Towards an understanding of bereavement in the pathway to suicide

Abstract Key Points 1. Suicide bereavement is associated with increased depression and risk of suicide. The increasing rate of suicide in Northern Ireland presents a major challenge to health and social care policy. 2. To date policy development on the topic has been hampered by a lack of local evidence. Contextually specific research reports are now emerging to strengthen the evidence-base. 3. The findings from our own study suggest that people bereaved by suicide include extended family members and members of the wider community, who can experience lengthy periods of depression and anxiety. 4. Bereaved family members and significant others, may require more nuanced, multi-dimensional interventions, provided over extended periods of time, in order to facilitate varied and complex grief processes. 5. A focus on empowerment, education and information may provide results that are as effective as increasing access to psychological services – these approaches should exist in tande

Low temperature behavior of nonequilibrium multilevel systems

We give a low temperature formula for the stationary occupations in Markovian systems away from detailed balance. Two applications are discussed, one to determine the direction of the ratchet current and one on population inversion. Both can take advantage of low temperature to improve the gain and typical nonequilibrium features. The new formula brings to the foreground the importance of kinetic aspects in terms of reactivities for deciding the levels with highest occupation and thus gives a detailed quantitative meaning to Landauer's blowtorch theorem at low temperature.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figure

A low temperature analysis of the boundary driven Kawasaki Process

Low temperature analysis of nonequilibrium systems requires finding the states with the longest lifetime and that are most accessible from other states. We determine these dominant states for a one-dimensional diffusive lattice gas subject to exclusion and with nearest neighbor interaction. They do not correspond to lowest energy configurations even though the particle current tends to zero as the temperature reaches zero. That is because the dynamical activity that sets the effective time scale, also goes to zero with temperature. The result is a non-trivial asymptotic phase diagram, which crucially depends on the interaction coupling and the relative chemical potentials of the reservoirs.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figur

Analytic solutions for a three-level system in a time-dependent field

This paper generalizes some known solitary solutions of a time-dependent Hamiltonian in two ways: The time-dependent field can be an elliptic function, and the time evolution is obtained for a complete set of basis vectors. The latter makes it feasible to consider arbitrary initial conditions. The former makes it possible to observe a beating caused by the non-linearity of the driving field.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

When did modern humans leave Africa?

Published by AAAS © belongs to the authors with AAAS licensed to publish. The attached document is the authors’ submitted version of the journal article. You are advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite from it

Where are the NGOs and Why? The Distribution of Health and Development NGOs in Bolivia

BACKGROUND: The presence and influence of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the landscape of global health and development have dramatically increased over the past several decades. The distribution of NGO activity and the ways in which contextual factors influence the distribution of NGO activity across geographies merit study. This paper explores the distribution of NGO activity, using Bolivia as a case study, and identifies local factors that are related to the distribution of NGO activity across municipalities in Bolivia. METHODS: The research question is addressed using a geographic information system (GIS) and multiple regression analyses of count data. We used count data of the total number of NGO projects across Bolivian municipalities to measure NGO activity both in general and in the health sector specifically and national census data for explanatory variables of interest. RESULTS: This study provides one of the first empirical analyses exploring factors related to the distribution of NGO activity at the national scale. Our analyses show that NGO activity in Bolivia, both in general and health-sector specific, is distributed unevenly across the country. Results indicate that NGO activity is related to population size, extent of urbanization, size of the indigenous population, and health system coverage. Results for NGO activity in general and health-sector specific NGO activity were similar. CONCLUSIONS: The uneven distribution of NGO activity may suggest a lack of co-ordination among NGOs working in Bolivia as well as a lack of co-ordination among NGO funders. Co-ordination of NGO activity is most needed in regions characterized by high NGO activity in order to avoid duplication of services and programmes and inefficient use of limited resources. Our findings also indicate that neither general nor health specific NGO activity is related to population need, when defined as population health status or education level or poverty levels. Considering these results we discuss broader implications for global health and development and make several recommendations relevant for development and health practice and research

Development of a technology adoption and usage prediction tool for assistive technology for people with dementia

This article is available open access through the publisher’s website at the link below. Copyright @ The Authors 2013.In the current work, data gleaned from an assistive technology (reminding technology), which has been evaluated with people with Dementia over a period of several years was retrospectively studied to extract the factors that contributed to successful adoption. The aim was to develop a prediction model with the capability of prospectively assessing whether the assistive technology would be suitable for persons with Dementia (and their carer), based on user characteristics, needs and perceptions. Such a prediction tool has the ability to empower a formal carer to assess, through a very limited amount of questions, whether the technology will be adopted and used.EPSR

A Search for Hydroxylamine (NH2OH) toward Select Astronomical Sources

Observations of 14 rotational transitions of hydroxylamine (NH2OH) using the NRAO 12 m Telescope on Kitt Peak are reported towards IRC+10216, Orion KL, Orion S, Sgr B2(N), Sgr B2(OH), W3IRS5, and W51M. Although recent models suggest the presence of NH2OH in high abundance, these observations resulted in non-detection. Upper limits are calculated to be as much as six orders of magnitude lower than predicted by models. Possible explanations for the lower than expected abundance are explored.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures, 3 table