Estimates of mortality and population changes in England and Wales over the two World Wars

Almost one million soldiers from England and Wales died during the First and Second World War whilst serving in the British Armed Forces. Although many articles and books have been published that commemorate the military efforts of the British Armed Forces, data on the demographic aspects of British army losses remain fragmentary. Official population statistics on England and Wales have provided continuous series on the civilian population, including mortality and fertility over the two war periods. The combatant population and combatant mortality have not been incorporated in the official statistics, which shows large out-migration at the beginning and large in-migration towards the end of the war periods. In order to estimate the dynamics of the total population and its excess mortality, we introduce in this paper a model of population flows and mortality in times of war operations. The model can be applied to a detailed reconstruction of war losses, using various shapes of the input data. This enables us to arrive at detailed estimates of war-related losses in England and Wales during the two world wars. Our results agree with elements of data provided by prior studies.England, First World War, population estimates, Second World War, Wales

Properties of quantizer and dequantizer operators for qudit states and parametric down-conversion

We review the method of quantizers and dequantizers to construct an invertible map of the density operators onto functions including probability distributions and discuss in detail examples of qubit and qutrit states. The biphoton states existing in the process of parametric down-conversion are studied in the probability representation of quantum mechanics

Pollen and Isotope Investigations of an Ice Core from Vavilov Ice Cap, October Revolution Island, Severnaya Zemlya Archipelago, Russia

The Vavilov Ice Cap (79°27'N, 95° 21'E) was cored during February and March of 1988. The corer passed through 457.18 m of glacier ice, 2.15 m of moraine-containing ice, and 2.28 m of underlying rocks. Structural-stratigraphical and isotope analysis show the glacier ice is of Holocene in age; the ice layer covered by frozen deposits is Pleistocene glacier ice; and the ground (ice wedge?) ice from underlying sediments was formed during the Last Interglacial. Palynological studies of this core, carried out for the first time in the Russian Arctic demonstrate that the pollen spectra have a unique pattern. It reduces the possibility of correlation between the Vavilov Ice Cape spectra and pollen spectra from other surficial deposits, because the ice retains pollen and spores brought from enormous distances. Only the upper 65 m of the core is easily dated, to the last millennium, by the presence of cereals, Plantago lanceolata, Centaurea cyanus, Cannabis pollen. That is in good agreement with the model of age distribution based upon depth. The presence of considerable amounts of Tilia cordifolia pollen, a West-European species in the upper layers suggests that summer air masses have been dominantly from the southwest during the last 500 years. The pollen data do not contradict the conclusion the Vavilov ice core is composed of a section of Holocene ice, moraine-containing ice representing the Pleistocene episode, and a ground ice formed during an earlier warm period (Last Interglacial?).Une carotte de glace prélevée en 1988 au sein de la calotte glaciaire de Vavilov (79°27'N, 95°21'E) a fait l'objet d'analyses isotopiques et palynologiques. Le sondage comprend 457,18 m de glace « pure », suivis de 2,15 m de glace chargée de sédiments et 2,28 m de roches gelés du socle. Les résultats des analyses structurales, stratigraphiques et isotopiques sont les suivants : la glace pure datée de l'Holocène, les 2,15 de la couche chargée de sédiments datent du Pléistocène, tandis que la glace présente dans les fentes du socle s'est formée au cours du dernier interglaciaire. Les spectres polliniques de cette carotte sont caractérisés par des grains de pollen d'origine lointaine préservés dans la glace. Cette constatation réduit grandement les possibilités de corrélation avec les données sédimentaires de la région, qui reflètent la composition de la végétation locale. Un âge inférieur à 1000 ans peut être attribué aux 65 m supérieurs de la carotte en raison de la présence de pollen de céréales, de Plantago lanceolata, Centaurea cyanus et de Cannabis. Cette interprétation concorde avec le modèle du taux d'accumulation de la glace. Dans la partie supérieure de la carotte, la présence en quantité considérable de Tilia cordifolia, une espèce de tilleul d'Europe de l'Ouest, laisse supposer que les masses d'air en provenance du sud-ouest ont prédominé au cours des étés des 500 dernières années. En conclusion, les données palynologiques ne contredisent pas les résultats antérieurs selon lesquels la carotte glaciaire étudiée couvre une partie de l'Holocène, que la glace contenant la moraine représente l'épisode du Pléistocène et que la glace du socle se soit formée pendant une période chaude (le dernier interglaciaire?)

Long-term trends in the longevity of scientific elites: evidence from the British and the Russian academies of science.

National science academies represent intellectual elites and vanguard groups in the achievement of longevity. We estimated life expectancy (LE) at age 50 of members of the British Royal Society (RS) for the years 1670-2007 and of members of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) for the years 1750-2006. The longevity of academicians was higher than that of their corresponding national populations, with the gap widening from the 1950s. Since the 1980s, LE in the RS has been higher than the maximum LE among all high-income countries. In each period, LE in the RS was greater than in the RAS, although since the 1950s it has risen in parallel in the two academies. This steep increase shared by academicians in Britain and Russia suggests that general populations have the potential for a substantial increase in survival to high ages

The changing relation between alcohol and life expectancy in Russia in 1965-2017.

INTRODUCTION AND AIMS: In the 1990s, a strong inverse relationship between life expectancy (LE) in Russia and mortality from alcohol poisoning was observed. This association is remarkable as this cause accounts for less than 2% of deaths each year. It can be explained by treating the alcohol poisoning mortality as the best available measure in Russia of the population prevalence of harmful drinking in any year which in turn associated with mortality from a wide range of causes. This study analyses the evolving relationship of LE with this mortality-based measure of harmful drinking since 1965, and places it in a policy context. DESIGN AND METHODS: We examine three periods: 1965-1984, a period of gradual LE decline; 1984-2003, a period of massive LE fluctuations; and 2003-2017, a period of LE improvement. Pearson's correlation coefficients and a linear relationship between annual changes in LE and alcohol poisoning were estimated for each period. RESULTS: The strongest negative correlation between changes in LE and alcohol poisonings was found in 1984-2003. Over the period 2003-2017 a consistent positive LE trend emerged that was statistically independent of alcohol poisoning. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that in the period from the mid-2000s a growth of LE in Russia was to a large extent independent of changes in the population prevalence of harmful drinking. While there has been a reduction in mortality at ages 15-64, at older ages mortality reduction unrelated to alcohol has become an increasingly important driver of overall mortality improvements

Radiation of high-power ultrawideband pulses with elliptical polarization by a conical helical antenna

A high-power source of ultrawideband radiation with elliptical polarization was developed on the basis of exciting a conical helical antenna by a bipolar voltage pulse with a length of 1 ns. The antenna parameters were preliminarily estimated using analytical formulas and then optimized via numerical simulation. The results of low-voltage test measurements were compared with the data that were obtained using a program that was developed on the basis of the finite-difference method in the time domain. In high-voltage measurements, the energy efficiency of the radiator was 0.85 and the coefficient of the hodograph ellipticity measured along the antenna axis was 0.9. The effective radiation potential of the source at an amplitude of bipolar voltage pulses of 190 kV was 270 kV, while the efficiency with respect to the peak field strength was 1.35. The high-power source of ultrawideband radiation operated at a pulse repetition frequency of 100 Hz

Superfluid drag of two-species Bose-Einstein condensates in optical lattices

We study two-species Bose-Einstein condensates in quasi two-dimensional optical lattices of varying geometry and potential depth. Based on the numerically exact Bloch and Wannier functions obtained using the plane-wave expansion method, we quantify the drag (entrainment coupling) between the condensate components. This drag originates from the (short range) inter-species interaction and increases with the kinetic energy. As a result of the interplay between interaction and kinetic energy effects, the superfluid-drag coefficient shows a non-monotonic dependence on the lattice depth. To make contact with future experiments, we quantitatively investigate the drag for mass ratios corresponding to relevant atomic species.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. Accepted in its original form but minor changes have been don