24,474 research outputs found
'It burdens me': The impact of stroke in central Aceh, Indonesia
This is the accepted version of the following article: Norris, M., Allotey, P. and Barrett, G. (2012), ‘It burdens
me’: the impact of stroke in central Aceh, Indonesia. Sociology of Health & Illness, 34: 826–840.
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2011.01431.x, which has been published in final form at
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2011.01431.x/abstract.The complex primary and secondary consequences of stroke have often been equated with the concept of biographical disruption, although a number of mediating factors have been identified. However, the research to date is almost exclusively based in western contexts, despite the fact that stroke is increasing most rapidly in low-income and middle-income countries. This research explores the experience of stroke in the rural community of central Aceh, Indonesia. The participants included 11 stroke survivors and 18 carers, with data collected through in-depth interviews and photographic facilitated interviews, supported with participant observation over a nine month period. The participants discussed and illustrated the disruptive result of their stroke, but for most, their ability to maintain religious duties and contribute to their family resulted in a form of biographical continuity. Their strategies and challenges are discussed alongside the implications for care in this context
"I feel like half my body is clogged up": Lay models of stroke in Central Aceh, Indonesia
This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Social Science and Medicine. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2010 Elsevier B.V.Stroke in low and middle income countries is an increasing cause of death and disability, with rates and the estimated burden considerably higher than that of high income countries. Lay explanatory models are believed to be one of the major influences on health seeking behaviour and essential to understand for appropriate education strategies. Despite stroke being a considerable health concern in Indonesia and particularly in Aceh, no studies to date have explored lay stroke models in that context. This paper presents the findings of a qualitative study informed by both hermeneutic phenomenology and ethnography. Based in rural communities in Bener Meriah and Aceh Tengah in Central Aceh, Indonesia, data were gathered through interviews, photographs and observations with 11 persons with stroke (aged 32–69 years) and 18 of their carers. Fieldwork was conducted over nine months between 2007 and 2008. The study examined lay concepts of stroke, described as a condition resulting from a local blockage in blood from multiple causes, many of which are not recognised within the biomedical frame. The blockage is understood to be reversible and therefore the condition curable. This understanding is embedded and sustained in the specific political, cultural, religious and social context. The results illustrate similarities and differences with other cross-cultural studies and suggest areas of future research and points of consideration for stroke education strategies
How to support growth with less energy
There is considerable potential to support growth with less use of primary energy and lower carbon emissions. This can be achieved through technical solutions (existing and new), as well as behavioural change. The goal of securing growth with lower carbon emissions is just one of several strategic goals that need to be satisfied. Of the others, the need to develop alternatives to an energy system heavily dependent on oil and natural gas and to maintain security of energy supply are likely to be the most important.
The strategic goals are to achieve major reductions in the energy intensity of transport, buildings in use, and to achieve corresponding reductions in energy intensity of the major building materials. Key challenges associated with these strategic goals include:
• the development of technologies to produce carbon-free cement, carbon-free steel, carbon-free glass
• enabling infrastructural developments that provide a framework for a wide range of low-carbon technologies and increase energy diversity and security of supply
• identification of key energy-efficiency tipping points and the construction of technology policy
• development of methane-fired modular fuel cells
• improved capabilities to model whole energy systems, i.e. adequately modelling both demand and supply, social/economic as well as technical, and assessing the impact outside of the UK system boundary
• better low-carbon planning and improved co-ordination of planning, building control and other policy tools
• better monitoring and feedback on the real performance of energy efficient technologies.
The implication of the Energy White Paper goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 60% by 2050 is a six-fold reduction in the carbon intensity of the UK economy. In the longer run, it is clear that we will move towards a carbon-free economy. Within this transition, developments in supply, distribution and end-use technologies will be multiplicative, while action to constrain demand growth is crucial to the rate of the overall transition
Metabolomic systems biology of trypanosomes
Metabolomics analysis, which aims at the systematic identification and quantification of all metabolites in biological systems, is emerging as a powerful new tool to identify biomarkers of disease, report on cellular responses to environmental perturbation, and to identify the targets of drugs. Here we discuss recent developments in metabolomic analysis, from the perspective of trypanosome research, highlighting remaining challenges and the most promising areas for future research
From non-Hermitian effective operators to large-scale no-core shell model calculations for light nuclei
No-core shell model (NCSM) calculations using ab initio effective
interactions are very successful in reproducing experimental nuclear spectra.
The main theoretical approach is the use of effective operators, which include
correlations left out by the truncation of the model space to a numerically
tractable size. We review recent applications of the effective operator
approach, within a NCSM framework, to the renormalization of the
nucleon-nucleon interaction, as well as scalar and tensor operators.Comment: To be submited to J. Phys. A, special issue on "The Physics of
Non-Hermitian Operators
A compact micro-wave synthesizer for transportable cold-atom interferometers
We present the realization of a compact micro-wave frequency synthesizer for
an atom interferometer based on stimulated Raman transitions, applied to
transportable inertial sensing. Our set-up is intended to address the hyperfine
transitions of Rubidium 87 atoms at 6.8 GHz. The prototype is evaluated both in
the time and the frequency domain by comparison with state-of-the-art frequency
references developed at LNE-SYRTE. In free-running mode, it features a residual
phase noise level of -65 dBrad$^2.Hz^{-1} at 10-Hz offset frequency and a white
phase noise level in the order of -120 dBrad^2.Hz^{-1} for Fourier frequencies
above 10 kHz. The phase noise effect on the sensitivity of the atomic
interferometer is evaluated for diverse values of cycling time, interrogation
time and Raman pulse duration. To our knowledge, the resulting contribution is
well below the sensitivity of any demonstrated cold atom inertial sensors based
on stimulated Raman transitions. The drastic improvement in terms of size,
simplicity and power consumption paves the way towards field and mobile
operations.Comment: accepted for publication in Review of Scientific Instruments, 6
pages, 4 figure
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