Attendance of MSM at Genitourinary Medicine services in England: implications for selective HPV vaccination programme (a short communication)

Background Human papillomaviruses (HPV) immunisation programmes for female adolescents in the UK offer relatively little benefit to men who have sex with men (MSM). Targeted HPV vaccination for MSM may reduce the high incidence of HPV-related disease among MSM. We used national data from sexual health clinics to calculate the number of MSM attending these clinics throughout England from 2009 to 2014 and to identify their characteristics, to inform the implementation of a targeted HPV vaccination programme in MSM. Methods We used the Genitourinary Medicine Clinic Activity Dataset (GUMCADv2) to obtain data for men aged 15–70 years who had attended a GUM clinic in England from 2009 to 2014. We analysed both numbers of MSM attending and number of GUM attendances, age at first attendance, ethnicity and geographical area of the clinic in England. Results A total of 374 983 MSM attended sexual health services in England between 2009 and 2014. Median age of presentation was 32 years (IQR 25–41) and showed regional geographical variation. Of all men attending sexual health clinics in England, the highest proportion of those identifying as MSM was in London (21%). Excluding visits within 1 month of an initial attendance, 49% of all MSM re-attended within 12 months and 58% within 24 months. MSM aged ≥36 years reattended more frequently than younger MSM. 51% reattended at least twice within 24 months of initial visit. Conclusions The majority of MSM reattend clinic at least once within a 24-month period, potentially facilitating the delivery of a three-dose HPV vaccination programme. This would reduce the burden on sexual health clinics and cost to local authorities due to extra visits if HPV vaccination were to be delivered through these services

Lifetime Adherence to Physical Activity Recommendations and Fall Occurrence in Community-dwelling Older Adults: a Retrospective Cohort Study

Falling is a major health concern for community-dwelling older adults. Regular physical activity has been proposed to prevent falls. The aim of this study was to assess whether the achievement of the 2004 UK Department of Health physical activity recommendations over a lifetime had a protective effect against falling in older people. 313 community-dwelling older adults completed a questionnaire about lifetime physical activity and fall occurrence. There were significantly fewer falls in those who had led an active lifestyle compared to those who had not (χ2Yates=4.568, p=0.033), with a lower relative risk of fall occurrence for the active respondents (RR=0.671) compared to the inactive (RR=1.210). Of those who were sufficiently active in their early adulthood, the decade where there was the biggest decrease in remaining active enough was in the 60s. It is concluded that an active lifestyle may have decreased the likelihood of having a fall in older ag

Element-by-element factorization algorithms for heat conduction

Element-by-element solution strategies are developed for transient heat conduction problems. Results of numerical tests indicate the effectiveness of the procedures proposed. The small database requirements and attractive architectural features of the algorithms suggest considerable potential for solving large scale problems

Habitat conversion and global avian biodiversity loss

The magnitude of the impacts of human activities on global biodiversity has been documented at several organizational levels. However, although there have been numerous studies of the effects of local-scale changes in land use (e.g. logging) on the abundance of groups of organisms, broader continental or global-scale analyses addressing the same basic issues remain largely wanting. None the less, changing patterns of land use, associated with the appropriation of increasing proportions of net primary productivity by the human population, seem likely not simply to have reduced the diversity of life, but also to have reduced the carrying capacity of the environment in terms of the numbers of other organisms that it can sustain. Here, we estimate the size of the existing global breeding bird population, and then make a first approximation as to how much this has been modified as a consequence of land-use changes wrought by human activities. Summing numbers across different land-use classes gives a best current estimate of a global population of less than 100 billion breeding bird individuals. Applying the same methodology to estimates of original land-use distributions suggests that conservatively this may represent a loss of between a fifth and a quarter of pre-agricultural bird numbers. This loss is shared across a range of temperate and tropical land-use types

Extinction and dust/gas ratio in LMC molecular clouds

Aims. The goal of this paper is to measure the dust content and distribution in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) by comparing extinction maps produced in the near-infrared wavelengths and the spatial distribution of the neutral and molecular gas, as traced by Hi and CO observations. Methods. In order to derive an extinction map of the LMC, we have developed a new method to measure the color excess of dark clouds, using the 2MASS all-sky survey. Classical methods to measure the color excess (including the NICE method) tend to underestimate the true color excess if the clouds are significantly contaminated by unreddened foreground stars, as is the case in the LMC. We propose a new method that uses the color of the X percentile reddest stars and which is robust against such contamination. Using this method, it is possible to infer the positions of dark clouds with respect to the star distribution by comparing the observed color excess as a function of the percentile used and that predicted by a model. Results. On the basis of the resulting extinction map, we perform a correlation analysis for a set of dark molecular clouds. Assuming similar infrared absorption properties for the dust in the neutral and molecular phases, we derive the absorption-to-column density ratio AV/NH and the CO-to-H2 conversion factor X_(CO). We show that AV/NH increases from the outskirts of the LMC towards the 30 Dor star-forming region. This can be explained either by a systematic increase of the dust abundance, or by the presence of an additional gas component not traced by Hi or CO, but strongly correlated to the Hi distribution. If dust abundance is allowed to vary, the derived X_(CO) factors for the selected regions are several times lower than those derived from a virial analysis of the CO data. This could indicate that molecular clouds in the LMC are not gravitationally bound, or that they are bounded by substantial external pressure. However, the X_(CO) values derived from absorption can be reconciled with the virial results assuming a constant value for the dust abundance and the existence of an additional, unseen gas component. These results are in agreement with those derived for the LMC from diffuse far-infrared emission

Time-efficient geometrically non-linear finite element simulations of thin shell deployable structures

Isogeometric analysis of thin shells can provide higher continuity and exact geometric description. It is shown in the existing literature that isogeometric analysis converges with fewer degrees of freedom than C⁰-continuous finite elements that use Langrange polynomial shape functions, but the speed of the solutions has not been previously assessed. In this research, the geometrically nonlinear bending of a thin shell deployable structure, a tape spring is studied, using both NURBS-based and C⁰-continuous finite elements. The complex deformation of a tape spring makes it a perfect case study to compare the computational efficiency of the mentioned techniques. The simulations are carried out in the commercial software ABAQUS and LS-DYNA, and it is found that isogeometric analysis is at least three times slower than the C⁰-continuous finite element methods

Orbital evolution of a test particle around a black hole: higher-order corrections

We study the orbital evolution of a radiation-damped binary in the extreme mass ratio limit, and the resulting waveforms, to one order beyond what can be obtained using the conservation laws approach. The equations of motion are solved perturbatively in the mass ratio (or the corresponding parameter in the scalar field toy model), using the self force, for quasi-circular orbits around a Schwarzschild black hole. This approach is applied for the scalar model. Higher-order corrections yield a phase shift which, if included, may make gravitational-wave astronomy potentially highly accurate.Comment: 4 pages, 3 Encapsulated PostScript figure