1,302 research outputs found
Loneliness, social relations and health and wellbeing in deprived communities
There is growing policy concern about the extent of loneliness in advanced societies, and its
prevalence among various social groups. This study looks at loneliness among people living in
deprived communities, where there may be additional barriers to social engagement including low
incomes, fear of crime, poor services and transient populations. The aim was to examine the
prevalence of loneliness, and also its associations with different types of social contacts and forms of
social support, and its links to self-reported health and wellbeing in the population group. The
method involved a cross-sectional survey of 4,302 adults across 15 communities, with the data
analysed using multinomial logistic regression controlling for sociodemographics, then for all other
predictors within each domain of interest. Frequent feelings of loneliness were more common
among those who: had contact with family monthly or less; had contact with neighbours weekly or
less; rarely talked to people in the neighbourhood; and who had no available sources of practical or
emotional support. Feelings of loneliness were most strongly associated with poor mental health,
but were also associated with long-term problems of stress, anxiety and depression, and with low
mental wellbeing, though to a lesser degree. The findings are consistent with a view that situational
loneliness may be the product of residential structures and resources in deprived areas. The findings
also show that neighbourly behaviours of different kinds are important for protecting against
loneliness in deprived communities. Familiarity within the neighbourhood, as active acquaintance
rather than merely recognition, is also important. The findings are indicative of several mechanisms
that may link loneliness to health and wellbeing in our study group: loneliness itself as a stressor;
lonely people not responding well to the many other stressors in deprived areas; and loneliness as
the product of weak social buffering to protect against stressors
Optimizing tuning masses for helicopter rotor blade vibration reduction including computed airloads and comparison with test data
The development and validation of an optimization procedure to systematically place tuning masses along a rotor blade span to minimize vibratory loads are described. The masses and their corresponding locations are the design variables that are manipulated to reduce the harmonics of hub shear for a four-bladed rotor system without adding a large mass penalty. The procedure incorporates a comprehensive helicopter analysis to calculate the airloads. Predicting changes in airloads due to changes in design variables is an important feature of this research. The procedure was applied to a one-sixth, Mach-scaled rotor blade model to place three masses and then again to place six masses. In both cases the added mass was able to achieve significant reductions in the hub shear. In addition, the procedure was applied to place a single mass of fixed value on a blade model to reduce the hub shear for three flight conditions. The analytical results were compared to experimental data from a wind tunnel test performed in the Langley Transonic Dynamics Tunnel. The correlation of the mass location was good and the trend of the mass location with respect to flight speed was predicted fairly well. However, it was noted that the analysis was not entirely successful at predicting the absolute magnitudes of the fixed system loads
Current reversal with type-I intermittency in deterministic inertia ratchets
The intermittency is investigated when the current reversal occurs in a
deterministic inertia ratchet system. To determine which type the intermittency
belongs to, we obtain the return map of velocities of particle using
stroboscopic recording, and numerically calculate the distribution of average
laminar length . The distribution follows the scaling law of , the characteristic relation of type-I
intermittency.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figure
On the spherical-axial transition in supernova remnants
A new law of motion for supernova remnant (SNR) which introduces the quantity
of swept matter in the thin layer approximation is introduced. This new law of
motion is tested on 10 years observations of SN1993J. The introduction of an
exponential gradient in the surrounding medium allows to model an aspherical
expansion. A weakly asymmetric SNR, SN1006, and a strongly asymmetric SNR,
SN1987a, are modeled. In the case of SN1987a the three observed rings are
simulated.Comment: 19 figures and 14 pages Accepted for publication in Astrophysics &
Space Science in the year 201
Hydrostatic pressure-induced modifications of structural transitions lead to large enhancements of magnetocaloric effects in MnNiSi-based systems
A remarkable decrease of the structural transition temperature of MnNiSi from 1200 to transitions, leading to a large magnetocaloric effect near room temperature. Application of relatively low hydrostatic pressures (∼2.4 kbar) lead to an extraordinary enhancement of the isothermal entropy change from -ΔS=44 to 89 J/kgK at ambient and 2.4 kbar applied pressures, respectively, for a field change of ΔB=5T, and is associated with a large relative volume change of about 7% with P=2.4 kbar
Quasinormal modes from potentials surrounding the charged dilaton black hole
We clarify the purely imaginary quasinormal frequencies of a massless scalar
perturbation on the 3D charged-dilaton black holes. This case is quite
interesting because the potential-step appears outside the event horizon
similar to the case of the electromagnetic perturbations on the large
Schwarzschild-AdS black holes. It turns out that the potential-step type
provides the purely imaginary quasinormal frequencies, while the
potential-barrier type gives the complex quasinormal modes.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figure
Dynamical properties of liquid Al near melting. An orbital-free molecular dynamics study
The static and dynamic structure of liquid Al is studied using the orbital
free ab-initio molecular dynamics method. Two thermodynamic states along the
coexistence line are considered, namely T = 943 K and 1323 K for which X-ray
and neutron scattering data are available. A new kinetic energy functional,
which fulfills a number of physically relevant conditions is employed, along
with a local first principles pseudopotential. In addition to a comparison with
experiment, we also compare our ab-initio results with those obtained from
conventional molecular dynamics simulations using effective interionic pair
potentials derived from second order pseudopotential perturbation theory.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables, submitted to PR
Adsorption of mono- and multivalent cat- and anions on DNA molecules
Adsorption of monovalent and multivalent cat- and anions on a deoxyribose
nucleic acid (DNA) molecule from a salt solution is investigated by computer
simulation. The ions are modelled as charged hard spheres, the DNA molecule as
a point charge pattern following the double-helical phosphate strands. The
geometrical shape of the DNA molecules is modelled on different levels ranging
from a simple cylindrical shape to structured models which include the major
and minor grooves between the phosphate strands. The densities of the ions
adsorbed on the phosphate strands, in the major and in the minor grooves are
calculated. First, we find that the adsorption pattern on the DNA surface
depends strongly on its geometrical shape: counterions adsorb preferentially
along the phosphate strands for a cylindrical model shape, but in the minor
groove for a geometrically structured model. Second, we find that an addition
of monovalent salt ions results in an increase of the charge density in the
minor groove while the total charge density of ions adsorbed in the major
groove stays unchanged. The adsorbed ion densities are highly structured along
the minor groove while they are almost smeared along the major groove.
Furthermore, for a fixed amount of added salt, the major groove cationic charge
is independent on the counterion valency. For increasing salt concentration the
major groove is neutralized while the total charge adsorbed in the minor groove
is constant. DNA overcharging is detected for multivalent salt. Simulations for
a larger ion radii, which mimic the effect of the ion hydration, indicate an
increased adsorbtion of cations in the major groove.Comment: 34 pages with 14 figure
OGEE v3: Online GEne Essentiality database with increased coverage of organisms and human cell lines
OGEE is an Online GEne Essentiality database. Gene essentiality is not a static and binary property, rather a context-dependent and evolvable property in all forms of life. In OGEE we collect not only experimentally tested essential and non-essential genes, but also associated gene properties that contributes to gene essentiality. We tagged conditionally essential genes that show variable essentiality statuses across datasets to highlight complex interplays between gene functions and environmental/experimental perturbations. OGEE v3 contains gene essentiality datasets for 91 species; almost doubled from 48 species in previous version. To accommodate recent advances on human cancer essential genes (as known as tumor dependency genes) that could serve as targets for cancer treatment and/or drug development, we expanded the collection of human essential genes from 16 cell lines in previous to 581. These human cancer cell lines were tested with high-throughput experiments such as CRISPR-Cas9 and RNAi; in total, 150 of which were tested by both techniques. We also included factors known to contribute to gene essentiality for these cell lines, such as genomic mutation, methylation and gene expression, along with extensive graphical visualizations for ease of understanding of these factors. OGEE v3 can be accessible freely at https://v3.ogee.info
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