Health Research Access to Personal Confidential Data in England and Wales: Assessing any gap in public attitude between preferable and acceptable models of consent

England and Wales are moving toward a model of ‘opt out’ for use of personal confidential data in health research. Existing research does not make clear how acceptable this move is to the public. While people are typically supportive of health research, when asked to describe the ideal level of control there is a marked lack of consensus over the preferred model of consent (e.g. explicit consent, opt out etc.). This study sought to investigate a relatively unexplored difference between the consent model that people prefer and that which they are willing to accept. It also sought to explore any reasons for such acceptance. A mixed methods approach was used to gather data, incorporating a structured questionnaire and in-depth focus group discussions led by an external facilitator. The sampling strategy was designed to recruit people with different involvement in the NHS but typically with experience of NHS services. Three separate focus groups were carried out over three consecutive days. The central finding is that people are typically willing to accept models of consent other than that which they would prefer. Such acceptance is typically conditional upon a number of factors, including: security and confidentiality, no inappropriate commercialisation or detrimental use, transparency, independent overview, the ability to object to any processing considered to be inappropriate or particularly sensitive. This study suggests that most people would find research use without the possibility of objection to be unacceptable. However, the study also suggests that people who would prefer to be asked explicitly before data were used for purposes beyond direct care may be willing to accept an opt out model of consent if the reasons for not seeking explicit consent are accessible to them and they trust that data is only going to be used under conditions, and with safeguards, that they would consider to be acceptable even if not preferable

Observations on Parental Care in the Family Aradidae (Heteroptera).

New observations of maternal care by Neuroctenus simplex and N. elongatus are reported

SAMP, the Simple Application Messaging Protocol: Letting applications talk to each other

SAMP, the Simple Application Messaging Protocol, is a hub-based communication standard for the exchange of data and control between participating client applications. It has been developed within the context of the Virtual Observatory with the aim of enabling specialised data analysis tools to cooperate as a loosely integrated suite, and is now in use by many and varied desktop and web-based applications dealing with astronomical data. This paper reviews the requirements and design principles that led to SAMP's specification, provides a high-level description of the protocol, and discusses some of its common and possible future usage patterns, with particular attention to those factors that have aided its success in practice.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for Virtual Observatory special issue of Astronomy and Computin

Measurements of hadronic structure functions of the photon at LEP

The present status of the measurements of hadronic structure functions of the photon, investigated in deep inelastic electron-photon scattering at LEP, is presented. This article covers the hadronic structure function F_2^gamma of quasi-real photons as well as the structure function of virtual photons. Special emphasis is given to new developments in the analysis and to the most recent measurements.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, To appear in the proceedings of DIS 2001, Bologna, Ital

Ideal MHD Ballooning modes, shear flow and the stable continuum

There is a well established theory of Ballooning modes in a toroidal plasma. The cornerstone of this is a local eigenvalue lambda on each magnetic surface - which also depends on the ballooning phase angle k. In stationary plasmas lambda(k) is required only near its maximum, but in rotating plasmas its average over k is required. Unfortunately in many case lambda(k) does not exist for some range of k, because the spectrum there contains only a stable continuum. This limits the application of the theory, and raises the important question of whether this "stable interval" gives rise to significant damping. This question is re-examined using a new, simplified, model - which leads to the conclusion that there is no appreciable damping at small shear flow. In particular, therefore, a small shear flow should not affect Ballooning mode stability boundaries