Impact of published clinical outcomes data: case study in NHS hospital trusts

Objective To examine the impact of the publication of clinical outcomes data on NHS Trusts in Scotland to inform the development of similar schemes elsewhere. Design Case studies including semistructured interviews and a review of background statistics. Setting Eight Scottish NHS acute trusts. Participants 48 trust staff comprising chief executives, medical directors, stroke consultants, breast cancer consultants, nurse managers, and junior doctors. Main outcome measures Staff views on the benefits and drawbacks of clinical outcome indicators provided by the clinical resource and audit group (CRAG) and perceptions of the impact of these data on clinical practice and continuous improvement of quality. Results The CRAG indicators had a low profile in the trusts and were rarely cited as informing internal quality improvement or used externally to identify best practice. The indicators were mainly used to support applications for further funding and service development. The poor effect was attributable to a lack of professional belief in the indicators, arising from perceived problems around quality of data and time lag between collection and presentation of data; limited dissemination; weak incentives to take action; a predilection for process rather than outcome indicators; and a belief that informal information is often more useful than quantitative data in the assessment of clinical performance. Conclusions Those responsible for developing clinical indicator programmes should develop robust datasets. They should also encourage a working environment and incentives such that these data are used to improve continuously

On commuting varieties of parabolic subalgebras

Let $G$ be a connected reductive algebraic group over an algebraically closed field $k$, and assume that the characteristic of $k$ is zero or a pretty good prime for $G$. Let $P$ be a parabolic subgroup of $G$ and let $\mathfrak p$ be the Lie algebra of $P$. We consider the commuting variety $\mathcal C(\mathfrak p) = \{(X,Y) \in \mathfrak p \times \mathfrak p \mid [X,Y] = 0\}$. Our main theorem gives a necessary and sufficient condition for irreducibility of $\mathcal C(\mathfrak p)$ in terms of the modality of the adjoint action of $P$ on the nilpotent variety of $\mathfrak p$. As a consequence, for the case $P = B$ a Borel subgroup of $G$, we give a classification of when $\mathcal C(\mathfrak b)$ is irreducible; this builds on a partial classification given by Keeton. Further, in cases where $\mathcal C(\mathfrak p)$ is irreducible, we consider whether $\mathcal C(\mathfrak p)$ is a normal variety. In particular, this leads to a classification of when $\mathcal C(\mathfrak b)$ is normal.Comment: 19 pages; minor update

The So-Called Groups of Militant Insanity Against the Video Police: Anti-Psychiatry and Autonomia in 1970s Italian Audiovisual Media

This talk explored how anti-psychiatry was taken up both in the Radio Alice free radio station and also cinematic culture in Italy in the 1970s, focusing on the work of Marco Bellocchio, Elio Petri, and especially Alberto Grifi. While Grifi's work Anna (Grifi and Sarchielli, 1975) is a relatively well-known anti-psychiatric video experiment, anti-psychiatry runs through his 1970s work in proximity with the creative autonomia movement that also gave rise to Radio Alice. However, these currents were already present in key works of Bellocchio and Petri, especially in Fists in the Pocket (Bellocchio, 1965), Matti da slegare (Fit to be Untied, 1975) and La classe operaia va in paradiso (Petri, 1971). In the latter sound is especially significant to indicate the inter-relations between class struggle, sexuality and psychic and emotional states and this would also form the basis for Radio Alice's reinvention of radio as a delirious machinery for a militant destabilisation of the state, capital and the mass media. If this militant insanity lost out in the end to the video police in the form of both mass arrests and the rise of Berlusconi's media empire, it provides a rich legacy for 21st century reinvention

Audiovision and Gesamtkunstwerk: The Aesthetics of First and Second Generation Industrial Music Video

Michel Chion has famously and provocatively referred to film as a sound art (Chion 2009), developing his earlier reading of cinema in the synaesthetic audiovisual terms of Audio-Vision (Chion 1994). Similarly, it is possible to argue that industrial music from its beginnings with groups like Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, SPK and others was an audiovisual art-form, as much as a musical one, and never simply a generic sonic style. The visual aspects of industrial music were not necessarily limited to film and video and included such things as the development of logos and other design features on record sleeves and as concert backdrops, as well as specific uses of photography and other visual arts. These visual elements were often deployed via strategies of anonymity and ambiguity, generating meanings out of a deliberate and playful constitutive vagueness. However, whenever it was technically feasible to do so, industrial groups made use of both film and video technologies, and in terms of the latter were pioneers in the combination of music and video, before and outside of its commercial codification. This chapter examines this field of audiovisual activity as a form of audiovisuology that goes well beyond the promotion and iillustration of popular music

Cause of the charge radius isotope shift at the \emph{N}=126 shell gap

We discuss the mechanism causing the `kink' in the charge radius isotope shift at the N=126 shell closure. The occupation of the 1$i_{11/2}$ neutron orbital is the decisive factor for reproducing the experimentally observed kink. We investigate whether this orbital is occupied or not by different Skyrme effective interactions as neutrons are added above the shell closure. Our results demonstrate that several factors can cause an appreciable occupation of the 1$i_{11/2}$ neutron orbital, including the magnitude of the spin-orbit field, and the isoscalar effective mass of the Skyrme interaction. The symmetry energy of the effective interaction has little influence upon its ability to reproduce the kink.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to be submitted to proceedings of INPC 201

Introduction: Trans TV as Intervention into Contemporary Television, Trans TV Dossier 1: Platform Television, Netflix and Industrial Transformations

This dossier is the first of two to emerge out of the Trans TV conference held at the University of Westminster in September 2017. The focus of this specific dossier is in tracking the latest developments and emergent trends affecting contemporary television production, especially as delivered via new online streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon. The article and series of interventions within this dossier set out to challenge both popular and scholarly discourse around these contemporary transformations, pointing not only to technological shifts in television but also to changes in terms of branding, regional and transnational delivery of content, viewing practices, mobile consumption and ‘transfandom’, amongst other factors. The dossier poses the key questions that if television is undergoing a process of transformation as the title 'Trans TV' suggests, what is 'television' becoming and to what extent and in what aspects can we still recognise it as 'television'? While there are a variety of answers to these questions within the dossier, there is a consensus that in the light of these multiple transformations of television, many of the key concepts and assumptions of Television Studies now require thorough reconsideration

Explicit large nuclear charge limit of electronic ground states for Li, Be, B, C, N, O, F, Ne and basic aspects of the periodic table

This paper is concerned with the Schrödinger equation for atoms and ions with $N=1$ to 10 electrons. In the asymptotic limit of large nuclear charge $Z$, we determine explicitly the low-lying energy levels and eigenstates. The asymptotic energies and wavefunctions are in good quantitative agreement with experimental data for positive ions, and in excellent qualitative agreement even for neutral atoms ($Z=N$). In particular, the predicted ground state spin and angular momentum quantum numbers ($^1S$ for He, Be, Ne, $^2S$ for H and Li, $^4S$ for N, $^2P$ for B and F, and $^3P$ for C and O) agree with experiment in every case. The asymptotic Schrödinger ground states agree, up to small corrections, with the semiempirical hydrogen orbital configurations developed by Bohr, Hund, and Slater to explain the periodic table. In rare cases where our results deviate from this picture, such as the ordering of the lowest $^1D^o$ and $^3S^o$ states of the carbon isoelectronic sequence, experiment confirms our predictions and not Hund's

Lancifodilactone G : insights about an unusually stable enol

From quantum mechanics calculations we confirm that the naturally occurring enol lancifodilactone G is stable over the keto form (by 2.6 kcal/mol in water), the only known stable aliphatic enol (devoid of conjugated or bulky aromatics and lacking a 1,3-diketone structural motif known to stabilize enols). We determine architectural elements responsible for the enol stabilization and find a mechanism for keto-enol conversion in solution. In addition, we correct previously reported computational results that were performed on the misinterpreted structure demonstrating that the enol form of this natural product is more stable than previously thought