Adjustable mount for electro-optic transducers in an evacuated cryogenic system

The invention is an adjustable mount for positioning an electro-optic transducer in an evacuated cryogenic environment. Electro-optic transducers are used in this manner as high sensitivity detectors of gas emission lines of spectroscopic analysis. The mount is made up of an adjusting mechanism and a transducer mount. The adjusting mechanism provided five degrees of freedom, linear adjustments and angular adjustments. The mount allows the use of an internal lens to focus energy on the transducer element thereby improving the efficiency of the detection device. Further, the transducer mount, although attached to the adjusting mechanism, is isolated thermally such that a cryogenic environment can be maintained at the transducer while the adjusting mechanism remains at room temperature. Radiation shields also are incorporated to further reduce heat flow to the transducer location

Progress in thin film GaAs solar cells

Solar cells using polycrystalline films of gallium arsenid

Care-seeking decisions for worsening symptoms in heart failure: a qualitative metasynthesis

Purpose: Over 50% of heart failure (HF) patients delay seeking help for worsening symptoms until these reach acute levels and require emergency hospitalisation. This metasynthesis aimed to identify and explore factors influencing timely care-seeking in patients with HF. Methods: Electronic databases searched were Medline, EMBASE and CINAHL. Studies were included if they were peer reviewed journal articles written in English, and reported perspectives of HF patients following qualitative data collection and analysis. Forty articles underwent analysis following the approach of Thomas and Harden. Leventhal's self-regulatory model (SRM) was used to organise the literature. Results: Much of the literature fit within the SRM, however this model did not account for all factors that influence patients’ care-seeking for worsening symptoms. Factors not accounted for included patients’ appraisals of previous care-seeking experiences, perceived system and provider barriers to accessing care, and the influence of external appraisals. When added to factors already represented in the model, such as misattribution of symptoms, not identifying with HF diagnosis, cognitive status, lack of understanding information provided, adaptation to symptoms, and emotional responses, a more comprehensive account of patients’ decision-making was revealed. Implications: This metasynthesis identified factors, as yet unaccounted for, in a prominent model, and has suggested a more comprehensive framework for addressing care-seeking in HF patients. This information can be used to tailor education, communication, and service initiatives to improve HF patients’ responses to worsening symptoms

Vitamin D toxicity of dietary origin in cats fed a natural complementary kitten food

Case series summary This case series describes two young sibling cats and an additional unrelated cat, from two separate households, that developed hypercalcaemia associated with hypervitaminosis D. Excessive vitamin D concentrations were identified in a natural complementary tinned kitten food that was fed to all three cats as part of their diet. In one of the cases, there was clinical evidence of soft tissue mineralisation. The hypercalcaemia and soft tissue mineralisation resolved following withdrawal of the affected food and medical management of the hypercalcaemia. Relevance and novel information This case series demonstrates the importance of obtaining a thorough dietary history in patients presenting with hypercalcaemia and the measurement of vitamin D metabolites when investigating such cases. Complementary foods may have the potential to induce nutritional toxicity even when fed with complete, nutritionally balanced diets

Narratives of therapeutic art-making in the context of marital breakdown: Older women reflect on a significant mid-life experience

This paper explores the narratives of three women aged 65-72 years. They reflected on an episode of therapeutic art-making in midlife, which addressed depression associated with marital crisis and breakdown. The narrative analysis focused upon on the ways in which participants narrated the events leading up to their participation in therapeutic art-making; the aspects of therapeutic art-making that continued to be given significance; the characters given primacy in the stories they told about their journey through therapy and marital breakdown; meanings, symbolic and otherwise, that participants ascribed to their artwork made during this turning point in their lives; and aspects of the narratives that conveyed present-day identities and artistic endeavors. The narratives revealed the complexity of the journey through marital breakdown and depression into health, and showed that therapeutic art-making could best be understood, not as a stand-alone experience, but as given meaning within the context of wider personal and social resources. Participants looked back on therapeutic art-making that occurred two decades earlier and still described this as a significant turning point in their personal development. Art as an adjunct to counselling/therapy was not only symbolically self-expressive but provided opportunity for decision-making, agency and a reformulated self-image

Psychopolitics: Peter Sedgwick’s legacy for mental health movements

This paper re-considers the relevance of Peter Sedgwick's Psychopolitics (1982) for a politics of mental health. Psychopolitics offered an indictment of ‘anti-psychiatry’ the failure of which, Sedgwick argued, lay in its deconstruction of the category of ‘mental illness’, a gesture that resulted in a politics of nihilism. ‘The radical who is only a radical nihilist’, Sedgwick observed, ‘is for all practical purposes the most adamant of conservatives’. Sedgwick argued, rather, that the concept of ‘mental illness’ could be a truly critical concept if it was deployed ‘to make demands upon the health service facilities of the society in which we live’. The paper contextualizes Psychopolitics within the ‘crisis tendencies’ of its time, surveying the shifting welfare landscape of the subsequent 25 years alongside Sedgwick's continuing relevance. It considers the dilemma that the discourse of ‘mental illness’ – Sedgwick's critical concept – has fallen out of favour with radical mental health movements yet remains paradigmatic within psychiatry itself. Finally, the paper endorses a contemporary perspective that, while necessarily updating Psychopolitics, remains nonetheless ‘Sedgwickian’

Effects of Iron, Silicate, and Light on Dimethylsulfoniopropionate Production in the Australian Subantarctic Zone

Shipboard bottle incubation experiments were performed to investigate the effects of iron, light, and silicate on algal production of particulate dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSPp) in the Subantarctic Zone (SAZ) south of Tasmania during March 1998. Iron enrichment resulted in threefold to ninefold increases in DMSPp concentrations relative to control treatments, following 7 and 8-day incubation experiments. Additions of Fe and Si preferentially stimulated the growth of lightly-silicified pennate diatoms and siliceous haptophytes, respectively, to which we attribute the increased DMSPp production in the incubation bottles. Both of these algal groups were previously believed to be low DMSPp producers; however, our experimental data suggest that addition of iron and silicate to the low-silicate low-iron waters of the SAZ will result in increased production of DMSPp by lightly silicified diatoms and siliceous haptophytes, respectively. Increased irradiance enhanced DMSPp production in iron-amended treatments with both low (0.5 nM) and high (5 nM) concentrations of added iron. However, the role of light in stimulating DMSPp production was apparently of secondary importance compared to the effects of iron addition. The combination of high irradiance and high iron enrichment produced the highest DMSPp production in the experiments, suggesting that iron and light may have a synergistic effect in limiting algal DMSPp production in subantarctic waters

‘It stays with you’: multiple evocative representations of dance and future possibilities for studies in sport and physical cultures

This article considers the integration of arts-based representations via poetic narratives together with artistic representation on dancing embodiment so as to continue an engagement with debates regarding multiple forms/representations. Like poetry, visual images are unique and can evoke particular kinds of emotional and visceral responses, meaning that alternative representational forms can resonate in different and powerful ways. In the article, we draw on grandparent-grandchild interactions, narrative poetry, and artistic representations of dance in order to illustrate how arts-based methods might synergise to offer new ways of ‘knowing’ and ‘seeing’. The expansion of the visual arts into interdisciplinary methodological innovations is a relatively new, and sometimes contentious approach, in studies of sport and exercise. We raise concerns regarding the future for more arts-based research in the light of an ever-changing landscape of a neoliberal university culture that demands high productivity in reductionist terms of what counts as ‘output’, often within very restricted time-frames. Heeding feminist calls for ‘slow academies’ that attempt to ‘change’ time collectively, and challenge the demands of a fast-paced audit culture, we consider why it is worth enabling creative and arts-based methods to continue to develop and flourish in studies of sport, exercise and health, despite the mounting pressures to ‘perform’