Primary care groups - Modernising primary and community health services

Developing primary and community health services is a key component of the government's plans for modernising the NHS. Primary care groups and trusts have a vital part to play in overcoming the variability, fragmentation, and isolation that have been the weaknesses of primary health care in the NHS. Primary care groups and trusts have introduced initiatives to promote greater collaboration between general practices and to share expertise and resources. Improving access to care is an important feature of the modernisation plan, and most groups and trusts are actively promoting access, particularly for people who have been poorly served traditionally. Groups and trusts are tackling staff shortages by using clinical specialists and promoting extended roles for nurses and pharmacist

Representation of South Asian people in randomised clinical trials: analysis of trials' data

Excluding patients of ethnic minority groups from clinical trials is unethical, introduces substantial bias, and means that findings are based on unrepresentative populations. The National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act 1993 requires that all minority groups be represented in the sample in research projects supported by the National Institutes of Health, unless there is a clear and compelling justification not to do so. In the United Kingdom no such legislation exists

Botulinum neurotoxin type C protease induces apoptosis in differentiated human neuroblastoma cells

Neuroblastomas constitute a major cause of cancer-related deaths in young children. In recent years, a number of translation-inhibiting enzymes have been evaluated for killing neuroblastoma cells. Here we investigated the potential vulnerability of human neuroblastoma cells to protease activity derived from botulinum neurotoxin type C. We show that following retinoic acid treatment, human neuroblastoma cells, SiMa and SH-SY5Y, acquire a neuronal phenotype evidenced by axonal growth and expression of neuronal markers. Botulinum neurotoxin type C which cleaves neuron-specific SNAP25 and syntaxin1 caused apoptotic death only in differentiated neuroblastoma cells. Direct comparison of translation-inhibiting enzymes and the type C botulinum protease revealed one order higher cytotoxic potency of the latter suggesting a novel neuroblastoma-targeting pathway. Our mechanistic insights revealed that loss of ubiquitous SNAP23 due to differentiation coupled to SNAP25 cleavage due to botulinum activity may underlie the apoptotic death of human neuroblastoma cells

Constraints on the Huygens landing site topography from the Surface Science Package Acoustic Properties Instrument

We present analysis of the results from the Huygens acoustic sounder instrument. The sounder sees a relatively smooth terrain, with specular reflectance characteristics

Attractive Channel Skyrmions and the Deuteron

The deuteron is described as a quantum state on a ten-dimensional manifold $M_{10}$ of Skyrme fields of degree two, which are obtained by calculating the holonomy of $SU(2)$ instantons. The manifold $M_{10}$ includes both toroidal configurations of minimal energy and configurations which are approximately the product of two Skyrmions in the most attractive relative orientation. The quantum Hamiltonian is of the form $-\Delta +V$, where $\Delta$ is the covariant Laplace operator on $M_{10}$ and $V$ is the potential which $M_{10}$ inherits from the Skyrme potential energy functional. Quantum states are complex-valued functions on the double cover of $M_{10}$ satisfying certain constraints. There is a unique bound state with the quantum numbers of the deuteron, and its binding energy is approximately 6 MeV. Some of the deuteron's electrostatic and magnetostatic properties are also calculated and compared with experiment.Comment: 38 pages, latex, 9 figure

Martian atmospheric O₃ retrieval development for the NOMAD-UVIS spectrometer

The composition of atmospheric trace gases and aerosols is a highly variable and poorly constrained component of the martian atmosphere, and by affecting martian climate and UV surface dose, represents a key parameter in the assessment of suitability for martian habitability. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) carries the Open University (OU) designed Ultraviolet and VIsible Spectrometer (UVIS) instrument as part of the Belgian-led Nadir and Occultation for MArs Discovery (NOMAD) spectrometer suite. NOMAD will begin transmitting science observations of martian surface and atmosphere back-scattered UltraViolet (UV) and visible radiation in Spring 2018, which will be processed to derive spatially and temporally averaged atmospheric trace gas and aerosol concentrations, intended to provide a better understanding of martian atmospheric photo-chemistry and dynamics, and will also improve models of martian atmospheric chemistry, climate and habitability. Work presented here illustrates initial development and testing of the OU’s new retrieval algorithm for determining O3 and aerosol concentrations from the UVIS instrument

Anyonic Bogomol'nyi Solitons in a Gauged O(3) Sigma Model

We introduce the self-dual abelian gauged $O(3)$ sigma models where the Maxwell and Chern-Simons terms constitute the kinetic terms for the gauge field. These models have quite rich structures and various limits. Our models are found to exhibit both symmetric and broken phases of the gauge group. We discuss the pure Chern-Simons limit in some detail and study rotationally symmetric solitons.Comment: 14 pages, 6 Postscript figures uuencoded, written in REVTe

Skyrmions and domain walls in (2+1) dimensions

We study classical solutions of the vector O(3) sigma model in (2+1) dimensions, spontaneously broken to O(2)xZ2. The model possesses Skyrmion-type solutions as well as stable domain walls which connect different vacua. We show that different types of waves can propagate on the wall, including waves carrying a topological charge. The domain wall can also absorb Skyrmions and, under appropriate initial conditions, it is possible to emit a Skyrmion from the wall.Comment: plain tex : 15 pages, 21 Postscript figures, uses epsf.te

Exomars entry and descent science

The entry, descent and landing of ExoMars offer a rare (once-per-mission) opportunity to perform in situ investigation of the martian environment over a wide altitude range. We present an initial assessment of the atmospheric science that can be performed using sensors of the Entry, Descent and Landing System (EDLS), over and above the expected engineering information. This is intended to help fulfill the concept of an Atmospheric Parameters Package (APP), as mentioned in the ExoMars draft Science Management Plan [ESA, 2005]. Mars' atmosphere is highly variable in time and space, due to phenomena including inertio-gravity waves, thermal tide effects, dust, solar wind conditions, and diurnal, seasonal and topographic effects. Atmospheric profile measurements, drawing on heritage from the Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument (HASI), which encountered Titan's atmosphere in 2005 [1], should allow us to address questions of the martian atmosphere's structure, dynamics and variability