Survey of psychosocial support provided by UK paediatric oncology centres

Aim: To obtain a comprehensive overview of current patterns of psychosocial support provided by National Health Service ( NHS) paediatric oncology treatment centres across the UK. Methods: A postal questionnaire was sent to co-ordinators in the UK Children's Cancer Study Group ( a professional body that is responsible for the organisation of treatment and management of childhood cancer in the UK) in 21 treatment centres and three separate Teenage Cancer Trus units. A range of psychosocial topics were explored, including ratio of staff providing support to patients; facilities provided for children and families; psychosocial support services such as support groups; information provision; and transition support. Results: There were many good areas of support provided by centres, but there was also a lack of standard practices and procedures. All centres employed social workers, play specialists, and paediatric oncology outreach nurses, but patient to staff ratios varied across centres. The poorest staff provision was among psychologists, where patient to staff ratios ranged from 132:1 to 1100:1. Written information was standard practice, while provision of other types of information (audiovisual, online) varied; none of the centres provided audio information specifically for children/young people. Conclusion: This variability in practices among centres frequently occurred, as centres rarely had procedures formally agreed or recorded in writing. British government policy currently seeks to develop standards and guidelines of care throughout the National Health Service. This study further demonstrates the importance of standards and the need to agree guidelines for the provision of psychosocial support for children/young people and their families throughout the course of the illness

An extension theorem for conformal gauge singularities

We analyse conformal gauge, or isotropic, singularities in cosmological models in general relativity. Using the calculus of tractors, we find conditions in terms of tractor curvature for a local extension of the conformal structure through a cosmological singularity and prove a local extension theorem.Comment: 43 pages, no figures, version as published in JMP, small changes, updated reference

A Bioeconomic Analysis of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Lobster Fishery

Several surplus production-based bioeconomic models are applied to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) commercial lobster fishery. The model which best explains the biological dynamics of the fishery is a modification of the Fox model developed by the authors. Economic costs are applied within a number of conceptual frameworks to develop the first integrated bioeconomic model of the fishery. In another development, the opportunity cost of labor based on crew share at the open access equilibrium level of fishing effort is used instead of proxy wage levels. Given the costs incurred, the fishery appears to be self-regulating in terms of long-term fishing effort for maximum sustainable yield.biological production models, fisheries economics, fisheries management, spiny lobster, slipper lobster, Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Strengths of singularities in spherical symmetry

Covariant equations characterizing the strength of a singularity in spherical symmetry are derived and several models are investigated. The difference between central and non-central singularities is emphasised. A slight modification to the definition of singularity strength is suggested. The gravitational weakness of shell crossing singularities in collapsing spherical dust is proven for timelike geodesics, closing a gap in the proof.Comment: 16 pages, revtex. V2. Classification of irregular singular points completed, Comments and references on singularities with a continuous metric amende

Deconfined Fermions but Confined Coherence?

The cuprate superconductors and certain organic conductors exhibit transport which is qualitatively anisotropic, yet at the same time other properties of these materials strongly suggest the existence of a Fermi surface and low energy excitations with substantial free electron character. The former of these features is very difficult to account for if the material possesses three dimensional coherence, while the latter is inconsistent with a description based on a two dimensional fixed point. We therefore present a new proposal for these materials in which they are categorized by a fixed point at which transport in one direction is not renormalization group irrelevant, but is intrinsically incoherent, i.e. the incoherence is present in a pure system, at zero temperature. The defining property of such a state is that single electron coherence is confined to lower dimensional subspaces (planes or chains) so that it is impossible to observe interference effects between histories which involve electrons moving between these subspaces.Comment: 31 pages, REVTEX, 3 eps figures, epsf.tex macr

Filamentary fragmentation in a turbulent medium

We present the results of smoothed particle hydrodynamic simulations investigating the evolution and fragmentation of filaments that are accreting from a turbulent medium. We show that the presence of turbulence, and the resulting inhomogeneities in the accretion flow, play a significant role in the fragmentation process. Filaments which experience a weakly turbulent accretion flow fragment in a two-tier hierarchical fashion, similar to the fragmentation pattern seen in the Orion Integral Shaped Filament. Increasing the energy in the turbulent velocity field results in more sub-structure within the filaments, and one sees a shift from gravity-dominated fragmentation to turbulence-dominated fragmentation. The sub-structure formed in the filaments is elongated and roughly parallel to the longitudinal axis of the filament, similar to the fibres seen in observations of Taurus, and suggests that the fray and fragment scenario is a possible mechanism for the production of fibres. We show that the formation of these fibre-like structures is linked to the vorticity of the velocity field inside the filament and the filament's accretion from an inhomogeneous medium. Moreover, we find that accretion is able to drive and sustain roughly sonic levels of turbulence inside the filaments, but is not able to prevent radial collapse once the filaments become supercritical. However, the supercritical filaments which contain fibre-like structures do not collapse radially, suggesting that fibrous filaments may not necessarily become radially unstable once they reach the critical line-density.Comment: (Accepted for publication in MNRAS