Mentoring to reduce antisocial behaviour in childhood

The effects of social interventions need to be examined in real life situations as well as studie

First measurement of gravitational lensing by cosmic voids in SDSS

We report the first measurement of the diminutive lensing signal arising from matter underdensities associated with cosmic voids. While undetectable individually, by stacking the weak gravitational shear estimates around 901 voids detected in SDSS DR7 by Sutter et al. (2012a), we find substantial evidence for a depression of the lensing signal compared to the cosmic mean. This depression is most pronounced at the void radius, in agreement with analytical models of void matter profiles. Even with the largest void sample and imaging survey available today, we cannot put useful constraints on the radial dark-matter void profile. We invite independent investigations of our findings by releasing data and analysis code to the public at https://github.com/pmelchior/void-lensingComment: 6 pages, 5 figures, as accepted by MNRA

What's the evidence that NICE guidance has been implemented? Results from a national evaluation using time series analysis, audit of patients' notes, and interviews

OBJECTIVES: To assess the extent and pattern of implementation of guidance issued by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE). DESIGN: Interrupted time series analysis, review of case notes, survey, and interviews. SETTING: Acute and primary care trusts in England and Wales. PARTICIPANTS: All primary care prescribing, hospital pharmacies; a random sample of 20 acute trusts, 17 mental health trusts, and 21 primary care trusts; and senior clinicians and managers from five acute trusts. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Rates of prescribing and use of procedures and medical devices relative to evidence based guidance. RESULTS: 6308 usable patient audit forms were returned. Implementation of NICE guidance varied by trust and by topic. Prescribing of some taxanes for cancer (P <0.002) and orlistat for obesity (P <0.001) significantly increased in line with guidance. Prescribing of drugs for Alzheimer’s disease and prophylactic extraction of wisdom teeth showed trends consistent with, but not obviously a consequence of, the guidance. Prescribing practice often did not accord with the details of the guidance. No change was apparent in the use of hearing aids, hip prostheses, implantable cardioverter defibrillators, laparoscopic hernia repair, and laparoscopic colorectal cancer surgery after NICE guidance had been issued. CONCLUSIONS: Implementation of NICE guidance has been variable. Guidance seems more likely to be adopted when there is strong professional support, a stable and convincing evidence base, and no increased or unfunded costs, in organisations that have established good systems for tracking guidance implementation and where the professionals involved are not isolated. Guidance needs to be clear and reflect the clinical context

Towards an understanding of third-order galaxy-galaxy lensing

Third-order galaxy-galaxy lensing (G3L) is a next generation galaxy-galaxy lensing technique that either measures the excess shear about lens pairs or the excess shear-shear correlations about lenses. It is clear that these statistics assess the three-point correlations between galaxy positions and projected matter density. For future applications of these novel statistics, we aim at a more intuitive understanding of G3L to isolate the main features that possibly can be measured. We construct a toy model ("isolated lens model"; ILM) for the distribution of galaxies and associated matter to determine the measured quantities of the two G3L correlation functions and traditional galaxy-galaxy lensing (GGL) in a simplified context. The ILM presumes single lens galaxies to be embedded inside arbitrary matter haloes that, however, are statistically independent ("isolated") from any other halo or lens position. In the ILM, the average mass-to-galaxy number ratio of clusters of any size cannot change. GGL and galaxy clustering alone cannot distinguish an ILM from any more complex scenario. The lens-lens-shear correlator in combination with second-order statistics enables us to detect deviations from a ILM, though. This can be quantified by a difference signal defined in the paper. We demonstrate with the ILM that this correlator picks up the excess matter distribution about galaxy pairs inside clusters. The lens-shear-shear correlator is sensitive to variations among matter haloes. In principle, it could be devised to constrain the ellipticities of haloes, without the need for luminous tracers, or maybe even random halo substructure. [Abridged]Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, accepted by A&A; some "lens-shear-shear" were falsely "lens-lens-shear

Dislocation Generation by Thermal Stresses in Si: Modeling and Experiments

We developed a finite-element modeling program to predict the thermally generated dislocation distribution in a wafer. This model uses measured parameters that are determined from generating dislocations under a known optical flux

An Investigation of Coach Behaviors, Goal Motives, and Implementation Intentions as Predictors of Well-Being in Sport

The present study aimed to expand upon Smith, Ntoumanis, and Duda’s (2007) research by investigating the influence of coach behaviors and implementation intentions on goal striving in sport. Structural equation modeling analysis with a sample of 108 athletes revealed coach behaviors as predictors of goal motives, which in turn predicted psychological well-being after 8 weeks. Supplementary regression analyses showed no interaction between autonomous goal motives and implementation intentions; however, a synergistic effect was identified for controlled goal motives such that controlled motives furnished with implementation intentions resulted in lower well-being than controlled motives alone. In further analyses, the motives underlying an implementation intention were found to mediate the paths from goal motives to well-being. The findings are discussed in terms of the roles played by goal motives, implementation intentions, and implementation intention motives during goal striving

Hidden spin-current conservation in 2d Fermi liquids

We report the existence of regimes of the two dimensional Fermi liquid that show unusual conservation of the spin current and may be tuned by varying some parameter like the density of fermions. We show that for reasonable models of the effective interaction the spin current may be conserved in general in 2d, not only for a particular regime. Low temperature spin waves propagate distinctively in these regimes and entirely new ``spin-acoustic'' modes are predicted for scattering-dominated temperature ranges. These new high-temperature propagating spin waves provide a clear signature for the experimental search of such regimes.Comment: 4 pages, no figures, revised version, accepted for pub. in the PR

The clustering of intermediate redshift quasars as measured by the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey

We measure the quasar two-point correlation function over the redshift range 2.2<z<2.8 using data from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey. We use a homogeneous subset of the data consisting of 27,129 quasars with spectroscopic redshifts---by far the largest such sample used for clustering measurements at these redshifts to date. The sample covers 3,600 square degrees, corresponding to a comoving volume of 9.7(Gpc/h)^3 assuming a fiducial LambdaCDM cosmology, and it has a median absolute i-band magnitude of -26, k-corrected to z=2. After accounting for redshift errors we find that the redshift space correlation function is fit well by a power-law of slope -2 and amplitude s_0=(9.7\pm 0.5)Mpc/h over the range 3<s<25Mpc/h. The projected correlation function, which integrates out the effects of peculiar velocities and redshift errors, is fit well by a power-law of slope -1 and r_0=(8.4\pm 0.6)Mpc/h over the range 4<R<16Mpc/h. There is no evidence for strong luminosity or redshift dependence to the clustering amplitude, in part because of the limited dynamic range in our sample. Our results are consistent with, but more precise than, previous measurements at similar redshifts. Our measurement of the quasar clustering amplitude implies a bias factor of b~3.5 for our quasar sample. We compare the data to models to constrain the manner in which quasars occupy dark matter halos at z~2.4 and infer that such quasars inhabit halos with a characteristic mass of ~10^{12}Msun/h with a duty cycle for the quasar activity of 1 per cent.Comment: 20 pages, 18 figures. Minor modifications to match version accepted by journa