Attitudes to telecare among older people, professional care workers and informal carers: a preventative strategy or crisis management?

This paper reports findings from an attitudinal survey towards telecare that emerged from twenty-two focus groups comprising ninety-two older people, fifty-five professional stakeholders and thirty-nine carers. These were convened in three different regions of England as a precursor to telecare service development. The results from this study suggest that informants’ views were shaped by prior knowledge of conventional health and social care delivery in their locality and the implication is that expectations and requirements in respect of telecare services in general are likely to be informed by wider perceptions about the extent to which community care should operate as a preventative strategy or as a mechanism for crisis management

Accretion of low angular momentum material onto black holes: 2D magnetohydrodynamical case

We report on the second phase of our study of slightly rotating accretion flows onto black holes. We consider magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) accretion flows with a spherically symmetric density distribution at the outer boundary, but with spherical symmetry broken by the introduction of a small, latitude-dependent angular momentum and a weak radial magnetic field. We study accretion flows by means of numerical 2D, axisymmetric, MHD simulations with and without resistive heating. Our main result is that the properties of the accretion flow depend mostly on an equatorial accretion torus which is made of the material that has too much angular momentum to be accreted directly. The torus accretes, however, because of the transport of angular momentum due to the magnetorotational instability (MRI). Initially, accretion is dominated by the polar funnel, as in the hydrodynamic inviscid case, where material has zero or very low angular momentum. At the later phase of the evolution, the torus thickens towards the poles and develops a corona or an outflow or both. Consequently, the mass accretion through the funnel is stopped. The accretion of rotating gas through the torus is significantly reduced compared to the accretion of non-rotating gas (i.e., the Bondi rate). It is also much smaller than the accretion rate in the inviscid, weakly rotating case.Our results do not change if we switch on or off resistive heating. Overall our simulations are very similar to those presented by Stone, Pringle, Hawley and Balbus despite different initial and outer boundary conditions. Thus, we confirm that MRI is very robust and controls the nature of radiatively inefficient accretion flows.Comment: submitted in Ap

Sites of Biosynthesis of Outer and Inner Membrane Proteins of Neurospora crassa Mitochondria

Outer and inner membranes of Neurospora crassa mitochondria were separated by the combined swelling, shrinking, sonication procedure. Membranes were characterized by electron microscopy and by marker enzyme activities. A red carotenoid pigment was found to be concentrated in the outer membrane. The inner mitochondrial membrane was resolved into about 20 protein bands on polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, whereas the outer membrane shows essentially one single protein band. Only negligible incorporation of radioactive amino acids occurs into outer membrane when isolated mitochondria are synthesizing polypeptide chains. In agreement with this observation labeling of outer membrane protein is almost entirely blocked, when whole Neurospora cells are incubated with radioactive amino acids in the presence of cycloheximide, an inhibitor of cytoplasmic protein synthesis. Finally, the essential electrophoretic protein band from outer membrane does not become labeled when mitochondria are incubated with radioactive amino acids either in vitro or in vivo in the presence of cycloheximide. It is concluded that the vast majority, if not all, of the outer membrane protein is synthesized by the cytoplasmic system and that polypeptide chains formed by the mitochondrial ribosomes are integrated into the inner mitochondrial membrane

Discovery of a New Nearby Star

We report the discovery of a nearby star with a very large proper motion of 5.06 +/- 0.03 arcsec/yr. The star is called SO025300.5+165258 and referred to herein as HPMS (high proper motion star). The discovery came as a result of a search of the SkyMorph database, a sensitive and persistent survey that is well suited for finding stars with high proper motions. There are currently only 7 known stars with proper motions > 5 arcsec/yr. We have determined a preliminary value for the parallax of 0.43 +/- 0.13 arcsec. If this value holds our new star ranks behind only the Alpha Centauri system (including Proxima Centauri) and Barnard's star in the list of our nearest stellar neighbors. The spectrum and measured tangential velocity indicate that HPMS is a main-sequence star with spectral type M6.5. However, if our distance measurement is correct, the HPMS is underluminous by 1.2 +/- 0.7 mag.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to ApJ Letter

Vortex Glass and Vortex Liquid in Oscillatory Media

We study the disordered, multi-spiral solutions of two-dimensional homogeneous oscillatory media for parameter values at which the single spiral/vortex solution is fully stable. In the framework of the complex Ginzburg-Landau (CGLE) equation, we show that these states, heretofore believed to be static, actually evolve on ultra-slow timescales. This is achieved via a reduction of the CGLE to the evolution of the sole vortex position and phase coordinates. This true defect-mediated turbulence occurs in two distinct phases, a vortex liquid characterized by normal diffusion of individual spirals, and a slowly relaxing, intermittent, ``vortex glass''.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Physical Review Letter

Eigenvalue correlations on Hyperelliptic Riemann surfaces

In this note we compute the functional derivative of the induced charge density, on a thin conductor, consisting of the union of g+1 disjoint intervals, $J:=\cup_{j=1}^{g+1}(a_j,b_j),$ with respect to an external potential. In the context of random matrix theory this object gives the eigenvalue fluctuations of Hermitian random matrix ensembles where the eigenvalue density is supported on J.Comment: latex 2e, seven pages, one figure. To appear in Journal of Physics