What is the impact of giant cell arteritis on patients' lives?: a UK qualitative study

Objectives: Clinical management of giant cell arteritis (GCA) involves balancing the risks and burdens arising from the disease with those arising from treatment, but there is little research on the nature of those burdens. We aimed to explore the impact of giant cell arteritis (GCA) and its treatment on patients’ lives. Methods: UK patients with GCA participated in semi-structured telephone interviews. Inductive thematic analysis was employed. Results: 24 participants were recruited (age: 65–92 years, time since diagnosis: 2 months to >6 years). The overarching themes from analysis were: ongoing symptoms of the disease and its treatment; and ‘life-changing’ impacts. The overall impact of GCA on patients’ lives arose from a changing combination of symptoms, side effects, adaptations to everyday life and impacts on sense of normality. Important factors contributing to loss of normality were glucocorticoid-related treatment burdens and fear about possible future loss of vision. Conclusions: The impact of GCA in patients’ everyday lives can be substantial, multifaceted and ongoing despite apparent control of disease activity. The findings of this study will help doctors better understand patient priorities, legitimise patients’ experiences of GCA and work with patients to set realistic treatment goals and plan adaptations to their everyday lives

Investing in Prevention or Paying for Recovery - Attitudes to Cyber Risk

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Broadly speaking an individual can invest time and effort to avoid becoming victim to a cyber attack and/or they can invest resource in recovering from any attack. We introduce a new game called the pre-vention and recovery game to study this trade-off. We report results from the experimental lab that allow us to categorize different approaches to risk taking. We show that many individuals appear relatively risk loving in that they invest in recovery rather than prevention. We find little difference in behavior between a gain and loss framing

Bayesian Networks for Max-linear Models

We study Bayesian networks based on max-linear structural equations as introduced in Gissibl and Kl\"uppelberg [16] and provide a summary of their independence properties. In particular we emphasize that distributions for such networks are generally not faithful to the independence model determined by their associated directed acyclic graph. In addition, we consider some of the basic issues of estimation and discuss generalized maximum likelihood estimation of the coefficients, using the concept of a generalized likelihood ratio for non-dominated families as introduced by Kiefer and Wolfowitz [21]. Finally we argue that the structure of a minimal network asymptotically can be identified completely from observational data.Comment: 18 page

Spatially-resolved electronic and vibronic properties of single diamondoid molecules

Diamondoids are a unique form of carbon nanostructure best described as hydrogen-terminated diamond molecules. Their diamond-cage structures and tetrahedral sp3 hybrid bonding create new possibilities for tuning electronic band gaps, optical properties, thermal transport, and mechanical strength at the nanoscale. The recently-discovered higher diamondoids (each containing more than three diamond cells) have thus generated much excitement in regards to their potential versatility as nanoscale devices. Despite this excitement, however, very little is known about the properties of isolated diamondoids on metal surfaces, a very relevant system for molecular electronics. Here we report the first molecular scale study of individual tetramantane diamondoids on Au(111) using scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy. We find that both the diamondoid electronic structure and electron-vibrational coupling exhibit unique spatial distributions characterized by pronounced line nodes across the molecular surfaces. Ab-initio pseudopotential density functional calculations reveal that the observed dominant electronic and vibronic properties of diamondoids are determined by surface hydrogen terminations, a feature having important implications for designing diamondoid-based molecular devices.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures. to appear in Nature Material

Testing the Nambu-Goldstone Hypothesis for Quarks and Leptons at the LHC

The hierarchy of the Yukawa couplings is an outstanding problem of the standard model. We present a class of models in which the first and second generation fermions are SUSY partners of pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons that parameterize a non-compact Kahler manifold, explaining the small values of these fermion masses relative to those of the third generation. We also provide an example of such a model. We find that various regions of the parameter space in this scenario can give the correct dark matter abundance, and that nearly all of these regions evade other phenomenological constraints. We show that for gluino mass ~700 GeV, model points from these regions can be easily distinguished from other mSUGRA points at the LHC with only 7 fb^(-1) of integrated luminosity at 14 TeV. The most striking signatures are a dearth of b- and tau-jets, a great number of multi-lepton events, and either an "inverted" slepton mass hierarchy, narrowed slepton mass hierarchy, or characteristic small-mu spectrum.Comment: Corresponds to published versio

Enhancing Social-Emotional Health and Wellbeing in the Early Years (E-SEE): A study protocol of a community-based randomised controlled trial with process and economic evaluations of the incredible years infant and toddler parenting programmes, delivered in a proportionate universal model

This is the final version. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Introduction: Behavioural and mental disorders have become a public health crisis and by 2020 may surpass physical illness as a major cause of disability. Early prevention is key. Two Incredible Years (IY) parent programmes that aim to enhance child well-being and development, IY Infant and IY Toddler, will be delivered and evaluated in a proportionate universal intervention model called Enhancing Social-Emotional Health and Wellbeing in the Early Years (E-SEE) Steps. The main research question is: Does E-SEE Steps enhance child social emotional well-being at 20 months when compared with services as usual? Methods and analysis: E-SEE Steps will be delivered in community settings by Early Years Children's Services and/or Public Health staff across local authorities. Parents of children aged 8 weeks or less, identified by health visitors, children's centre staff or self-referral, are eligible for participation in the trial. The randomisation allocation ratio is 5:1 (intervention to control). All intervention parents will receive an Incredible Years Infant book (universal level), and may be offered the Infant and/or Toddler group-based programme/s - based on parent depression scores on the Patient Health Questionnaire or child social emotional well-being scores on the Ages and Stages Questionnaire: Social Emotional, Second Edition (ASQ:SE-2). Control group parents will receive services as usual. A process and economic evaluation are included. The primary outcome for the study is social emotional well-being, assessed at 20 months, using the ASQ:SE-2. Intention-to-treat and per protocol analyses will be conducted. Clustering and hierarchical effects will be accounted for using linear mixed models. Ethics and dissemination: Ethical approvals have been obtained from the University of York Education Ethics Committee (ref: FC15/03, 10 August 2015) and UK NHS REC 5 (ref: 15/WA/0178, 22 May 2015. The current protocol is Version 9, 26 February 2018. The sponsor of the trial is the University of York. Dissemination of findings will be via peer-reviewed journals, conference presentations and public events.National Institute for Health Research (NIHR