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Displaced solar sail orbits around asteroids with free angular velocity
No full textThis paper investigates displaced solar sail orbits around an asteroid, characterized by free angular velocity and the orbital plane that is always perpendicular to the direction of solar illumination. It enables precise control of orbit shape and spatial orientation, as well as improving coverage to the asteroid under varying sunlight directions. It is found that the angular velocity must be constrained within certain bounds to ensure controllability, which can lead to full orbit circles or orbit arcs in the inertial frame. A nonlinear controller is designed to track real-time-required attitude angles (α, δ), incorporating a δ-switching strategy to ensure bounded angular velocity. A novel mission concept of long-term displaced orbit around 433 Eros throughout its heliocentric orbit using available solar sail technology is proposed based on the preceding studie
Hospitalisations and deaths due to ambulatory care sensitive conditions among adults with and without intellectual disabilities in Scotland: a cohort study
Get PDFObjectives: To explore how well the primary care system in Scotland works for adults with intellectual disabilities (ID), using the rate of unplanned hospital admissions for ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSC) as a proxy indicator. As part of this, to investigate those rates and rate ratios among adults with ID and without ID, adjusting for the prevalence of a given ACSC in each population. The secondary aim was to explore deaths due to ACSC among the ID and no-ID populations.
Design: A population-based retrospective cohort data linkage study of adult respondents to Scotland’s 2011 Census. Self-reported or proxy-reported ID status from the Census was linked to hospital admissions data and deaths data. The cohort was followed until the end of 2019. The prevalence of ACSCs in each population was calculated from aggregate-level data published by the National Health Service, as it was not possible to use the linked dataset for this purpose.
Setting: Whole population of Scotland.
Participants: People aged 18+ on census day (27 March 2011), including all adults with ID (n=16 840) and a 15% randomly selected comparator sample of adults without ID (n=566 074).
Primary and secondary outcome measures: Crude and age-sex standardised incidence rates and ratios; cumulative incidence; prevalence ratios. The exposure was ID status, and the outcomes were (1) unplanned ACSC hospital admission, (2) death with an ACSC condition listed as the main cause on the death certificate and (3) death with an ACSC condition listed as one of the causes on the death certificate.
Results: Adults with ID under the age of 55 had only a slightly higher risk of an unplanned ACSC hospitalisation than their general population counterparts (standardised incidence ratio 1.11; 95% CI 1.03 to 1.20). After adjusting for different ACSC prevalence in ID and non-ID cohorts, this difference in risk disappeared. These findings contrast with existing evidence from England, where a much higher unadjusted risk of unplanned ACSC hospitalisations was found among people with ID. Adults with ID had a higher risk of dying due to ACSC than adults without ID (standardised mortality ratio 2.54; 95% CI 2.19 to 2.95).
Conclusions: Our findings on unplanned ACSC hospitalisations suggest that the primary care system in Scotland appears to be similarly effective for adults with ID than for adults without ID. However, the higher risk of dying from ACSC among people with ID suggests that this system is less effective for people with ID. Future research should investigate this tension and aim to understand why the operation of the primary healthcare system seems to be worse with regards to ACSC mortality than with regards to unplanned ACSC hospitalisations
Gender-affirming hormone therapy and cardiovascular prevention: adding another piece to an incomplete puzzle
No full textNo abstract available
How are bars and nightclubs in Scotland using extensions in late-night alcohol trading hours? Venue observation study
Get PDFIntroduction:
Late-night alcohol trading hours are generally associated with increased alcohol-related harm. Since 2018, two Scottish cities have allowed extensions in late-night alcohol trading hours with the aim of revitalising the night-time economy. This is the first study to directly observe whether and how bars and nightclubs use these extensions, and collect rich qualitative data about venue environment and staff behaviour.
Methods:
Trained, paired fieldworkers, behaving as customers, completed semi-structured observation schedules on mobile devices during repeated visits to 15 purposively sampled venues in 2023–24 (5 venues in Glasgow and 10 in Aberdeen: total of 313 h of observation). In-depth qualitative fieldnotes were completed within 48 h of visits.
Results:
Half of the venues closed early on at least one fieldworker visit without using all of their later trading hours. Venues using their extended hours were observed to be at low occupancy on at least one visit. Fieldworkers observed bar staff serving alcohol to intoxicated customers in every venue. In half of the venues, ‘shot girls’ were observed persistently approaching customers, including those who appeared intoxicated.
Conclusions:
Extensions in late-night alcohol trading hours granted in two Scottish cities were not used consistently by venues due to lack of demand by customers. The late-night sale of alcohol to intoxicated customers was routine. Our findings challenge the assumption that later trading hours benefit the night-time economy and highlight the likelihood of associated alcohol-related harms
Rethinking care for multiple long term conditions: beyond guidelines for single diseases
Get PDFTo improve the integrated management of multiple long
term conditions, clinical guidelines must encompass
adapted care for disease complexity, incorporate
perspectives from those with lived experience and
generalist healthcare providers, and be supported by a
stronger evidence base
Double Threat: a World War II Historical Mystery of Espionage, Revenge and D-Day Britain
No full textTwo men. Two death threats. One enemy still at large.
Double Threat is a gripping wartime suspense novel set in June 1944, just two weeks after the Allied D-Day landings in Normandy.
Dr Roger Scarfield, a compassionate family physician who also treats soldiers in a military hospital, finds himself drawn once more into a dangerous web of intrigue. His close friend, Major James Brendan-Cox, a decorated war hero forced to leave the army due to chest disease and now serving in the police, shares his growing unease.
The two men have already unmasked a brilliant Oxford historian, Andrew Thorndike, as a German spy, a patriotic act that carried personal consequences. Thorndike had been Roger’s patient, suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis, and Roger had fallen deeply in love with the spy’s enigmatic sister, who now works in intelligence.
Now, both Roger and James receive chilling death threats through the post. At the same time, a disturbing wave of apparent food poisoning spreads among Roger’s patients. Is it coincidence or calculated revenge?
As suspicion deepens and the war intensifies, the pair must uncover the truth before the unseen enemy strikes again. What they eventually discover shocks them both.
Double Threat is a compelling blend of wartime mystery, espionage thriller, medical drama, and psychological suspense, perfect for readers who enjoy intelligent historical crime fiction set against the backdrop of World War II Britain
Non-equilibrium cooling behaviour of static coronal condensation models
No full textThe lack of opacity effects and radiative equilibrium are often invoked as limitations of coronal condensation models at low temperatures, causing overcooling relative to the full solution. Previous radiative equilibrium studies of these structures, including radiative transfer outside of local thermodynamic equilibrium, have only considered the instantaneous statistical equilibrium solution, i.e. moving directly between steady-state atomic ionisation and excitation states. Here, we show the importance of considering non-equilibrium ionisation and recombination effects during the radiative relaxation of these models, by performing a set of simulations in which initially isothermal and isobaric slabs cool (without allowing for bulk velocities). We find that due to the ionisation timescale, with a time-dependent treatment, a slab which starts with a high ionisation fraction, rapidly drops to low temperatures (<2kK), before slowly heating back up radiatively to the same temperature as a model using statistical equilibrium, over the course of a few hundred seconds. We discuss potential implications for cooling plasma in magnetohydrodynamic models of coronal condensations as more realistic radiation treatments are included. Additionally, we find that the line profiles for Hα differ dramatically during the cooling in a non-equilibrium ionisation model than for the same stratification using a statistical equilibrium treatment
Comfort zones: thermal environments for life and capital in a warming world
Get PDFFirst coined by American indoor climate engineers in the 1920s, the concept of
the comfort zone has since gained traction beyond buildings and houses, in
domains as varied as psychology, business management and education. This
paper provides a genealogy of the term, tracing its roots in classical political economic theory. It situates comfort zones in a world ecology, from the domestic
sphere to the farm, from the office to the factory floor. Today, comfort zones
are shaping both the climate crisis and responses to it. The construction of climatically regulated spaces is central to capitalism’s vital operations, exclusions and
sacrifices; oriented to the lifecycles of machinery, microchips and microorganisms as much as humans; and shadowed by a politics of discomfort
Functional disability and the risk of subsequent smoking initiation: a prospective cohort analysis
Get PDFBackground:
Smoking initiation remains a major public health concern, yet little is known about whether functional disability independently increases the risk of becoming a smoker.
Methods:
We conducted a prospective cohort analysis using data from Waves 10 (2018–2019, baseline) and 14 (2022–2023, follow-up) of the UK Household Longitudinal Study. The analytic sample included 20,529 adults who were non-smokers at baseline and were prospectively followed over four years to assess smoking initiation at Wave 14. Functional disability was assessed across twelve domains; mobility, lifting or carrying objects, manual dexterity, continence, hearing, sight, physical coordination, personal care, memory/concentration/learning/understanding, communication/speech, recognising physical danger, and other health problems or disabilities; and was operationalised based on its presence, number of affected domains, and specific type of limitation reported. Modified Poisson regression with robust standard errors was used to estimate adjusted relative risks (RRs) of smoking initiation, controlling for age, sex, education, ethnicity, and urban/rural residence.
Results:
At baseline, 25.1 % of participants (n = 5161) reported at least one functional disability. By follow-up, 379 participants (1.9 %) had initiated smoking. Individuals with functional disabilities had a higher risk of smoking initiation (RR = 1.42, 95 % CI: 1.12–1.80, p = 0.004) after adjustment. A significant trend was observed across increasing numbers of functional disabilities (p-trend < 0.001), with elevated risks among individuals reporting two or more (RR = 1.80, 95 % CI: 1.33–2.42, p < 0.001). Among new smokers, individuals with functional disabilities were also more likely to smoke ≥ 10 cigarettes per day (RR = 1.40, 95 % CI: 1.04–1.64, p = 0.020). Domain-specific analyses showed that mobility limitations (RR = 1.83, 95 % CI: 1.33–2.50, p < 0.001), lifting or carrying impairments (RR = 1.90, 95 % CI: 1.40–2.57, p < 0.001), personal care limitations (RR = 1.95, 95 % CI: 1.19–3.18, p = 0.008), and difficulties recognising physical danger (RR = 2.59, 95 % CI: 1.15–5.81, p = 0.021) were most strongly associated with smoking initiation.
Conclusions:
Functional disability is associated with an increased risk of smoking initiation. These findings highlight the need for inclusive tobacco prevention strategies that address the unique vulnerabilities and barriers faced by people with functional impairments
Hypothalamic deiodinase type-3 establishes the period of circannual interval timing in mammals
Get PDFAnimals respond to environmental cues to time phenological events, but the intrinsic mechanism of circannual timing remains elusive. We used transcriptomic sequencing and frequent sampling of multiple hypothalamic nuclei in Djungarian hamsters to examine the neural and molecular architecture of circannual interval timing. Our study identified three distinct phases of transcript changes, with deiodinase type-3 (Dio3) expression activated during the early induction phase. Subsequent work demonstrated that targeted mutation of Dio3 using CRISPR–Cas resulted in a shorter period for circannual interval timing. Hamsters that are non-responsive to short photoperiods and fail to show any winter adaptations do not display changes in Dio3 expression and do not show any change in body mass or pelage. Our work demonstrates that changes in Dio3 induction are essential for setting the period of circannual interval timing
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