What Are the Challenges Involved in the Prevention of Depression in Schools?

Depression is linked with serious social and educational impairments and elevated rates of smoking, substance misuse and obesity among children and adolescents. Due to already existing structures within schools and their important role within the community, they appear to provide an ideal environment to implement preventative strategies against depression. Even though there is a growing evidence base for school-based interventions, it is rarely supportive for their effectiveness. In the current piece, we are exploring potential reasons for a limited success of school-based prevention against depression. We mainly focus on parental mental health as one of the potential moderators of the effectiveness of school-based approaches. We argue that family-oriented approach to mental health provision at schools needs to be taken. We also explore barriers to parental involvement experienced by schools and make recommendations of how these can be mitigated. Finally, the article outlines existing school-based interventions targeting mental health of both pupils and parents

Last orbits of binary strange quark stars

We present the first relativistic calculations of the final phase of inspiral of a binary system consisting of two stars built predominantely of strange quark matter (strange quark stars). We study the precoalescing stage within the Isenberg-Wilson-Mathews approximation of general relativity using a multidomain spectral method. A hydrodynamical treatment is performed under the assumption that the flow is either rigidly rotating or irrotational, taking into account the finite density at the stellar surface -- a distinctive feature with respect to the neutron star case. The gravitational-radiation driven evolution of the binary system is approximated by a sequence of quasi-equilibrium configurations at fixed baryon number and decreasing separation. We find that the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) is given by an orbital instability both for synchronized and irrotational systems. This constrasts with neutron stars for which the ISCO is given by the mass-shedding limit in the irrotational case. The gravitational wave frequency at the ISCO, which marks the end of the inspiral phase, is found to be 1400 Hz for two irrotational 1.35 Msol strange stars and for the MIT bag model of strange matter with massless quarks and a bag constant B=60 MeV/fm^3. Detailed comparisons with binary neutrons star models, as well as with third order Post-Newtonian point-mass binaries are given.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, improved conclusion and figures, references added, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.