Gambling problems and help-seeking in serving United Kingdom military personnel: a qualitative study

Introduction In military personnel are vulnerable to gambling problems, yet many are reluctant to seek help. The aim of the current study was to explore the lived experience of problem gambling and help-seeking among serving members of the United Kingdom Armed Forces. Methods Seventeen individuals from a larger, cross-sectional survey of gambling and wellbeing in the Royal Air Force (RAF) completed semi-structured interviews. Interview questions focused on personal experiences, the context of the RAF and its influence, knowledge and experiences of treatment and support services, and the impact of COVID-19. Results Reflexive thematic analysis revealed four themes: (1) harmful and protective occupational factors; (2) socio-cultural and personal influences; (3) organizational attitudes toward mental health and help-seeking, and (4) current support pathways and provision. Discussion Findings also indicated that gambling and alcohol use are common within the RAF, and that personnel are actively coping with mental health challenges

Ionospheric Assimilation Techniques for ARGOS Low-Resolution Airglow and Aurora Spectrograph (LORAAS) Tomographically Reconstructed Equatorial Electron Density Profiles

The LORAAS instrument aboard the ARGOS satellite observes line-of-sight ultraviolet limb intensities from ionosphere and thermosphere airglow. This study uses tomographically reconstructed electron density profiles (EDPs) from the nightside emissions. The ionospheric reconstruction is performed using a two-dimensional O+ 1356Å radiative recombination forward model and discrete inverse theory. The forward model assumes a Chapman layer for the vertical electron density distribution from which h m F 2, N m F 2, and topside scale height are derived for every 90 s limb scan, which is equivalent to 5° resolution in latitude. Since ARGOS is in a near Sun-synchronous orbit, these EDPs form a latitude slice through the equatorial anomaly structures at approximately 0230 LT. These data reflect ongoing ionospheric processes, and it is necessary to assimilate or compare with a model that contains appropriate ionospheric evolution such as the ionospheric forecast model (IFM). This study addresses the reasonableness of both the reconstructed EDPs and the IFM in describing the equatorial anomalies\u27 diurnal and weather variability. The comparison of the LORASS EDPs with those of IFM for October 2000 show that the EDP reconstruction results compare favorably to the IFM EDPs in peak height and topside scale height. Additionally, the sector-to-sector climatology of the observed and modeled equatorial anomalies is similar to within the resolution of the instrument and model. The variability observed in each pass of the satellite is much larger than the IFM variability. The LORASS observation variability indicates that careful assessment of the representation error of the observations should be addressed through supplemental observations

CloneQC: lightweight sequence verification for synthetic biology

Synthetic biology projects aim to produce physical DNA that matches a designed target sequence. Chemically synthesized oligomers are generally used as the starting point for building larger and larger sequences. Due to the error rate of chemical synthesis, these oligomers can have many differences from the target sequence. As oligomers are joined together to make larger and larger synthetic intermediates, it becomes essential to perform quality control to eliminate intermediates with errors and retain only those DNA molecules that are error free with respect to the target. This step is often performed by transforming bacteria with synthetic DNA and sequencing colonies until a clone with a perfect sequence is identified. Here we present CloneQC, a lightweight software pipeline available as a free web server and as source code that performs quality control on sequenced clones. Input to the server is a list of desired sequences and forward and reverse reads for each clone. The server generates summary statistics (error rates and success rates target-by-target) and a detailed report of perfect clones. This software will be useful to laboratories conducting in-house DNA synthesis and is available at http://cloneqc.thruhere.net/ and as Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) licensed source

Precision neutron interferometric measurement of the nd coherent neutron scattering length and consequences for models of three-nucleon forces

We have performed the first high precision measurement of the coherent neutron scattering length of deuterium in a pure sample using neutron interferometry. We find b_nd = (6.665 +/- 0.004) fm in agreement with the world average of previous measurements using different techniques, b_nd = (6.6730 +/- 0.0045) fm. We compare the new world average for the nd coherent scattering length b_nd = (6.669 +/- 0.003) fm to calculations of the doublet and quartet scattering lengths from several modern nucleon-nucleon potential models with three-nucleon force (3NF) additions and show that almost all theories are in serious disagreement with experiment. This comparison is a more stringent test of the models than past comparisons with the less precisely-determined nuclear doublet scattering length of a_nd = (0.65 +/- 0.04) fm.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure