Uptake of systematic reviews and meta-analyses based on individual participant data in clinical practice guidelines: descriptive study.

To establish the extent to which systematic reviews and meta-analyses of individual participant data (IPD) are being used to inform the recommendations included in published clinical guidelines

Boron nitride nanotubes : pronounced resistance to oxidation

Boron nitride (BN) nanotubes have the same nanostructure as carbon nanotubes but are found to exhibit significant resistance to oxidation at high temperatures. Our systematic study has revealed that BN nanotubes are stable at 700 &deg;C in air and that some thin nanotubes (diameter less than 20 nm) with perfect multiwalled cylindrical structure can survive up to 900 &deg;C. Thermogravimetric analysis reveals an onset temperature for oxidation of BN nanotubes of 800 &deg;C compared with only 400 &deg;C for carbon nanotubes under the same conditions. This more pronounced resistance of BN nanotubes to oxidation is inherited from the hexagonal BN and also depends on the nanocrystalline structure. This high level of resistance to oxidation allows promising BN nanotube applications athigh temperatures<br /

Moduli Inflation from Dynamical Supersymmetry Breaking

Moduli fields, which parameterize perturbative flat directions of the potential in supersymmetric theories, are natural candidates to act as inflatons. An inflationary potential on moduli space can result if the scale of dynamical SUSY breaking in some sector of the theory is determined by a moduli dependent coupling. The magnitude of density fluctuations generated during inflation then depends on the scale of SUSY breaking in this sector. This can naturally be hierarchically smaller than the Planck scale in a dynamical model, giving small fluctuations without any fine tuning of parameters. It is also natural for SUSY to be restored at the minimum of the moduli potential, and to leave the universe with zero cosmological constant after inflation. Acceptable reheating can also be achieved in this scenario.Comment: 14 pages, latex, improved discussion of reheating for composite inflaton

Movies in the classroom: Lessons for curriculum design

Public health is considered to be both a science and an art, in which we seek to protect, improve and promote human health and enhance quality of life. It is a wide-ranging discipline, encompassing a broad mix of practitioners who work across a variety of organisational settings, and draws from science, technology, social sciences and law. Leadership, too, is often described as an art and as a field of study “draws on both the arts and the sciences” (Gill, 2006, p. 5). However, the word ‘art’ is frequently used indiscriminately and also ambiguously; it is a word that we often associate with the humanities, yet there has been relatively little discussion of how both public health and leadership, as subjects of study, are informed by the humanities. In what ways can the humanities, here largely defined as a collection of academic disciplines that include literature, drama and film, be used to enhance the learning of those practising, or seeking to practise, in the fields of public health and leadership? There is a burgeoning body of literature which suggests that, by incorporating into our teaching the humanities, including film, we can enhance the learning experience of our students and help lay the foundations for greater sensitivity, understanding and empathy, as well as make the learning more ‘real’. In medicine, too, there has been growing interest in the use of the humanities to enhance medical training, with much of the literature suggesting that exposure can help make those who practise medicine more empathetic, understanding and thoughtful in their work. Why not, then, explore how this might be incorporated into the teaching of public health and leadership

More varieties of hybrid inflation

It is pointed out that hybrid inflation can be implemented with the inflaton field rolling away from the origin instead of towards it. This `inverted' hybrid inflation has a spectral index $n < 1$, in contrast with ordinary hybrid inflation which has $n \gtrsim 1$, so a measured value of $n$ substantially different from 1 would distinguish the two. Other generalisations of hybrid inflation are also considered.Comment: 9 page

Induced-gravity Inflation and the Density Perturbation Spectrum

Recent experimental determinations of the spectral index describing the scalar mode spectrum of density perturbations encourage comparison with predictions from models of the very early universe. Unlike extended inflation, Induced-gravity Inflation predicts a power spectrum with $0.98 \leq n_s \leq 1.00$, in close agreement with the experimental measurements.Comment: 11pp, no figures. Plain LaTeX. HUTP-94/A011. Revised edition -- Forthcoming in Physics Letters

General Solutions for Tunneling of Scalar Fields with Quartic Potentials in de Sitter Space

The tunneling rates for scalar fields with quartic potentials in de Sitter space in the limit of no gravitational back reaction are calculated numerically and the results are fitted by analytic formulae.Comment: (Contours in Figure 1 corrected, two-dimensional fitting coefficient corrected, references added.), 16 pages, KUNS 124

The conceptual and practical ethical dilemmas of using health discussion board posts as research data.

Increasing numbers of people living with a long-term health condition are putting personal health information online, including on discussion boards. Many discussion boards contain material of potential use to researchers; however, it is unclear how this information can and should be used by researchers. To date there has been no evaluation of the views of those individuals sharing health information online regarding the use of their shared information for research purposes