1,604 research outputs found
Stories for Change
This compendium of nearly 50 best practices showcases the notable strategies that increase access to arts and culture for older adult and immigrant populations. Newcomers and older adults (65 +) are two of the fastest growing populations -- communities across the country are grappling with a demographic makeup that is increasingly diverse and proportionally older than in the past. Arts and cultural organizations have the opportunity to reach-out, to increase resources in the community, and to engage populations that are at risk for being overlooked."Stories for Change" is a compelling collection, brimming with new ideas brought to fruition by many types of organizations including: museums, libraries, community development organizations, theaters, orchestras, dance ensembles, area agencies on aging, transportation bureaus, parks, botanic gardens, universities, and more. Organizations that hope to enhance the lives of their older and immigrant residents can find approaches portrayed in these Stories that can be adapted to meet the needs of their communities.Best practices include the well-known Alzheimer's Project of the Museum of Modern Art, which has been adapted to museums around the country, and Circle of Care, a unique ride share program that partners young people with older adults to attend free arts performances in Boulder, Colorado. Stories are located in rural, mid-size, and metropolitan settings; many can be easily implemented, and do not require a major overhaul of staffing, operations, or an organization's mission
Embodied carbon assessment using a dynamic climate model: Case-study comparison of a concrete, steel and timber building structure
Climate Change Adaptation Case Study: Benefit-Cost Analysis of Coastal Flooding Hazard Mitigation
The damage Hurricane Sandy caused had far-reaching repercussions up and down the East Coast of the United States. Vast coastal flooding accompanied the storm, inundating homes, businesses, and utility and emergency facilities. Since the storm, projects to mitigate similar future floods have been scrutinized. Such projects not only need to keep out floodwaters but also be designed to withstand the effect that climate change might have on rising sea levels and increased flood risk.
In this study, we develop an economic model to assess the costs and benefits of a berm (sea wall) to mitigate the effects of flooding from a large storm. We account for the lifecycle costs of the project, which include those for the upfront construction of the berm, ongoing maintenance, land acquisition, and wetland and recreation zone construction. Benefits of the project include avoided fatalities, avoided residential and commercial damages, avoided utility and municipal damages, recreational and health benefits, avoided debris removal expenses, and avoided loss of function of key transportation and commercial infrastructure located in the area. Our estimate of the beneficial effects of the berm includes ecosystem services from wetlands and health benefits to the surrounding community from a park and nature system constructed along the berm.
To account for the effects of climate change and verify that the project will maintain its effectiveness over the long term, we allow the risk of flooding to increase over time. Over our 50-year time horizon, we double the risk of 100- and 500-year flood events to account for the effects of sea level rise on coastal flooding. Based on the economic analysis, the project is highly cost beneficial over its 50-year timeframe. This analysis demonstrates that climate change adaptation investments can be cost beneficial even though they mitigate the impacts of low-probability, high-consequence events
Analysis of environmental influences in nuclear half-life measurements exhibiting time-dependent decay rates
In a recent series of papers evidence has been presented for correlations
between solar activity and nuclear decay rates. This includes an apparent
correlation between Earth-Sun distance and data taken at Brookhaven National
Laboratory (BNL), and at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB).
Although these correlations could arise from a direct interaction between the
decaying nuclei and some particles or fields emanating from the Sun, they could
also represent an "environmental" effect arising from a seasonal variation of
the sensitivities of the BNL and PTB detectors due to changes in temperature,
relative humidity, background radiation, etc. In this paper, we present a
detailed analysis of the responses of the detectors actually used in the BNL
and PTB experiments, and show that sensitivities to seasonal variations in the
respective detectors are likely too small to produce the observed fluctuations
Palliative care in the emergency department: A systematic literature qualitative review and thematic synthesis
Background: Despite a fast-paced environment, the emergency clinician has a duty to meet thepalliative patient's needs. Despite suggested models and interventions, this remains challenging inpractice.Aim: To increase understanding of these challenges by exploring the experience of palliative carepatients and their families and informal carers attending the emergency department, and of theclinicians caring for them.Design: Qualitative systematic literature review and thematic synthesis. Search terms related tothe population (palliative care patients, family carers, clinicians), exposure (the emergencydepartment) and outcome (experience). The search was international but restricted to English, andused a qualitative filter. Title, abstracts and retrieved full texts were reviewed independently by tworeviewers against predefined inclusion criteria arbitrated by a third reviewer. Studies were appraisedfor quality but not excluded on that basis.Data Sources: MEDLINE [1946-], Embase[1947-], CINAHL [1981-] and PsycINFO [1987-] with abibliography search.Results: 19 papers of 16 studies were included from Australia (n=5), the United Kingdom (n=5) andUnited States (n = 9) representing 482 clinical staff involved in the emergency department (doctors,nurses, paramedics, social workers, technicians), 61 patients and 36 carers. Nine descriptive themesformed three analytic themes: âEnvironment and Purposeâ; âSystems of Care and InterdisciplinaryWorkingâ and âEducation and Trainingâ.Conclusions: Provision of emergency palliative care is a necessary purpose of the emergencydepartment. Failure to recognise this, gain the necessary skills, or change the systems needed for anenvironment better suited to its delivery perpetuates poor implementation of care in thisenvironment
Anomalous Expansion of Attractively Interacting Fermionic Atoms in an Optical Lattice
Strong correlations can dramatically modify the thermodynamics of a quantum
many-particle system. Especially intriguing behaviour can appear when the
system adiabatically enters a strongly correlated regime, for the interplay
between entropy and strong interactions can lead to counterintuitive effects. A
well known example is the so-called Pomeranchuk effect, occurring when liquid
3He is adiabatically compressed towards its crystalline phase. Here, we report
on a novel anomalous, isentropic effect in a spin mixture of attractively
interacting fermionic atoms in an optical lattice. As we adiabatically increase
the attraction between the atoms we observe that the gas, instead of
contracting, anomalously expands. This expansion results from the combination
of two effects induced by pair formation in a lattice potential: the
suppression of quantum fluctuations as the attraction increases, which leads to
a dominant role of entropy, and the progressive loss of the spin degree of
freedom, which forces the gas to excite additional orbital degrees of freedom
and expand to outer regions of the trap in order to maintain the entropy. The
unexpected thermodynamics we observe reveal fundamentally distinctive features
of pairing in the fermionic Hubbard model.Comment: 6 pages (plus appendix), 6 figure
Aquilegia, Vol. 13 No. 6, November-December 1989: Newsletter of the Colorado Native Plant Society
https://epublications.regis.edu/aquilegia/1049/thumbnail.jp
Epidemiological evidence of higher susceptibility to vCJD in the young
BACKGROUND: The strikingly young age of new variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (vCJD) cases remains unexplained. Age dependent susceptibility to infection has been put forward, but differential dietary exposure to contaminated food products in the UK population according to age and sex during the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) epidemic may provide a simpler explanation. METHODS: Using recently published estimates of dietary exposure in mathematical models of the epidemiology of the new variant Creutzfeldt Jacob disease (vCJD), we examine whether the age characteristics of vCJD cases may be reproduced. RESULTS: The susceptibility/exposure risk function has likely peaked in adolescents and was followed by a sharp decrease with age, evocative of the profile of exposure to bovine material consumption according to age. However, assuming that the risk of contamination was proportional to exposure, with no age dependent susceptibility, the model failed to reproduce the observed age characteristics of the vCJD cases: The predicted cumulated proportion of cases over 40 years was 48%, in strong disagreement with the observed 10%. Incorporating age dependent susceptibility led to a cumulated proportion of cases over 40 years old of 12%. CONCLUSIONS: This analysis provides evidence that differential dietary exposure alone fails to explain the pattern of age in vCJD cases. Decreasing age related susceptibility is required to reproduce the characteristics of the age distribution of vCJD cases
Autism in England: assessing underdiagnosis in a population-based cohort study of prospectively collected primary care data
Background:
Autism has long been viewed as a paediatric condition, meaning that many autistic adults missed out on a diagnosis as children when autism was little known. We estimated numbers of diagnosed and undiagnosed autistic people in England, and examined how diagnostic rates differed by socio-demographic factors. /
Methods:
This population-based cohort study of prospectively collected primary care data from IQVIA Medical Research Data (IMRD) compared the prevalence of diagnosed autism to community prevalence to estimate underdiagnosis. 602,433 individuals registered at an English primary care practice in 2018 and 5,586,100 individuals registered between 2000 and 2018 were included. /
Findings:
Rates of diagnosed autism in children/young people were much higher than in adults/older adults. As of 2018, 2.94% of 10- to 14-year-olds had a diagnosis (1 in 34), vs. 0.02% aged 70+ (1 in 6000). Exploratory projections based on these data suggest that, as of 2018, 463,500 people (0.82% of the English population) may have been diagnosed autistic, and between 435,700 and 1,197,300 may be autistic and undiagnosed (59â72% of autistic people, 0.77%â2.12% of the English population). Age-related inequalities were also evident in new diagnoses (incidence): c.1 in 250 5- to 9-year-olds had a newly-recorded autism diagnosis in 2018, vs. c.1 in 4000 20- to 49-year-olds, and c.1 in 18,000 people aged 50+. /
Interpretation:
Substantial age-related differences in the proportions of people diagnosed suggest an urgent need to improve access to adult autism diagnostic services
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