The experiences of women with polycystic ovary syndrome on a very low-calorie diet

The research was funded by an educational grant from LighterLife. Broom was the Medical Director for LighterLife at the time of the research. Johnson is the Head of Nutrition and Research at LighterLife. The authors report no other conflicts of interest in this work.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Reconnaissance Study of Pleistocene Lake and Fluvial Deposits In and Near Ancestral Yellowstone Lake, Wyoming

Seven sequences of Pleistocene strata, five of them predominantly lacustrine, are described from outcrops north of Yellowstone Lake. These are (1) Turbid Lake sequence, 30–50 feet of white pumiceous claystone and tuff with carbonaceous partings and a distinctive compositional pattern of excesses and deficiencies of many elements; (2) Yellowstone Falls sequence, 75 feet or more of varved white claystone and tuff containing pollen and diatoms, overlain by gray conglomerate and sandstone; (3) Hayden Valley sequence, 200 feet or more of gray and white silt and claystone containing sparse diatoms; (4) Alum Creek sequence, 30 feet or more of bedded sand and gravel with lesser amounts of clay; (5) Mudkettle sequence, 150 feet or more of light gray to white, soft clay and claystone with lesser amounts of sandstone and conglomerate, moderately lithified in part, and containing some pollen and diatoms; (6) Astringent Creek Sand (newly named), a gray, commonly unlithified sand as much as 300 feet thick and containing abundant volcanic debris; and (7) Pelican Valley sequence, 120 feet or more of light gray to white, soft clay, silt, sand, and some pumice pebble conglomerate and shard beds; finer grained beds contain diatoms, pollen, and carbonaceous debris that has a radiocarbon date of 7,550 ±350 years. Other localized deposits with radiocarbon dates and abundant diatoms consist of white carbonaceous tuffaceous clay and sand with an age of 9,440±300 years, in Gibbon Canyon, and a gray and white carbonaceous clay, silt, and sand with an age of 3,750+300 years at Bannock Ford in Yellowstone Canyon. Slight arching of the Upper Basin Member of the Plateau Rhyolite caused the Yellowstone River to develop an antecedent course across it. Uplift of the Pelican Valley area during the last 7,500 years averaged about one foot in 50 years

Reconnaissance Study of Pleistocene Lake and Fluvial Deposits In and Near Ancestral Yellowstone Lake, Wyoming

Seven sequences of Pleistocene strata, five of them predominantly lacustrine, are described from outcrops north of Yellowstone Lake. These are (1) Turbid Lake sequence, 30–50 feet of white pumiceous claystone and tuff with carbonaceous partings and a distinctive compositional pattern of excesses and deficiencies of many elements; (2) Yellowstone Falls sequence, 75 feet or more of varved white claystone and tuff containing pollen and diatoms, overlain by gray conglomerate and sandstone; (3) Hayden Valley sequence, 200 feet or more of gray and white silt and claystone containing sparse diatoms; (4) Alum Creek sequence, 30 feet or more of bedded sand and gravel with lesser amounts of clay; (5) Mudkettle sequence, 150 feet or more of light gray to white, soft clay and claystone with lesser amounts of sandstone and conglomerate, moderately lithified in part, and containing some pollen and diatoms; (6) Astringent Creek Sand (newly named), a gray, commonly unlithified sand as much as 300 feet thick and containing abundant volcanic debris; and (7) Pelican Valley sequence, 120 feet or more of light gray to white, soft clay, silt, sand, and some pumice pebble conglomerate and shard beds; finer grained beds contain diatoms, pollen, and carbonaceous debris that has a radiocarbon date of 7,550 ±350 years. Other localized deposits with radiocarbon dates and abundant diatoms consist of white carbonaceous tuffaceous clay and sand with an age of 9,440±300 years, in Gibbon Canyon, and a gray and white carbonaceous clay, silt, and sand with an age of 3,750+300 years at Bannock Ford in Yellowstone Canyon. Slight arching of the Upper Basin Member of the Plateau Rhyolite caused the Yellowstone River to develop an antecedent course across it. Uplift of the Pelican Valley area during the last 7,500 years averaged about one foot in 50 years

Health & homelessness in Aberdeen City: a report for the Scottish Health Council.

1. Background According to the latest official figures, 1900 households presented themselves as homeless in Aberdeen City in the year 2005/2006 (Scottish Executive 2006). The problems faced by homeless people in Aberdeen and elsewhere have already been documented in terms of inadequate housing, family and relationship breakdown, unemployment, multiple debt, reliance on benefits and low income. (Love, 1993, 1997, 2002; Spicker, Love, Strangward, McLaverty & Strachan, 2002). Such multiple and linked problems serve to marginalise homeless people relegating them to ways of life outside of mainstream society. A corollary of such exclusion is the relatively high levels of poor health (both physical and mental) found among the homeless population. Hence, physical hardship, accidents, inadequate resources to practice personal hygiene, poor diet, stress, difficulty registering with a GP, a lack of preventative care, a lack of (suitable) health information and stigma combine to increase the rates of morbidity and mortality among homeless people. 2. Research The study examined the health status and health behaviours of homeless people in Aberdeen. It sought to find out how well NHS services engage with homeless people in the city. The intention was to explore how patient and public involvement could be developed meaningfully to ensure that the views of homeless people are actively sought, listened to and acted upon. The definition of homelessness used corresponded to that used by the Homelessness Task Force (see Appendix A) and covered the statutory homeless and non statutory homeless (e.g. roofless, houseless, temporarily housed, those living in insecure accommodation etc.)

Self-assembly using dendritic building blocks - towards controllable nanomaterials

Dendritic molecules have well defined, three-dimensional branched architectures, and constitute a unique nanoscale toolkit. This review focuses on examples in which individual dendritic molecules are assembled into more complex arrays via non-covalent interactions. In particular, it illustrates how the structural information programmed into the dendritic architecture controls the assembly process, and as a consequence, the properties of the supramolecular structures which are generated. Furthermore, the review emphasises how the use of non-covalent (supramolecular) interactions, provides the assembly process with reversibility, and hence a high degree of control. The review also illustrates how self-assembly offers an ideal approach for amplifying the branching of small, synthetically accessible, relatively inexpensive dendritic systems (e.g. dendrons), into highly branched complex nanoscale assemblies. The review begins by considering the assembly of dendritic molecules to generate discrete, well-defined supramolecular assemblies. The variety of possible assembled structures is illustrated, and the ability of an assembled structure to encapsulate a templating unit is described. The ability of both organic and inorganic building blocks to direct the assembly process is discussed. The review then describes larger discrete assemblies of dendritic molecules, which do not exist as a single well-defined species, but instead exist as statistical distributions. For example, assembly around nanoparticles, the assembly of amphiphilic dendrons and the assembly of dendritic systems in the presence of DNA will all be discussed. Finally, the review examines dendritic molecules, which assemble or order themselves into extended arrays. Such systems extend beyond the nanoscale into the microscale or even the macroscale domain, exhibiting a wide range of different architectures. The ability of these assemblies to act as gel-phase or liquid crystalline materials will be considered. Taken as a whole, this review emphasises the control and tunability that underpins the assembly of nanomaterials using dendritic building blocks, and furthermore highlights the potential future applications of these assemblies at the interfaces between chemistry, biology and materials science

Holey fibre mode-selective couplers

Mode-selective coupling in an asymmetric holey fibre coupler is demonstrated both numerically and experimentally for the first time. The coupler's performance is shown to be ultrabroadband, with significant potential existing for the use of such couplers in high bandwidth few-mode fibre networks

The emotional well-being of young people: a review of the literature.

Suicide is increasingly described by governments and policy-makers as a global public health problem. Between 1950 and 1995 global suicide rates have increased by 60%. In recent years concerns have been expressed in Scotland and the UK about rising suicide rates amongst children and young people and the accumulation of increasing evidence that the adoption of negative coping strategies is contributing to rising levels of deliberate self harm (DSH).This literature review was in part used and incorporated into chapter two of the final report, The emotional wellbeing of young people: final report of phase one of a 'Choose Life' research project in Aberdeenshire (March 2004-March 2007), which can be found at http://hdl.handle.net/10059/439

Health & ethnicity in Aberdeenshire: a study of Polish in-migrants; a report for the Scottish Health Council.

In Scotland as a whole, around 2% of the population are from minority ethnic backgrounds, although the distribution of people from such backgrounds is uneven across the country. In Aberdeenshire, out of a total population of 232,850, 1,165 people come from ethnic minority backgrounds, around 0.5% of the total population. According to the 2001 Census, there are nine main ethnic minority groups in Aberdeenshire, the largest of which is Chinese, comprising around a quarter of the total ethnic minority population of the area (n=277, 24%). The remaining groups are made up of Indians, Pakistanis, other South Asians, Africans, Black Scottish and people from the Caribbean. However, around 29% come from other minority ethnic groups. With respect to the latter, there has been a noticeable influx of people from Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, Lithuania and Latvia following the accession of ten new member states to the European Union on the 1st April 2004. It has been estimated that around 800 migrant workers and their families are now coming to Grampian each month (400 of whom are Polish), if levels of applications for National Insurance numbers are indicative in this respect (NHS Grampian, 2005). The health needs of migrants is becoming increasingly recognised. As such, the International Organization for Migrations most recent World Migration Report (2005) argued that, the social and economic costs of neglecting migration health, also as a public health issue, can be immeasurable. The experience of migration can lead to increased vulnerability to ill health as well as ill health, which arises after arrival. Poorer migrants are often lowly paid, living in damp conditions, badly nourished and exposed to higher risks in working environments yet under-utilise health services. In addition, the stigma generated from wider perceptions of poor migrant health can contribute to an undermining of the benefits of migration. In short, migration is a public health issue, which seems likely to endure in an emerging age of migration (Castles and Miller 2003). Finally communication is considered fundamentally important to the health of migrants due to language barriers having adverse effects on the accessibility of care, the quality of care received, patient satisfaction and patient health outcomes (Bischoff 2003). To help in-migrants settle into Scotland generally and Aberdeenshire in particular the Scottish Executive and a range of national and regional bodies have introduced a range of policies. Within healthcare, NHS Grampian (2005) aims to make genuine and lasting improvements in the quality of services provided to the local ethnic communities and to make NHS Grampian the leader, for other Health Boards to follow. To this end a range of policies are being implemented. These include, interpretation and translation services, training for NHS Grampian staff to better understand the needs of the local ethnic communities, access and service delivery, racial equality within NHS Grampian, appointments procedures, training procedures, actively promoting health within the ethnic communities and meeting the healthcare needs of recently arrived migrant workers and their families and asylum seekers

Closed loop adaptive optics with a laser guide star for biological light microscopy

We report on the development of a widefield microscope that achieves adaptive optics correction through the use of a wavefront sensor observing an artificial laser guide star induced within the sample. By generating this guide star at arbitrary positions and depths within the sample we allow the delivery of high-resolution images. This approach delivers much faster AO correction than image optimization techniques, and allows the use of AO with fluorescent imaging modalities without generating excessive photo-toxic damage in the sample, or inducing significant photo-bleaching in the flurophore molecules