The deuteron: structure and form factors

A brief review of the history of the discovery of the deuteron in provided. The current status of both experiment and theory for the elastic electron scattering is then presented.Comment: 80 pages, 33 figures, submited to Advances in Nuclear Physic

The ability of societies to adapt to twenty-first-century sea-level rise

Against the background of potentially substantial sea-level rise, one important question is to what extent are coastal societies able to adapt? This question is often answered in the negative by referring to sinking islands and submerged megacities. Although these risks are real, the picture is incomplete because it lacks consideration of adaptation. This Perspective explores societies' abilities to adapt to twenty-first-century sea-level rise by integrating perspectives from coastal engineering, economics, finance and social sciences, and provides a comparative analysis of a set of cases that vary in terms of technological limits, economic and financial barriers to adaptation and social conflicts

A mixed methods approach to adapting health-related quality of life measures for use in routine oncology clinical practice

Purpose: The current study reviewed and adapted existing health-related quality of life (HRQoL) instruments for use in routine clinical practice delivering outpatient chemotherapy for colorectal, breast, and gynaecological cancers. Methods: 564 (288 gynaecological, 208 breast, and 68 colorectal) outpatient consultations of 141 patients were audio-recorded and analysed to identify discussed issues. Issues were ranked from most to least commonly discussed within each disease group. Existing HRQoL instruments were evaluated against these lists and best fitting items entered into cancer-specific item banks. Item banks were evaluated during semi-structured interviews by twenty-one oncologists (13 consultants and 8 specialist registrars), four clinical nurse specialists, and thirty patients, from breast, gynaecological and colorectal cancer practices. Pilot questionnaires were completed by 448 (145 breast, 148 gynaecological, 155 colorectal) patients attending outpatient clinics. Item selection and scale reliability was explored using descriptive data and psychometric methods alongside qualitative patient and clinician ratings. Results: Each questionnaire includes four physical and three psychosocial function scales each with good internal consistency reliability (>α.70), plus disease-specific individual-symptom items identified as useful in clinical practice. Conclusions: Three cancer-specific health-related quality of life measures were developed for use in routine clinical practice. Initial analyses suggest good clinical utility and acceptable psychometric properties for the new instruments

Integrating biodiversity, remote sensing, and auxiliary information for the study of ecosystem functioning and conservation at large spatial scales

Assessing patterns and processes of plant functional, taxonomic, genetic, and structural biodiversity at large scales is essential across many disciplines, including ecosystem management, agriculture, ecosystem risk and service assessment, conservation science, and forestry. In situ data housed in databases necessary to perform such assessments over large parts of the world are growing steadily. Integrating these in situ data with remote sensing (RS) products helps not only to improve data completeness and quality but also to account for limitations and uncertainties associated with each data product. Here, we outline how auxiliary environmental and socioeconomic data might be integrated with biodiversity and RS data to expand our knowledge about ecosystem functioning and inform the conservation of biodiversity. We discuss concepts, data, and methods necessary to assess plant species and ecosystem properties across scales of space and time and provide a critical discussion of outstanding issues