2,624 research outputs found
Exploring community-based suicide prevention in the context of rural Australia : a qualitative study
Suicide rates in rural communities are higher than in urban areas, and communities play a crucial role in suicide prevention. This study explores community-based suicide prevention using a qualitative research design. Semi-structured interviews and focus groups asked participants to explore community-based suicide prevention in the context of rural Australia. Participants recruited ((n = 37; ages 29â72, Mean = 46, SD = 9.56); female 62.2%; lived experience 48.6%) were self-identified experts, working in rural community-based suicide prevention (community services, program providers, research, and policy development) around Australia. Data were thematically analysed, identifying three themes relating to community-based suicide prevention: (i) Community led initiatives; (ii) Meeting community needs; and (iii) Programs to improve health and suicidality. Implementing community-based suicide prevention needs community-level engagement and partnerships, including with community leaders; gatekeepers; community members; people with lived experience; services; and professionals, to âget stuff doneâ. Available resources and social capital are utilised, with co-created interventions reflecting diverse lifestyles, beliefs, norms, and cultures. The definition of âcommunityâ, community needs, issues, and solutions need to be identified by communities themselves. Primarily non-clinical programs address determinants of health and suicidality and increase community awareness of suicide and its prevention, and the capacity to recognise and support people at risk. This study shows how community-based suicide prevention presents as a social innovation approach, seeing suicide as a social phenomenon, with community-based programs as the potential driver of social change, equipping communities with the âknow howâ to implement, monitor, and adjust community-based programs to fit community needs
Hard thermal loops for soft or collinear external momenta
We consider finite temperature 1-loop diagrams with hard loop momenta and an
arbitrary number of external gauge fields when the external momenta are either
soft, or near the light cone and nearly collinear with the loop momentum. We
obtain a recursion relation for these diagrams which we translate into an
equation for their generating functional. By integrating out the soft fields
while keeping two collinear ones we find an integral equation, originally due
to Arnold, Moore, and Yaffe, which sums the bremsstrahlung and pair
annihilation contribution to the thermal photon production rate.Comment: 17 pages, title corrected, clarifying paragraph added to the
appendix, version to appear in JHE
Amiodarone and metabolite MDEA inhibit Ebola virus infection by interfering with the viral entry process
Ebola virus disease (EVD) is one of the most lethal transmissible infections characterized by a high fatality rate, and a treatment has not been developed yet. Recently, it has been shown that cationic amphiphiles, among them the antiarrhythmic drug amiodarone, inhibit filovirus infection. In the present work, we investigated how amiodarone interferes with Ebola virus infection. Wild-type Sudan ebolavirus and recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus, pseudotyped with the Zaire ebolavirus glycoprotein, were used to gain further insight into the ability of amiodarone to affect Ebola virus infection. We show that amiodarone decreases Ebola virus infection at concentrations close to those found in the sera of patients treated for arrhythmias. The drug acts by interfering with the fusion of the viral envelope with the endosomal membrane. We also show that MDEA, the main amiodarone metabolite, contributes to the antiviral activity. Finally, studies with amiodarone analogues indicate that the antiviral activity is correlated with drug ability to accumulate into and interfere with the endocytic pathway. Considering that it is well tolerated, especially in the acute setting, amiodarone appears to deserve consideration for clinical use in EV
Five-Brane Superpotentials and Heterotic/F-theory Duality
Under heterotic/F-theory duality it was argued that a wide class of heterotic
five-branes is mapped into the geometry of an F-theory compactification
manifold. In four-dimensional compactifications this identifies a five-brane
wrapped on a curve in the base of an elliptically fibered Calabi-Yau threefold
with a specific F-theory Calabi-Yau fourfold containing the blow-up of the
five-brane curve. We argue that this duality can be reformulated by first
constructing a non-Calabi-Yau heterotic threefold by blowing up the curve of
the five-brane into a divisor with five-brane flux. Employing
heterotic/F-theory duality this leads us to the construction of a Calabi-Yau
fourfold and four-form flux. Moreover, we obtain an explicit map between the
five-brane superpotential and an F-theory flux superpotential. The map of the
open-closed deformation problem of a five-brane in a compact Calabi-Yau
threefold into a deformation problem of complex structures on a dual Calabi-Yau
fourfold with four-form flux provides a powerful tool to explicitly compute the
five-brane superpotential.Comment: 43 pages, v2: minor correction
Regression discontinuity analysis demonstrated varied effect of Treat-All on CD4 testing among Southern African countries
OBJECTIVE: To determine whether Treat-All policy impacted laboratory testing practices of antiretroviral therapy (ART) programs in Southern Africa.STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: We used HIV cohort data from Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe in a regression discontinuity design to estimate changes in pre-ART CD4 testing and viral load monitoring following national Treat-all adoption that occurred during 2016-2017. This study included more than 230,000 ART-naĂŻve people living with HIV (PLHIV) aged five years or older who started ART within two years of national Treat-All adoption.RESULTS: We found pre-ART CD4 testing decreased following adoption of Treat-All recommendations in Malawi (-21.4 percentage points (pp), 95% CI: -26.8, -16.0) and in Mozambique (-8.8pp, 95% CI: -14.9, -2.8), but increased in Zambia (+2.7pp, 95% CI: +0.4, +5.1). Treat-All policy had no effect on viral load monitoring, except among females in South Africa (+7.1pp, 95% CI: +1.1, +13.0).CONCLUSION: Treat-All policy expanded ART eligibility, but led to reductions in pre-ART CD4 testing in some countries that may weaken advanced HIV disease management. Continued and expanded support of CD4 and viral load laboratory capacity is needed to further improve treatment successes and allow for uniform evaluation of ART implementation across Southern Africa.</p
Spectroscopic Mass and Host-star Metallicity Measurements for Newly Discovered Microlensing Planet OGLE-2018-BLG-0740Lb
We report the discovery of the microlensing planet OGLE-2018-BLG-0740Lb. The
planet is detected with a very strong signal of , but
the interpretation of the signal suffers from two types of degeneracies. One
type is caused by the previously known close/wide degeneracy, and the other is
caused by an ambiguity between two solutions, in which one solution requires to
incorporate finite-source effects, while the other solution is consistent with
a point-source interpretation. Although difficult to be firmly resolved based
on only the photometric data, the degeneracy is resolved in strong favor of the
point-source solution with the additional external information obtained from
astrometric and spectroscopic observations. The small astrometric offset
between the source and baseline object supports that the blend is the lens and
this interpretation is further secured by the consistency of the spectroscopic
distance estimate of the blend with the lensing parameters of the point-source
solution. The estimated mass of the host is and the mass
of the planet is (close solution) or (wide solution) and the lens is located at a distance of ~kpc.
The bright nature of the lens, with (), combined with
its dominance of the observed flux suggest that radial-velocity (RV) follow-up
observations of the lens can be done using high-resolution spectrometers
mounted on large telescopes, e.g., VLT/ESPRESSO, and this can potentially not
only measure the period and eccentricity of the planet but also probe for
close-in planets. We estimate that the expected RV amplitude would be .Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures, 4 table
Internal representations, external representations and ergonomics: towards a theoretical integration
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