Morbidity trends in the population of a specialised homeless primary care service.

An increasing body of research demonstrates that homelessness is an independent risk factor for morbidity and premature death. This paper compares the frequency of diagnoses between 2003 and 2009 in the computerised records of a specialist practice for homeless people. The changing morbidity trends revealed offer a basis for comparison with other services and suggest benefits from collaborative working, particularly around substance misuse and mental health.

Kinetics of moisture expansion in fired clay ceramics: a (time)(1/4) law.

We report the results of experiments to estimate the moisture expansion of several modern and ancient clay brick ceramics from the time of manufacture. From these data we propose a new expansion law, in which the expansive strain increases as (age)(1/4) approximately. Such time dependence is consistent with a mechanism in which expansion arises from a diffusion-controlled rehydration reaction on a linear or low-dimension structure.