9,455 research outputs found
Managing multiple morbidity in mid-life: a qualitative study of attitudes to drug use
OBJECTIVE: To examine attitudes towards drug use among middle aged respondents with high levels of chronic morbidity. DESIGN: Qualitative study with detailed interviews. SETTING: West of Scotland. PARTICIPANTS: 23 men and women aged about 50 years with four or more chronic illnesses. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Participants' feelings about long term use of drugs to manage chronic multiple morbidity. RESULTS: Drugs occupied a central place in the way people managed their comorbidities. Respondents expressed an aversion to taking drugs, despite acknowledging that they depended on drugs to live as "normal" a life as possible. Respondents expressed ambivalence to their drugs in various ways. Firstly, they adopted both regular and more flexible regimens and might adhere to a regular regimen in treating one condition (such as hypertension) while adopting a flexible regimen in relation to others, in response to their experience of symptoms or varying demands of their daily life. Secondly, they expressed reluctance to take drugs, but an inability to be free of them. Thirdly, drugs both facilitated performance of social roles and served as evidence of an inability to perform such roles. CONCLUSIONS: Insight into the considerable tension experienced by people managing complex drug regimens to manage multiple chronic illness may help medical carers to support self care practices among patients and to optimise concordance in their use of prescribed drugs
Recommended from our members
2D3D2D: a diagnostic approach to textile and fashion research practice
In the School of Art and Design, at Nottingham Trent University, a range of research methods and practices have developed through PhD and post doctoral study in relation to printed textile design and new technology. Individual research projects have addressed pattern (Bunce 1993); photographic imagery (Briggs 1997); colour (Leak 2001); non-repeating pattern (Carlisle 2003) and 2D/3D (Townsend 2003). Post-doctoral research (Briggs-Goode & Bunce 2001) and Townsend's research into 2D/3D informed a group project and exhibition Transforming Shape (2004). The outcomes created by Gillian Bunce, Amanda Briggs-Goode, Gillian Bunce, Rosemary Goulding and Katherine Townsend explored the relationships between innovative surface imagery and three-dimensional prototypes, based on the simple geometric forms of square, rectangle and circle
Gravitons in Flatland
We review some features of three-dimensional (3D) massive gravity theories.
In particular, we stress the role of the Schouten tensor, explore an analogy
with Lovelock gravity and discuss renormalizabilty.Comment: 11 pages, Contribution to proceedings of the workshop {\it Cosmology,
the Quantum Vacuum and Zeta Functions} in celebration of the 60th birthday of
Emilio Elizalde; Barcelona, 8-10 March, 2010. Additional references in v
Massive Gravity in Three Dimensions
A particular higher-derivative extension of the Einstein-Hilbert action in
three spacetime dimensions is shown to be equivalent at the linearized level to
the (unitary) Pauli-Fierz action for a massive spin-2 field. A more general
model, which also includes `topologically-massive' gravity as a special case,
propagates the two spin 2 helicity states with different masses. We discuss the
extension to massive -extended supergravity, and we present a
`cosmological' extension that admits an anti-de Sitter vacuum.Comment: Minor corrections plus a further correction to discussion of
supersymmetry in adS vacua, Version to be publishe
Hidden supersymmetry of domain walls and cosmologies
We show that all domain-wall solutions of gravity coupled to scalar fields
for which the worldvolume geometry is Minkowski or anti-de Sitter admit Killing
spinors, and satisfy corresponding first-order equations involving a
superpotential determined by the solution. By analytic continuation, all flat
or closed FLRW cosmologies are shown to satisfy similar first-order equations
arising from the existence of ``pseudo-Killing'' spinors.Comment: 4 pages, v2:minor improvements, refs added, version to appear in PR
More on Massive 3D Gravity
We explore the space of static solutions of the recently discovered
three-dimensional `New Massive Gravity' (NMG), allowing for either sign of the
Einstein-Hilbert term and a cosmological term parametrized by a dimensionless
constant . For we find black hole solutions asymptotic
(but not isometric) to the unique (anti) de Sitter vacuum, including extremal
black holes that interpolate between this vacuum and (a)dS. We
also investigate unitarity of linearized NMG in (a)dS vacua. We find unitary
theories for some dS vacua, but (bulk) unitarity in adS implies negative
central charge of the dual CFT, except for where the central charge
vanishes and the bulk gravitons are replaced by `massive photons'. A similar
phenomenon is found in the massless limit of NMG, for which the linearized
equations become equivalent to Maxwell's equations.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures; v2: minor improvements and extensions,
references added; v3: version to appear in PR
Dilaton Domain Walls and Dynamical Systems
Domain wall solutions of -dimensional gravity coupled to a dilaton field
with an exponential potential are shown
to be governed by an autonomous dynamical system, with a transcritical
bifurcation as a function of the parameter when . All
phase-plane trajectories are found exactly for , including
separatrices corresponding to walls that interpolate between and
adS_{d-1} \times\bR, and the exact solution is found for . Janus-type
solutions are interpreted as marginal bound states of these ``separatrix
walls''. All flat domain wall solutions, which are given exactly for any
, are shown to be supersymmetric for some superpotential ,
determined by the solution.Comment: 30 pp, 11 figs, significant revision of original. Minor additional
corrections in version to appear in journa
Classical resolution of singularities in dilaton cosmologies
For models of dilaton-gravity with a possible exponential potential, such as
the tensor-scalar sector of IIA supergravity, we show how cosmological
solutions correspond to trajectories in a 2D Milne space (parametrized by the
dilaton and the scale factor). Cosmological singularities correspond to points
at which a trajectory meets the Milne horizon, but the trajectories can be
smoothly continued through the horizon to an instanton solution of the
Euclidean theory. We find some exact cosmology/instanton solutions that lift to
black holes in one higher dimension. For one such solution, the singularities
of a big crunch to big bang transition mediated by an instanton phase lift to
the black hole and cosmological horizons of de Sitter Schwarzschild spacetimes.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figure
Supersymmetric Electrovacs In Gauged Supergravities
We show that the D=6 SU(2) gauged supergravity of van Nieuwenhuizen et al,
obtained by dimensional reduction of the D=7 topologically massive gauged
supergravity and previously thought not to be dimensionally reducible, can be
further reduced to five and four dimensions. On reduction to D=4 one recovers
the special case of the SU(2)XSU(2) gauged supergravity of Freedman and Schwarz
for which one of the SU(2) coupling constants vanishes. Previously known
supersymmetric electrovacs of this model then imply new ground states in 7-D.
We construct a supersymmetric electrovac solution of N=2 SU(2) gauged
supergravity in 7-D. We also investigate the domain wall solutions of these
theories and show they preserve a half of the supersymmetry.Comment: 29 pages, TeX, no figures. Introduction and conclusion rewritten. New
references added. Minor changes to all section
Cosmology as Relativistic Particle Mechanics: From Big Crunch to Big Bang
Cosmology can be viewed as geodesic motion in an appropriate metric on an
`augmented' target space; here we obtain these geodesics from an effective
relativistic particle action. As an application, we find some exact (flat and
curved) cosmologies for models with N scalar fields taking values in a
hyperbolic target space for which the augmented target space is a Milne
universe. The singularities of these cosmologies correspond to points at which
the particle trajectory crosses the Milne horizon, suggesting a novel
resolution of them, which we explore via the Wheeler-deWitt equation.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures, references and comments adde
- âŠ