The gender and access to health services study: final report

Men and women frequently think and behave differently. To observe this is not to suggest anything so absurdly simple as that there are only male and female ways of being; behaviours and thought processes vary according to numerous other factors besides gender. That this is very generally the case however, does mean that there are broad - and often broadly predictable - differences in the way men and women engage with the world. Most commercial organisations understand this very well and plan accordingly. Many public authorities recognise it too and take these differences into account when developing and providing services. For historical reasons however the NHS has rarely done so. It is widely known that there are differences between men and women in the incidence and prevalence of most health conditions. Sometimes there are clear biological reasons for these differences but often there are not. Where biology offers little or no enlightenment, other questions need to be asked: · Do men and women behave in ways that predispose them to particular health conditions to different degrees? · Do men and women use health services with different degrees of effectiveness? · Do men and women receive differerent kinds of service from the NHS? The answer is – yes, these things happen frequently. This is sometimes to the disadvantage of one sex and sometimes to the disadvantage of the other. Sometimes it is to the disadvantage of both. And when these things happen, health outcomes are often affected. This report looks at the reasons why gender is such an important and fundamental determinant of health status and considers the ways in which gender inequalities can be tackled within the present legislative and policy framework. It also brings together the knowledge and evidence in relation to six specific areas of health concerns

Probing the geometry and motion of AGN coronae through accretion disc emissivity profiles

To gain a better understanding of the inner disc region that comprises active galactic nuclei it is necessary to understand the pattern in which the disc is illuminated (the emissivity profile) by X-rays emitted from the continuum source above the black hole (corona). The differences in the emissivity profiles produced by various corona geometries are explored via general relativistic ray tracing simulations. Through the analysis of various parameters of the geometries simulated it is found that emissivity profiles produced by point source and extended geometries such as cylindrical slabs and spheroidal coronae placed on the accretion disc are distinguishable. Profiles produced by point source and conical geometries are not significantly different, requiring an analysis of reflection fraction to differentiate the two geometries. Beamed point and beamed conical sources are also simulated in an effort to model jet-like coronae, though the differences here are most evident in the reflection fraction. For a point source we determine an approximation for the measured reflection fraction with the source height and velocity. Simulating spectra from the emissivity profiles produced by the various geometries produce distinguishable differences. Overall spectral differences between the geometries do not exceed 15 per cent in the most extreme cases. It is found that emissivity profiles can be useful in distinguishing point source and extended geometries given high quality spectral data of extreme, bright sources over long exposure times. In combination with reflection fraction, timing, and spectral analysis we may use emissivity profiles to discern the geometry of the X-ray source.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Observation of large-scale multi-agent based simulations

The computational cost of large-scale multi-agent based simulations (MABS) can be extremely important, especially if simulations have to be monitored for validation purposes. In this paper, two methods, based on self-observation and statistical survey theory, are introduced in order to optimize the computation of observations in MABS. An empirical comparison of the computational cost of these methods is performed on a toy problem

Revealing structure and evolution within the corona of the Seyfert galaxy I Zw 1

X-ray spectral timing analysis is presented of XMM-Newton observations of the narrow line Seyfert 1 galaxy I Zwicky 1 (I Zw 1) taken in 2015 January. After exploring the effect of background flaring on timing analyses, X-ray time lags between the reflection-dominated 0.3-1.0keV energy and continuum-dominated 1.0-4.0keV band are measured, indicative of reverberation off the inner accretion disc. The reverberation lag time is seen to vary as a step function in frequency; across lower frequency components of the variability, 3e-4 to 1.2e-3Hz a lag of 160s is measured, but the lag shortens to (59 +/- 4)s above 1.2e-3Hz. The lag-energy spectrum reveals differing profiles between these ranges with a change in the dip showing the earliest arriving photons. The low frequency signal indicates reverberation of X-rays emitted from a corona extended at low height over the disc while at high frequencies, variability is generated in a collimated core of the corona through which luminosity fluctuations propagate upwards. Principal component analysis of the variability supports this interpretation, showing uncorrelated variation in the spectral slope of two power law continuum components. The distinct evolution of the two components of the corona is seen as a flare passes inwards from the extended to the collimated portion. An increase in variability in the extended corona was found preceding the initial increase in X-ray flux. Variability from the extended corona was seen to die away as the flare passed into the collimated core leading to a second sharper increase in the X-ray count rate.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Motion and Trajectories of Particles Around Three-Dimensional Black Holes

The motion of relativistic particles around three dimensional black holes following the Hamilton-Jacobi formalism is studied. It follows that the Hamilton-Jacobi equation can be separated and reduced to quadratures in analogy with the four dimensional case. It is shown that: a) particles are trapped by the black hole independently of their energy and angular momentum, b) matter alway falls to the centre of the black hole and cannot understake a motion with stables orbits as in four dimensions. For the extreme values of the angular momentum of the black hole, we were able to find exact solutions of the equations of motion and trajectories of a test particle.Comment: Plain TeX, 9pp, IPNO-TH 93/06, DFTUZ 93/0

Resonant X-Ray Scattering on the M-Edge Spectra from Triple-k Structure Phase in U_{0.75}Np_{0.25}O_{2} and UO_{2}

We derive an expression for the scattering amplitude of resonant x-ray scattering under the assumption that the Hamiltonian describing the intermediate state preserves spherical symmetry. On the basis of this expression, we demonstrate that the energy profile of the RXS spectra expected near U and Np M_4 edges from the triple-k antiferromagnetic ordering phase in UO_{2} and U_{0.75}Np_{0.25}O_{2} agree well with those from the experiments. We demonstrate that the spectra in the \sigma-\sigma' and \sigma-\pi' channels exhibit quadrupole and dipole natures, respectively.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, to be published in J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. Supp

The History of the International Grassland Congress 1927-2020

Grasslands cover 27% of the world’s land area and 70% of agricultural land. They form an important foundation for agriculture and livestock husbandry and contribute to the livelihoods of more than 800 million people. The International Grassland Congress (IGC) began as a meeting of a small group of forage researchers in Europe in 1927. It has now expanded into a gathering held every 3-5 years with over 1000 delegates from 80+ countries who represent research, extension, and primary production. The newly released IGC history provides not only an overview of the IGC Congress over the last 93 years, but highlights the people, events and changes in grassland agriculture around the world during this period. This current edition is an expansion and update of ‘A Brief History of the International Grassland Congress’ presented at the XX IGC in Ireland in 2005 by Professor Ross Humphreys, Australia. The authors have worked diligently to highlight the major individuals that shaped the IGC since its inception, including excerpts of presentations by world grassland leaders. They even included part of the welcome address from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who was President of the XIII IGC held in Reading, United Kingdom, in 1960. The IGC History describes the two Congresses held in the United States, the XI IGC in State College, PA in 1952 and the XIV IGC in Lexington, KY in 1981. It also provides details on the formation of the Forage and Grassland Foundation by Dr. John Baylor and Mr. Warren Thompson (Kentucky) from the $100,000 profit of the XIV Congress