Escape Velocity: Why the Prospect of Extreme Human Life Extension Matters Now

Should we be considering the social and economic ramifications of a society where life-span could be limitless

Public attitudes in England towards the sharing of personal data following a mass casualty incident : a cross-sectional study

Objectives: To assess public attitudes towards data sharing to facilitate a mental health screening programme for people caught up in a mass casualty incident. Design: Two, identical, cross-sectional, online surveys, using quotas to ensure demographic representativeness of people aged 18–65 years in England. Participants were randomly allocated to consider a scenario in which they witness a terrorism-related radiation incident or mass shooting, after which a police officer records their contact details. Setting: Participants were drawn from an online panel maintained by a market research company. Surveys were conducted before and immediately after a series of terrorist attacks and a large tower block fire occurred in England. Participants: One thousand people aged 18–65 years participated in each survey. Main outcome measures: Three questions asking participants if it would be acceptable for police to share their contact details, without asking first, with ‘a health-related government organisation, so they can send you a questionnaire to find out if you might benefit from extra care or support’, ‘a specialist NHS team, to provide you with information about ways to get support for any physical or mental health issues’ and ‘your GP, so they can check how you are doing’. Results: A minority of participants reported that it would be definitely not acceptable for their details to be shared with the government organisation (n=259, 13.0%), the National Health Service (NHS) (n=141, 7.1%) and their general practitioner (GP) (n=166, 8.3%). There was a small, but significant increase in acceptability for the radiation incident compared with the mass shooting. No major differences were observed between the preincident and postincident surveys. Conclusions: Although most people believe it is acceptable for their details to be shared in order to facilitate a mental health response to a major incident, care must be taken to communicate with those affected about how their information will be used

Isaiah 5: A prophetic critique of economic proportion

The text of Isaiah 5 describes a rapidly changing society in 8th-century BCE Judah. This shift is driven by forces such as increased international trade, the clash of urbanisation and agrarianism, and the rise of the urban elites. These changes have direct correlation with the transforming economic environment of that period. Yet scholars have paid little attention to the economic realities reflected in the message of the prophet Isaiah. This article explores the context of Isaiah 5 through an engagement with economic theory. While recognising the dilemmas in the adoption of tools from contemporary economic theory to analyse an ancient society, this article utilises game theory to shed light on the historical and cultural background to the text. By applying the ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ it explores the ‘deal’ being offered by the prophet to the Judahite leaders in Isaiah 5: 8–24. In particular, the article looks at rational choice and the self-interested basis of decision-making to draw insights from the text by highlighting the conflicts of interest for the wealthy elite of Isaiah 5. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This research relates to the disciplines of Old Testament Studies and Economic Theory. The focus is applying economic theory to the biblical text of Isaiah 5

Parents’ Knowledge, Attitudes and Use of Antibiotics in Upper Respiratory Infections in Nigerian Children

Parental knowledge of antibiotic use in upper respiratory tract infections (URTI) impacts significantly in the preservation of antibiotic efficacy, yet has not been adequately studied in Nigerian settings. This present study evaluated the knowledge, attitudes and self-medicating practices of caregivers towards the use of antibiotics in URTI among children. The study was a cross-sectional and prospective survey. Parents visiting two hospitals (Nsukka General Hospital - rural and Enugu State University of Technology Teaching Hospital- urban) with their sick children (12 years and under) were approached to complete a 24-item questionnaire. The items assessed parental knowledge of, attitudes and self-medicating practices towards antibiotics in cases of URTI. Frequencies, means and inferential multivariate (chi-square, t-tests and regression) data analysis were conducted. The parents exhibited poor knowledge in most of the knowledge items. Younger parents, those visiting the urban hospital and those with higher educational status exhibited significantly better knowledge of antibiotics and URTI (p<0.05). The parents indicated marginally accepting attitudes towards antibiotics use and misuse and this was influenced largely by better antibiotic knowledge and better educational qualifications (p<0.001). However parents from both hospitals frequently self-medicated (88.6%) and acknowledged poor practices towards antibiotics such as the use of left over antibiotics. Majority (85%) of the parents also said they received antibiotics after they demanded it from their physicians. Parents in these study settings in Nigeria, possessed poor knowledge and positive attitudes of antibiotic use in their children, and exhibited poor practices when utilizing them

Realistic atomistic structure of amorphous silicon from machine-learning-driven molecular dynamics

Amorphous silicon (a-Si) is a widely studied noncrystalline material, and yet the subtle details of its atomistic structure are still unclear. Here, we show that accurate structural models of a-Si can be obtained using a machine-learning-based interatomic potential. Our best a-Si network is obtained by simulated cooling from the melt at a rate of 1011 K/s (that is, on the 10 ns time scale), contains less than 2% defects, and agrees with experiments regarding excess energies, diffraction data, and 29Si NMR chemical shifts. We show that this level of quality is impossible to achieve with faster quench simulations. We then generate a 4096-atom system that correctly reproduces the magnitude of the first sharp diffraction peak (FSDP) in the structure factor, achieving the closest agreement with experiments to date. Our study demonstrates the broader impact of machine-learning potentials for elucidating structures and properties of technologically important amorphous materials

Survival of near-critical branching Brownian motion

Consider a system of particles performing branching Brownian motion with negative drift $\mu = \sqrt{2 - \epsilon}$ and killed upon hitting zero. Initially there is one particle at $x>0$. Kesten showed that the process survives with positive probability if and only if $\epsilon>0$. Here we are interested in the asymptotics as \eps\to 0 of the survival probability $Q_\mu(x)$. It is proved that if $L= \pi/\sqrt{\epsilon}$ then for all $x \in \R$, $\lim_{\epsilon \to 0} Q_\mu(L+x) = \theta(x) \in (0,1)$ exists and is a travelling wave solution of the Fisher-KPP equation. Furthermore, we obtain sharp asymptotics of the survival probability when $x<L$ and $L-x \to \infty$. The proofs rely on probabilistic methods developed by the authors in a previous work. This completes earlier work by Harris, Harris and Kyprianou and confirms predictions made by Derrida and Simon, which were obtained using nonrigorous PDE methods