Effects of a pain self-management intervention combining written and video elements on health-related quality of life among people with different levels of education

Combining written and video material could increase the impact of health education for people with less education, but more evidence is needed about the impact of combined materials in different formats, especially in the context of chronic pain self-management. This study tested the impact of combining written information about self-managing chronic joint pain, which used language at a high reading level, with a DVD containing narrative video material presented directly by patients, using language at a lower reading level. Physical and mental health-related quality of life (36-item Short Form Health Survey) was measured among 107 men with hemophilia before and six months after being randomly assigned to receive an information booklet alone or the booklet plus the DVD. Analysis of covariance was used to compare health outcomes between randomized groups at follow-up, using the baseline measures as covariates, with stratified analyses for groups with different level of education. The DVD significantly improved mental health-related quality of life among those with only high school education. Video material could therefore supplement written information to increase its impact on groups with less education, and combined interventions of this type could help to achieve health benefits for disadvantaged groups who are most in need of intervention.This work was supported by the Haemophilia Society UK and the Institute for Health Policy and Research, London Metropolitan University. Baxter and Bayer Healthcare also made small contributions to the costs of the DVD production

What is acceptance, and how could it affect health outcomes for people receiving renal dialysis?

Renal dialysis is a life-saving treatment for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) but is burdensome, invasive and expensive. Patients’ experiences of dialysis and the outcomes of their treatment could potentially be improved by focusing on ‘acceptance’. However, the concept of acceptance has been used in different ways. This article examines ways that acceptance has been conceptualised in research on chronic illness generally and ESRD specifically, and makes proposals for research to understand better what acceptance means for people with ESRD. The aim is to assist the development of acceptance-related measures and interventions to support people with ESRD.N/

Chromhome: a rich internet application for accessing comparative chromosome homology maps.

BACKGROUND: Comparative genomics has become a significant research area in recent years, following the availability of a number of sequenced genomes. The comparison of genomes is of great importance in the analysis of functionally important genome regions. It can also be used to understand the phylogenetic relationships of species and the mechanisms leading to rearrangement of karyotypes during evolution. Many species have been studied at the cytogenetic level by cross species chromosome painting. With the large amount of such information, it has become vital to computerize the data and make them accessible worldwide. Chromhome http://www.chromhome.org is a comprehensive web application that is designed to provide cytogenetic comparisons among species and to fulfil this need. RESULTS: The Chromhome application architecture is multi-tiered with an interactive client layer, business logic and database layers. Enterprise java platform with open source framework OpenLaszlo is used to implement the Rich Internet Chromhome Application. Cross species comparative mapping raw data are collected and the processed information is stored into MySQL Chromhome database. Chromhome Release 1.0 contains 109 homology maps from 51 species. The data cover species from 14 orders and 30 families. The homology map displays all the chromosomes of the compared species as one image, making comparisons among species easier. Inferred data also provides maps of homologous regions that could serve as a guideline for researchers involved in phylogenetic or evolution based studies. CONCLUSION: Chromhome provides a useful resource for comparative genomics, holding graphical homology maps of a wide range of species. It brings together cytogenetic data of many genomes under one roof. Inferred painting can often determine the chromosomal homologous regions between two species, if each has been compared with a common third species. Inferred painting greatly reduces the need to map entire genomes and helps focus only on relevant regions of the chromosomes of the species under study. Future releases of Chromhome will accommodate more species and their respective gene and BAC maps, in addition to chromosome painting data. Chromhome application provides a single-page interface (SPI) with desktop style layout, delivering a better and richer user experience.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

The concept of divine immanence in the theology of the nineteenth century

The dominant immanental character of nineteenth century theology was directly related to the epistemological problem in modern thought, which had reached a climax with Kant's bifurcation of knowledge into noumenal and phenomenal elements and his consequent restriction of metaphysics. The developmental philosophy of history, advanced by Lessing and Herder, and the Romanticist individuality and wholeness of outlook, were further contributory influences upon the pattern of the theology of the period.Schleiermacher's theology of experience embodied the Romanticist outlook in making a state of feeling, orientated upon the universe, normative for religious truth. Having rejected metaphysics, he confined all determinate knowledge of God and of His relation to the world, to a description of states of religious consciousness.In German idealist philosophy, Romanticism found a variant expression as an organon of reflective awareness. Hegel made God the final term of a system of rational harmony in which the Idea triumphs over all antitheses of experiential reality. His system could be characterized as a 'panentheism', in which God is not simply identified with the world, but is made the Absolute, under which the world is organically subsumed.Baur used the Hegelian dialectic to remove the transcendent uniqueness of Christian history, regarding the latter as the necessary evolution of the Absolute. In Strauss, the same pattern of thought, coupled with a radical Biblical criticism, reduced Gospel history to universal religious truth, immanent to the religious consciousness. Biedermenn did not effectively fulfill his aim of uniting the philosophy of the Absolute with an independent, objective world of reality.In British theology, Coleridge introduced an idealist impulse, in terms of which an idea, or spiritual truth, was conceived to be more important than Biblical history or the historic dogma. Toward the end of the century, neo-Hegelianism developed a more absolute idealist system which made God the end term of a process of development, a. view which accorded well with contemporary, optimistic and evolutionary thought.The historical positivism of Ritschl eliminated metaphysical or transcendental knowledge of God. Doctrinal knowledge concerning God was made subject to the judgment of its worth for the individual. His method promoted an approach to the study of religious history whereby universal religious values were gleaned from the various historical manifestations of religion. In the thought of Troeltsch, God is little more than a principle of purposive development within the flow of historical process.The present reaction to nineteenth century immanentism was prefigured within that century itself, in Kierkegaard's rejection of a theory of knowledge and his insistence upon the absolute disjunction between the human and the Divine, a chasm which can be bridged only by the paradoxical action of Divine grace and the leap of human faith. Martin Kahler challenged syncretic historicism, in the centrality which he accorded to Christology and in his belief that Biblical history is qualified by suprahistorical factors distinguishing it from general history.In these protests we have the essential elements of contemporary revived transcendentalism, and Biblically-centred theology. We may properly conclude that, in Biblical faith, a view of God's sovereign holiness is found united with a belief in the immediacy of His presence in revelation and providential action

Multiparameter radar observations of time evolution of convective storms: evaluation of water budgets and latent heating rates

Includes bibliographical references (page 1109).One advantage of dual-polarization radars is the ability to differentiate between water and ice phases in storms. The application of difference reflectivity (ZDP) in the analysis of mixed-phase precipitation is presented. Here, ZDP analysis is used to obtain the fraction of water and ice in mixed-phase precipitation. The techniques developed are applied to data collected on 9 August 1991 during the Convection and Precipitation Electrification experiment. Time series of storm total liquid and ice water contents are computed. The liquid and ice water contents are used in a water budget equation to obtain the net latent heating of the convective storm. It is shown that the latent heating profile shows good correlation with the updraft and electric field increases in the time evolution of the storm

A Reading Preference and Risk Taxonomy for Printed Proprietary Information Compromise in the Aerospace and Defense Industry

The protection of proprietary information that users print from their information systems is a significant concern. Researchers have repeatedly indicated that human behaviors and perception are important factors influencing the information security of organizations and have called for more research. In this study, we focused on the investigation of user reading preference, user perceived risk, and seven demographics in the context of compromising printed proprietary information. A Reading Preference and Risk (RPR) taxonomy was developed to classify users respective to potential risks to printed proprietary information. Results of a Webbased survey show that employees were dispersed across the RPR Taxonomy with 15.1% identified as potentially problematic. Our results also showed an overall reading preference for print materials and a high-perceived risk for compromising printed proprietary information. Significant differences between the constructs and demographics suggest that a user’s likelihood to compromise printed proprietary information is affected by frequency of user exposure, confidentiality level, and previous user experience with the compromise of proprietary information. Additionally, age, gender, and a user’s desire to retain e-training content in memory had a significant effect on user reading preference

Stigma: content analysis of the representation of people with personality disorder in the U.K. popular press, 2001-2012.

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article:Bowen, M. (2016). Stigma: content analysis of the representation of people with personality disorder in the U.K. popular press, 2001-2012. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, which has been published in final form at doi: 10.1111/inm.12213. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.There is evidence that people with personality disorder are stigmatised within healthcare settings; however, little is known about the role that the media has played in the wider processes of stigmatisation. This research examines the degree to which the popular press in the United Kingdom have established a link between personality disorder and homicide, and the impact this may have had on the processes of stigmatisation. Using a content analysis approach, it was identified that there were 552 articles in the popular press, between 2001 and 2012, that made reference to personality disorder and 42% of those articles established a link with homicide. Comparison between two time periods, 2001-2006 and 2007-2012, identified that there was a significant reduction in the proportion of homicide articles (Pearson (5, n=552) = 5.64, p > .05), however, the effect size of this change was only small. These findings suggest that the press may have contributed to the processes of stigmatisation, and may have encouraged the general public to hold prejudicial attitudes towards people with a diagnosis of personality disorder

Patterns of local and nonlocal water resource use across the western U.S. determined via stable isotope intercomparisons

In the western U.S., the mismatch between public water demands and natural water availability necessitates large interbasin transfers of water as well as groundwater mining of fossil aquifers. Here we identify probable situations of nonlocal water use in both space and time based on isotopic comparisons between tap waters and potential water resources within hydrologic basins. Our approach, which considers evaporative enrichment of heavy isotopes during storage and distribution, is used to determine the likelihood of local origin for 612 tap water samples collected from across the western U.S. We find that 64% of samples are isotopically distinct from precipitation falling within the local hydrologic basin, a proxy for groundwater with modern recharge, and 31% of samples are isotopically distinct from estimated surface water found within the local basin. Those samples inconsistent with local water sources, which we suggest are likely derived from water imported from other basins or extracted from fossil aquifers, are primarily clustered in southern California, the San Francisco Bay area, and central Arizona. Our isotope-based estimates of nonlocal water use are correlated with both hydrogeomorphic and socioeconomic properties of basins, suggesting that these factors exert a predictable influence on the likelihood that nonlocal waters are used to supply tap water. We use these basin properties to develop a regional model of nonlocal water resource use that predicts (r2 = 0.64) isotopically inferred patterns and allows assessment of total interbasin transfer and/or fossil aquifer extraction volumes across the western U.S.Fil: Good, Stephen P.. University of Utah; Estados UnidosFil: Kennedy, Casey D.. United States Department Of Agriculture. Agriculture Research Service; Estados UnidosFil: Stalker Jeremy C.. Jacksonville University; Estados UnidosFil: Chesson, Lesley A.. IsoForensics; Estados UnidosFil: Valenzuela, Luciano Oscar. Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales. Departamento de Arqueología. Laboratorio de Ecología Evolutiva Humana (Sede Quequén); Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. University of Utah; Estados UnidosFil: Beasley, Melanie M.. University of California at San Diego; Estados UnidosFil: Ehleringer, James R. University of Utah; Estados UnidosFil: Bowen, Gabriel J.. University of Utah; Estados Unido