49,957 research outputs found
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
Layering Transitions and Solvation Forces in an Asymmetrically Confined Fluid
We consider a simple fluid confined between two parallel walls (substrates),
separated by a distance L. The walls exert competing surface fields so that one
wall is attractive and may be completely wet by liquid (it is solvophilic)
while the other is solvophobic. Such asymmetric confinement is sometimes termed
a `Janus Interface'. The second wall is: (i) purely repulsive and therefore
completely dry (contact angle 180 degrees) or (ii) weakly attractive and
partially dry (the contact angle is typically in the range 160-170 degrees). At
low temperatures, but above the bulk triple point, we find using classical
density functional theory (DFT) that the fluid is highly structured in the
liquid part of the density profile. In case (i) a sequence of layering
transitions occurs: as L is increased at fixed chemical potential (mu) close to
bulk gas--liquid coexistence, new layers of liquid-like density develop
discontinuously. In contrast to confinement between identical walls, the
solvation force is repulsive for all wall separations and jumps discontinuously
at each layering transition and the excess grand potential exhibits many
metastable minima as a function of the adsorption. For a fixed temperature
T=0.56Tc, where Tc is the bulk critical temperature, we determine the
transition lines in the L, mu plane. In case (ii) we do not find layering
transitions and the solvation force oscillates about zero. We discuss how our
mean-field DFT results might be altered by including effects of fluctuations
and comment on how the phenomenology we have revealed might be relevant for
experimental and simulation studies of water confined between hydrophilic and
hydrophobic substrates, emphasizing it is important to distinguish between
cases (i) and (ii).Comment: 16 pages, 13 figure
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
ROSAT observations of two 'cooling flow' EMSS Galaxies
We present ROSAT observations of two luminous L~10^44 erg/s EMSS galaxies,
MS1019+5139 and MS1209+3917, previously classified as 'cooling flow' galaxies.
MS1019+5139 does not appear to be spatially extended (<13 kpc) while its
spectrum is well fit by a power law with Gamma = 1.73 +0.19-0.18; X-ray
variability on a timescale of ~ years is also clearly detected. MS1209+3917
shows no evidence of spatial extension (<50 kpc) but it shows variability,
while its spectrum can be fit with thermal bremsstrahlung emission (kT=1.8
+0.9-0.4 keV) or a power law model (Gamma = 2.50 +0.44-0.42, but with excess
photoelectric absorption above the Galactic value). All the above argue against
thermal emission from a group of galaxies or a galaxy but in favour of an AGN
(possibly BL Lac) interpretation. We conclude that no 'normal' galaxies with
high X-ray luminosities have yet been detected in the EMSS survey that could be
significant contributors to the X-ray background.Comment: 6 pages, LaTeX, 6 postscript figures included, to appear in MNRA
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
Automatic holographic droplet analysis for liquid fuel sprays
The basic scheme for automated holographic analysis involves an optical system for reconstruction of the three dimensional real image of the droplet field, a spatial scanning system to transport a digitizing X-y image sensor through the real image, and processing algorithms for droplet recognition which establish the droplet sizes and positions. The hardware for system demonstrated includes the expanded and collimated beam from a 5 mW helium-neon laser for hologram reconstruction, an imaging lens for magnification of the real image field, and a video camera and digitizer providing 512-by-512 pixel resolution with 8-bit digitization. A mechanical stage is used to scan the hologram in three dimensional space, maintaining constant image magnification. A test droplet hologram is used for development and testing of the image processing algorithms
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
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