An ambition of healthcare policy has been to move more acute services into community settings. This systematic literature review presents analysis of published operational research methods for modelling patient flow within community healthcare, and for modelling the combination of patient flow and outcomes in all settings. Assessed for inclusion at three levels -with the references from included papers also assessed -25 ''Patient flow within community care'', 23 ''Patient flow and outcomes'' papers and 5 papers within the intersection are included for review. Comparisons are made between each paper's setting, definition of states, factors considered to influence flow, output measures and implementation of results. Common complexities and characteristics of community service models are discussed with directions for future work suggested. We found that in developing patient flow models for community services that use outcomes, transplant waiting list may have transferable benefits.

Investigated in this paper is the coupled fluid–body motion of a thin solid body undergoing a skimming impact on a shallow-water layer. The underbody shape (the region that makes contact with the liquid layer) is described by a smooth polynomic curve for which the magnitude of underbody thickness is represented by the scale parameter C. The body undergoes an oblique impact (where the horizontal speed of the body is much greater than its vertical speed) onto a liquid layer with the underbody’s trailing edge making the initial contact. This downstream contact point of the wetted region is modelled as fixed (relative to the body) throughout the skimming motion with the liquid layer assumed to detach smoothly from this sharp trailing edge. There are two geometrical scenarios of interest: the concave case ($$C<0$$ C < 0 producing a hooked underbody) and the convex case ($$C > 0$$ C > 0 producing a rounded underbody). As C is varied the rebound dynamics of the motion are predicted. Analyses of small-time water entry and of water exit are presented and are shown to be broadly in agreement with the computational results of the shallow-water model. Reduced analysis and physical insights are also presented in each case alongside numerical investigations and comparisons as C is varied, indicating qualitative analytical/numerical agreement. Increased body thickness substantially changes the interaction structure and accentuates inertial forces in the fluid flow.

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If a body enters a viscous-inviscid fluid layer near a wall, then significant effects can be felt from the presence of incident vorticity, viscous forces and nonlinear forces. The focus here is on the response in the outer edge of such a wall layer. Nonlinear two-dimensional unsteady behaviour is examined through modelling, computation and analysis applied for a thin body travelling streamwise upstream or downstream or staying still relative to the wall. The wall layer with its balance between inviscid and viscous effects interacts freely with the body movement, causing relatively high magnitudes of pressure on top of the body and nonlinear responses in the gap between the body and the wall. The study finds explicit solutions for the motion of the body, separation of the flow arising near the wall and possible instabilities occurring over the length scale of any short body.

Recent investigations highlight the possibility of electroreception within arthropods through charged mechanosensory hairs. This discovery raises questions about the influence of electrostatic interaction between hairs and surrounding electrical fields within this sensory modality. Here, we investigate these questions by studying electrostatic coupling in arrays of hairs. We establish the notion of sensitivity contours that indicate regions within which point charges deflect hairs beyond a given threshold. We then examine how the contour’s shape and size and the overall hair behaviour change in response to variations in the coupling between hairs. This investigation unveils synergistic behaviours whereby the sensitivity of hairs is enhanced or inhibited by neighbouring hairs. The hair spacing and ratio of a system’s electrical parameters to its mechanical parameters influence this behaviour. Our results indicate that electrostatic interaction between hairs leads to emergent sensory properties for biologically relevant parameter values. The analysis raises new questions around the impact of electrostatic interaction on the current understanding of sensory hair processes, such as acoustic sensing, unveiling new sensory capabilities within electroreception such as amplification of hair sensitivity and location detection of charges in the environment.

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