bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Sweden
Authors: Andrèasson Sven , Bremberg Sven , Källestål Carina , Lundgren Bernt , Nordgren Paul , Elinder Liselotte Schäfer , Wallin Eva
Published: November 2023

This chapter documents the Swedish experience of moves towards an evidence-based approach to public health. It comprises a description of the Swedish welfare regime and the new Swedish public health policy, followed by some case studies: reduction of social inequalities in child accidental injuries through environmental preventive measures, community-based prevention of alcohol problems, smoke-free restaurants, assessment of the health impacts of the European Union Common Agricultural Policy, and the challenge of knowledge-based public health work.
An evidence-based approach to public health and tackling health inequalities in Ireland and Northern Ireland
Authors: Boydell Leslie , Wilde Jane
Published: November 2023

This concluding section explores a number of new directions for advancing an evidencebased approach to tackling health inequalities with respect to addressing gaps in the evidence base and the frameworks for making investment choices.
Voluntary action
Authors: Passingham Richard
Published: November 2023

It has been common to believe that only human beings are capable of voluntary action. Philosophy used to teach that it was this capacity that set us apart from animals. Thus, Descartes argued that animals operate like automata, and that only people are free to choose their destiny.
Speech
Authors: Passingham Richard
Published: November 2023

Speech is the most impressive example of human voluntary action. We spend much of our time freely generating words, and we talk for long periods without repeating a sentence. And nobody tells us what to say or when to say it. This chapter pursues this simple notion. If the frontal lobe is a mechanism for selecting responses, one can ask what modifications were needed for it to be able to select verbal ones. Evolution works by modifying existing systems so that they can serve new purposes. The speech system was developed by hijacking the mechanisms for directing non-verbal responses.
Trends in current research
Authors: Hutnik Nimmi
Published: November 2023

It is the aim of contemporary social science to validate its theories by means of empirical observations. A deepening interest in ethnic minority identity, produced perhaps by increasing racial tensions in multi-racial societies alongside ideological concerns for human rights and ethnic dignity, has led to a burgeoning of research into the area. In reviewing the vast body of data that has accumulated since the late 1930s, an emphasis will be placed on how ethnic minority individuals think and feel about themselves rather than how majority group individuals think and feel about their ethnic minority counterparts. Early research saw ethnic minority individuals as socially and culturally inferior to the majority group. Society was exonerated from blame or the need for corrective action because this social and cultural inferiority was attributed to inherited racial inferiority, biologically determined and therefore beyond hope of change. The prevalent ideology of Social Darwinism served to bolster such research and bias its conclusions. In the deficit model, the deficiencies in ethnic minority identity and achievement are attributed not to genetically determined factors, but to historical, economic, political, and socio-psychological forces prevalent in society that had shaped the ethnic minority individual in certain ways. Thus, institutionalized racism was seen as responsible for the deviant, the pathological, and the underprivileged status of ethnic minority groups. Many studies underlined the fact that black Americans had high rates of drug addiction and alcoholism, exhibiting tendencies towards criminal behaviour, personality disorders, and suicide.
The social psychology of music education
Authors: Olsson Bengt
Published: November 2023

Music education takes place within interpersonal and institutional settings, and research in social psychology should be able to contribute to a better understanding of these settings. Social psychology emphasizes the inter action between the social world and the individual, and so a social psychologist’s view of music education is likely to focus on the influence that teachers and learners have upon each other’s behaviour and attitudes. A number of social psychological factors affect what teachers are able to accomplish and what students might achieve in music education.
Aspects of autism that theory of mind cannot explain
Authors: Plaisted Kate C
Published: November 2023

It goes without saying that over the last fifteen years a great deal of research in autism has been generated by the hypothesis that children with autism lack theory of mind skills. But running in parallel with the theory of mind research has been a line of research examining the so-called ‘asocial’ abnormalities in autism. This research can be considered to fall broadly into two camps—that which studies visuospatial processing in autism and that which considers object and pattern processing. The aim of this chapter will not be to provide comprehensive review of that literature on the asocial aspects of autism but to highlight the major theoretical ideas.
The role of the frontal lobes and the amygdala in theory of mind
Authors: Stone Valerie E
Published: November 2023

One male macaque approaches another who is next to a food source. The one approaching moves his head forward, raises his brows, and opens his mouth in a threat display. The other monkey withdraws from the food source, signalling his submission by smacking his lips.

A graduate student is at a Society for Neuroscience conference, talking to a relatively well-known researcher at a poster, when the president of the society comes up. The president greets the researcher. The graduate student excuses himself, ducks his head and discreetly withdraws.
The nature of emotion
Authors: Rolls Edmund T
Published: November 2023

In this chapter the nature of emotion, and its functions, are considered, to provide a foundation for exploring the brain mechanisms involved in emotion in Chapter 4. It is important when considering the neural bases of emotion to know what types of stimuli elicit emotions. This is considered here, and helps to focus analysis on certain types of brain processing in Chapter 4. It is also important to know what the functions of emotion are, for they provides a guide to the neural output systems which may be expected to receive inputs from the brain regions involved in emotions.
Brain-stimulation reward
Authors: Rolls Edmund T
Published: November 2023

Electrical stimulation at some sites in the brain is rewarding, in that animals including humans will work to obtain the stimulation. This phenomenon has been very useful in helping to understand the brain mechanisms that implement reward. The discovery that rats would learn to stimulate electrically some regions of the brain was reported by J. Olds and Milner (1954). Olds noticed that rats would return to a corner of an open field apparatus where stimulation had just been given. He stimulated the rat whenever it went to the corner and found that the animals rapidly learned to go there to obtain the stimulation, by making delivery of it contingent on other types of behaviour, such as pressing a lever in a Skinner box or crossing a shock grid (see J. Olds 1977) (see Fig. 5.1).
A theory of consciousness, and its application to understanding emotion and pleasure
Authors: Rolls Edmund T
Published: November 2023

It might be possible to build a computer which would perform the functions of emotions described in Chapters 3 and 10, and yet we might not want to ascribe emotional feelings to the computer. We might even build the computer with some of the main processing stages present in the brain, and implemented using neural networks which simulate the operation of the real neural networks in the brain (see Chapter 4, the Appendix, and Rolls and Treves 1998), yet we might not still wish to ascribe emotional feelings to this computer. This point often arises in discussions with undergraduates, who may say that they follow the types of point made about emotion in Chapters 3 and 4, yet believe that almost the most important aspect of emotions, the feelings, have not been accounted for, nor their neural basis described. In a sense, the functions of reward and punishment in emotional behaviour are described in Chapters 3 and 10, but what about the subjective aspects of emotion, what about the pleasure? A similar point arises in Chapters 2 and 7, where parts of the taste, olfactory, and visual systems in which the reward value of the taste, smell, and sight of food is represented are described. (One such brain region is the orbitofrontal cortex.) Although the neuronal representation in the orbitofrontal cortex is clearly related to the reward value of food, is this where the pleasantness (the subjective hedonic aspect) of the taste, smell, and sight of food is represented? Again, we could (in principle at least) build a computer with neural networks to simulate each of the processing stages for the taste, smell, and sight of food which are described in Chapter 2 (and more formally in terms of neural networks by Rolls and Treves 1998), and yet would probably not wish to ascribe feelings of pleasantness to the system we have simulated on the computer.
The Inspectors Fail
Authors: Pennington T Hugh
Published: November 2023

What went wrong at Barr’s was not due to bad food law. If good modern legislation was there to protect the public by setting hygiene standards in food businesses and by creating incentives for good practice by punishing those who sold products dangerous to health, why were the laws not being enforced? It was not because Barr’s was being ignored. In the two years before the outbreak his premises had been visited by inspectors eight times, and checked in an informal way by one of his big customers, John Devine.
Inspectorates have Limits
Authors: Pennington T Hugh
Published: November 2023

The identification of strikingly similar patterns of failure with the inspection regimes applied to enterprises as different as butchers and oil rigs indicates the strong likelihood of deep-seated problems rather than isolated local difficulties. This raises a serious question about the utility of traditional inspections as deliverers of what legislators intend.
CJD
Authors: Pennington T Hugh
Published: November 2023

Stephen (Steve) Churchill was born on 14 April 1976 in Stockton-on-Tees. He was a second child. His father was a fireman, and the family lived in a large Victorian semidetached house. Steve was a lively child. He played rugby and was a good swimmer.
Introduction
Authors: Ram-Mohan L Ramdas
Published: November 2023

The dramatic advances in computational methods over the past several decades have provided a remarkable realization of approximate numerical solutions to physical problems which have been considered to be analytically intractable. In particular, the finite element method (FEM) represents a stratagem of proven success for solving boundary value problems in quantum mechanics. This method originates in the principle of stationary action and other variational principles, which are central unifying principles in all areas of physics. In fact, essentially all the differential equations of interest in physics can be derived by the calculus of variations from a corresponding action integral. With its basis in variational principles, the FEM can be expected to hold an increasing appeal among physicists. This book provides an introduction to the FEM through applications in quantum mechanics.
Interpolation polynomials in one dimension
Authors: Ram-Mohan L Ramdas
Published: November 2023

In the finite element method (FEM) in one dimension, we solve for the values of an unknown function f(x) at discrete nodal points in the elements. In this chapter, we consider the representation of f (x) over a given interval using interpolation polynomials, called Lagrange polynomials, assuming we know the values Ji of the function at n discrete nodal points Xi in an interval. With the use of Lagrange interpolation polynomials, we can ensure that f(xi) = Ji and f(x) is approximated by the polynomials in between. This ensures that the function has continuity at the nodes in the element, and the polynomial representation is said to have Co continuity. The end nodes of an element are common to the adjacent elements so that inter ele¬ment continuity of the function is also readily assured. The Lagrange polynomials are discussed in the next section.
Quantum mechanical tunneling
Authors: Ram-Mohan L Ramdas
Published: November 2023

A distinguishing feature of quantum mechanics, as compared with classical mechanics, is the phenomenon of matter exhibiting wave-like properties. A direct consequence of this wave property of particles is the tunneling of particles through potential energy barriers.-3 The classical particle is forbidden from penetrating the barrier region. In this chapter, the problem of one-dimensional (1D) quantum mechanical tunneling of particles through potential barriers of arbitrary shape is treated. We show that tunneling is a mixed boundary value problem, and obtain the action integral that leads to Schrodinger’s equation and at the same time gives the equations defining the boundary conditions (BCs).
Global public goods for health: A flawed paradigm?
Authors: Mooney Gavin , Dzator Janet
Published: November 2023

Many of today’s health problems extend beyond national boundaries and raise questions of their management internationally. Examples include the emergence of new infectious diseases that can affect people across the globe. While such diseases and their effects may be difficult to contain, there could be few more challenging tasks than determining how best to design and finance relevant health intervention programs to deal with them. The question then becomes how resources can best be used, not only to maximize the outcomes of specific health intervention programs but also to promote the health benefits of programs that are not necessarily first and foremost concerned with health.1 In the context of this chapter that question can be narrowed down to asking whether the “Global Public Goods for Health” (GPGH) concept is the best way forward.
Semiclassical Theory of Conductance Fluctuations
Authors: Nakamura Katsuhiro , Harayama Takahisa
Published: November 2023

In the previous chapter, we investigated billiard-ball dynamics. A pair of nearby orbits is found to separate rapidly and to show completely different motions in chaotic billiards. Particles there obeyed classical mechanics. In the microscopic world on the submicron scale, an electron stands for a particle and quantum dots for billiard tables. Here one has to resort to quantum mechanics and the electron obeys the Schrodinger equation. Let us consider the time-independent stationary states.
Orbital Diamagnetism and Persistent Current
Authors: Nakamura Katsuhiro , Harayama Takahisa
Published: November 2023

The theory and experiment of orbital diamagnetism associated with the cyclotron motion have almost a century of history. A charged particle in a magnetic field, receiving a Lorentz force, obeys cyclotron motion, which is a basic principle for accelerators.
Linear Response Theory in the Semiclassical Regime
Authors: Nakamura Katsuhiro , Harayama Takahisa
Published: November 2023

The problem of Sinai billiards or Lorentz gas has received wide attention in the field of mathematical physics for the last few decades. This problem is to place a regular or irregular array of circular hard disks and pursue the complicated motion of a point particle moving between these disks. The central interest lies in giving a proof for the ergodicity and mixing which constitute the foundations of statistical mechanics.
The Monte-Carlo method for the Boltzmann equation
Authors: Lapeyre B , Pardoux É , Sentis R
Published: November 2023

The Boltzmann equation describes the evolution of a population of particles that have binary collisions and travel in a straight line between each collision. This type of equation can be used in a great number of physical models where we want to describe collision phenomena carefully. A significant example of the application is the modelling of the flows around objects in the upper atmosphere (above 70 km) where the distribution of the particles is not necessarily a Maxwellian function. This equation can be also used to model the behaviour of low-density gas in laboratory experiments.
Le´vy Process, Le´vy Flights, and Weierstrass Random Walk
Authors: Zaslavsky George M
Published: November 2023

Considering random processes one can model different situations with different levels of the dependence of events at different time instants, with different levels of memory and correlation between the events, and so on. This kind of an axiomatic approach to the kinetics of dynamical systems is hardly acceptable unless the intrinsic dynamical features will be involved into the random process model in an explicit way.
Measures
Authors: Kantorovitz Shmuel
Published: November 2023

The setting of abstract measure theory is a family A of so-called measurablesubsets of a given set X, and a function so that the measure μ(E) of the set E E A has some ‘intuitively desirable’ property, such as ‘countable additivity’: for mutually disjoint sets Ei E A. In order to make sense, this setting has to deal with a family A that is closed under countable unions. We then arrive to the concept of a measurable space.
Construction of measures
Authors: Kantorovitz Shmuel
Published: November 2023

The purpose of this chapter is to construct measure spaces from more primitive objects. We start with a semi-algebra C of subsets of a given set X and a semi-measure μ defined on it.
Measure and topology
Authors: Kantorovitz Shmuel
Published: November 2023

In this chapter, the space X will be a topological space, and we shall be interested in constructing a measure space (X, M, μ) with a ‘natural’ affinity to the given topology.
Continuous linear functionals
Authors: Kantorovitz Shmuel
Published: November 2023

The general form of continuous linear functionals on Hilbert space was described in Theorem 1.37. In the present chapter, we shall obtain the general form of continuous linear functionals on some of the normed spaces we have encountered. We consider first some basic facts about arbitrary linear maps between normed spaces.
Hilbert spaces
Authors: Kantorovitz Shmuel
Published: November 2023

We recall that the vectors x, y in an inner product space X are (mutually) orthogonal if (x, y) = 0 (cf. Theorem 1.35).
Electron-Lattice Coupling I: Noninteracting Electrons
Authors: Barford William
Published: November 2023

Electron-phonon coupling plays a crucial role in one-dimensional systems. For any value of the electron-phonon coupling an infinite, undistorted polymer chain is unstable with respect to a lower symmetry, distorted structure. This is a consequence of the well-known Peierls theorem (Fr¨ohlich 1954; Peierls 1955), which states that a one-dimensional metal is unstable with respect to a lattice distortion that opens a band gap at the Fermi surface. A proof of bond-alternation in conjugated polymers in the non interacting limit was first presented independently by Ooshika (1957, 1959), and Longuet-Higgins and Salem (1959).
The theory of costly signalling
Authors: Smith John Maynard , Harper David
Published: November 2023

In 1975, Zahavi proposed that animal signals are reliable because they are costly, an idea he called the ‘handicap principle’. Although the idea has since been extended (Zahavi and Zahavi 1997) to lengths that seem to us excessive, the basic idea has been justly influential. Our aim in this chapter is to clarify the concept, and the situations to which it can properly be applied. First, the notion of a ‘cost’ needs discussion. The crucial distinction is between ‘efficacy cost’ (Guilford and Dawkins 1991), the cost necessary to ensure that the information can be reliably perceived, and ‘strategic cost’, the cost needed to ensure honesty and prevent cheating. The efficacy cost is easy to understand: a road sign on a motorway must be larger and more expensive than one on a side road because it must be read at a greater distance, and not because, otherwise, someone would be tempted to lie. Demonstrating that a signal is costly, therefore, is not evidence that it is a handicap. For example, male nightingales sing loudly for most of the night and lose 5–10% of their body mass while doing so (Thomas 2002). However, this heavy investment in song may be needed if males are to be heard by females travelling hundreds of metres above them. Rather it is the great virtuosity of a Nightingale’s song (Hughes et al. 2002) that would make us wonder about strategic costs. Similarly, in Zebra Finches the calls of both sexes, and the songs of males, are louder in the presence of increased levels of white noise (Cynx et al. 1998).
Signals during contests
Authors: Smith John Maynard , Harper David
Published: November 2023

There is an obvious question to ask about signals made during animal contests. How can such signals be reliable when the contestants prefer different outcomes? We have already discussed two possible answers to this question: The signal is an index, either of fighting ability or of need for the resource being contested. It is honest because lying is impossible. The signal is a handicap: in the context of animal fights, it is risky to make, and would be too costly for a low quality individual, or for an individual not in serious need of the resource.
Signals in primates and other social animals
Authors: Smith John Maynard , Harper David
Published: November 2023

This chapter discusses a number of ideas that are only rather distantly related to one another, but which have in common that they were stimulated in the first place by the study of primates, and by a comparison of human and primate signalling: Section 7.2, we discuss the role of signals in the wild, using Vervet Monkeys as our main example. In Section 7.3, still using Vervets as our main example, we discuss the development of the ability to produce a signal in the appropriate circumstances, and to respond appropriately. It turns out that there is no simple answer to the question whether these abilities are learnt or innate: there is certainly an innate component, but competence is improved by experience. However, in Vervets and other primates there is little sign of teaching by parents. We compare the roles of nature and nurture in the acquisition of signalling ability in monkeys with their roles in the acquisition of species-specific song in songbirds.
Tobacco smoke carcinogens: Human uptake and DNA interactions
Authors: Hecht Stephen S
Published: November 2023

Tobacco products cause approximately 30 per cent of all cancer death in developed countries (Peto et al. 1996; World Health Organization 1997). In spite of this, there are over 1 billion smokers in the world (World Health Organization 1997). Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is also a recognized cause of cancer (National Cancer Institute 1999). Mortality from cancers caused by tobacco products-lung, larynx, oral cavity, esophagus, pancreas, kidney, liver, bladder, stomach, and colon­ will continue to be significant in the foreseeable future (International Agency for Research on Cancer 1986b; Doll 1996; Chao et al. 2000). We need to achieve a better understanding of mechanisms of tobacco-induced cancer in humans in order to develop new cancer prevention strategies.
Tobacco smoking in central European countries: Poland
Authors: Zatonski Witold
Published: November 2023

Two simultaneous health phenomena developed in eastern and central Europe after World War II. On the one hand, the incidence of infectious diseases and perinatal/ neonatal mortality fell abruptly. However, at the same time the incidence of and mortality from man-made diseases began to rise rapidly. In the 1970s and 1980s, the incidence of lung cancer, liver cirrhosis (especially in south-eastern Europe), cardiovascular diseases and injury-related mortality (especially in the then Soviet Union) in young and middle-aged adults (particularly among men) reached levels never previously recorded in the world (Feachem 1994; Zatonski and Jha 2000). As a result of the above, at the end of the 1980s the levels of mortality due to infectious diseases and mortality among infants or children and youth before age 20 were comparable to Western standards (World Bank 1996; Zatoflski and Jha 2000). At the same time, adult health represented a public health catastrophe. Premature mortality, especially among young and middle-aged adult men had reached the highest level in the developed world.
Cancer of the prostate
Authors: Levi Fabio , Vecchia Carlo La
Published: November 2023

Prostate cancer is the fourth site for cancer incidence worldwide in men, and the third in developed countries after lung and colon-rectum (Parkin et al. 1999). Considerable changes in incidence rates from prostate carcinoma have been observed in the USA, the European Union, and in most other developed countries, suggesting that an epidemic of this neoplasm occurred in the late 1980s or early 1990s, followed by a fall in rates. A critical appraisal of the descriptive epidemiology of prostate cancer indicates, however, that most trends were likely attributable to changes in diagnostic procedures (mainly, the introduction of prostate-specific antigen-PSA-blood test), rather than substantial changes in risk-factor exposure (Levi et al. 2000).
Tobacco smoking and cancer of the breast
Authors: Trichopoulos Dimitrios , Lagiou Areti
Published: November 2023

Tobacco smoking is the most important human carcinogen, and breast cancer is, at least in the developed world, the type of cancer that causes more deaths among women (Lagiou and Adami 2002). If tobacco smoking were found to be a factor that increases the risk of breast cancer, the implications would extend beyond the potential prevention of a number of breast cancer cases, because of the emotional impact that this form of cancer has. The evidence, however, has been unusually puzzling.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
Authors: Burns David M
Published: November 2023

Tobacco use antedates the arrival of Columbus in the Americas, and tobacco leaf became a mainstay of trade between America and Europe over the next several centuries. However, use of tobacco as cigarettes is a behavior largely confined to the twentieth and now the twenty-first century (USDHHS 2001). Milder blends of flue-cured tobaccos are used for most cigarettes, and they produce a more acid smoke than the tobacco used for pipes and cigars (IARC 1986). Nicotine, the addictive agent sought by the smoker, is less readily absorbed across the oral mucosa from this more acid smoke; and, to satisfy the smokers need for this drug, smoke must be inhaled into much larger surface area of the lung to allow sufficient absorption.
Global tobacco control policy
Authors: Gray Nigel
Published: November 2023

Tobacco control policy has evolved over time and will continue to do so. To every action by the tobacco industry there has been a reaction by public health authorities and vice versa. As a result there has been a continuing struggle between those committed to market expansion (the industry) and those committed to market shrinkage (public health authorities). As a result the market is shrinking in most developed countries while it expands in many, but not all, developing countries. Between 1997 and 1999 world tobacco leaf sales went from 7 975 360 tonnes to 6 341430 tonnes (United States Department of Agriculture 2001), while world cigarette production went from 5 614 830 million pieces in 1996 to 5 573 464 million pieces in 2000 (United States Department of Agriculture 2001). If public health is winning, it is winning very slowly.
Chemical reactions
Authors: Pelcé Pierre , Brujić Jasna , Costier Laurent
Published: November 2023

Since the chemical potentials are a function of the concentration, the pressure and the temperature, condition (4.2) constitutes a relation between these different variables. In general, this equation has several possible solutions. Nevertheless, if all the reacting species are ideal gases there is only one solution (Zeldovich 1938). The equilibrium condition takes a more useful form as long as the chemical species are ideal gases or the solutes are at low concentrations (a weak solution).
First instabilities
Authors: Pelcé Pierre , Brujić Jasna , Costier Laurent
Published: November 2023

First let us consider a linear geometry to which a uniform pressure gradient is applied along the Hele–Shaw cell.
Evolution of growth forms
Authors: Pelcé Pierre , Brujić Jasna , Costier Laurent
Published: November 2023

Thus, the motion of the curve is only described by the normal velocity of these points. The tangential velocity appears as a degree of freedom corresponding to the invariance of the gauge or the parametrisation. The choice of parameterisation depends on the problem in question. The simplest case is clearly V = 0 , but certain constraints may impose other possibilities.
Stochastic growth forms
Authors: Pelcé Pierre , Brujić Jasna , Costier Laurent
Published: November 2023

Consider a square lattice of points in the centre of which we have placed a particle at rest. From an arbitrary point at the edge of the lattice we introduce a second par- ticle which leaps randomly from one site to a neighbouring one in an equiprobable way. As soon as the particle reaches a site next to the central particle, it is attached and thus nucleates an aggregate of two particles. We repeat the same process several times; as soon as the new particle reaches a site next to the aggregate it is attached in the same way.
Polymers, Elastomers and Rubber Elasticity
Authors: Warner M , Terentjev E M
Published: November 2023

The ability to identify the structure of macromolecules is a relatively recent occurrence in history, in spite of our reliance on such materials since ancient times. Some sig-nificant events in this advance have been the development of a rubber industry based on coagulated rubber latex, procedures for vulcanising rubber with sulphur and heat, discovered by Goodyear in 1844, the development of cellulose nitrate and xanthane and the development of gutta percha. One of the founders of polymer chemistry was Hermann Staudinger, who first proposed the now familiar 'chain' idea for these large molecules (Staudinger, 1920). The DuPont Company began synthesising polyesthers and polyarnides in the 1930s which provided an impetus for polymer industry in the United States (Carothers, 1929). Parallel efforts, largely stimulated by the two World Wars, were focussed on phenolformaldehyde resins (Baekeland, 1909) and at Farben-fabriken Bayer (Weil, 1926; Hofmann, 1936).
Cholesteric Elastomers
Authors: Warner M , Terentjev E M
Published: November 2023

Liquids of rod-like units, which possess a certain handedness in their shape or po-larisability, spontaneously form cholesterics, or twisted nematic phases. The breaking of symmetry such that an object differs from its mirror-image (such as right and left hands) is called the chirality. Chiral, nematogenic polymers also form cholesteric phases. Crosslinked networks made from such polymers accordingly have a spontaneously twisted director distribution; they are non-centrosymmetric in their symmetry and possess corresponding physical properties, such as the piezoelectricity. Their director distribution being helical with characteristic length scale in the optical range, they display their chirality in their brilliant colours.
Measuring change
Authors: Streiner David L , Norman Geoffrey R
Published: November 2023

The measurement of change has been a topic of considerable confusion in the medical literature. As clinicians and researchers, we view that the ultimate goal of most treatment medical, surgical, psychosocial, or educational—is to induce change in the patient’s or student’s status. It would appear to follow that the measurement of change in patients’ health state or in a student’s level of understanding is an appropriate goal of research. A number of recent articles (Guyatt et al. 1987; MacKenzie et al. 1986) have advocated this position, both on the grounds that the measurement of change in patient’s condition is the goal of clinical care and should be addressed by research methods, and on the methodological basis that instruments which are responsive to changes in health status are more sensitive measures of the effects of clinical interventions than those which simply assess health status after an intervention.
Fantastic voyages
Authors: Jones Richard A L
Published: November 2023

Some people think that nanotechnology will transform the world. Nanotechnology, to these people, is a new technology which is not with us yet, but whose arrival within the next fifty years is absolutely inevitable. Once the technology is mastered, we will learn to make tiny machines that will be able to assemble anything, atom by atom, from any kind of raw material. The consequences, they believe, will be transforming. Material things of any kind will become virtually free, as well as being immeasurably superior in all respects to anything we have available to us now. These tiny machines will be able to repair our bodies from the inside, cell by celł The threat of disease will be eliminated, and the process of ageing will be only a historical memory. In this world, energy will be dean and abundant and the environment will have been repaired to a pristine state. Space travel wi11 be cheap and easy, and death will be abolished.
The Brownian universe: physics at the nanoscale
Authors: Jones Richard A L
Published: November 2023

People who write about the history of ideas know that great works of literature can change the way people think. But popular films, trashy genre novels, and cheesy television shows can change the intellectual climate just as much as high art can. I am sure that the way people think about nanotechnology now has been profoundly changed by the 1966 science fiction film ‘Fantastic voyage’, later made into a novel by Isaac Asimov and spun out into a Saturday morning television series. The heroes of the film have to save the life of a scientist who knows vital secrets, but who lies in a coma following an attack by the bad guys. He has a blood clot on his brain, inoperable unless the brain surgeon and his team are shrunk to the size of microbes and injected into the scientist’s bloodstream in a similarly sunken submarine. After a series of misadventures, our plucky team manage to destroy the blood clot with (shrunken) laser guns and swim to safety, after their submarine is consumed by a white blood cell.
Machines and mechanisms
Authors: Jones Richard A L
Published: November 2023

‘I sell here, sir, what all the world desires to have—power.’ These are the reported words of Matthew Boulton, the early industrialist, who collaborated with James Watt to manufacture a steam engine of hugely improved design. It was this device, which, perhaps more than any other, made possible the industrial revolution. Before then, if you wanted more work done than human muscle power could manage, then you could use animals like horses or oxen, you could use a windmill, or you could use water power. Animals need to rest, with wind power you are at the mercy of the weather, and the use of water power on an industrial scale relies on a suitable combination of climate and topography. England’s Peak District, where I am writing these words, combines a hilly landscape with a quite stupendous propensity for rain, and, as a consequence, was industrialised very early on the basis of its water power, but the inhabitants of drier and flatter places were less lucky. So the development of power sources which had much greater capacity than animals, which were reliable, and which did not depend on a favourable location, provided both power and wealth to their inventors. At the beginning of the industrial revolution, the ultimate power source was the energy won by burning coal. The energy in coal is chemical energy; this chemical energy is converted into heat energy by burning it in air, and the heat energy is converted to mechanical energy by boiling water to drive a steam engine.
Our nanotechnological future
Authors: Jones Richard A L
Published: November 2023

Perhaps the most radical visions of the nanotechnology evangelists will not come to pass. Nonetheless, nanotechnology, in the form of machines structured on the nanoscale that do interesting and useful things, will certainly play an increasingly large part in our lives over the next half-century. How revolutionary the impact of these new technologies will be is difficult to say, and I am conscious that scientists have a very bad track record in prediction. Scientists almost always greatly overestimate how much can be done over a ten-year time period, largely because most scientists are quite unaware of the scale of effort and ingenuity required to take a viable idea from the laboratory and turn it into an engineering and economic success. But equally, scientists typically underestimate what can be done in fifty years. Working scientists are often cautious, incremental people, and their time horizons are as often determined by the typical duration of a grant from a funding body-three years-as by some Jong-term goal or vision.
Detecting Agents
Authors: Johnson Susan C
Published: November 2023

This paper reviews a recent set of behavioural studies that examine the scope and nature of the representational system underlying theory-of-mind development. Studies with typically developing infants, adults and children with autism all converge on the claim that there is a specialized input system that uses not only morphological cues, but also behavioural cues to categorize novel objects as agents. Evidence is reviewed in which 12-to 15-month-old infants treat certain non-human objects as if they have perceptual/attentional abilities, communicative abilities and goal-directed behaviour.
Facial expressions, their communicatory functions and neuro-cognitive substrates
Authors: Blair R J R
Published: November 2023

Human emotional expressions serve a crucial communicatory role allowing the rapid transmission of valence information from one individual to another. This paper will review the literature on the neural mechanisms necessary for this communication: both the mechanisms involved in the production of emotional expressions and those involved in the interpretation of the emotional expressions of others. Finally, reference to the neuro-psychiatric disorders of autism, psychopathy and acquired sociopathy will be made. In these conditions, the appropriate processing of emotional expressions is impaired. In autism, it is argued that the basic response to emotional expressions remains intact but that there is impaired ability to represent the referent of the individual displaying the emotion.
Dressing the mind Properly for the Game
Authors: Sally David
Published: November 2023

Game theory as a theoretical and empirical approach to interaction has spread from economics to psychology, political science, sociology and biology. Numerous social interactions—foraging, talking, trusting, coordinating, competing—can be formally represented in a game with specific rules and strategies. These same interactions seem to rely on an interweaving of mental selves, but an effective strategy need not depend on explicit strategizing and higher mental capabilities, as less sentient creatures or even lines of software can play similar games. Human players are distinct because we are less consistent and our choices respond to elements of the setting that appear to be strategically insignificant.
Economic evaluation using patient-level data
Authors: Drummond Michael E , Sculpher Mark J , Torrance George W , O’Brien Bernie J , Stoddart Greg L
Published: November 2023

In this chapter we review some general principles concerning economic evaluation using patient-level data, which usually means the collection of data alongside randomized controlled trials. Many of the issues covered are also pertinent, however, when an observational study is used as a vehicle for economic evaluation ( for example, analysis of patient records or charts). The intent of the chapter is to examine general issues that are common to all the techniques of economic evaluation. The discussion of specific issues, such as the collection and analysis of utility or willingness-to-pay data, can be found in earlier chapters.
Fundamental Concepts And Equations
Authors: Novotný A , Straškraba I
Published: November 2023

This chapter is introductory. In the first section, we introduce the basic mathematical notions and notation used throughout the whole book. The physical background to the governing equations of gas dynamics is presented in Section 1.2. In Section 1.3 we list an important number of advanced mathematical concepts and results needed in the sequel. Finally, in the annexed Section 1.4, a survey of basic general concepts from functional analysis is briefly recalled.
Setting the scene
Authors: Jean Yves
Published: November 2023

Transition metal complexes are molecules containing one or more metallic centres (Ti, Fe, Ni, etc.) bound to a certain number of ‘ligands’. These latter may be atoms (H, O, Cl, etc.), molecular fragments (CR3, NR2, SH, etc.), or molecules that are themselves stable in the absence of any interaction with a metal (NR3, PR3, R2C=CR2), benzene, etc.). In this book, we shall study the electronic structure of these complexes by molecular orbital (MO) theory. We shall seek to establish the shape, the energetic ordering, and the electronic occupation of the MO; starting from this detailed description of the electronic structure, we shall consider problems of geometry and reactivity.
Applications
Authors: Jean Yves
Published: November 2023

A detailed knowledge of the electronic structure of transition metal complexes, and in particular of the shape and electronic occupation of the d-block orbitals, enables several problems related to their structure and reactivity to be studied. The examples discussed in this chapter illustrate a method for analysing these problems that usually relies on a study of orbital interactions between the ligand and the metal centre, and/or on a correlation diagram that links the orbitals of two different structures. The answers that one may hope to obtain from this type of analysis are qualitativerather than quantitative. For example, one can often determine which of two possible conformations of a complex is the more stable, and why, without being able to deduce the energy difference between them. Once the electronic factors that favour a particular structure are established, it may well also be possible to predict the type of changes that will follow from, for example, a change in the nature of the ligands. A qualitative interpretation of the structure and reactivity of complexes is exceedingly interesting for chemists, even if studies of a different type, that depend on accurate calculations, are necessary to provide theoretical data that may usefully be compared, quantitatively, with experimental results.
The General Theory of Relativity
Authors: Hawley John F , Holcomb Katherine A
Published: November 2023

Einstein’s conviction that the universe obeyed the relativity principle led him not only to revise Newton’s mathematical equations of mechanics, but even more drastically, to discard the concept of absolute space and time. It proved unnecessary to alter Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism, since they already obeyed the correct invariance law; it was their lack of Galilean invariance that had motivated Einstein in the first place. Special relativity thus brought mechanics and electromagnetics into full consistency.
Alexander matrices and Alexander polynomials
Authors: Gilbert N D , Porter T
Published: November 2023

Although the method that we have used to calculate the Alexander polynomial of a knot only uses the theory of determinants, the trouble with it is to know why it works. It is easy to check that the result is invariant under the Reidemeister moves but it would be nice to link it in with other invariants. ‘It would be nice’ sounds a weak reason, but often when one can do something by a different method, it is possible to see how to ‘squeeze’ the method a bit to get out more detailed information. What we will do is give a second method of calculating Alexander polynomials, this time using presentations of groups. The payoffs are (i) methods that can be applied to other group presentations which we will use later in Chapter 11; (ii) intermediate stages and related constructions that show more of the fine detail of the situation even in the case of knots; and (iii) new invariants that have important geometric significance although in this book we will not be able to do justice to this aspect.
Intermediate rank lattice rules
Authors: Sloan I H , Joe S
Published: November 2023

The previous chapter considered lattice rules of maximal rank. Now in this chapter we shall look at certain lattice rules that have rank less than or equal to s.
From Chern-Simons to WZW via Path Integrals
Authors: Fine Dana S
Published: November 2023

Direct analysis of the Chern-Simons path integral reduces quantum expectations of unknotted Wilson lines in Chern-Simons theory on S3 with group G to n-point functions in the WZW model of maps from S2 to G. The reduction hinges on the characterization of 𝒜/ 𝒢n, the space of connections modulo those gauge transformations which are the identity at a point n, as itself a principal fiber bundle with affine-linear fiber.
Low Frequency Expansions
Authors: Dassios George , Kleinman Ralph
Published: November 2023

The motivation for considering low frequency expansions is to replace the general scattering problems described in Chapter I by sequences of simpler problems. If one is interested only in scattering at extremely low frequencies, then, in the spirit of Rayleigh (1897a), it is possible to replace the scattering problem by a potential problem. But, if one wants to improve the approximation, then additional terms in a power series expansion may be found (Stevenson 1953a,b) by solving boundary value or transmission problems for the Laplace equation in acoustics and electromagnetics and for the elastostatic equation in elasticity, each of which is simpler than the original scattering problem. In this chapter we describe this process in detail for each of the problems discussed in Chapter 1.
Spin Interactions in Solids
Authors: Karlsson Erik b.
Published: November 2023

To understand the nuclear spin interactions in solids we must start with the free atoms. In a free atom the interaction between orbital and spin motion of the electron produces the fine structure, which gives rise to the J = L + S multiplets. The hyperfine structure is the further splitting, caused by the coupling of J to the nuclear spin I, where the levels are described by their total angular momentum F =J +I.

Splittings of the F levels due to the magnetic interaction between I and J are smaller than the fine-structure splittings by a factor governed by the ratio of the nuclear magneton μN to the Bohr magneton μB, where μN/ μB =mc/mp ≈1/2000. From the ‘nuclear’ point of view this interaction is conveniently visualized as a motion of the nuclear magnetic moment and its spin I in the field produced by the atomic electrons.