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Flood- and Weather-Damaged Homes and Mental Health: An Analysis Using England's Mental Health Survey
There is increasing evidence that exposure to weather-related hazards like storms and floods adversely affects mental health. However, evidence of treated and untreated mental disorders based on diagnostic criteria for the general population is limited. We analysed the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, a large probability sample survey of adults in England (n = 7525), that provides the only national data on the prevalence of mental disorders assessed to diagnostic criteria. The most recent survey (2014–2015) asked participants if they had experienced damage to their home (due to wind, rain, snow or flood) in the six months prior to interview, a period that included months of unprecedented population exposure to flooding, particularly in Southern England. One in twenty (4.5%) reported living in a storm- or flood-damaged home in the previous six months. Social advantage (home ownership, higher household income) increased the odds of exposure to storm or flood damage. Exposure predicted having a common mental disorder over and above the effects of other known predictors of poor mental health. With climate change increasing the frequency and severity of storms and flooding, improving community resilience and disaster preparedness is a priority. Evidence on the mental health of exposed populations is key to building this capacity
Mapping the Curricular Structure and Contents of Network Science Courses
As network science has matured as an established field of research, there are
already a number of courses on this topic developed and offered at various
higher education institutions, often at postgraduate levels. In those courses,
instructors adopted different approaches with different focus areas and
curricular designs. We collected information about 30 existing network science
courses from various online sources, and analyzed the contents of their syllabi
or course schedules. The topics and their curricular sequences were extracted
from the course syllabi/schedules and represented as a directed weighted graph,
which we call the topic network. Community detection in the topic network
revealed seven topic clusters, which matched reasonably with the concept list
previously generated by students and educators through the Network Literacy
initiative. The minimum spanning tree of the topic network revealed typical
flows of curricular contents, starting with examples of networks, moving onto
random networks and small-world networks, then branching off to various
subtopics from there. These results illustrate the current state of consensus
formation (including variations and disagreements) among the network science
community on what should be taught about networks and how, which may also be
informative for K--12 education and informal education.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables; to appear in Cramer, C. et al.
(eds.), Network Science in Education -- Tools and Techniques for Transforming
Teaching and Learning (Springer, 2017, in press
Variational Formulation for the KPZ and Related Kinetic Equations
We present a variational formulation for the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ)
equation that leads to a thermodynamic-like potential for the KPZ as well as
for other related kinetic equations. For the KPZ case, with the knowledge of
such a potential we prove some global shift invariance properties previously
conjectured by other authors. We also show a few results about the form of the
stationary probability distribution function for arbitrary dimensions. The
procedure used for KPZ was extended in order to derive more general forms of
such a functional leading to other nonlinear kinetic equations, as well as
cases with density dependent surface tension.Comment: RevTex, 8pgs, double colum
Social patterning of alcohol consumption among mothers with infants in the UK
Background We examined patterns of alcohol use among mothers with infants in the UK focusing on (i) common (‘majority’) patterns of alcohol use (frequency and quantity) and (ii) associated social factors. Methods We analysed data from 15,510 mothers who took part in waves 1 and 2 of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) in 2000/1. 9 months after birth, mothers reported their frequency and quantity of alcohol use, along with information on social circumstances. Logistic regression, carried out in 2011, helped identify the social factors associated with majority patterns of alcohol use. Results Majority patterns of alcohol use were: infrequent drinking (never/<1/week), infrequent light drinking (1 unit/day, <1/week), and frequent light drinking (<14 units/week). In mutually adjusted models, infrequent drinking was associated with childhood, educational, and income disadvantage, and younger age at first birth. Infrequent light drinking was associated with educational and income disadvantage, economic inactivity, and marriage. Frequent light drinking was associated with marriage and fewer children in the household. Conclusions Among mothers in the UK, the majority drank infrequent small quantities. Positive social gradients were evident for frequency of alcohol use among socially advantaged mothers
System Size Stochastic Resonance: General Nonequilibrium Potential Framework
We study the phenomenon of system size stochastic resonance within the
nonequilibrium potential's framework. We analyze three different cases of
spatially extended systems, exploiting the knowledge of their nonequilibrium
potential, showing that through the analysis of that potential we can obtain a
clear physical interpretation of this phenomenon in wide classes of extended
systems. Depending on the characteristics of the system, the phenomenon results
to be associated to a breaking of the symmetry of the nonequilibrium potential
or to a deepening of the potential minima yielding an effective scaling of the
noise intensity with the system size.Comment: LaTex, 24 pages and 9 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Kaluza-Klein Dark Matter and the Positron Excess
The excess of cosmic positrons observed by the HEAT experiment may be the
result of Kaluza-Klein dark matter annihilating in the galactic halo.
Kaluza-Klein dark matter annihilates dominantly into charged leptons that yield
a large number and hard spectrum of positrons per annihilation. Given a
Kaluza-Klein dark matter particle with a mass in the range of 300-400 GeV, no
exceptional substructure or clumping is needed in the local distribution of
dark matter to generate a positron flux that explains the HEAT observations.
This is in contrast to supersymmetric dark matter that requires unnaturally
large amounts of dark substructure to produce the observed positron excess.
Future astrophysical and collider tests are outlined that will confirm or rule
out this explanation of the HEAT data.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, REVTeX
Scaling function for the noisy Burgers equation in the soliton approximation
We derive the scaling function for the one dimensional noisy Burgers equation
in the two-soliton approximation within the weak noise canonical phase space
approach. The result is in agreement with an earlier heuristic expression and
exhibits the correct scaling properties. The calculation presents the first
step in a many body treatment of the correlations in the Burgers equation.Comment: Replacement: Several corrections, 4 pages, Revtex file, 3 figures. To
appear in Europhysics Letter
Characterization and properties of controlled nucleation thermochemical deposited (CNTD) silicon carbide
The microstructure of controlled nucleation thermochemical deposition (CNTD) - SiC material was studied and the room temperature and high temperature bend strength and oxidation resistance was evaluated. Utilizing the CNTD process, ultrafine grained (0.01-0.1 mm) SiC was deposited on W - wires (0.5 mm diameter by 20 cm long) as substrates. The deposited SiC rods had superior surface smoothness and were without any macrocolumnar growth commonly found in conventional CVD material. At both room and high temperature (1200 - 1380 C), the CNTD - SiC exhibited bend strength approximately 200,000 psi (1380 MPa), several times higher than that of hot pressed, sintered, or CVD SiC. The excellent retention of strength at high temperature was attributed to the high purity and fine grain size of the SiC deposit and the apparent absence of grain growth at elevated temperatures. The rates of weight change for CNTD - SiC during oxidation were lower than for NC-203 (hot pressed SiC), higher than for GE's CVD - SiC, and considerably below those for HS-130 (hot pressed Si3N4). The high purity, fully dense, and stable grain size CNTD - SiC material shows potential for high temperature structural applications; however problem areas might include: scaling the process to make larger parts, deposition on removable substrates, and the possible residual tensile stress
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