Dancing with loneliness in later life: A pilot study mapping seasonal variations

Temporal variations in loneliness at the individual and population level have long been reported in longitudinal studies. Although the evidence is limited due to methodological distinctions among studies, we broadly know that loneliness as one ages is a dynamic experience with people becoming more or less lonely or staying the same over time. There is, however, less evidence to understand individual variations in loneliness over shorter periods of time. This paper reports on one element of a small mixed method pilot study to investigate seasonal variations in loneliness over the course of one year and to test the effectiveness of tools used to collect data at repeated short intervals. Our findings confirm that loneliness is dynamic even over shorter periods of time with participants reporting to be lonelier in the evenings, weekends and spring-summer period. Data measures were at times problematic due to language and/or interpretation and reinforce the relevance of reviewing the more common approaches to studying loneliness to more effectively capture the complex and individual nature of the experience.Brunel University Londo

Defenceless castles: the use of grossly disproportionate force by householders in light of R (Collins) v Secretary of State for Justice [2016] EWHC 33 (Admin)

On 16 January 2016, the Divisional Court gave judgment in the case of Collins. In the judgment, Sir Brian Leveson P provided an authoritative statement as to the meaning of ‘grossly disproportionate’ within the law of self-defence for householders. First introduced in 2013, clarity on the meaning of the phrase has been long awaited by both the academic and the practitioner. The Court’s interpretation of the phrase has disturbed the understanding of many and will cause many editions of upcoming Criminal Law textbooks to be re-written on this point. This paper will examine whether the Divisional Court was correct in its interpretation by attempting to find the true intention of Parliament in drafting the legislation. The paper shall also examine how the householder defences operates in modern practice and its suitability to the law of self-defence

Customer Profiling of Alpha: The Next Generation Marketing

Alpha generation plays a significant role in today’s market as firms are supposed to accumulate and store enormous data for better selling. Alpha is the customer next who needs to be targeted by the producers as they tend to influence their parent’s decision making. Literature suggests that Alpha Generation will influence the buying patterns, technology, education, markets, and other factors of the economy, but this fact is still at its infancy stage and under-researched. Adapting the framework of social learning theory, the current paper attempts to capture and compile the traits posed by Alpha Generation predominantly in the field of marketing

Adverse lifestyle leads to an annual excess of 2 million deaths in China

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Semiautomated text analytics for qualitative data synthesis

Approaches to synthesizing qualitative data have, to date, largely focused on integrating the findings from published reports. However, developments in text mining software offer the potential for efficient analysis of large pooled primary qualitative datasets. This case study aimed to (a) provide a step‐by‐step guide to using one software application, Leximancer, and (b) interrogate opportunities and limitations of the software for qualitative data synthesis. We applied Leximancer v4.5 to a pool of five qualitative, UK‐based studies on transportation such as walking, cycling, and driving, and displayed the findings of the automated content analysis as intertopic distance maps. Leximancer enabled us to “zoom out” to familiarize ourselves with, and gain a broad perspective of, the pooled data. It indicated which studies clustered around dominant topics such as “people.” The software also enabled us to “zoom in” to narrow the perspective to specific subgroups and lines of enquiry. For example, “people” featured in men's and women's narratives but were talked about differently, with men mentioning “kids” and “old,” whereas women mentioned “things” and “stuff.” The approach provided us with a fresh lens for the initial inductive step in the analysis process and could guide further exploration. The limitations of using Leximancer were the substantial data preparation time involved and the contextual knowledge required from the researcher to turn lines of inquiry into meaningful insights. In summary, Leximancer is a useful tool for contributing to qualitative data synthesis, facilitating comprehensive and transparent data coding but can only inform, not replace, researcher‐led interpretive work

Plasma arginine vasopressin concentrations in epileptics under monotherapy

Plasma arginine vasopressin concentrations were determined by radio-immunoassay in 112 adult epileptics who were taking carbamazepine, phenytoin, primidone, or sodium valproate in long-term monotherapy, and in 19 controls. No significant difference was found between the groups, but some epileptics taking carbamazepine and primidone showed low values. Serum concentrations of carbamazepine did not correlate with the concentrations of plasma arginine vasopressin. In conclusion, there was no evidence of a stimulating effect of chronic carbamazepine medication or a special inhibiting effect of phenytoin on the release of vasopressin arginine from the posterior pituitary

Strategy and model building in the fourth dimension: a null model for genotype × age interaction as a Gaussian stationary stochastic process

BACKGROUND: Using univariate and multivariate variance components linkage analysis methods, we studied possible genotype × age interaction in cardiovascular phenotypes related to the aging process from the Framingham Heart Study. RESULTS: We found evidence for genotype × age interaction for fasting glucose and systolic blood pressure. CONCLUSIONS: There is polygenic genotype × age interaction for fasting glucose and systolic blood pressure and quantitative trait locus × age interaction for a linkage signal for systolic blood pressure phenotypes located on chromosome 17 at 67 cM

Logics for Reversible Regular Languages and Semigroups with Involution

We present MSO and FO logics with predicates `between' and `neighbour' that characterise various fragments of the class of regular languages that are closed under the reverse operation. The standard connections that exist between MSO and FO logics and varieties of finite semigroups extend to this setting with semigroups extended with an involution. The case is different for FO with neighbour relation where we show that one needs additional equations to characterise the class.Comment: Accepted for DLT 201

High rates of venous and arterial thrombotic events in patients with POEMS syndrome: results from the UCLH (UK) POEMS Registry

Arterial and venous thromboses occur in patients with POEMS (polyneuropathy, organomegaly, endocrinopathy, M-protein level, and skin changes) syndrome at a previously reported rate of 20%. We reviewed the University College London Hospitals (UCLH) POEMS Registry to determine the rate of venous thromboembolism (VTE), arterial events, and risk factors. This registry, established in 1999 and comprising 103 patients at the time of this study, is the largest single-center cohort in Europe. Of the 83 assessable patients, median age at presentation was 52 years (range, 31-84). Twenty-five patients experienced clinically apparent arterial or venous events, and 2 had concurrent arterial and venous thromboses. Eleven patients had VTEs, including deep vein thrombosis (DVT; 3 of 11), pulmonary embolism (4 of 11), and peripherally inserted central catheter–associated DVT, which occurred during autologous stem cell transplantation (3 of 11). Sixteen patients experienced arterial events: stroke (7 of 16), peripheral arterial occlusion (5 of 16), myocardial infarction (3 of 16), and microvascular disease (1 of 16), with no discernible relationship with thrombocytosis or polycythemia. Thirty percent of POEMS patients have arterial and venous thromboses, higher than previously reported. There were more arterial than venous events, and most occurred during active disease, before the start of chemotherapy, indicating the need for a preemptive approach to thromboprophylaxi

Using the theory of planned behaviour as a process evaluation tool in randomised trials of knowledge translation strategies : A case study from UK primary care

Peer reviewedPublisher PD