Suicide in Northern Ireland: epidemiology, risk factors, and prevention

The rates of suicide and self-harm in Northern Ireland are high, and have increased from 143 registered suicides in 1996 to 313 in 2010 and 318 in 2015. This Review summarises the epidemiology of suicidal behaviour, as well as the evidence from a small number of studies that have identified risk factors associated with high suicide rates in Northern Ireland. These risk factors were mental illness, trauma, exposure to the conflict known as the Troubles, deprivation, relationship problems, employment difficulties, financial difficulties, being LGBT, childhood adversities, and alcohol or drug use. We highlight the key challenges and opportunities for suicide prevention, emphasising a so-called lifespan approach. More needs to be done to address the relationship between substance misuse and suicide. Future research and prevention efforts should also focus on the transgenerational effect of the conflict, youth suicide, suicide prevention in minority groups, and the criminal justice context. The provision of and access to suicide-specific psychosocial interventions need to be prioritised, more support for people in crisis is required, as well as interventions for mental illness. Protect Life 2, the national suicide prevention strategy, needs to be implemented in full. Given the legacy of conflict in Northern Ireland, all suicide prevention efforts should be trauma informed

Burying the Evidence: How Great Britain is Prolonging the Occupational Cancer Epidemic

The U.K. authorities are failing to acknowledge or deal effectively with an epidemic of work-related cancers. The government’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) underestimates the exposed population, the risks faced as a result of those exposures, and the potential for prevention. The HSE fails to acknowledge the social inequality in occupational cancer risk, which is concentrated in manual workers and lower employment grades, or the greater likelihood these groups will experience multiple exposures to work-related carcinogens. It continues to neglect the largely uninvestigated and unprioritized risk to women and currently has neither a requirement nor a strategy for reducing the numbers and volumes of cancer-causing substances, processes, and environments at work. The result is that the U.K. faces at least 20,000 and possibly in excess of 40,000 new cases of work-related cancer every year, leading to thousands of deaths and an annual cost to the economy of between £29.5bn and £59bn. This paper outlines flaws in the HSE’s approach and makes recommendations to address effectively the U.K.’s occupational cancer crisis

Turning a yield-stress calcite suspension into a shear-thickening one by tuning inter-particle friction

We show that a suspension of non-Brownian calcite particles in glycerol-water mixtures can be tuned continuously from being a yield-stress suspension to a shear-thickening suspension--without a measurable yield stress--by the addition of various surfactants. We interpret our results within a recent theoretical framework that models the rheological effects of stress-dependent constraints on inter-particle motion. Bare calcite particle suspensions are found to have finite yield stresses. In these suspensions, frictional contacts that constrain inter-particle sliding form at an infinitesimal applied stress and remain thereafter, while adhesive bonds that constrain inter-particle rotation are broken as the applied stress increases. Adding surfactants reduces the yield stress of such suspensions. We show that, contrary to the case of surfactant added to colloidal suspensions, this effect in non-Brownian suspensions is attributable to the emergence of a finite onset stress for the formation of frictional contacts. Our data suggest that the magnitude of this onset stress is set by the strength of surfactant adsorption to the particle surfaces, which therefore constitutes a new design principle for using surfactants to tune the rheology of formulations consisting of suspensions of adhesive non-Brownian particulates.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure

Evaluating Student Partnership for Enhancement

Student engagement has been a core pillars of our Scottish Quality Enhancement Framework from its inception, ensuring a strong and meaningful student voice and contribution to our assurance and enhancements agendas, works and achievements. With a wide spread shift across the sector from engagement of students to partnership working, and the celebration of 20 years of enhancement, it feels fitting and timely to ask the question ‘How do we evaluate our ideas and practices of partnership, and their impacts enhancing the student experience?’. This presentation utilises the presenters own institutional context as a case study, and initial findings from a small-scale research project, to explore how we currently evaluate student partnerships in their many forms, and where we may need to expand our evaluative practice and approach to examine the impacts of partnership for the future

Fresh Cement as a Frictional Non-Brownian Suspension

Cement is an essential construction material due to its ability to flow before later setting, however the rheological properties must be tightly controlled. Despite this, much understanding remains empirical. Using a combination of continuous and oscillatory shear flow, we compare fresh Portland cement suspensions to previous measurements on model non-Brownian suspensions to gain a micro-physical understanding. Comparing steady and small-amplitude oscillatory shear, we reveal two distinct jamming concentrations, and rcp, where the respective yield stresses diverge. As in model suspensions, the steady-shear jamming point is notably below the oscillatory jamming point, < rcp, suggesting that it is tied to frictional particle contacts. These results indicate that recently established models for the rheology of frictional, adhesive non-Brownian suspensions can be applied to fresh cement pastes, offering a new framework to understand the role of additives and fillers. Such micro-physical understanding can guide formulation changes to improve performance and reduce environmental impact

Camelpox virus encodes a schlafen-like protein that affects orthopoxvirus virulence.

Camelpox virus (CMLV) gene 176R encodes a protein with sequence similarity to murine schlafen (m-slfn) proteins. In vivo, short and long members of the m-slfn family inhibited T-cell development, whereas in vitro, only short m-slfns caused arrest of fibroblast growth. CMLV 176 protein (v-slfn) is most closely related to short m-slfns; however, when expressed stably in mammalian cells, v-slfn did not inhibit cell growth. v-slfn is a predominantly cytoplasmic 57 kDa protein that is expressed throughout infection. Several other orthopoxviruses encode v-slfn proteins, but the v-slfn gene is fragmented in all sequenced variola virus and vaccinia virus (VACV) strains. Consistent with this, all 16 VACV strains tested do not express a v-slfn detected by polyclonal serum raised against the CMLV protein. In the absence of a small animal model to study CMLV pathogenesis, the contribution of CMLV v-slfn to orthopoxvirus virulence was studied via its expression in an attenuated strain of VACV. Recombinant viruses expressing wild-type v-slfn or v-slfn tagged at its C terminus with a haemagglutinin (HA) epitope were less virulent than control viruses. However, a virus expressing v-slfn tagged with the HA epitope at its N terminus had similar virulence to controls, implying that the N terminus has an important function. A greater recruitment of lymphocytes into infected lung tissue was observed in the presence of wild-type v-slfn but, interestingly, these cells were less activated. Thus, v-slfn is an orthopoxvirus virulence factor that affects the host immune response to infection

Optimising non-Newtonian fluids for impact protection of laminates

Non-Newtonian fluids can be used for the protection of flexible laminates. Understanding the coupling between the flow of the protecting fluid and the deformation of the protected solids is necessary in order to optimize this functionality. We present a scaling analysis of the problem based on a single coupling variable, the effective width of a squeeze flow between flat rigid plates, and predict that impact protection for laminates is optimized by using shear-thinning, and not shear-thickening, fluids. The prediction is verified experimentally by measuring the velocity and pressure in impact experiments. Our scaling analysis should be generically applicable for non-Newtonian fluid-solid interactions in diverse applications.</p