Medical housing "lines".

General practitioners are often asked for medical certificates (housing "lines") by applicants for council housing who claim to have medical problems requiring housing priority. The results of a survey by questionnaire showed that general practitioners in Edinburgh do not know how the housing system works and that they seem to overestimate their patients'' chances of obtaining suitable council housing. General practitioners need to know how the housing system works, and communication between general practitioners and housing departments should be improved. A comparison was also made between the number of medical points awarded by a community medicine specialist and a group of general practitioners who had written housing "lines" for their patients. The general practitioners tended to award more points than the specialist. Social priority for housing should be recognised as an independent factor and a new category of top social priority added.     

The threshold for radiation stochastic effects: arguments "pro" and "contra". Applied realization

This study represents the analysis of the data available in the literature and the author's findings concerning the issue of a shape of the dose stochastic effect curve in the range of low levels of radiation (LLR). The data obtained from radioepidemiological and experimental investigations are used. Also considered are the arguments "pro" and "contra" regarding approximation of these curves by means of a linear function (linear non-threshold conception) or as a quasi-plateau (threshold conception). The above analysis allows us to conclude that the threshold conception is more reliable than the non-threshold one from the standpoint of the analysis of postulate bases, theoretical paradigms, the mechanisms for radiobiological effects, epidemiological and experimental data. It is suggested that a separate radiogenic cancer risk estimation should be used in case of LLR and high level radiation instead of one overall estimation by means of the linear non-threshold model.