1,253 research outputs found
Incentives for breastfeeding and for smoking cessation in pregnancy: An exploration of types and meanings
Financial or tangible incentives are a strategy for improving health behaviours. The mechanisms of action of incentives are complex and debated. Using a multidisciplinary integrated mixed methods study, with service-user collaboration throughout, we developed a typology of incentives and their meanings for initiating and sustaining smoking cessation in pregnancy and breastfeeding. The ultimate aim was to inform incentive intervention design by providing insights into incentive acceptability and mechanisms of action.
Systematic evidence syntheses of incentive intervention studies for smoking cessation in pregnancy or breastfeeding identified incentive characteristics, which were developed into initial categories. Little published qualitative data on user perspectives and acceptability was available. Qualitative interviews and focus groups conducted in three UK regions with a diverse socio-demographic sample of 88 women and significant others from the target population, 53 service providers, 24 experts/decision makers, and conference attendees identified new potential incentives and providers, with and without experience of incentives. Identified incentives (published and emergent) were classified into eight categories: cash and shopping vouchers, maternal wellbeing, baby and pregnancy-related, behaviour-related, health-related, general utility, awards and certificates, and experiences. A typology was refined iteratively through concurrent data collection and thematic analysis to explore participants' understandings of ‘incentives’ and to compare and contrast meanings across types. Our typology can be understood in three dimensions: the degree of restriction, the extent to which each is hedonic and/or utilitarian, and whether each has solely monetary value versus monetary with added social value. The layers of autonomy, meanings and the social value of incentive types influence their acceptability and interact with structural, social, and personal factors. Dimensions of incentive meaning that go beyond the simple incentive description should inform incentive programme design and are likely to influence outcomes
Real-time atmospheric absorption spectra for in-flight tuning of an airborne dial system
Real-time measurements of atmospheric absorption spectra are displayed and used to precisely calibrate and fix the frequency of an Alexandrite laser to specific oxygen absorption features for airborne Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) measurements of atmospheric pressure and temperature. The DIAL system used contains two narrowband tunable Alexandrite lasers: one is electronically scanned to tune to oxygen absorption features for on-line signals while the second is used to obtain off-line (nonabsorbed) atmospheric return signals. The lidar operator may select the number of shots to be averaged, the altitude, and altitude interval over which the signals are averaged using single key stroke commands. The operator also determines exactly which oxygen absorption lines are scanned by comparing the line spacings and relative strengths with known line parameters, thus calibrating the laser wavelength readout. The system was used successfully to measure the atmospheric pressure profile on the first flights of this lidar, November 20, and December 9, 1985, aboard the NASA Wallops Electra aircraft
Airborne Lidar measurements of the atmospheric pressure profile with tunable Alexandrite lasers
The first remote measurements of the atmospheric pressure profile made from an airborne platform are described. The measurements utilize a differential absorption lidar and tunable solid state Alexandrite lasers. The pressure measurement technique uses a high resolution oxygen A band where the absorption is highly pressure sensitive due to collision broadening. Absorption troughs and regions of minimum absorption were used between pairs of stongly absorption lines for these measurements. The trough technique allows the measurement to be greatly desensitized to the effects of laser frequency instabilities. The lidar system was set up to measure pressure with the on-line laser tuned to the absorption trough at 13147.3/cm and with the reference laser tuned to a nonabsorbing frequency near 13170.0/cm. The lidar signal returns were sampled with a 200 range gate (30 vertical resoltion) and averaged over 100 shots
High density cluster jet target for storage ring experiments
The design and performance of a newly developed cluster jet target
installation for hadron physics experiments are presented which, for the first
time, is able to generate a hydrogen cluster jet beam with a target thickness
of above at a distance of two metres behind the
cluster jet nozzle. The properties of the cluster beam and of individual
clusters themselves are studied at this installation. Special emphasis is
placed on measurements of the target beam density as a function of the relevant
parameters as well as on the cluster beam profiles. By means of a
time-of-flight setup, measurements of the velocity of single clusters and
velocity distributions were possible. The complete installation, which meets
the requirements of future internal fixed target experiments at storage rings,
and the results of the systematic studies on hydrogen cluster jets are
presented and discussed.Comment: 10 pages, 18 figure
The Backgrounds Data Center
The Strategic Defense Initiative Organization has created data centers for midcourse, plumes, and backgrounds phenomenologies. The Backgrounds Data Center (BDC) has been designated as the prime archive for data collected by SDIO programs. The BDC maintains a Summary Catalog that contains 'metadata,' that is, information about data, such as when the data were obtained, what the spectral range of the data is, and what region of the Earth or sky was observed. Queries to this catalog result in a listing of all data sets (from all experiments in the Summary Catalog) that satisfy the specified criteria. Thus, the user can identify different experiments that made similar observations and order them from the BDC for analysis. On-site users can use the Science Analysis Facility (SAFE for this purpose. For some programs, the BDC maintains a Program Catalog, which can classify data in as many ways as desired (rather than just by position, time, and spectral range as in the Summary Catalog). For example, data sets could be tagged with such diverse parameters as solar illumination angle, signal level, or the value of a particular spectral ratio, as long as these quantities can be read from the digital record or calculated from it by the ingest program. All unclassified catalogs and unclassified data will be remotely accessible
Some constructions of almost para-hyperhermitian structures on manifolds and tangent bundles
In this paper we give some examples of almost para-hyperhermitian structures
on the tangent bundle of an almost product manifold, on the product manifold
, where is a manifold endowed with a mixed 3-structure
and on the circle bundle over a manifold with a mixed 3-structure.Comment: 10 pages; This paper has been presented in the "4th German-Romanian
Seminar on Geometry" Dortmund, Germany, 15-18 July 200
The harmonic oscillator on Riemannian and Lorentzian configuration spaces of constant curvature
The harmonic oscillator as a distinguished dynamical system can be defined
not only on the Euclidean plane but also on the sphere and on the hyperbolic
plane, and more generally on any configuration space with constant curvature
and with a metric of any signature, either Riemannian (definite positive) or
Lorentzian (indefinite). In this paper we study the main properties of these
`curved' harmonic oscillators simultaneously on any such configuration space,
using a Cayley-Klein (CK) type approach, with two free parameters \ki, \kii
which altogether correspond to the possible values for curvature and signature
type: the generic Riemannian and Lorentzian spaces of constant curvature
(sphere , hyperbolic plane , AntiDeSitter sphere {\bf
AdS}^{\unomasuno} and DeSitter sphere {\bf dS}^{\unomasuno}) appear in this
family, with the Euclidean and Minkowski spaces as flat limits.
We solve the equations of motion for the `curved' harmonic oscillator and
obtain explicit expressions for the orbits by using three different methods:
first by direct integration, second by obtaining the general CK version of the
Binet's equation and third, as a consequence of its superintegrable character.
The orbits are conics with centre at the potential origin in any CK space,
thereby extending this well known Euclidean property to any constant curvature
configuration space. The final part of the article, that has a more geometric
character, presents those results of the theory of conics on spaces of constant
curvature which are pertinent.Comment: 29 pages, 6 figure
Near-Threshold eta Meson Production in Proton-Proton Collisions
The production of eta mesons has been measured in the proton-proton
interaction close to the reaction threshold using the COSY-11 internal facility
at the cooler synchrotron COSY. Total cross sections were determined for eight
different excess energies in the range from 0.5 MeV to 5.4 MeV. The energy
dependence of the total cross section is well described by the available
phase-space volume weighted by FSI factors for the proton-proton and proton-eta
pairs.Comment: 9 pages, 1 table, 5 figure
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