Quality of Life in a Mixed Ethnic Population after Myocardial Infarction

Background: Although South Asian people are a significant ethnic group at increased risk of coronary heart disease and high mortality rates and experience greater delays with respect to diagnosis, referral and treatment, comparatively little is known about their quality of life during recovery from a myocardial infarction.Objectives: We sought to determine and compare the impact of ethnicity on quality of life after myocardial infarction (MI) in a mixed ethnic population (South Asian and white people) in the UK.Methods: A 2x2 mixed-group design with repeated measures on the second factor. The independent variables were ethnic group (white/South Asian) and time since MI (2 weeks/3 months). The dependent variables were the subscale scores on the Short-Form 36-item health survey (SF-36) and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS).Results: At 2 weeks, significant differences were observed between groups on 5 of the 8 SF-36 subscale domain scores, with the white group reporting higher quality of life. Significant improvement in reported quality of life occurred in both groups over time on all domains of the SF-36, except bodily pain. There was a significantly greater improvement in favour of the white group for the role-physical domain. There was no significant difference between groups in terms of anxiety or depression at 2 weeks. Both groups showed a significant reduction in anxiety and depression by 3 months, but the degree of reduction was not significantly different between them. At 3 months, there was no significant difference between groups in terms of anxiety scores, but the South Asian group scored significantly higher on the depression scale.Conclusions: South Asian people have significantly poorer quality of life than white people after MI. While both groups showed improvement over time, South Asian people reported significantly less improvement in physical role function and were more depressed at 3 months. Identifying the factors accounting for such differences is important to develop models of care for delivering the most effective and culturally-sensitive interventions to this group

Understanding power, social capital and trust alongside near real-time water quality monitoring and technological development collaboration

We report on qualitative social research conducted with stakeholders in a local agricultural knowledge and advice network associated with a collaborative water quality monitoring project. These farmers, advisors and researchers allude to existing social dynamics, technological developments, and (more general) social evolution which is analysed against a novel analytical framework. This framework considers notions of power, social capital, and trust as related and dynamic, forming the basis of our contribution to knowledge. We then probe the data to understand perceived impacts of the collaborative project and social interaction associated with this research project, which involved cutting edge automated and frequent water quality monitoring that allowed for near real-time access to data visualisation displayed via a bespoke mobile or web ‘app’ (1622WQ). Our findings indicate that a multi-faceted approach to assessing and intervening based on consideration of multiple social dimensions holds promise in terms of creating conditions that allow for individual and group learning to encourage changes in thinking required to result in improved land management practice

The Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS) of Three Spectrometers for the ExoMars 2016 Trace Gas Orbiter

The Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS) package is an element of the Russian contribution to the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars 2016 Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) mission. ACS consists of three separate infrared spectrometers, sharing common mechanical, electrical, and thermal interfaces. This ensemble of spectrometers has been designed and developed in response to the Trace Gas Orbiter mission objectives that specifically address the requirement of high sensitivity instruments to enable the unambiguous detection of trace gases of potential geophysical or biological interest. For this reason, ACS embarks a set of instruments achieving simultaneously very high accuracy (ppt level), very high resolving power (>10,000) and large spectral coverage (0.7 to 17 μm—the visible to thermal infrared range). The near-infrared (NIR) channel is a versatile spectrometer covering the 0.7–1.6 μm spectral range with a resolving power of ∼20,000. NIR employs the combination of an echelle grating with an AOTF (Acousto-Optical Tunable Filter) as diffraction order selector. This channel will be mainly operated in solar occultation and nadir, and can also perform limb observations. The scientific goals of NIR are the measurements of water vapor, aerosols, and dayside or night side airglows. The mid-infrared (MIR) channel is a cross-dispersion echelle instrument dedicated to solar occultation measurements in the 2.2–4.4 μm range. MIR achieves a resolving power of >50,000. It has been designed to accomplish the most sensitive measurements ever of the trace gases present in the Martian atmosphere. The thermal-infrared channel (TIRVIM) is a 2-inch double pendulum Fourier-transform spectrometer encompassing the spectral range of 1.7–17 μm with apodized resolution varying from 0.2 to 1.3 cm−1. TIRVIM is primarily dedicated to profiling temperature from the surface up to ∼60 km and to monitor aerosol abundance in nadir. TIRVIM also has a limb and solar occultation capability. The technical concept of the instrument, its accommodation on the spacecraft, the optical designs as well as some of the calibrations, and the expected performances for its three channels are described

Integrating sequence and array data to create an improved 1000 Genomes Project haplotype reference panel

A major use of the 1000 Genomes Project (1000GP) data is genotype imputation in genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Here we develop a method to estimate haplotypes from low-coverage sequencing data that can take advantage of single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) microarray genotypes on the same samples. First the SNP array data are phased to build a backbone (or 'scaffold') of haplotypes across each chromosome. We then phase the sequence data 'onto' this haplotype scaffold. This approach can take advantage of relatedness between sequenced and non-sequenced samples to improve accuracy. We use this method to create a new 1000GP haplotype reference set for use by the human genetic community. Using a set of validation genotypes at SNP and bi-allelic indels we show that these haplotypes have lower genotype discordance and improved imputation performance into downstream GWAS samples, especially at low-frequency variants. © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved

Measurement of the View the tt production cross-section using eμ events with b-tagged jets in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper describes a measurement of the inclusive top quark pair production cross-section (σtt¯) with a data sample of 3.2 fb−1 of proton–proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 13 TeV, collected in 2015 by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. This measurement uses events with an opposite-charge electron–muon pair in the final state. Jets containing b-quarks are tagged using an algorithm based on track impact parameters and reconstructed secondary vertices. The numbers of events with exactly one and exactly two b-tagged jets are counted and used to determine simultaneously σtt¯ and the efficiency to reconstruct and b-tag a jet from a top quark decay, thereby minimising the associated systematic uncertainties. The cross-section is measured to be: σtt¯ = 818 ± 8 (stat) ± 27 (syst) ± 19 (lumi) ± 12 (beam) pb, where the four uncertainties arise from data statistics, experimental and theoretical systematic effects, the integrated luminosity and the LHC beam energy, giving a total relative uncertainty of 4.4%. The result is consistent with theoretical QCD calculations at next-to-next-to-leading order. A fiducial measurement corresponding to the experimental acceptance of the leptons is also presented

Search for TeV-scale gravity signatures in high-mass final states with leptons and jets with the ATLAS detector at sqrt [ s ] = 13TeV

A search for physics beyond the Standard Model, in final states with at least one high transverse momentum charged lepton (electron or muon) and two additional high transverse momentum leptons or jets, is performed using 3.2 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider in 2015 at √s = 13 TeV. The upper end of the distribution of the scalar sum of the transverse momenta of leptons and jets is sensitive to the production of high-mass objects. No excess of events beyond Standard Model predictions is observed. Exclusion limits are set for models of microscopic black holes with two to six extra dimensions