Traumatic injury and dementia in New Zealand : a Palmerston North Hospital case-control study : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Health Science in Psychology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Little is known about the relationship between traumatic injury (TI) and dementia. The increasing prevalence of both conditions in the world and in New Zealand (NZ) drove the Author to want to investigate whether the pathophysiological consequences of major trauma of any kind - mostly due to falls in the dementia population - and not just traumatic brain injury (TBI), may result in dementia. Both TI and dementia constitute major health and socio-economic problems contributing to long-term disability worldwide and have important implications for health service delivery and for medico-legal compensation issues. The first specific objective was to determine whether dementia was associated with an increased risk and incidence of trauma in the past and whether such an association might be explained by the injuries or by medical comorbidities. The second specific objective was to identify whether there were any differences in the mechanisms of injury and type of discharge from hospital between cases and controls. The research was a non-experimental, retrospective, hospital-based, case-control study. Cases and controls were selected from the Palmerston North Hospital (PNH) acute admissions database and were matched in terms of exposure to traumatic injury, sex, age, ethnicity, and recorded comordibites. Statistical and epidemiological analyses were done using RaosoftR and MedCalcR softwares. All medical conditions were operationally defined using the current World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10). The results showed that a history of TI was more frequently found in cases with dementia than in the controls. Patients with dementia and TI were more likely to have preexisting comorbidities and were more unlikely to be discharged to their previous habitual residence. The findings strongly indicate that the brain is affected by the way the body responds to TI both locally and systemically. The conclusion was that the direct and indirect consequences of TI, mostly due to falls, could constitute a plausible risk factor for the development or progression of dementia but that further research is needed to assess what type of trauma and what type of dementia could be involved in the association, one that is likely to be multifactorial in the elderly population

Towards a manifestly SL(2,Z)-covariant action for the type IIB (p,q) super-five-branes

We determine a manifestly SL(2,Z)-covariant kappa-symmetric action for the type IIB (p,q) five-branes as a perturbative expansion in the world-volume field strengths within the framework where the brane tension is generated by a world-volume field. In this formulation the Lagrangian is expected to be polynomial; we construct the kappa-invariant action to fourth order in the world-volume field strengths.Comment: 9 pages, LaTeX2

Super-p-brane actions from interpolating dualisations

We review a recently proposed method for constructing super-p-brane world-volume actions. In this approach, starting from a democratic choice of world-volume gauge-fields guided by p-brane intersection rules, the requirements of kappa-symmetry and gauge invariance can be used to determine the corresponding action. We discuss the application of the method to some cases of interest, notably the (p,q)-5-branes of type-IIB string theory in a manifestly S-duality covariant formulation.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX2e. Based on talks given by A.W. at QFTHEP'99, Moscow, 27 May-2 June 1999, and at the Third annual meeting of the EU TMR network `Quantum aspects of gauge theories, supersymmetry and unification', Paris, 1-7 September 199

Information Costs and Mutual Fund Flows

This paper examines how investor and capital flows into mutual funds in the Swedish pension system are related to fund characteristics. Similarly to U.S. studies, we show that individuals chase past returns and have a strong preference for lower-fee funds. However, our results suggest that past returns are less important than previous studies suggest. A more important determinant of fund inflows is information costs. For instance, foreign-based funds with a track record similar to that of domestic funds attract fewer investors and receive less capital. Moreover, new funds without a track record also receive lower inflows.Flows; Information; Pension System; Portfolio Choice

Variations in Fertility - a Consequense of Other Factors Besides Love?

The purpose of this paper is to discuss possible explanations for the variation in the Swedish fertility rate. We are primarily interested in economic and social conditions and their impact on the total fertility rate between 1965 and 2003. The results from the study support a positive e¤ect on fertility from the female labour market participation and child allowance while divorces report a negative e¤ect on fertility. The model including level as well as di¤erences in the variables has been found to give the best results.Total fertility rate; Economics; Sweden; Time-series

Spatial Dependence and the Determinants of Child Births in Swedish Municipalities 1974-2002

The overall Swedish total fertility rate (TFR) has been shown to fluctuate quite dramatically during the last 40 years, from 2.4 in 1965 reaching down as low as 1.5 in 1999. Although numerous studies in the past have tried to explain this fluctuation, there has been surprisingly little focus on impacts from local or even regional differences. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to analyse, for the first time, whether there exists a significant dispersion in the number of child births normalised by the number of fertile women among Swedish municipalities for the period 1974-2002 and then provide an explanation for occurred differences. Regional differences, as well as the presence of spatial dependence, are first confirmed in an exploratory spatial data analysis. Particularly noticeable is the volatility and how local hotspots emerge and disappear during the study period. Subsequent regression analyses are performed for a selected number of years where we solve for spatial dependence and use economic-, institutional-, sociological-, and geographical characteristics of the municipalities as explanatory variables.

Anyons on Higher Genus Surfaces - a Constructive Approach

We reconsider the problem of anyons on higher genus surfaces by embedding them in three dimensional space. From a concrete realization based on three dimensional flux tubes bound to charges moving on the surface, we explicitly derive all the representations of the spinning braid group. The component structure of the wave functions arises from winding the flux tubes around the handles. We also argue that the anyons in our construction must fulfil the generalized spin-statistics relation.Comment: 8 pages, LaTex, 2 figures available on request ([email protected]), USITP-93-1

Vacuum radiation and frequency-mixing in linear light-matter systems

Recent progress in photonics has led to a renewed interest in time-varying media that change on timescales comparable to the optical wave oscillation time. However, these studies typically overlook the role of material dispersion that will necessarily imply a delayed temporal response or, stated alternatively, a memory effect. We investigate the influence of the medium memory on a specific effect, i.e. the excitation of quantum vacuum radiation due to the temporal modulation. We construct a framework which reduces the problem to single-particle quantum mechanics, which we then use to study the quantum vacuum radiation. We find that the delayed temporal response changes the vacuum emission properties drastically: Frequencies mix, something typically associated with nonlinear processes, despite the system being completely linear. Indeed, this effect is related to the parametric resonances of the light-matter system, and to the parametric driving of the system by frequencies present locally in the drive but not in its spectrum.Comment: 16 pages + appendices, 3 figures. Accepted for publicatio