Patients' advocacy: the development of a service at the State Hospital, Carstairs, Scotland

Advocacy is part of the process of empowering patients and involving them in the development of services. This paper describes the development of an advocacy service in the State Hospital at Carstairs and explores the issues involved in advocacy in a maximum secure environment. Using a model of citizen advocacy the service was started in September 1997. Patient involvement throughout the hospital was high with approximately 88% of patients having some contact with the service by January 2000. Most of the issues raised by patients are similar to those in any mental health advocacy project. Entrapment is a particular issue for some patients. Safety and security issues influence every aspect of the service. This ranges from advocates having to do more for patients rather than enable them to do things for themselves (e.g. make telephone calls) to the principle of the patients' wishes being paramount being tempered by security demands

A renormalisation group approach to two-body scattering in the presence of long-range forces

We apply renormalisation-group methods to two-body scattering by a combination of known long-range and unknown short-range potentials. We impose a cut-off in the basis of distorted waves of the long-range potential and identify possible fixed points of the short-range potential as this cut-off is lowered to zero. The expansions around these fixed points define the power countings for the corresponding effective field theories. Expansions around nontrivial fixed points are shown to correspond to distorted-wave versions of the effective-range expansion. These methods are applied to scattering in the presence of Coulomb, Yukawa and repulsive inverse-square potentials.Comment: 22 pages (RevTeX), 4 figure

Local realizations of contact interactions in two- and three-body problems

Mathematically rigorous theory of the two-body contact interaction in three dimension is reviewed. Local potential realizations of this proper contact interaction are given in terms of Poschl-Teller, exponential and square-well potentials. Three body calculation is carried out for the halo nucleus 11Li using adequately represented contact interaction.Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev.

Fine and ultrafine particles from indoor sources – Effects on healthy humans in a controlled exposure study and on lung epithelial cells in vitro

In recent years increasing concern has been expressed about the potential adverse health effects of particles from indoor sources. The aims of the EPIA project were: (1) to characterize potentially relevant indoor sources of (ultra)fine particles with respect to their emission levels and composition and (2) to investigate their adverse health effects. We investigated the effects of emissions from candle burning (CB), toasting of bread (TB) and sausage frying (FS) in a randomized, cross-over sham-controlled exposure study in healthy adults as well as in vitro in A549 human lung epithelial cells. Participants were exposed for 2 h to each of these sources at two different exposure levels, and examined before, during and after the exposures at defined time-intervals. We found transient associations between exposures and several respiratory and cardiovascular effects as well as inflammatory changes (e.g. lung function, blood pressure, arterial stiffness, interleukin-8 in nasal lavage/blood). Specific effects were found to depend strongly on the emission source and the selected exposure metric (e.g. size-specific particle mass concentration, size-specific particle number concentration, lung deposited surface area concentration). Evaluation of PM2.5 samples in the A549 cells, revealed an increased interleukin-8 release and DNA strand breakage induction for toasting, whereas candle burning only resulted in DNA damage. The results from our project demonstrate that elevated concentrations from certain indoor emission sources may lead to changes in the lung and cardiovascular systems as well as possibly induce inflammation

Effective Field Theory and the Gamow Shell Model: The 6He Halo Nucleus

We combine Halo/Cluster Effective Field Theory (H/CEFT) and the Gamow Shell Model (GSM) to describe the $0^+$ ground state of $\rm{^6He}$ as a three-body halo system. We use two-body interactions for the neutron-alpha particle and two-neutron pairs obtained from H/CEFT at leading order, with parameters determined from scattering in the p$_{3/2}$ and s$_0$ channels, respectively. The three-body dynamics of the system is solved using the GSM formalism, where the continuum states are incorporated in the shell model valence space. We find that in the absence of three-body forces the system collapses, since the binding energy of the ground state diverges as cutoffs are increased. We show that addition at leading order of a three-body force with a single parameter is sufficient for proper renormalization and to fix the binding energy to its experimental value

The outer halos of elliptical galaxies

Recent progress is summarized on the determination of the density distributions of stars and dark matter, stellar kinematics, and stellar population properties, in the extended, low surface brightness halo regions of elliptical galaxies. With integral field absorption spectroscopy and with planetary nebulae as tracers, velocity dispersion and rotation profiles have been followed to ~4 and ~5-8 effective radii, respectively, and in M87 to the outer edge at ~150 kpc. The results are generally consistent with the known dichotomy of elliptical galaxy types, but some galaxies show more complex rotation profiles in their halos and there is a higher incidence of misalignments, indicating triaxiality. Dynamical models have shown a range of slopes for the total mass profiles, and that the inner dark matter densities in ellipticals are higher than in spiral galaxies, indicating earlier assembly redshifts. Analysis of the hot X-ray emitting gas in X-ray bright ellipticals and comparison with dynamical mass determinations indicates that non-thermal components to the pressure may be important in the inner ~10 kpc, and that the properties of these systems are closely related to their group environments. First results on the outer halo stellar population properties do not yet give a clear picture. In the halo of one bright galaxy, lower [alpha/Fe] abundances indicate longer star formation histories pointing towards late accretion of the halo. This is consistent with independent evidence for on-going accretion, and suggests a connection to the observed size evolution of elliptical galaxies with redshift.Comment: 8 pages. Invited review to appear in the proceedings of "Galaxies and their Masks" eds. Block, D.L., Freeman, K.C. & Puerari, I., 2010, Springer (New York

Effective Theory of the Triton

We apply the effective field theory approach to the three-nucleon system. In particular, we consider S=1/2 neutron-deuteron scattering and the triton. We show that in this channel a unique nonperturbative renormalization takes place which requires the introduction of a single three-body force at leading order. With one fitted parameter we find a good description of low-energy data. Invariance under the renormalization group explains some universal features of the three-nucleon system ---such as the Thomas and Efimov effects and the Phillips line--- and the origin of SU(4) symmetry in nuclei.Comment: 16 pages, Latex, 7 PS figures included with epsf.sty, discussion and references added, conclusions unchange

The Three-Boson System with Short-Range Interactions

We discuss renormalization of the non-relativistic three-body problem with short-range forces. The problem is non-perturbative at momenta of the order of the inverse of the two-body scattering length. An infinite number of graphs must be summed, which leads to a cutoff dependence that does not appear in any order in perturbation theory. We argue that this cutoff dependence can be absorbed in one local three-body force counterterm and compute the running of the three-body force with the cutoff. This allows a calculation of the scattering of a particle and the two-particle bound state if the corresponding scattering length is used as input. We also obtain a model-independent relation between binding energy of a shallow three-body bound state and this scattering length. We comment on the power counting that organizes higher-order corrections and on relevance of this result for the effective field theory program in nuclear and molecular physics.Comment: 24 pages, RevTex, 15 PS figures included with epsf.st

Weakly bound atomic trimers in ultracold traps

The experimental three-atom recombination coefficients of the atomic states $^{23}$Na$|F=1,m_F=-1>$, $^{87}$Rb$|F=1,m_F=-1>$ and $^{85}$Rb$|F=2,m_F=-2>$, together with the corresponding two-body scattering lengths, allow predictions of the trimer bound state energies for such systems in a trap. The recombination parameter is given as a function of the weakly bound trimer energies, which are in the interval $1<m(a/\hbar)^2 E_3< 6.9$ for large positive scattering lengths, $a$. The contribution of a deep-bound state to our prediction, in the case of $^{85}$Rb$|F=2,m_F=-2>$, for a particular trap, is shown to be relatively small.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur

Investigation of gravity-driven coatal currents

We summarize a study that compares experimental laboratory data for gravity-driven coastal surface currents with corresponding theoretical results obtained from a new geostrophic model describing such currents. It is found that experiment and theory are, generally, in good agreement