Evaluation of Chrysalis: a weight management programme delivered in Retford GP practices

An Adult Weight Management service (Chrysalis) has delivered 39 programmes (at the time of this study) across the 4 General practices in Retford, Nottinghamshire. It is a 12 week (one hour per session) programme of lifestyle and behavioural change advice which aims to support patients in losing and maintaining weight loss. Patients attend in small groups of approximately 12 people. Follow up occurs at three and twelve months after completion of the initial course. The service was introduced in February 2009, and has seen over 500 patients. In 2009 Retford Health applied successfully for a Regional Innovation Award to further develop the service to try to improve the outcomes of the intervention. The innovation was to develop an on-line calorie calculator through which patients can input the details of foods consumed and activity undertaken in order to more tangibly assess the required reduction in calorie intake and/or increase in calorie burning through physical activity. This research was conducted to specifically to analyse and interpret existing data held by Retford Health and to collect additional primary qualitative data from clients on the weight management programme (with particular emphasis on assessing the feasibility of the on-line resource), with a view to evaluating the process and outcomes of the intervention. In September 2010 we applied for a research grant from the Faculty of Health Life and Social Science at the University of Lincoln and were awarded £2200 to support this small-scale evaluation of the service. The research was led by Dr Ros Kane, Principal Lecturer in the Lincoln School of Health and Social Care and supported by the work of two recent graduates from the Faculty, Claudia Watson and Aaron Burgess

The impact of information, value-deliberation and group-based decision-making on values for ecosystem services:Integrating deliberative monetary valuation and storytelling

We thank the four anonymous referees whose comments substantially helped to improve this paper. We thank Anna Attlee and Althea Davies who helped to facilitate the research workshops; Anna Attlee also for helping to analyse the qualitative data. We thank all the participants of our study for their effort, and the Marine Conservation Society, the British Sub-Aqua Club and the Angling Trust for assisting with participant recruitment. This work was funded through the UK National Ecosystem Assessment Follow-On (Work Package 6: Shared, Plural and Cultural Values), funded by the UK Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Welsh Government, the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC); additional funding was received from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation through the Marine Conservation Society. J.O. Kenter was also supported by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement no 315925 and K.N. Irvine by the Scottish Government Rural and Economic Sciences and Analytical Service (RESAS) Division.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Patient decision making about organ quality in liver transplantation

It is challenging to discuss the use of high‐risk organs with patients, in part because of the lack of information about how patients view this topic. This study was designed to determine how patients think about organ quality and to test formats for risk communication. Semistructured interviews of 10 patients on the waiting list revealed limited understanding about the spectrum of organ quality and a reluctance to consider anything but the best organs. A computerized quantitative survey was then conducted with an interactive graph to elicit the risk of graft failure that patients would accept. Fifty‐eight percent of the 95 wait‐listed patients who completed the survey would accept only organs with a risk of graft failure of 25% or less at 3 years, whereas 18% would accept only organs with the lowest risk possible (19% at 3 years). Risk tolerance was increased when the organ quality was presented relative to average organs rather than the best organs and when feedback was provided about the implications for organ availability. More than three‐quarters of the patients reported that they wanted an equal or dominant role in organ acceptance decisions. Men tended to prefer lower risk organs (mean acceptable risk = 29%) in comparison with women (mean acceptable risk = 35%, P = 0.04), but risk tolerance was not associated with other demographic or clinical characteristics (eg, the severity of liver disease). In summary, patients want to be involved in decisions about organ quality. Patients' risk tolerance varies widely, and their acceptance of high‐risk organs can be facilitated if we present the risks of graft failure with respect to average organs and provide feedback about the implications for organ availability. Liver Transpl, 2011. © 2011 AASLD.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/88081/1/22437_ftp.pd

Insulin Signaling in Microdomains of the Plasma Membrane

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73880/1/j.1600-0854.2003.00119.x.pd

Single-molecule experiments in biological physics: methods and applications

I review single-molecule experiments (SME) in biological physics. Recent technological developments have provided the tools to design and build scientific instruments of high enough sensitivity and precision to manipulate and visualize individual molecules and measure microscopic forces. Using SME it is possible to: manipulate molecules one at a time and measure distributions describing molecular properties; characterize the kinetics of biomolecular reactions and; detect molecular intermediates. SME provide the additional information about thermodynamics and kinetics of biomolecular processes. This complements information obtained in traditional bulk assays. In SME it is also possible to measure small energies and detect large Brownian deviations in biomolecular reactions, thereby offering new methods and systems to scrutinize the basic foundations of statistical mechanics. This review is written at a very introductory level emphasizing the importance of SME to scientists interested in knowing the common playground of ideas and the interdisciplinary topics accessible by these techniques. The review discusses SME from an experimental perspective, first exposing the most common experimental methodologies and later presenting various molecular systems where such techniques have been applied. I briefly discuss experimental techniques such as atomic-force microscopy (AFM), laser optical tweezers (LOT), magnetic tweezers (MT), biomembrane force probe (BFP) and single-molecule fluorescence (SMF). I then present several applications of SME to the study of nucleic acids (DNA, RNA and DNA condensation), proteins (protein-protein interactions, protein folding and molecular motors). Finally, I discuss applications of SME to the study of the nonequilibrium thermodynamics of small systems and the experimental verification of fluctuation theorems. I conclude with a discussion of open questions and future perspectives.Comment: Latex, 60 pages, 12 figures, Topical Review for J. Phys. C (Cond. Matt

Anisotropy studies around the galactic centre at EeV energies with the Auger Observatory

Data from the Pierre Auger Observatory are analyzed to search for anisotropies near the direction of the Galactic Centre at EeV energies. The exposure of the surface array in this part of the sky is already significantly larger than that of the fore-runner experiments. Our results do not support previous findings of localized excesses in the AGASA and SUGAR data. We set an upper bound on a point-like flux of cosmic rays arriving from the Galactic Centre which excludes several scenarios predicting sources of EeV neutrons from Sagittarius $A$. Also the events detected simultaneously by the surface and fluorescence detectors (the `hybrid' data set), which have better pointing accuracy but are less numerous than those of the surface array alone, do not show any significant localized excess from this direction.Comment: Matches published versio

Operations of and Future Plans for the Pierre Auger Observatory

Technical reports on operations and features of the Pierre Auger Observatory, including ongoing and planned enhancements and the status of the future northern hemisphere portion of the Observatory. Contributions to the 31st International Cosmic Ray Conference, Lodz, Poland, July 2009.Comment: Contributions to the 31st ICRC, Lodz, Poland, July 200

Highlights from the Pierre Auger Observatory

The Pierre Auger Observatory is the world's largest cosmic ray observatory. Our current exposure reaches nearly 40,000 km$^2$ str and provides us with an unprecedented quality data set. The performance and stability of the detectors and their enhancements are described. Data analyses have led to a number of major breakthroughs. Among these we discuss the energy spectrum and the searches for large-scale anisotropies. We present analyses of our X$_{max}$ data and show how it can be interpreted in terms of mass composition. We also describe some new analyses that extract mass sensitive parameters from the 100% duty cycle SD data. A coherent interpretation of all these recent results opens new directions. The consequences regarding the cosmic ray composition and the properties of UHECR sources are briefly discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 12 figures, talk given at the 33rd International Cosmic Ray Conference, Rio de Janeiro 201