Sun awareness and sun protection among persons attending dermatology clinics in Malta

On a global level, public awareness of the harmful effects of the sun on the skin, namely skin cancer and photo ageing, has gradually increased largely as a result of ongoing public educational campaigns. In order to assess the current level of knowledge of sun-related skin damage, and to evaluate sun protection habits among Maltese persons (aged 16-50 years) attending dermatology clinics in 3 local hospitals, we undertook a questionnaire survey. A total of 333 valid completed questionnaires were available for evaluation. The vast majority of respondents were aware that exposure to the sun causes skin cancer (93%) and skin ageing (85%). In addition, 69% of the respondents knew that skin cancer can kill. Overall however, this high level of sun awareness is not being translated into safe practice. Occupational sun exposure is substantially greater in men. Notwithstanding this trend men use sunscreens far less than women when out in the sun both at work and during leisure. Pursuing outdoor leisure activities including going to the beach during hours of peak sunshine in spring and summer is popular. The general level of sun protection during leisure is unacceptably low. The media are considered to be by far the most influential source of information on the subject of the sun and the skin. The results of this survey can be used to guide future sun awareness campaigns to focus on issues and population subgroups that need most emphasis.peer-reviewe

A novel patient-administered treatment for malignant and pre-malignant skin lesions

It is a well established fact that the incidence of sun-related skin damage (photo-ageing) and neoplastic transformation (photo-carcinogenesis) has progressively increased in recent decades as a result of cultural and occupational trends leading to increased sun exposure and use of sunbeds, particularly in Caucasian populations. Reference to a topical immune response modulator known as Imiquimod (Aldara™).peer-reviewe

On the qq-log-convexity conjecture of Sun

In his study of Ramanujan-Sato type series for $1/\pi$, Sun introduced a sequence of polynomials $S_n(q)$ as given by $$S_n(q)=\sum\limits_{k=0}^n{n\choose k}{2k\choose k}{2(n-k)\choose n-k}q^k,$$ and he conjectured that the polynomials $S_n(q)$ are $q$-log-convex. By imitating a result of Liu and Wang on generating new $q$-log-convex sequences of polynomials from old ones, we obtain a sufficient condition for determining the $q$-log-convexity of self-reciprocal polynomials. Based on this criterion, we then give an affirmative answer to Sun's conjecture

Understanding Astrophysical Noise from Stellar Surface Magneto-Convection

To obtain cm/s precision, stellar surface magneto-convection must be disentangled from observed radial velocities (RVs). In order to understand and remove the convective signature, we create Sun-as-a-star model observations based on a 3D magnetohydrodynamic solar simulation. From these Sun-as-a-star model observations, we find several line characteristics are correlated with the induced RV shifts. The aim of this campaign is to feed directly into future high precision RV studies, such as the search for habitable, rocky worlds, with forthcoming spectrographs such as ESPRESSO.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures; presented at the 18th Cambridge Workshop on Cool Stars, Stellar Systems, and the Sun (CoolStars18); to appear in the proceedings of Lowell Observatory (9-13 June 2014), edited by G. van Belle & H. Harris. Updated with correct y-axis units on righthand plot in figure

Oscillation-Based Test Structure and Method for OTA-C Filters

“This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder." “Copyright IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.”This paper describes a design for testability technique for operational transconductance amplifier and capacitor filters using an oscillation-based test topology. The oscillation-based test structure is a vectorless output test strategy easily extendable to built-in self-test. The proposed methodology converts filter under test into a quadrature oscillator using very simple techniques and measures the output frequency. The oscillation frequency may be considered as a digital signal and it can be evaluated using digital circuitry therefore the test time is very small. These characteristics imply that the proposed method is very suitable for catastrophic and parametric faults testing and also effective in detecting single and multiple faults. The validity of the proposed method has been verified using comparison between faulty and fault-free simulation results of two integrator loop and Tow-Thomas filters. Simulation results in 0.25 mum CMOS technology show that the proposed oscillation-based test strategy for OTA-C filters has 87% fault coverage and with a minimum number of extra components, requires a negligible area overhead