Posttraumatic stress and symptom improvement in Norwegian tourists exposed to the 2004 tsunami – a longitudinal study

Background Mental health consequences of disasters are frequently studied. However, few studies have investigated symptom improvement in victims after natural disasters. This study aimed to identify predictors of 6 months post-disaster stress symptoms and to study 6 months and 24 months course of symptoms among Norwegian tourists who experienced the 2004 tsunami. Methods Norwegian tourists (≥18 years) who experienced the 2004 tsunami (n = 2468) were invited to return a postal questionnaire at two points of time. The first data set was collected at 6 months (T1, n = 899) and the second data set at 24 months post-disaster (T2, n = 1180). The population studied consisted of those who responded at both assessments (n = 674). Impact of Event Scale Revised (IES-R) was used to measure posttraumatic stress symptoms. IES–R score ≥33 (caseness) was used to identify various symptom trajectories from T1 to T2. Multiple linear regression was used to determine predictors of posttraumatic stress at T1 and to identify variables associated with symptom improvement from T1 to T2. Results The majority was identified as non-case at both assessments (57.7%), while 20.8% of the respondents were identified as case at both assessments. Symptoms at T1 were positively related to female gender, older age, unemployment, being chased or caught by the waves, witnessing death or suffering, loss of loved ones, experiencing intense fear during the disaster, low conscientiousness, neuroticism and low levels of social support. The IES-R sum score declined from 24.6 (SD = 18.5) at T1 to 22.9 (SD = 18.3) at T2, p < 0.001. Emotional stability and high IES-R scores at T1 were positively related to symptom improvement, while received social support was not. Being referred to a mental health specialist was negatively related to symptom improvement. Conclusions A significant minority (20-30%) among Norwegian tourists developed enduring posttraumatic stress symptoms in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami. Tsunami exposure, peritraumatic fear, neuroticism and low levels of social support were the strongest predictors of posttraumatic stress at 6 months post-disaster. Decrease in posttraumatic stress was related to emotional stability and higher symptom levels at T1. Being referred to a mental health specialist did not facilitate symptom improvement

Street Salafism : contingency and urbanity as religious creed

Muslims living in European cities have come under increased public scrutiny over the past two decades for alleged links with overseas governments as sponsors of extremism. Media representations such as the documentary ‘Undercover Mosque’ that aired on a British television channel in 2007 is a poignant example of how the banal, everyday life of religious spaces can be folded into – while also give succour to – such narratives. Against the backdrop of such constraints, young Muslim men who identify as Salafi, inhabit the same street featured in the documentary with its dense and evolving Islamic infrastructure, in ways that evade easy capture of authorial gazes as well as local sensibilities of what it means to be Muslim. They do so through a hermeneutical method that I describe here as street Salafism. This involves a range of corporeal strategies that enable them to exist in and beyond the material and narrative life of the street that is seen as determining of them. In doing so, street Salafism reveals new ontological conditions of difference that test the limits, but also possibilities, for multicultural life in diverse cities such as the case described here

Spectrum design with distributed delays using Galerkin approximations

The problem of designing the spectrum of a linear scalar distributed delay system has been studied. Systems with delays have infinite spectrum. There are many methods for doing this.The generalized stability charts can give a lot of information about the system in question. However using this method can become quite complicated for many types of delay distributed systems. There are other approaches like using the Lambert W function to tackle the problem using numerical methods

Heat Transfer Augmentation of Concentrated Solar Absorber Using Modified Surface Contour

This work aims to compare the cavity surface contour’s thermal performance to that of the solar absorber’s plain surface contour for Scheffler type parabolic dish collectors. The absorber is tested for the temperature range up to 600°C without working fluid and 180°C with the working fluid. The modified absorber surface's thermal performance is compared with the flat surface absorber with and without heat transfer fluid. The peak temperature reached by the surface modified absorber (534°C) is about 8.6% more than that of the unmodified absorber (492°C) during an outdoor test without fluid. The energy efficiency of cavity surface absorber and plain surface absorber are 67.65% and 61.84%, respectively. The contoured cavity surface produces a more uniform temperature distribution and a higher heat absorption rate than the plain surface. The results are beneficial to the design of high-temperature solar absorbers for concentrated solar collectors

Why wouldn't you consult us? Reflections on preventing radicalisation among actors in radical(ising) milieus

This article engages the situated knowledge of actors in radical(ising) milieus to enhance our understanding of radicalisation and how to counter it. The article draws on interviews and observations from two ethnographic case studies in the UK –one with young people from an ‘Islamist’ and one from young people in an ‘extreme-right’ milieu –as well as three mediated dialogue events organised with participants from these milieus. The article explores how actors in these two milieus themselves understand what ‘drives’ and what might ‘prevent’ radicalisation and the degree to which such emic understandings concur with, or deviate from, etic (academic, policy, practice) conceptualisations –in particular on actors’ understandings of the role of the state, and its counter-terrorism policies and agencies, in driving radicalisation. We outline the views and experiences of Preventing or Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) interventions among milieu actors, which they encounter through the ‘Prevent’ arm of the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy but also in the form of curtailment of their activity (prevention from attending events and bans on social media). Finally, we consider how these emic understandings and personal experiences are expressed in milieu actors’ own practices of preventing or constraining trajectories into extremism and the openness of research participants themselves to engaging with agencies involved in P/CVE employing dialogic approaches. The article brings new insight to the field by considering the understandings and experiences of counter-extremism policies and practices among those targeted by them and argues for the importance of engaging with individuals as subjects not objects of counter-extremism policy and practice

Development of Fundal Varices in Cirrhotic Patients after Eradication of Esophageal Varices

Background: To analyze the development of fundal varices in cirrhotic patients after eradication of esophageal varicesMethods: In this observational study 150 patients of liver cirrhosis, with the history of upper gastrointestinal tract bleed and esophageal varices of grade F2 and F3 but absence of fundal varices, were included. Patients who had previous history of banding were excluded.Results: Eighty one (54%) patients were male. Mean age of the patients was 49.34±11.45 years. Twenty two (14.66%) developed fundal varices of which 2(1.33%) patients developed fundal varices at 2 months, 8(5.33%) patients developed fundal varices at 4 months following banding, and 12(8%) patients developed fundal varices at 6 months following banding of esophageal varices. Fourteen (63.63%) patients had GOV2 while 8(36.36%) had IGV1. Conclusion: New fundal varices develop with increasing frequency in patients treated with esophageal variceal band ligation, and the incidence has a time-dependent relationship

Analysis of channel uncertainty in ARQ relay networks

Several power allocation algorithms for cooperative relay networks are presented in the literature. These contributions assume perfect channel knowledge and capacity achieving codes. However in practice, obtaining the channel state information at a relay or at the destination is an estimation problem and can generally not be error free. The investigation of the power allocation mechanism in a wireless network due to channel imperfections is important because it can severely degrade its performance regarding throughput and bit error rate. In this paper, the impact of imperfect channel state information on the power allocation of an adaptive relay network is investigated. Moreover, a framework including Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) mechanism is provided to make the power allocation mechanism robust against these channel imperfections. For this framework, the end-to end SNR is calculated considering imperfect channel knowledge using ARQ analytically. The goal is to emphasize the impact of imperfect channel knowledge on the power allocation mechanism. In this paper, the simulation results illustrate the impact of channel uncertainties on the average outage probability, throughput, and consumed sum power for different qualities of channel estimation. It is shown that the presented framework with ARQ is extremely robust against the channel imperfections

TE/TM Pass Guided Wave Optical Polarizer

A metal-clad guided wave optical polarizer with a high-index dielectric buffer layer is analyzed. The TE and TM polarization characteristics of the infinitely long version of the polarizer are well-known and are easily obtainable by solving the Helmholtz equation. The infinitely long polarizer model does not account for the input/output ends of the polarizer and thus it is not practical. In this work, we analyze the finite-length version of the same polarizer using the Method of Lines. In this manner, we account simultaneously for the absorption loss due to the presence of the metal and the loss due to reflection at the input and output ends of the finite-length polarizer. The effect of the polarizer length and thickness of the high index buffer layer on the TE/TM discrimination properties of the polarizer are calculated by the MOL