Beyond safety to wellbeing: How local authorities can mitigate the mental health risks of living in houses in multiple occupation

The regulation of houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) by local authorities focuses on ensuring the physical safety of occupants through adequate standards of building quality, safety provision and management suitability. However, it has been suggested that HMOs may also pose a particular threat to the mental health of residents. In this paper we consider the suitability of current regulations to tackle the possible risks to the mental health of HMO residents and then outline how the current public health agenda may present an opportunity for environmental health professionals to tackle these issues in new ways. Using a framework which encompasses the psychosocial processes thought to link residents? mental health with their housing conditions, we describe how local authorities can address some of the mental health risks posed by HMOs but that the current enforcement culture, in which prosecution is seen as a last resort makes decisive action against landlords very difficult. In recognising the many vulnerable households living in HMOs, we argue that local authorities dealing with housing standards and environmental management are strategically placed to be more ambitious and proactive in protecting the health of local residents particularly through the developing public health and wellbeing partnerships. We call for empirical research to look at how local authorities actually use current legislation as well as other strategies to manage HMOs and protect the mental health of tenants

Neutron irradiation of Am-241 effectively produces curium

Computer study was made on the production of multicurie amounts of highly alpha-active curium 242 from americium 241 irradiation. The information available includes curium 242 yields, curium composition, irradiation data, and production techniques and safeguards

On the arcmin structure of the X-ray Universe

We present the angular correlation function of the X-ray population of 1063 XMM-Newton observations at high Galactic latitudes, comprising up to ~30000 sources over a sky area of ~125 sq. degrees in the energy bands: soft (0.5-2 keV) and hard (2-10 keV). This is the largest sample of serendipitous X-ray sources ever used for clustering analysis purposes to date and the results have been determined with unprecedented accuracy. We detect significant clustering signals in the soft and hard bands (~10 sigma and ~5 sigma, respectively). We deproject the angular correlation function via Limber's equation and calculate the typical spatial lengths. We infer that AGN at redshifts ~1 are embedded in dark matter halos with typical masses of log M ~ 12.6/h Msol and lifetimes in the range ~3-5 x 10^8 years, which indicates that AGN activity is a transient phase in the life of galaxies.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure. Proc. of the conference "X-ray Astronomy 2009: Present status, multiwavelength approach and future perspectives", September 2009, Bologna. To appear in AIP Conf. Proc. (editors: A. Comastri, M. Cappi, L. Angelini)

Project management techniques for highly integrated programs

The management and control of a representative, highly integrated high-technology project, in the X-29A aircraft flight test project is addressed. The X-29A research aircraft required the development and integration of eight distinct technologies in one aircraft. The project management system developed for the X-29A flight test program focuses on the dynamic interactions and the the intercommunication among components of the system. The insights gained from the new conceptual framework permitted subordination of departments to more functional units of decisionmaking, information processing, and communication networks. These processes were used to develop a project management system for the X-29A around the information flows that minimized the effects inherent in sampled-data systems and exploited the closed-loop multivariable nature of highly integrated projects

Nitric acid-organic mixtures surveyed for use in separation by anion exchange methods

Column elution-spectrographic analysis technique compares certain solvents directly to the methanol system, using inert rare earths instead of actinides. Distribution ratios for americium between 90 percent solvent, 10 percent 5 M nitric acid and Dowex 1 nitrate form resin for a large group of organics miscible in water was determined

A simplex-like search method for bi-objective optimization

We describe a new algorithm for bi-objective optimization, similar to the Nelder Mead simplex algorithm, widely used for single objective optimization. For diferentiable bi-objective functions on a continuous search space, internal Pareto optima occur where the two gradient vectors point in opposite directions. So such optima may be located by minimizing the cosine of the angle between these vectors. This requires a complex rather than a simplex, so we term the technique the \cosine seeking complex". An extra beneft of this approach is that a successful search identifes the direction of the effcient curve of Pareto points, expediting further searches. Results are presented for some standard test functions. The method presented is quite complicated and space considerations here preclude complete details. We hope to publish a fuller description in another place

Multivariate Diophantine equations with many solutions

We show that for each n-tuple of positive rational integers (a_1,..,a_n) there are sets of primes S of arbitrarily large cardinality s such that the solutions of the equation a_1x_1+...+a_nx_n=1 with the x_i all S-units are not contained in fewer than exp((4+o(1))s^{1/2}(log s)^{-1/2}) proper linear subspaces of C^n. This generalizes a result of Erdos, Stewart and Tijdeman for m=2 [Compositio 36 (1988), 37-56]. Furthermore we prove that for any algebraic number field K of degree n, any integer m with 1<=m<n, and any sufficiently large s there are integers b_0,...,b_m in a number field which are linearly independent over the rationals, and prime numbers p_1,...,p_s, such that the norm polynomial equation |N_{K/Q}(b_0+b_1x_1+...+b_mx_m)|=p_1^{z_1}...p_s^{z_s} has at least exp{(1+o(1)){n/m}s^{m/n}(log s)^{-1+m/n}) solutions in integers x_1,..,x_m,z_1,..,z_s. This generalizes a result of Moree and Stewart [Indag. Math. 1 (1990), 465-472]. Our main tool, also established in this paper, is an effective lower bound for the number of ideals in a number field K of norm <=X composed of prime ideals which lie outside a given finite set of prime ideals T and which have norm <=Y. This generalizes a result of Canfield, Erdos and Pomerance [J. Number Th. 17 (1983), 1-28], and of Moree and Stewart (see above).Comment: 29 page