1,051 research outputs found
Written evidence submitted to Commons Select Committee Animal Welfare Inquiry
• While it is believed that the Animal Welfare Act is a valuable document, enforcement of its remits need to be strengthened
• A range of recommendations are made focusing on the following areas:
• The effectiveness of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 with regard to domestic pets
• Regulation surrounding the sale of domestic pets, including online sales and advertising
• Enforcement of current animal welfare legislation, including prosecution of offences by the police, local authorities, the RSPCA and others
• Recommendations include
• Introduction of an effective licensing system (for breeders and dog owners)
• Bans on selling and advertising dogs on the internet
• Community education events for dog owners
• Introduction of a competitive system to decide on the authorised animal welfare enforcement agency
• Greater investment in ground services such as number of inspector
Quadratic Lagrangians and Topology in Gauge Theory Gravity
We consider topological contributions to the action integral in a gauge
theory formulation of gravity. Two topological invariants are found and are
shown to arise from the scalar and pseudoscalar parts of a single integral.
Neither of these action integrals contribute to the classical field equations.
An identity is found for the invariants that is valid for non-symmetric Riemann
tensors, generalizing the usual GR expression for the topological invariants.
The link with Yang-Mills instantons in Euclidean gravity is also explored. Ten
independent quadratic terms are constructed from the Riemann tensor, and the
topological invariants reduce these to eight possible independent terms for a
quadratic Lagrangian. The resulting field equations for the parity
non-violating terms are presented. Our derivations of these results are
considerably simpler that those found in the literature
Fast and precise map-making for massively multi-detector CMB experiments
Future cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarisation experiments aim to
measure an unprecedentedly small signal - the primordial gravity wave component
of the polarisation field B-mode. To achieve this, they will analyse huge
datasets, involving years worth of time-ordered data (TOD) from massively
multi-detector focal planes. This creates the need for fast and precise methods
to complement the M-L approach in analysis pipelines. In this paper, we
investigate fast map-making methods as applied to long duration, massively
multi-detector, ground-based experiments, in the context of the search for
B-modes. We focus on two alternative map-making approaches: destriping and TOD
filtering, comparing their performance on simulated multi-detector polarisation
data. We have written an optimised, parallel destriping code, the DEStriping
CARTographer DESCART, that is generalised for massive focal planes, including
the potential effect of cross-correlated TOD 1/f noise. We also determine the
scaling of computing time for destriping as applied to a simulated full-season
data-set for a realistic experiment. We find that destriping can out-perform
filtering in estimating both the large-scale E and B-mode angular power
spectra. In particular, filtering can produce significant spurious B-mode power
via EB mixing. Whilst this can be removed, it contributes to the variance of
B-mode bandpower estimates at scales near the primordial B-mode peak. For the
experimental configuration we simulate, this has an effect on the possible
detection significance for primordial B-modes. Destriping is a viable
alternative fast method to the full M-L approach that does not cause the
problems associated with filtering, and is flexible enough to fit into both M-L
and Monte-Carlo pseudo-Cl pipelines.Comment: 16 pages, 14 figures. MNRAS accepted. Typos corrected and computing
time/memory requirement orders-of-magnitude numbers in section 4 replaced by
precise number
Fast Pixel Space Convolution for CMB Surveys with Asymmetric Beams and Complex Scan Strategies: FEBeCoP
Precise measurement of the angular power spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave
Background (CMB) temperature and polarization anisotropy can tightly constrain
many cosmological models and parameters. However, accurate measurements can
only be realized in practice provided all major systematic effects have been
taken into account. Beam asymmetry, coupled with the scan strategy, is a major
source of systematic error in scanning CMB experiments such as Planck, the
focus of our current interest. We envision Monte Carlo methods to rigorously
study and account for the systematic effect of beams in CMB analysis. Toward
that goal, we have developed a fast pixel space convolution method that can
simulate sky maps observed by a scanning instrument, taking into account real
beam shapes and scan strategy. The essence is to pre-compute the "effective
beams" using a computer code, "Fast Effective Beam Convolution in Pixel space"
(FEBeCoP), that we have developed for the Planck mission. The code computes
effective beams given the focal plane beam characteristics of the Planck
instrument and the full history of actual satellite pointing, and performs very
fast convolution of sky signals using the effective beams. In this paper, we
describe the algorithm and the computational scheme that has been implemented.
We also outline a few applications of the effective beams in the precision
analysis of Planck data, for characterizing the CMB anisotropy and for
detecting and measuring properties of point sources.Comment: 26 pages, 15 figures. New subsection on beam/PSF statistics, new and
better figures, more explicit algebra for polarized beams, added explanatory
text at many places following referees comments [Accepted for publication in
ApJS
Detection of X-ray galaxy clusters based on the Kolmogorov method
The detection of clusters of galaxies in large surveys plays an important
part in extragalactic astronomy, and particularly in cosmology, since cluster
counts can give strong constraints on cosmological parameters. X-ray imaging is
in particular a reliable means to discover new clusters, and large X-ray
surveys are now available. Considering XMM-Newton data for a sample of 40 Abell
clusters, we show that their analysis with a Kolmogorov distribution can
provide a distinctive signature for galaxy clusters. The Kolmogorov method is
sensitive to the correlations in the cluster X-ray properties and can therefore
be used for their identification, thus allowing to search reliably for clusters
in a simple way
SANEPIC: A Map-Making Method for Timestream Data From Large Arrays
We describe a map-making method which we have developed for the Balloon-borne
Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) experiment, but which should
have general application to data from other submillimeter arrays. Our method
uses a Maximum Likelihood based approach, with several approximations, which
allows images to be constructed using large amounts of data with fairly modest
computer memory and processing requirements. This new approach, Signal And
Noise Estimation Procedure Including Correlations (SANEPIC), builds upon
several previous methods, but focuses specifically on the regime where there is
a large number of detectors sampling the same map of the sky, and explicitly
allowing for the the possibility of strong correlations between the detector
timestreams. We provide real and simulated examples of how well this method
performs compared with more simplistic map-makers based on filtering. We
discuss two separate implementations of SANEPIC: a brute-force approach, in
which the inverse pixel-pixel covariance matrix is computed; and an iterative
approach, which is much more efficient for large maps. SANEPIC has been
successfully used to produce maps using data from the 2005 BLAST flight.Comment: 27 Pages, 15 figures; Submitted to the Astrophysical Journal; related
results available at http://blastexperiment.info/ [the BLAST Webpage
Performance of the Xpert HPV assay in women attending for cervical screening
© 2015 The Authors. Objectives: This study evaluated the Xpert HPV Assay in women attending screening in general practice by comparing Xpert with two established HPV tests, cytology and histology. Methods: A prospective study in women aged 20-60 years attending screening in Bristol, Edinburgh and London using residual Preservcyt cytology samples. Sample order was randomised between Roche cobas4800 and Cepheid Xpert assays with Qiagen hc2 third. Results: 3408 cases were included in the primary analysis. Positivity for Xpert was 19.6%, cobas 19.2% and hc2 19.9% with high concordance (kappa=86.8% vs cobas, 81.55 vs hc2). Xpert, cobas and hc2 showed similar sensitivity (98.7%, 97.5%, 98.7%) for CIN2+. All pairwise comparisons had high concordance (Kappa ≥0.78 with any abnormal cytology. Xpert and hc2 were positive for all cases of ≥moderate dyskaryosis ( N=63)), cobas was negative in two. Histology was available for 172 participants. 79 reported CIN2+, 47 CIN3+. All CIN3+ was positive on Xpert and hc2 and one case negative for cobas. One case of CIN2 was negative for all assays. Conclusions: The performance of Xpert HPV Assay in a general screening population is comparable to established HPV tests. It offers simplicity of testing, flexibility with non-batching of individual samples and rapid turnaround time
All-sky convolution for polarimetry experiments
We discuss all-sky convolution of the instrument beam with the sky signal in
polarimetry experiments, such as the Planck mission which will map the
temperature anisotropy and polarization of the cosmic microwave background
(CMB). To account properly for stray light (from e.g. the galaxy, sun, and
planets) in the far side-lobes of such an experiment, it is necessary to
perform the beam convolution over the full sky. We discuss this process in
multipole space for an arbitrary beam response, fully including the effects of
beam asymmetry and cross-polarization. The form of the convolution in multipole
space is such that the Wandelt-Gorski fast technique for all-sky convolution of
scalar signals (e.g. temperature) can be applied with little modification. We
further show that for the special case of a pure co-polarized, axisymmetric
beam the effect of the convolution can be described by spin-weighted window
functions. In the limits of a small angle beam and large Legendre multipoles,
the spin-weight 2 window function for the linear polarization reduces to the
usual scalar window function used in previous analyses of beam effects in CMB
polarimetry experiments. While we focus on the example of polarimetry
experiments in the context of CMB studies, we emphasise that the formalism we
develop is applicable to anisotropic filtering of arbitrary tensor fields on
the sphere.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure; Minor changes to match version accepted by Phys.
Rev.
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parkrun participation, impact and perceived social inclusion among runners/walkers and volunteers with mental health conditions
Supplemental material is available online at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13548506.2023.2185643#supplemental-material-section .Engagement in recreation can positively impact the physical and mental health of those experiencing mental health challenges; however, the impact of engaging in other aspects of such recreation, such as volunteering, remain largely unexplored in this population. Volunteering is known to have a wealth of health and wellbeing benefits among the general population; therefore, the impact of recreational-based volunteering for those with mental health conditions deserves to be explored. The current study sought to examine the health, social and wellbeing impacts of parkrun engagement among runners and volunteers living with a mental health condition. Participants with a mental health condition (N = 1661, M(SD)age = 43.4 (12.8) years, 66% female) completed self-reported questionnaires. A MANOVA was conducted to examine the differences in health and wellbeing impacts between those who run/walk vs. those who run/walk and volunteer, while chi-square analyses examined variables of perceived social inclusion. Findings suggest that there was a statistically significant multivariate effect of participation type on perceived parkrun impact (F (10, 1470) = 7.13; p < 0.001; Wilk’s Λ = 0.954, partial η2 = 0.046). It was also found that for those who run/walk and volunteer, compared to those who only run/walk, parkrun made them more feel part of a community (56% v 29% respectively, X2(1) = 116.70, p < 0.001) and facilitated them meeting new people (60% v 24% respectively, X2 (1) = 206.67, p < 0.001). These results suggest that the health, wellbeing, and social inclusion benefits of parkrun participation are different for those who run and volunteer, compared to those who only run. These findings may have public health implications and clinical implications for mental health treatment, as they convey that it is not simply the physical engagement in recreation that may play a role in one’s recovery, but also the volunteer aspect.GAF was funded by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Doctoral Fellowship throughout this research
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