Scientific production and international collaboration in occupational health, 1992-2001

Objectives. The objectives of the present study were twofold, to describe international scientific production in occupational health and to examine international collaboration in this discipline. Methods. A bibliometric study was carried out, using Science Citation Index, in order to evaluate the articles published during the period 1992-2001 in eight representative occupational health journals. Scientific production, collaborative profiles for each country, and the significant relationships established between countries are reported. Results. One or more institutions in the United States had contributed to over 40% of the articles examined. The United States was followed by the United Kingdom (9.15%) and then Sweden (8.65%). When population size effects were eliminated, the Scandinavian countries proved to be the leading producers. After correction for gross domestic product, there was an increase in the ranking of apparently scientifically modest countries. The Scandinavian countries remained high. In terms of international collaboration in general, there was an inverse relationship between the production of a country and the proportion of articles co-authored with institutions in other countries. Finally, the significant relationships between countries permitted the identification of up to six large collaboration nuclei. Conclusions. The high absolute and relative Scandinavian production is suggestive of the great importance of occupational health in these countries. Access to publication by more modest countries, scientifically speaking, is observed to occur through collaboration with the high-production countries. In this sense, it would seem necessary to study the basis underlying these relationships. Finally, the characterization of the collaborative nuclei does not differ greatly from what was expected

On the solar nickel and oxygen abundances

Determinations of the solar oxygen content relying on the neutral forbidden transition at 630 nm depend upon the nickel abundance, due to a Ni I blend. Here we rederive the solar nickel abundance, using the same ab initio 3D hydrodynamic model of the solar photosphere employed in the recent revision of the abundances of C, N, O and other elements. Using 17 weak, unblended lines of Ni I together with the most accurate atomic and observational data available we find log epsilon_Ni = 6.17 +/- 0.02 (statistical) +/- 0.05 (systematic), a downwards shift of 0.06 to 0.08 dex relative to previous 1D-based abundances. We investigate the implications of the new nickel abundance for studies of the solar oxygen abundance based on the [O I] 630 nm line in the quiet Sun. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the oxygen abundance implied by the recent sunspot spectropolarimetric study of Centeno & Socas-Navarro needs to be revised downwards from log epsilon_O = 8.86 +/- 0.07 to 8.71 +/- 0.10. This revision is based on the new nickel abundance, application of the best available gf-value for the 630 nm forbidden oxygen line, and a more transparent treatment of CO formation. Determinations of the solar oxygen content relying on forbidden lines now appear to converge around log epsilon_O = 8.7.Comment: v2 matches published versio

The impact of financialisation on public health in times of COVID-19 and beyond

The substantial literature in political economy and soci- ology has shown that the increasing importance of finan- cial activities (financialisation) exhibits significant effects on many socioeconomic conditions. While these condi- tions are relevant to public health, the dominant focus of the literature has been centred on the impact of financial markets on health services and health-care systems. This paper analyses how the financialisation of non-financial corporations, real estate and pensions can worsen public health through the transformation of workplace and living conditions as well as financially dependent social groups' perception of health risk. Our analysis raises several ques- tions which aim to provide the basis of a future research agenda on the effects of financialisation on public and global health

Bayesian Inversion of Stokes Profiles

[abridged] Inversion techniques are the most powerful methods to obtain information about the thermodynamical and magnetic properties of solar and stellar atmospheres. In the last years, we have witnessed the development of highly sophisticated inversion codes that are now widely applied to spectro-polarimetric observations. The majority of these inversion codes are based on the optimization of a complicated non-linear merit function. However, no reliable and statistically well-defined confidence intervals can be obtained for the parameters inferred from the inversions. A correct estimation of the confidence intervals for all the parameters that describe the model is mandatory. Additionally, it is fundamental to apply efficient techniques to assess the ability of models to reproduce the observations and to what extent the models have to be refined or can be simplified. Bayesian techniques are applied to analyze the performance of the model to fit a given observed Stokes vector. The posterior distribution, is efficiently sampled using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. For simplicity, we focus on the Milne-Eddington approximate solution of the radiative transfer equation and we only take into account the generation of polarization through the Zeeman effect. However, the method is extremely general and other more complex forward models can be applied. We illustrate the ability of the method with the aid of academic and realistic examples. We show that the information provided by the posterior distribution turns out to be fundamental to understand and determine the amount of information available in the Stokes profiles in these particular cases.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in A&

Critical properties of the four-state Commutative Random Permutation Glassy Potts model in three and four dimensions

We investigate the critical properties of the four-state commutative random permutation glassy Potts model in three and four dimensions by means of Monte Carlo simulation and of a finite size scaling analysis. Thanks to the use of a field programmable gate array we have been able to thermalize a large number of samples of systems with large volume. This has allowed us to observe a spin-glass ordered phase in d=4 and to study the critical properties of the transition. In d=3, our results are consistent with the presence of a Kosterlitz-Thouless transition, but we cannot exclude transient effects due to a value of the lower critical dimension slightly below 3.Comment: 9 pages, 8 Postscript figure

Bohmian transmission and reflection dwell times without trajectory sampling

Within the framework of Bohmian mechanics dwell times find a straightforward formulation. The computation of associated probabilities and distributions however needs the explicit knowledge of a relevant sample of trajectories and therefore implies formidable numerical effort. Here a trajectory free formulation for the average transmission and reflection dwell times within static spatial intervals [a,b] is given for one-dimensional scattering problems. This formulation reduces the computation time to less than 5% of the computation time by means of trajectory sampling.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures; v2: published version, significantly revised and shortened (former sections 2 and 3 omitted, appendix A added, simplified mathematics

Pilot Study: Systemic response after lung SBRT analyzing immune Cells phenotyping

To investigate changes of immune-phenotyping values in patients treated with Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy (SBRT) over the lung in order to evaluate the immune response after radiation therapy