Visualising and quantifying 'excess deaths' in Scotland compared with the rest of the UK and the rest of Western Europe

BACKGROUND: Scotland has higher mortality rates than the rest of Western Europe (rWE), with more cardiovascular disease and cancer among older adults; and alcohol-related and drug-related deaths, suicide and violence among younger adults. METHODS: We obtained sex, age-specific and year-specific all-cause mortality rates for Scotland and other populations, and explored differences in mortality both visually and numerically. RESULTS: Scotland's age-specific mortality was higher than the rest of the UK (rUK) since 1950, and has increased. Between the 1950s and 2000s, 'excess deaths' by age 80 per 100 000 population associated with living in Scotland grew from 4341 to 7203 compared with rUK, and from 4132 to 8828 compared with rWE. UK-wide mortality risk compared with rWE also increased, from 240 'excess deaths' in the 1950s to 2320 in the 2000s. Cohorts born in the 1940s and 1950s throughout the UK including Scotland had lower mortality risk than comparable rWE populations, especially for males. Mortality rates were higher in Scotland than rUK and rWE among younger adults from the 1990s onwards suggesting an age-period interaction. CONCLUSIONS: Worsening mortality among young adults in the past 30 years reversed a relative advantage evident for those born between 1950 and 1960. Compared with rWE, Scotland and rUK have followed similar trends but Scotland has started from a worse position and had worse working age-period effects in the 1990s and 2000s

Financial sector reforms and stochastic policy simulations: A flow of funds model for India

We apply stochastic simulation methods to a system-wide flow of funds model for India for 1951-94. We address two issues; first, the impact of financial reforms on interest rates and loanable funds, and second, the robustness of policy where there is uncertainty about the true model. We find considerable variation in policy risk depending on the policy instrument and the policy regime. Interest rate risks are greater in the controlled regime; quantity risks are greater in the decontrolled regime. Outcomes also depend on controls on intermediaries: more heavily controlled banks respond differently from other less heavily controlled financial intermediaries

Dyspraxia in clinical education: a review

Background The stereotype of the student with dyspraxia as ‘clumsy and disorganised’ may cause clinical teachers to be concerned about the student’s performance in a clinical environment. However, if it is understood that dyspraxic students possess many strengths, as well as weaknesses, it may be that some stereotypical myths may be dispelled and more effective support offered to them. This review considers the research surrounding the experiences of students and health professionals with dyspraxia within higher education (HE), alongside the personal experiences of EW, in order to inform the development of clinical teachers in respect of their support for learners with dyspraxia. Findings A literature review produced five relevant articles. Four studies focussed on HE students and one on doctors. A significant theme was that dyspraxia impaired learning new skills. Doctors with dyspraxia tended not to disclose their condition, due to fear of stigmatisation and negative effects on their career. Positive attributes of dyspraxia included resilience and determination to succeed. Two main adaptations to dyspraxia were highlighted; a ‘difference’ view focussing on individuals’ strengths, and a ‘medical/deficit’ view, focussing on their weaknesses and others’ negative perceptions. Discussions and Recommendations It is important for clinical educators to understand and support students with dyspraxia – as clinical environments can be particularly difficult for them. Dyspraxia has both positive and negative effects. Here we discuss the findings of previous studies in the context of EWAA’s personal experiences. We also present a series of practical recommendations, whilst recognising that more research is required to document their impact in clinical education

Low Threshold Two-Dimensional Annular Bragg Lasers

Lasing at telecommunication wavelengths from annular resonators employing radial Bragg reflectors is demonstrated at room temperature under pulsed optical pumping. Sub milliwatt pump threshold levels are observed for resonators with 0.5-1.5 wavelengths wide defects of radii 7-8 mm. The quality factors of the resonator modal fields are estimated to be on the order of a few thousands. The electromagnetic field is shown to be guided by the defect. Good agreement is found between the measured and calculated spectrum.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Parametric Resonance For Complex Fields

Recently, there have been studies of parametric resonance decay of oscillating real homogeneous cosmological scalar fields, in both the narrow-band and broad-band case, primarily within the context of inflaton decay and (p)reheating. However, many realistic models of particle cosmology, such as supersymmetric ones, inherently involve complex scalar fields. In the oscillations of complex scalars, a relative phase between the oscillations in the real and imaginary components may prevent the violations of adiabaticity that have been argued to underly broad-band parametric resonance. In this paper, we give a treatment of parametric resonance for the decay of homogeneous complex scalar fields, analyzing properties of the resonance in the presence of out of phase oscillations of the real and imaginary components. For phase-invariant coupling of the driving parameter field to the decay field, and Mathieu type resonance, we give an explicit mapping from the complex resonance case to an equivalent real case with shifted resonance parameters. In addition, we consider the consequences of the complex field case as they apply to ``instant preheating,'' the explosive decay of non-convex potentials, and resonance in an expanding FRW universe. Applications of our considerations to supersymmetric cosmological models will be presented elsewhere.Comment: 20 pages, 2 figure

Capacitor performance limitations in high power converter applications

Background: Over the last 80 years the association between social class and obesity has changed. In the 1930s obesity rates were low and wealthy people tended to have a higher risk of obesity than poor people. However, rising affluence and industrialisation has lead to both rising rates of obesity and an obesogenic environment in which socioeconomically disadvantaged people have the highest risk of obesity. This study investigates the magnitude of these changes by modelling trajectories of adiposity by social class and cohort using the Twenty-07 study. Methods: The Twenty-07 study contains three cohorts of people (n = 4510), born in Glasgow in the 1930s, 1950s and 1970s. Two measures of adiposity, BMI and Waist to Height Ratio (WHtR), were recorded at baseline in 1987/8 when study participants were aged 15, 35 or 55, and again on 4 further occasions over 20 years. Parental social class (manual/non-manual) was collected at baseline. For each gender, we apply multilevel models to identify trajectories of adiposity by cohort and social class. Results: The trajectories indicated that adiposity increased with age and rates of increase varied by cohort, social class and gender. For any given age the youngest cohort had the fastest rate of increase and the highest predicted adiposity. For example, at age 35 for non-manual men, BMI was 24.2 (95% CI 23.7, 24.8) for the 1950s cohort and 27.2 (26.8, 27.5) for the 1970s cohort. By the end of the study respondents in more recent cohorts had BMI values approximately equivalent to those of people aged 20 years older in an earlier cohort. Cohort variation was much greater than socioeconomic variation. The smallest cohort difference in BMI was 2.10 (0.94, 3.26), a comparison of the 1950 and 1930s cohorts for non-manual men at age 55. In contrast, the largest social class difference in BMI, a comparison of manual and non manual women at age 64, was only 1.18 (0.37, 1.98). Socioeconomic inequalities tended to be smaller for men than women, particularly for the 1930s cohort where there was no evidence of a socioeconomic gradient for men unlike for women. The main difference between WHtR and BMI was that increases in WHtR accelerated with age whilst increases in BMI slowed with age. Conclusion: Increases in adiposity for younger cohorts across all socioeconomic groups dwarf any socioeconomic inequalities in adiposity. This highlights the damaging impact for the whole population of living in an obesogenic environment

Development and validation of a Food Preoccupation Questionnaire

Existing Food Preoccupation Questionnaires do not take account of food-related thoughts that have a positive emotional valence. We report on the development and validation of a questionnaire that provides independent assessments of thought frequency and emotional valence (positive, negative or neutral)

Essays in Labor Economics

This dissertation contributes to the understanding of employer-employee bargaining over hours of work, and the use of administrative data to better understand labor market statistics. In chapter 1, ``Hours Off the Clock,'' I address a simple but confounding research question: To what extent do workers work more hours than they are paid for? The relationship between hours worked and hours paid, and the conditions under which employers can demand more hours ``off the clock," is not well understood. The answer to this question affects worker welfare, as well as wage and hour regulation. In addition, work off the clock has important implications for the measurement and cyclical movement of productivity and wages. In this chapter, I construct a unique administrative dataset of hours paid by employers linked to a survey of workers on their reported hours worked to measure work off the clock. Using cross-sectional variation in local labor markets, I find only a small cyclical component to work off the clock. The results point to labor hoarding rather than efficiency wage theory, indicating work off the clock cannot explain the counter-cyclical movement of productivity. I find workers employed by small firms, and in industries with a high rate of wage and hour violations are associated with larger differences in hours worked than hours paid. These findings suggest the importance of tracking hours of work for enforcement of labor regulations. In chapter 2, ``Hours Adjustments: Evidence from Linked Employer-Employee Data,'' coauthored with fellow graduate student Nellie Zhao, we provide the first look at administrative data on hours worked within firms. We document the extent to which part-time work varies across industries, and confirm that part-time work is concentrated in relatively low-wage service sectors. Further, we take advantage of the longitudinal nature of our dataset and analyze the prevalence of transitions between part-time and full-time work within the same job. We show that the share of new full-time or part-time jobs that are created due to within-job hours changes varies greatly across industries. In chapter 3, ``Total Error and Variability Measures with Integrated Disclosure Limitation for Quarterly Workforce Indicators and LEHD Origin Destination Employment Statistics in OnTheMap,'' coauthored with Kevin L. McKinney, Lars Vilhuber, and John M. Abowd, we report results from the first comprehensive total quality evaluation of five major indicators in the U.S. Census Bureau's Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Program Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI). We conducted the evaluation by generating multiple threads of the edit and imputation models used in the LEHD Infrastructure File System. These threads conform to the Rubin (1987) multiple imputation model, with each thread or implicate being the output of formal probability models that address coverage, edit, and imputation errors. Design-based sampling variability and finite population corrections are also included in the evaluation. We derive special formulas for the Rubin total variability and its components that are consistent with the disclosure avoidance system used for QWI. These formulas allow us to publish the complete set of detailed total quality measures for QWI and LODES. The analysis reveals that the five publication variables are estimated very accurately for tabulations involving at least 10 jobs. Tabulations involving three to nine jobs have acceptable quality. Tabulations involving zero, one or two jobs have substantial total variability