2,247 research outputs found
Preliminary genetic analyses of important musculoskeletal conditions of thoroughbred racehorses in Hong Kong
A retrospective cohort study of important musculoskeletal conditions of Thoroughbred racehorses was conducted using health records generated over a 15 year period (n = 5062, 1296 sires). The prevalence of each condition in the study population was: fracture, 13%; osteoarthritis, 10%; suspensory ligament injury, 10%; and tendon injury, 19%. Linear and logistic sire and animal regression models were built to describe the binary occurrence of these musculoskeletal conditions, and to evaluate the significance of possible environmental risk factors. The heritability of each condition was estimated using residual maximum likelihood (REML). Bivariate mixed models were used to generate estimates of genetic correlations between each pair of conditions.<p></p>
Heritability estimates of fracture, osteoarthritis, suspensory ligament and tendon injury were small to moderate (range: 0.01–0.20). Fracture was found to be positively genetically correlated with both osteoarthritis and suspensory ligament injury. These results suggest that there is a significant genetic component involved in the risk of the studied conditions. Due to positive genetic correlations, a reduction in prevalence of one of the correlated conditions may effect a reduction in risk of the other condition.<p></p>
Spatial access to healthcare: exploring the provision of local services
This thesis creates a context for exploring the provision of local healthcare services
quantitatively, with particular focus on the application of spatial analysis and the use of
geographic information systems (GIS). It focuses theoretically on the intersections between:
health and medical geography; GIScience and spatially integrated social science; and social
justice and spatial equity, elucidating the value of space and place in understanding patient
registration with, and usage of, healthcare services.
The practical elements of the thesis are based on patient registration data provided by
Southwark primary care trust (PCT), and Hospital Episode Statistics from the NHS
Information Centre. Focussing initially on primary care, registration with GP surgeries in
Southwark is considered firstly from a normative perspective, and subsequently by
employing a service area delineation approach. Profiling GP surgeries in this way enables an
insight into patient registration behaviours, and sheds light on the challenges of
implementing an agenda of patient choice as advocated by recent NHS white papers. The
perspective of inpatient and outpatient care is also considered, given the increasing import
of joined up provision in primary and secondary care. The thesis considers the linkage
between the two service hierarchies, investigating utilisation of secondary care by patients.
The value of this thesis derives from its relevance to the reform agenda that looks likely to
radically reshape the NHS, the exploitation of patient registration data at individual level,
novel use of classification, and the systematic application of spatial analysis across a range of
scales
A review of the effective approaches to environmental labelling of food products. Report to Defra, for Project Report for FO0419 entitled 'Effective approaches to environmental labelling of food products'
A high resolution imaging detector for TeV gamma-ray astronomy
Details are presented of an atmospheric Cherenkov telescope for use in very high energy gamma-ray astronomy which consists of a cluster of 109 close-packed photomultiplier tubes at the focus of a 10 meter optical reflector. The images of the Cherenkov flashes generated both by gamma-ray and charged cosmic-ray events are digitized and recorded. Subsequent off-line analysis of the images improves the significance of the signal to noise ratio by a factor of 10 compared with non-imaging techniques
Next-to-leading resummation of cosmological perturbations via the Lagrangian picture: 2-loop correction in real and redshift spaces
We present an improved prediction of the nonlinear perturbation theory (PT)
via the Lagrangian picture, which was originally proposed by Matsubara (2008).
Based on the relations between the power spectrum in standard PT and that in
Lagrangian PT, we derive analytic expressions for the power spectrum in
Lagrangian PT up to 2-loop order in both real and redshift spaces. Comparing
the improved prediction of Lagrangian PT with -body simulations in real
space, we find that the 2-loop corrections can extend the valid range of wave
numbers where we can predict the power spectrum within 1% accuracy by a factor
of 1.0 (), 1.3 (1), 1.6 (2) and 1.8 (3) vied with 1-loop Lagrangian PT
results. On the other hand, in all redshift ranges, the higher-order
corrections are shown to be less significant on the two-point correlation
functions around the baryon acoustic peak, because the 1-loop Lagrangian PT is
already accurate enough to explain the nonlinearity on those scales in -body
simulations.Comment: 18pages, 4 figure
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Effect of Corrosion Film Composition and Structure on the Corrosion Kinetics of Ni-Cr-Fe Alloys in High Temperature Water
Nickel alloys such as Alloy 600 undergo Stress Corrosion Cracking (SCC) in pure water at temperatures between about 260 C and the critical point. Increasing the level of Cr in Ni-Fe-Cr alloys increases SCC resistance in aerated and deaerated water. The mechanism is not understood. The effect of Cr composition on oxide microstructure and corrosion kinetics of Ni-Fe-Cr alloys was determined experimentally, to evaluate whether the anodic dissolution model for SCC can account for the effect of Cr on SCC. The alloy corrosion rate and corrosion product oxide microstructure is strongly influenced by the Cr composition. Corrosion kinetics are parabolic and influenced by chromium concentration, with the parabolic constant first increasing then decreasing as Cr increases from 5 to 39%. Surface analyses using Analytical Electron microscopy (AEM) and Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES) show that the corrosion product film that forms initially on all alloys exposed to high purity high temperature water is a nickel rich oxide. With time, the amount of chromium in the oxide film increases and corrosion proceeds toward the formation of the more thermodynamically stable spinel or hexagonal Cr-rich oxides, similar to high temperature gaseous oxidation. Due to the slower diffusion kinetics at the temperatures of water corrosion compared to those in high temperature gaseous oxidation, however, the films remain as a mixture of NiO, mixed Ni, Fe and Cr spinels, NiCrO{sub 3} and FeCrO{sub 3}. As the amount of Cr in the film increases and the nature of the film changes from NiO to spinel or hexagonal oxides, cation diffusion through the films slows, slowing the corrosion rate. These observations are qualitatively consistent with an anodic dissolution SCC mechanism. However, parametric modeling of the SCC growth process, applying available creep, oxide rupture strain and corrosion kinetics data, indicates that the anodic dissolution mechanism accounts for only a fraction of the effect of Cr on SCC resistance
Harmonic E/B decomposition for CMB polarization maps
The full sky cosmic microwave background polarization field can be decomposed
into 'electric' (E) and 'magnetic' (B) components that are signatures of
distinct physical processes. We give a general construction that achieves
separation of E and B modes on arbitrary sections of the sky at the expense of
increasing the noise. When E modes are present on all scales the separation of
all of the B signal is no longer possible: there are inevitably ambiguous modes
that cannot be separated. We discuss the practicality of performing E/B
decomposition on large scales with realistic non-symmetric sky-cuts, and show
that separation on large scales is possible by retaining only the well
supported modes. The large scale modes potentially contain a great deal of
useful information, and E/B separation at the level of the map is essential for
clean detection of B without confusion from cosmic variance due to the E
signal. We give simple matrix manipulations for creating pure E and B maps of
the large scale signal for general sky cuts. We demonstrate that the method
works well in a realistic case and give estimates of the performance with data
from the Planck satellite. In the appendix we discuss the simple analytic case
of an azimuthally symmetric cut, and show that exact E/B separation is possible
on an azimuthally symmetric cut with a finite number of non-intersecting
circular cuts around foreground sources.Comment: Fixed numerical bug in tensor C_l: Planck detection probability
results updated (supersedes PRD version). Sample code and additional examples
available at http://cosmologist.info/polar
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Near-Earth asteroid sample return missions
The rate of discovery of new NEAs and the success of D-S 1 and NEAR-Shoemaker, suggest that sample return from NEAs is now technically feasible. Here we present a summary of a recent workshop on the topic
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