Access to a Car and the Self-Reported Health and Mental Health of People Aged 65 and Older in Northern Ireland

This article examines relationships between access to a car and the self- reported health and mental health of older people. The analysis is based on a sample of N 1⁄4 65,601 individuals aged 65 years and older from the Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study linked to 2001 and 2011 census returns. The findings from hierarchical linear and binary logistic multilevel path models indicate that having no access to a car is related to a considerable health and mental health disadvantage particularly for older people who live alone. Rural–urban health and mental health differences are mediated by access to a car. The findings support approaches that emphasize the importance of autonomy and independence for the well-being of older people and indicate that not having access to a car can be a problem for older people not only in rural but also in intermediate and urban areas, if no sufficient alternative forms of mobility are provided.

Implementation of Selective Packet Destruction on Wireless Open-Access Research Platform

Interesting wireless networking scenarios exist wherein network services must be guaranteed in a dynamic fashion for some priority users. For example, in disaster recovery, members need to be able to quickly block other users in order to gain sole use of the radio channel. As it is not always feasible to physically switch off other users, we propose a new approach, termed selective packet destruction (SPD) to ensure service for priority users. A testbed for SPD has been created, based on the Rice University Wireless open-Access Research Platform and been used to examine the feasibility of our approach. Results from the testbed are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of SPD and show how a balance between performance and acknowledgement destruction rate can be achieved. A 90% reduction in TCP & UDP traffic is achieved for a 75% MAC ACK destruction rate.

Contested urbanism: Access and control issues in Tundikhel, Kathmandu

Contested Open Spaces?: Access and control issues in Tundikhel, Kathmandu

Public spaces play a role of political, economic and cultural transformation of cities and the impact of these transformations on the nature of public space.

Urban open space(s) in Kathmandu have been an important part of the city’s urbanism. Historically they have played an important role in the city as spaces for religious, cultural, social and political and military activities during the 300 years of unified monarchy. Throughout the civil war period (Maoist insurgency between 1996 and 2006) they became material locations for political activities, and a site for protests and dharnas. In post-conflict Kathmandu, especially since the abolition of Monarchy in May 28, 2008, these spaces are increasingly seen being claimed by street hawkers, informal sellers and individuals reflecting a new set of users and functions, whereas a significant part of Tundikhel still remains under the military occupation posing important questions around access, identity and control of an important space.


Public spaces are broadly defined as crossroads where different paths and trajectories meet, sometimes overlapping and other times colliding (Madanipour, 2003). Using Tudikhel in Kathmandu, this research examines the increasing collision and contestations witnessed through social, political and neoliberal interactions. It explores how spaces are constantly
contested, negotiated and as a result reshaped through these interactions. It is observed that multiple forces are at play to gain control and access of this important open space, leading to increasing fragmentation of the space, and erosion of its historic significance both as cultural venue and a symbol of democracy in modern Nepal. It is argued that increasing disconnection of Tudikhel from wider urban setting has contributed to exacerbation of these contestations

UK publicly funded Clinical Trials Units supported a controlled access approach to share individual participant data but highlighted concerns

OBJECTIVES: Evaluate current data sharing activities of UK publicly funded Clinical Trial Units (CTUs) and identify good practices and barriers.

STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: Web-based survey of Directors of 45 UK Clinical Research Collaboration (UKCRC)-registered CTUs.

RESULTS: Twenty-three (51%) CTUs responded: Five (22%) of these had an established data sharing policy and eight (35%) specifically requested consent to use patient data beyond the scope of the original trial. Fifteen (65%) CTUs had received requests for data, and seven (30%) had made external requests for data in the previous 12 months. CTUs supported the need for increased data sharing activities although concerns were raised about patient identification, misuse of data, and financial burden. Custodianship of clinical trial data and requirements for a CTU to align its policy to their parent institutes were also raised. No CTUs supported the use of an open access model for data sharing.

CONCLUSION: There is support within the publicly funded UKCRC-registered CTUs for data sharing, but many perceived barriers remain. CTUs are currently using a variety of approaches and procedures for sharing data. This survey has informed further work, including development of guidance for publicly funded CTUs, to promote good practice and facilitate data sharing.

Queen's University Belfast, RCUK Open Access Compliance Report 2014/2015

Queen's University Belfast has submitted its open access compliance report to the RCUK for 2014/2015. Queen's receives an annual open access block grant from RCUK. The funds are made available to support universities in meeting the requirements of the RCUK open access policy, in particular meeting the cost of article processing charges (APC) to make articles open access through the publisher.

Hyperbolic Polaritonic Crystals Based on Nanostructured Nanorod Metamaterials

Surface plasmon polaritons usually exist on a few suitable plasmonic materials; however, nanostructured plasmonic metamaterials allow a much broader range of optical properties to be designed. Here, bottom-up and top-down nanostructuring are combined, creating hyperbolic metamaterial-based photonic crystals termed hyperbolic polaritonic crystals, allowing free-space access to the high spatial frequency modes supported by these metamaterials.

Cross-layer Framework for Fine-grained Channel Access in Next Generation High-density WiFi Networks

Densely deployed WiFi networks will play a crucial role in providing the capacity for next generation mobile internet. However, due to increasing interference, overlapped channels in WiFi networks and throughput efficiency degradation, densely deployed WiFi networks is not a guarantee to obtain higher throughput. An emergent challenge is how to efficiently utilize scarce spectrum resources, by matching physical layer resources to traffic demand. In this aspect, access control allocation strategies play a pivotal role but remain too coarse-grained. As a solution, this research proposes a flexible framework for fine-grained channel width adaptation and multi-channel access in WiFi networks. This approach, named SFCA (Sub-carrier Fine-grained Channel Access), adopts DOFDM (Discontinuous Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) at the PHY layer. It allocates the frequency resource with a sub-carrier granularity, which facilitates the channel width adaptation for multi-channel access and thus brings more flexibility and higher frequency efficiency. The MAC layer uses a frequency-time domain backoff scheme, which combines the popular time-domain BEB scheme with a frequency-domain backoff to decrease access collision, resulting in higher access probability for the contending nodes. SFCA is compared with FICA (an established access scheme) showing significant outperformance. Finally we present results for next generation 802.11ac WiFi networks.

Beam division multiple access transmission for massive MIMO communications

We study multicarrier multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) systems, in which the base station employs an asymptotically large number of antennas. We analyze a fully correlated channel matrix and provide a beam domain channel model, where the channel gains are independent of sub-carriers. For this model, we first derive a closed-form upper bound on the achievable ergodic sum-rate, based on which, we develop asymptotically necessary and sufficient conditions for optimal downlink transmission that require only statistical channel state information at the transmitter. Furthermore, we propose a beam division multiple access (BDMA) transmission scheme that simultaneously serves multiple users via different beams. By selecting users within non-overlapping beams, the MU-MIMO channels can be equivalently decomposed into multiple single-user MIMO channels; this scheme significantly reduces the overhead of channel estimation, as well as, the processing complexity at transceivers. For BDMA transmission, we work out an optimal pilot design criterion to minimize the mean square error (MSE) and provide optimal pilot sequences by utilizing the Zadoff-Chu sequences. Simulations demonstrate the near-optimal performance of BDMA transmission and the advantages of the proposed pilot sequences.

The Restorability Assessment and Endodontic Access Cavity Interface

Successful root canal treatment requires management of the bacterial infection within the root canal space and protection of residual tooth structure with direct/indirect restorations. Long-term success depends upon prevention of re-infection of the root canal space as well as ensuring favorable distribution of the occlusal forces throughout the residual tooth structure. Appropriate planning and design of the final restoration prior to initiating root canal treatment is paramount in achieving this objective. This article describes simultaneous restorability assessment and access cavity preparation to optimize outcome of both endodontic and prosthodontic treatment of the endodontically involved tooth.

Event-driven implicit authentication for mobile access control

In order to protect user privacy on mobile devices, an event-driven implicit authentication scheme is proposed in this paper. Several methods of utilizing the scheme for recognizing legitimate user behavior are investigated. The investigated methods compute an aggregate score and a threshold in real-time to determine the trust level of the current user using real data derived from user interaction with the device. The proposed scheme is designed to: operate completely in the background, require minimal training period, enable high user recognition rate for implicit authentication, and prompt detection of abnormal activity that can be used to trigger explicitly authenticated access control. In this paper, we investigate threshold computation through standard deviation and EWMA (exponentially weighted moving average) based algorithms. The result of extensive experiments on user data collected over a period of several weeks from an Android phone indicates that our proposed approach is feasible and effective for lightweight real-time implicit authentication on mobile smartphones.

Social Ecological Constraints to Park Use in Communities with Quality Access

Evidence correlates physical activity, psychological restoration, and social health to proximity to parks and sites of recreation. The purpose of this study was to identify perceived constraints to park use in low-income communities facing significant health disparities, with access to underutilized parks. We used a series of focus groups with families, teens, and older adults in neighborhoods with similar demographic distribution and access to parks over 125 acres in size. Constraints to park use varied across age groups as well as across social ecological levels, with perceived constraints to individuals, user groups, communities, and society. Policies and interventions aimed at increasing park use must specifically address barriers across social ecological levels to be successful.