316 research outputs found
Male frequent attenders of general practice and their help seeking preferences
Background: Low rates of health service usage by men are commonly linked to masculine values and traditional male gender roles. However, not all men conform to these stereotypical notions of masculinity, with some men choosing to attend health services on a frequent basis, for a variety of different reasons. This study draws upon the accounts of male frequent attenders of the General Practitioner's (GP) surgery, examining their help-seeking preferences and their reasons for choosing services within general practice over other sources of support. Methods: The study extends thematic analysis of interview data from the Self Care in Primary Care study (SCinPC), a large scale multi-method evaluation study of a self care programme delivered to frequent attenders of general practice. Data were collected from 34 semi-structured interviews conducted with men prior to their exposure to the intervention. Results: The ages of interviewed men ranged from 16 to 72 years, and 91% of the sample (n= 31) stated that they had a current health condition. The thematic analysis exposed diverse perspectives within male help-seeking preferences and the decision-making behind men's choice of services. The study also draws attention to the large variation in men's knowledge of available health services, particularly alternatives to general practice. Furthermore, the data revealed some men's lack of confidence in existing alternatives to general practice. Conclusions: The study highlights the complex nature of male help-seeking preferences, and provides evidence that there should be no 'one size fits all' approach to male service provision. It also provides impetus for conducting further studies into this under researched area of interest. © 2011 WPMH GmbH
Multi- Configurations
Using resonant x-ray scattering to perform diffraction experiments at the U
M edge novel reflections of the generic form have been observed
in UAs$_{0.8}$Se$_{0.2}$ where $\vec{k} = $, with $k = {1/2}$ reciprocal
lattice units, is the wave vector of the primary (magnetic) order parameter.
The reflections, with of the magnetic intensities,
cannot be explained on the basis of the primary order parameter within standard
scattering theory. A full experimental characterisation of these reflections is
presented including their energy, azimuthal and temperature dependencies. On
this basis we establish that the reflections most likely arise from the
electric dipole operator involving transitions between the core 3d and
partially filled $5f$ states. The temperature dependence couples the
peak to the triple- region of the phase diagram: Below K,
where previous studies have suggested a transition to a double- state,
the intensity of the is dramatically reduced. Whilst we are unable to
give a definite explanation of how these novel reflections appear, this paper
concludes with a discussion of possible ideas for these reflections in terms of
the coherent superposition of the 3 primary (magnetic) order parameters
Linking Structural Racism and Discrimination and Breast Cancer Outcomes: A Social Genomics Approach
We live in a society where individuals and communities are marginalized because of their race or ethnicity. This structural inequity extracts enormous health and societal costs, decreasing access to cancer care and increasing health disparities, especially among the most vulnerable. In an effort to identify causes of disparities, we have incorporated individual sociodemographic characteristics (eg, income and education) and other social determinants of health (eg, access to care, insurance, and transportation needs), as well as biologic markers (eg, genetic predisposition to disease) that can serve as therapeutic targets into our research
Like-minded sources on Facebook are prevalent but not polarizing
Many critics raise concerns about the prevalence of ‘echo chambers’ on social media and their potential role in increasing political polarization. However, the lack of available data and the challenges of conducting large-scale field experiments have made it difficult to assess the scope of the problem 1,2. Here we present data from 2020 for the entire population of active adult Facebook users in the USA showing that content from ‘like-minded’ sources constitutes the majority of what people see on the platform, although political information and news represent only a small fraction of these exposures. To evaluate a potential response to concerns about the effects of echo chambers, we conducted a multi-wave field experiment on Facebook among 23,377 users for whom we reduced exposure to content from like-minded sources during the 2020 US presidential election by about one-third. We found that the intervention increased their exposure to content from cross-cutting sources and decreased exposure to uncivil language, but had no measurable effects on eight preregistered attitudinal measures such as affective polarization, ideological extremity, candidate evaluations and belief in false claims. These precisely estimated results suggest that although exposure to content from like-minded sources on social media is common, reducing its prevalence during the 2020 US presidential election did not correspondingly reduce polarization in beliefs or attitudes
Real Roots of Random Polynomials and Zero Crossing Properties of Diffusion Equation
We study various statistical properties of real roots of three different
classes of random polynomials which recently attracted a vivid interest in the
context of probability theory and quantum chaos. We first focus on gap
probabilities on the real axis, i.e. the probability that these polynomials
have no real root in a given interval. For generalized Kac polynomials, indexed
by an integer d, of large degree n, one finds that the probability of no real
root in the interval [0,1] decays as a power law n^{-\theta(d)} where \theta(d)
> 0 is the persistence exponent of the diffusion equation with random initial
conditions in spatial dimension d. For n \gg 1 even, the probability that they
have no real root on the full real axis decays like
n^{-2(\theta(2)+\theta(d))}. For Weyl polynomials and Binomial polynomials,
this probability decays respectively like \exp{(-2\theta_{\infty}} \sqrt{n})
and \exp{(-\pi \theta_{\infty} \sqrt{n})} where \theta_{\infty} is such that
\theta(d) = 2^{-3/2} \theta_{\infty} \sqrt{d} in large dimension d. We also
show that the probability that such polynomials have exactly k roots on a given
interval [a,b] has a scaling form given by \exp{(-N_{ab} \tilde
\phi(k/N_{ab}))} where N_{ab} is the mean number of real roots in [a,b] and
\tilde \phi(x) a universal scaling function. We develop a simple Mean Field
(MF) theory reproducing qualitatively these scaling behaviors, and improve
systematically this MF approach using the method of persistence with partial
survival, which in some cases yields exact results. Finally, we show that the
probability density function of the largest absolute value of the real roots
has a universal algebraic tail with exponent {-2}. These analytical results are
confirmed by detailed numerical computations.Comment: 32 pages, 16 figure
Structural characterisation of neutrophil glycans by ultra sensitive mass spectrometric glycomics methodology
Neutrophils are the most abundant white blood cells in humans and play a vital role in several aspects of the immune response. Numerous reports have implicated neutrophil glycosylation as an important factor in mediating these interactions. We report here the application of high sensitivity glycomics methodologies, including matrix assisted laser desorption ionisation (MALDI-TOF) and MALDI-TOF/TOF analyses, to the structural analysis of N- and O-linked carbohydrates released from two samples of neutrophils, prepared by two separate and geographically remote laboratories. The data produced demonstrates that the cells display a diverse range of sialylated and fucosylated complex glycans, with a high level of similarity between the two preparations
Adjusting for dependent comorbidity in the calculation of healthy life expectancy
BACKGROUND: Healthy life expectancy – sometimes called health-adjusted life expectancy (HALE) – is a form of health expectancy indicator that extends measures of life expectancy to account for the distribution of health states in the population. The World Health Organization has estimated healthy life expectancy for 192 WHO Member States using information from health interview surveys and from the Global Burden of Disease Study. The latter estimates loss of health by cause, age and sex for populations. Summation of prevalent years lived with disability (PYLD) across all causes would result in overestimation of the severity of the population average health state because of comorbidity between conditions. Earlier HALE calculations made adjustments for independent comorbidity in adding PYLD across causes. This paper presents a method for adjusting for dependent comorbidity using available empirical data. METHODS: Data from five large national health surveys were analysed by age and sex to estimate "dependent comorbidity" factors for pairs of conditions. These factors were defined as the ratio of the prevalence of people with both conditions to the product of the two total prevalences for each of the conditions. The resulting dependent comorbidity factors were used for all Member States to adjust for dependent comorbidity in summation of PYLD across all causes and in the calculation of HALE. A sensitivity analysis was also carried out for order effects in the proposed calculation method. RESULTS: There was surprising consistency in the dependent comorbidity factors across the five surveys. The improved estimation of dependent comorbidity resulted in reductions in total PYLD per capita ranging from a few per cent in younger adult ages to around 8% in the oldest age group (80 years and over) in developed countries and up to 15% in the oldest age group in the least developed countries. The effect of the dependent comorbidity adjustment on estimated healthy life expectancies is small for some regions (high income countries, Eastern Europe, Western Pacific) and ranges from an increase of 0.5 to 1.5 years for countries in Latin America, South East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. CONCLUSION: The available evidence suggests that dependent comorbidity is important, and that adjustment for it makes a significant difference to resulting HALE estimates for some regions of the world. Given the data limitations, we recommend a normative adjustment based on the available evidence, and applied consistently across all countries
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