout the National Health Service. This study further demonstrates the importance of standards and the need to agree guidelines for the provision of psychosocial support for children/young people and their families throughout the course of the illness

Space weather effects on drilling accuracy in the North Sea

The oil industry uses geomagnetic field information to aid directional drilling operations when drilling for oil and gas offshore. These operations involve continuous monitoring of the azimuth and inclination of the well path to ensure the target is reached and, for safety reasons, to avoid collisions with existing wells. Although the most accurate method of achieving this is through a gyroscopic survey, this can be time consuming and expensive. An alternative method is a magnetic survey, where measurements while drilling (MWD) are made along the well by magnetometers housed in a tool within the drill string. These MWD magnetic surveys require estimates of the Earth’s magnetic field at the drilling location to correct the downhole magnetometer readings. The most accurate corrections are obtained if all sources of the Earth’s magnetic field are considered. Estimates of the main field generated in the core and the local crustal field can be obtained using mathematical models derived from suitable data sets. In order to quantify the external field, an analysis of UK observatory data from 1983 to 2004 has been carried out. By accounting for the external field, the directional error associated with estimated field values at a mid-latitude oil well (55 N) in the North Sea is shown to be reduced by the order of 20%. This improvement varies with latitude, local time, season and phase of the geomagnetic activity cycle. By accounting for all sources of the field, using a technique called Interpolation In-Field Referencing (IIFR), directional drillers have access to data from a “virtual” magnetic observatory at the drill site. This leads to an error reduction in positional accuracy that is close to matching that of the gyroscopic survey method and provides a valuable independent technique for quality control purposes

Observations of the Io plasma torus

The short wavelength spectrography on the IUE satellite was used to obtain spectra of the plasma torus near the orbit of Io about Jupiter. Three exposures of about 8 hours each taken in March and May 1979 show emission features due to SII, SIII, and OIII. The absence of features at other wavelengths permits upper limits to be other species in the torus

Observations of polar aurora on Jupiter

North-south spatial maps of Jupiter were obtained with the SWP camera in IUE observations of 10 December 1978, 19 May 1979, and 7 June 1979. Bright auroral emissions were detected from the north and south polar regions at H Ly alpha (1216 A) and in the H2 Lyman bands (1250-1608 A) on 19 May 1979; yet no enhanced polar emission was detected on the other days. The relationship between the IUE observing geometry and the geometry of the Jovian magnetosphere is discussed

Inhomogeneous Dust Collapse in 5D Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet Gravity

We consider a Lemaitre - Tolman - Bondi type space-time in Einstein gravity with the Gauss-Bonnet combination of quadratic curvature terms, and present exact solution in closed form. It turns out that the presence of the coupling constant of the Gauss-Bonnet terms alpha > 0 completely changes the causal structure of the singularities from the analogous general relativistic case. The gravitational collapse of inhomogeneous dust in the five-dimensional Gauss-Bonnet extended Einstein equations leads to formation of a massive, but weak, timelike singularity which is forbidden in general relativity. Interestingly, this is a counterexample to three conjecture viz. cosmic censorship conjecture, hoop conjecture and Seifert's conjecture.Comment: 8 Latex Pages, 2 EPS figure

Active galactic nucleus feedback in clusters of galaxies

Observations made during the last ten years with the Chandra X-ray Observatory have shed much light on the cooling gas in the centers of clusters of galaxies and the role of active galactic nucleus (AGN) heating. Cooling of the hot intracluster medium in cluster centers can feed the supermassive black holes found in the nuclei of the dominant cluster galaxies leading to AGN outbursts which can reheat the gas, suppressing cooling and large amounts of star formation. AGN heating can come in the form of shocks, buoyantly rising bubbles that have been inflated by radio lobes, and the dissipation of sound waves.Comment: Refereed review article published in Chandra's First Decade of Discovery Special Feature edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science

Cauchy-characteristic Evolution of Einstein-Klein-Gordon Systems: The Black Hole Regime

The Cauchy+characteristic matching (CCM) problem for the scalar wave equation is investigated in the background geometry of a Schwarzschild black hole. Previously reported work developed the CCM framework for the coupled Einstein-Klein-Gordon system of equations, assuming a regular center of symmetry. Here, the time evolution after the formation of a black hole is pursued, using a CCM formulation of the governing equations perturbed around the Schwarzschild background. An extension of the matching scheme allows for arbitrary matching boundary motion across the coordinate grid. As a proof of concept, the late time behavior of the dynamics of the scalar field is explored. The power-law tails in both the time-like and null infinity limits are verified.Comment: To appear in Phys. Rev. D, 9 pages, revtex, 5 figures available at http://www.astro.psu.edu/users/nr/preprints.htm