Making sense of ‘side effects’: Counterpublic health in the era of direct-acting antivirals

Direct-Acting Antiviral (DAA) treatments for hepatitis C have been widely promoted by health promotion professionals and medical clinicians as being ‘side-effect free’. In this paper, we draw on data that troubles this approach. We used a mixed method design to collect data from people who inject drugs, and who were DAA treatment naïve, in New South Wales, Australia. We describe knowledge about and perceptions of DAA treatment. We found that concerns about side effects were commonplace – for example, one-third (37%) of participants who had not taken up treatment worried “a lot” about ‘side effects’ – and that these concerns were underpinned by a general distrust and suspicion of medical institutions and their technologies, including widespread negative associations linked to interferon treatment. In trying to make sense of this, we draw on the concept of counterpublic health and its recognition that the everyday health needs, knowledges and aspirations of subordinated citizens frequently contradict the normative frameworks governing public health interventions. We suggest that failing to engage with concerns about ‘side effects’ could hinder elimination efforts. Our analysis suggests that addressing the issue of ‘side effects’ within the ‘public’ discourse of DAAs will not dampen or damage elimination efforts, as some might fear, but rather it will legitimate the concerns of people who inject, decrease their suspicion of medical interventions, and better support the uptake of DAA treatments

Polarization conversion from a thin cavity array in the microwave regime

Open Access journalLinearly polarized microwave radiation is shown to have its plane of polarization converted to the orthogonal state upon reflection from an ultrathin (λ/25) cavity array. The structure benefits from an uncomplicated design consisting of a metallic grating closely separated from a ground plane by a dielectric spacer. A single set of periodically spaced slits (monograting) exhibits polarization conversion when the normally incident electric field is aligned at 45° to the slits. Two orthogonal sets of slits (bigrating) allows this narrow-band effect to be broadened when the two orthogonal resonances are separated in frequency. We optimise the design and experimentally demonstrate near loss-less polarization conversion (95% of the incident intensity) across a 3.1 GHz frequency band. Finally, we study the dependence of the structure's performance on incident angle and slit width.DSTLEngineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC

Phase resonances on metal gratings of identical, equally spaced alternately tapered slits

Copyright © 2009 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in Applied Physics Letters 95 (2009) and may be found at http://link.aip.org/link/?APPLAB/95/041905/1Phase resonances are observed in the microwave response of metal transmission gratings comprised of identical but alternately orientated tapered slits. Despite each slit having identical dimensions, and being equally spaced from its neighbors, these high-Q mode are nonetheless supported even at normal incidence. The excitation of these modes is attributed to the interference between Fabry–Perot-like modes and diffractively coupled surface waves

Structurally dictated anisotropic "designer surface plasmons"

Copyright © 2011 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in Applied Physics Letters 99 (2011) and may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3655170The concept of pseudo-plasmonic surfaces at microwave frequencies is extended to include structures with a high degree of surface anisotropy. The experimental sample is fabricated by patterning a metal with a rectangular array of rectangular holes and is found to support structurally dictated surface plasmon-like modes; the anisotropic dispersion of which results from an ellipsoid of limiting frequencies. By exploiting the anisotropy of the unit cell, the family of higher order surface waves associated with the quantization of the electromagnetic fields within the holes is also explored

Living arrangements and elderly care : the case of Hong Kong

Hong Kong has been a British Colony for more than one and a half centuries. The British has provided a legal-administrative framework under which the Chinese live and work (Chan and Lee, 1995), The Census showed that ninety-eight percent of the Territory\u27s total population are ethnically Chinese. In 1991, nearly one half of HongKong\u27s residents were immigrants from the Chinese Mainland and two thirds of the remaining were Hong Kong born off-springs of immigrants from the mainland. Although expatriotes from other countries are accountable for the remainder 2% of the population, a great majority of expatriotes are from overseas Chinese communities in southeast Asia: Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Burma. It cannot be overstated that Hong Kong has a fairly homogenous cultural values that can be described as “Chinese”, the beliefs with respect to filial piety and honouring one\u27s ancestors still play a significant role in shaping and regulating the local Chinese social life and familial behavior

Thin structured rigid body for acoustic absorption

This is the final version of the article. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.We present a thin acoustic metamaterial absorber, comprised of only rigid metal and air, that gives rise to near unity absorption of airborne sound on resonance. This simple, easily fabricated, robust structure comprising a perforated metal plate separated from a rigid wall by a deeply subwavelength channel of air is an ideal candidate for a sound absorbing panel. The strong absorption in the system is attributed to the thermo-viscous losses arising from a sound wave guided between the plate and the wall, defining the subwavelength channel.The authors wish to acknowledge financial support from DSTL and QinetiQ

Auditory perception in individuals with Friedreich’s Ataxia

INTRODUCTION: Friedreich's ataxia (FRDA) is an inherited ataxia with a range of progressive features including axonal degeneration of sensory nerves. The aim of this study was to investigate auditory perception in affected individuals. METHODS: Fourteen subjects with genetically defined FRDA participated. Two control groups, one consisting of healthy, normally hearing individuals and another comprised of subjects with sensorineural hearing loss, were also assessed. Auditory processing was evaluated using structured tasks designed to reveal the listeners' ability to perceive temporal and spectral cues. Findings were then correlated with open-set speech understanding. RESULTS: Nine of 14 individuals with FRDA showed evidence of auditory processing disorder. Gap and amplitude modulation detection levels in these subjects were significantly elevated, indicating impaired encoding of rapid signal changes. Electrophysiologic findings (auditory brainstem response, ABR) also reflected disrupted neural activity. Speech understanding was significantly affected in these listeners and the degree of disruption was related to temporal processing ability. Speech analyses indicated that timing cues (notably consonant voice onset time and vowel duration) were most affected. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that auditory pathway abnormality is a relatively common consequence of FRDA. Regular auditory evaluation should therefore be part of the management regime for all affected individuals. This assessment should include both ABR testing, which can provide insights into the degree to which auditory neural activity is disrupted, and some functional measure of hearing capacity such as speech perception assessment, which can quantify the disorder and provide a basis for interventio

Translocal imagination of Hong Kong connections: the shifting of Chow Yun-Fat's star image since 1997

Anyone who is interested in Hong Kong cinema must be familiar with one name: Chow Yun-fat (b. 1955). He rose to film stardom in the 1980s when Hong Kong cinema started to attract global attention beyond East Asia. During his early screen career, Chow established a star image as an urban citizen of modern Hong Kong through films such as A Better Tomorrow/Yingxiong bense (John Woo, 1986), City on Fire/Longhu fengyun (Ringo Lam, 1987), All About Ah-Long/A Lang de gushi (Johnnie To, 1989), God of Gamblers/Du shen (Wong Jing, 1989), and Hard Boiled/Lashou shentan (John Woo, 1992)

The long-term health and wellbeing impacts of Healthy New Towns: a six-month feasibility study of Healthy New Town demonstrator sites in England

BACKGROUND: Major public health challenges in England include high levels of health risk behaviour and associated diseases. In the context of an ageing population and falls in spending on adult social care, these challenges place huge pressure on health services. There is evidence to show that living environments can shape health, wellbeing and behaviour. However, there is an urgent need to understand how this evidence can be brought together to deliver healthy environments in local urban settings. The HNT programme was commissioned by NHS England in 2015 and is supported by Public Health England. HNTs are 10 major housing developments that aim to improve population health by applying healthy built environment design principles, increasing residents' use of healthy spaces, promoting community activation and cohesion to improve mental health and reduce social isolation, and creating new models for integrating health and social care. The programme provides a natural experiment in which to investigate the effects on health, wellbeing and inequalities of large-scale interventions targeting the wider social determinants of health. RESEARCH QUESTIONS: 1. What are the similarities and differences in the Healthy New Town (HNT) programme developments, activities and processes, contexts and expected impacts and outcomes across the HNT sites? 2. How feasible is the use of existing HNT evaluation data and data from routine sources as the baseline for a longer-term study to assess impact on health, wellbeing and behavioural outcomes, programme processes and mechanisms and Social Return on Investment? AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: 1) To produce participatory systems maps for 5 HNT sites, illustrating processes and expected outcomes from HNT activities and developing a theoretical framework for longer-term research. 2) To scope and synthesise available qualitative data produced through existing local evaluations and to test the feasibility of using this data to ground a longer-term qualitative study of HNT processes. 3) To define primary and secondary outcome measures for assessment of HNT effectiveness and Social Return on Investment, using existing HNT datasets and routinely available data. 4) To test the feasibility of expanding the research programme to include the 5 HNT sites that are not currently in the HNT Evaluation Collaborative to improve study power and representativeness. METHODS The proposed research involves workstreams to: a) use participatory systems mapping with stakeholders in each HNT to produce a theoretical framework for a longer term study on the HNT programme; b) scope and synthesise existing qualitative data from local HNT evaluations to understand local processes and intervention mechanisms; c) scope and standardise local and routinely available data to establish a baseline and feasibility for a longer term study of health and economic outcomes; d) build relationships and recruit 5 further HNTs into the proposed research. TIMELINE FOR DELIVERY The proposed research will be conducted between 1st November 2018 and 30th April 2019 to enable completion while HNT site leads are still in post. ANTICIPATED IMPACT AND DISSEMINATION The proposed research will produce a theoretical framework for the HNT programme, designed to guide further research on the health impacts of HNTs. Findings will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications and presentations and local audiences including residents, local government and Public Health England

Carbon nanotubes as electrically active nanoreactors for multi-step inorganic synthesis: sequential transformations of molecules to nanoclusters, and nanoclusters to nanoribbons

In organic synthesis, the composition and structure of products are predetermined by the reaction conditions; however, the synthesis of well-defined inorganic nanostructures often presents a significant challenge yielding non-stoichiometric or polymorphic products. In this study, confinement in the nanoscale cavities of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT) provides a new approach for multi-step inorganic synthesis where sequential chemical transformations take place within the same nanotube. In the first step, SWNT donate electrons to the reactant iodine molecules (I2) transforming them to iodide anions (I-). These then react with metal hexacarbonyls (M(CO)6, M = Mo or W) in the next step yielding anionic nanoclusters [M6I14]2-, the size and composition of which are strictly dictated by the nanotube cavity, as demonstrated by aberration corrected high resolution transmission electron microscopy (AC-HRTEM), scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy. Atoms in the nanoclusters [M6I14]2- are arranged in a perfect octahedral geometry and can engage in further chemical reactions within the nanotube, either reacting with each other leading to a new polymeric phase of molybdenum iodide [Mo6I12]n, or with hydrogen sulphide gas giving rise to nanoribbons of molybdenum/tungsten disulphide [MS2]n in the third step of the synthesis. Electron microscopy measurements demonstrate that the products of the multi-step inorganic transformations are precisely controlled by the SWNT nanoreactor, with complementary Raman spectroscopy revealing the remarkable property of SWNT to act as a reservoir of electrons during the chemical transformation. The electron transfer from the host-nanotube to the reacting guest-molecules is essential for stabilising the anionic metal iodide 2 nanoclusters and for their further transformation to metal disulphide nanoribbons synthesised in the nanotubes in high yield