House value as an indicator of cumulative wealth is strongly related to morbidity and mortality risk in older people: a census-based cross-sectional and longitudinal study

Background: There has been relatively little research into health inequalities in older populations. This may be partly explained by the difficulty in identifying appropriate indicators of socio-economic status for older people. Ideally, indicators of socio-economic status to be used in studies of health inequalities in older populations should incorporate some measure of life-time socio-economic standing, and house value may fill this role. This study examined whether an indicator of accumulated wealth based on a combination of housing tenure and house value was a strong predictor of ill-health in older populations.
Methods: A total of 191 848 people aged =65 years and not living in communal establishments were identified from the 2001 Northern Ireland Census and followed for 5 years. Self-reported health and mortality risk by housing tenure/house value groupings were examined while controlling for a range of other demographic and socio-economic characteristics.
Results: Housing tenure/house value was highly correlated with other indicators of socio-economic status. Public-sector renters had worse self-reported health and higher mortality rates than owner occupiers but significant gradients were also found between those living in the highest-and lowest-valued owner-occupier properties. The relationship between housing tenure and value was unchanged by adjustment for indicators of social support and quality of the physical environment. Adjustment for limiting long-term illness and self-reported health at baseline narrowed but did not eliminate the health gains associated with living in more expensive housing.
Conclusions: House value of residence is an accessible and powerful indicator of accumulated wealth that is highly correlated with current health status and predictive of future mortality risk in older populations.

Strength and permeation properties as an indicator of durability of concrete

Durability of concrete is a great concern to all designers, owners and users of reinforced concrete structures. As a result, more restrictive regulations are being introduced in various Codes of Practice dealing with the design of these structures. Attempts are being made by various researchers to develop performance based specification. For this to be successful standard non destructive tests are required which will be used to assess the durability of concretes. In parallel with this approach, a research team in Queen’s University Belfast, U. K., investigated the effect of different mix parameters on workability, strength and various permeation properties. Furthermore, durability parameters such as freeze-thaw salt scaling resistance and carbonation depth were also investigated. The research was part funded by the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR). This paper reports of the findings from this study. The results from this investigation showed that some of the non destructive tests used were reasonably well correlated with carbonation and freeze-thaw salt scaling resistance of CEM I concrete. If the mix parameters such as aggregate-cement ratio or water-cement ratio are known, better correlation can be obtained. Further investigation is required varying other mix parameters including various aggregates, admixtures and air entrainments before the result can be used for developing mix design methods for durable concretes. Also long term site tests are required to validate the results obtained from the accelerated laboratory tests used to study the carbonation resistance and freeze-thaw salt scaling resistance.

Isotopic composition of inorganic carbon as an indicator of benzoate degradation by Pseudomonas putida: temperature, growth rate and pH effects.

Degradation experiments of benzoate by Pseudomonas putida resulted in enzymatic carbon isotope fractionations. However, isotopic temperature effects between experiments at 20 and 30 °C were minor. Averages of the last three values of the CO2 isotopic composition (δ13CCO2(g)) were more negative than the initial benzoate δ13C value (−26.2‰ Vienna Pee Dee Belenite (VPDB)) by 3.8, 3.4 and 3.2‰ at 20, 25 and 30 °C, respectively. Although the maximum isotopic temperature difference found was only 0.6‰, more extreme temperature variations may cause larger isotope effects. In order to understand the isotope effects on the total inorganic carbon (TIC), a better measure is to calculate the proportions of the inorganic carbon species (CO2(g), CO2(aq) and HCO3−) and to determine their cumulative δ13CTIC. In all three experiments δ13CTIC was more positive than the initial isotopic composition of the benzoate at a pH of 7. This suggests an uptake of 12C in the biomass in order to match the carbon balance of these closed system experiments.

Flow-mediated dilatation of the brachial artery is a poorly reproducible indicator of microvascular function in Type I diabetes mellitus

Aim: Two Type I diabetes and control group comparator studies were conducted to assess the reproducibility of FMD and to analyse blood flow data normally discarded during FMD measurement.

Design: The studies were sequential and differed only with regard to operator and ultrasound machine. Seventy-two subjects with diabetes and 71 controls were studied in total.

Methods: Subjects had FMD measured conventionally. Blood velocity waveforms were averaged over 10 pulses post forearm ischaemia and their component frequencies analysed using the wavelet transform, a mathematical tool for waveform analysis. The component frequencies were grouped into 11 bands to facilitate analysis.

Results: Subjects were well-matched between studies. In Study 1, FMD was significantly impaired in subjects with Type I diabetes vs. controls (median 4.35%, interquartile range 3.10-4.80 vs. 6.50, 4.79-9.42, P < 0.001). No differences were detected between groups in Study 2, however. However, analysis of blood velocity waveforms yielded significant differences between groups in two frequency bands in each study.

Conclusions: This report highlights concerns over the reproducibility of FMD measures. Further work is required to fully elucidate the role of analysing velocity waveforms after forearm ischaemia.

Transonic Aeroelastic Stability Analysis Using a Kriging-Based Schur Complement Formulation

A method is described to allow searches for transonic aeroelastic instability of realistically sized aircraft models in multidimensional parameter spaces when computational fluid dynamics are used to model the aerodynamics. Aeroelastic instability is predicted from a small nonlinear eigenvalue problem. The approximation of the computationally expensive interaction term modeling the fluid response is formulated to allow the automated and blind search for aeroelastic instability. The approximation uses a kriging interpolation of exact numerical samples covering the parameter space. The approach, demonstrated for the Goland wing and the multidisciplinary optimization transport wing, results in stability analyses over whole flight envelopes at an equivalent cost of several steady-state simulations.

Flagging up sunburn: a printable, multicomponent, UV-indicator that warns of the approach of erythema

A printable, multicomponent, UV-sensitive indicator which provides different coloured, flag-like warnings of the approach to erythema is described.

Novel photocatalyst-based colourimetric indicator for oxygen: Use of a platinum catalyst for controlling response times

The preparation and characterisation of a novel, UV-activated, solvent-based, colourimetric indicator for oxygen is described, comprising a redox dye (methylene blue, MB), semiconductor photocatalyst (Pt-TiO2), and a sacrificial electron donor (SED = glycerol), all dispersed/dissolved in a polymer medium (sulfonated polystyrene. SPS). Upon exposure to UVA light, the Pt-TiO2/MB/glycerol/SPS oxygen indicator is readily photobleached as the MB is converted into its oxygen-sensitive, leuco form, LMB. In contrast to its non-platinised TiO2 counterpart (TiO2/MB/glycerol/SPS oxygen indicator), the recovery of the original colour is faster (ca. 1.5 days cf. 5 days at 21 degrees C). This is due to the catalytic action of the 0.38 wt% platinum loaded onto the semiconductor photocatalyst. TiO2, on the oxidation of the photogenerated LMB by ambient O-2. Furthermore, by increasing the level of platinum loading, recovery times can be decreased further; e.g. a Pt-TiO2/MB/glycerol/SPS oxygen indicator with platinum level of 1.52 wt% recovers fully within 12 h. A study of the kinetics of recovery as a function of film thickness revealed the recovery step is not controlled by the diffusion of O-2 through the film, but instead dependent upon the slow rate of oxidation of LMB to MB by O-2 in the low dielectric polymer encapsulation medium. Other work showed this recovery is only moderately dependant upon temperatures above -10 degrees C and very sensitive to relative humidity above 30% RH. Potential uses of this UV light activated indicator are discussed briefly. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.