Carpal tunnel syndrome associated with oral bisphosphonates. A population-based cohort study

© 2016 Carvajal et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Background: Bisphosphonates are widely used to prevent osteoporotic fractures. Some severe musculoskeletal reactions have been described with this medication; among them, some cases of carpal tunnel syndrome. Thus, the aim of this study was to explore whether bisphosphonates may be associated with this syndrome. Methods: A cohort study was conducted to compare exposed to unexposed women; the exposed group was that composed of women having received at least one prescription of an oral bisphosphonate. For the purpose, we used information from The Health Improvement Network (THIN) database. The outcome of interest was defined as those women diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome. A survival analysis was performed; the Cox proportional hazard model was used to calculate hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals, and to adjust for identified confounding variables. Results: Out of a sample of 59,475 women older than 51 years, 19,825 were treated with bisphosphonates during the period studied. No differences in age distribution or mean follow-up time were observed between the two groups in comparison. Overall, there were 572 women diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome, 242 (1.2%) in the group exposed to bisphosphonates, and 330 (0.8%) in the unexposed. An adjusted hazard ratio of developing carpal tunnel syndrome of 1.38 (95%CI, 1.15-1.64) was found for women exposed to bisphosphonates; no significant changes in the hazard ratios were found when considering different levels of bisphosphonate exposure

Analysis of Bancarization Through Sofware as a Process of Financial Inclusion in Chimborazo

In a globalized world, one of the most important measures of economic development is financial inclusion that defines a fundamental element that guarantees access to financial products and services by the most vulnerable population; The purpose of this research was to analyze the levels of banking in the province of Chimborazo, which is equivalent to financial deepening through loans and deposits in addition to financial density. The research approach was quantitative, the deductive analytical method evaluated to evaluated nd study the specific financial deepening data based on the VAB (gross value added, deposits and loans), the method of applying linear models through the use of the Gretl 19 software can investigate the existing correlation of financial inclusion against placements and deposits, in addition to the application of financial density. According to the results obtained, it is concluded that there is a positive incidence of fundraising and placement at the level of financial depth, however, the factor that has the greatest influence on depth from any perspective is the provincial gross value added, which allowed to infer that The greater the gross value added, the greater the financial deepening in order to encourage investment in productive business activities. Keywords: financial inclusion, banking, software, Chimborazo. Resumen En un mundo globalizado, una de las medidas más importantes del desarrollo económico es la inclusión financiera que define un elemento fundamental que garantiza el acceso a productos y servicios financieros por la población más vulnerable; la presente investigación tuvo por objetivo analizar los niveles de bancarización como un proceso de inclusión financiera en la provincia de Chimborazo, considerando tanto profundización financiera a través de colocaciones y captaciones además de la densidad financiera. El enfoque de la investigación fue cuantitativo, el método analítico deductivo permitió evaluar y estudiar los datos obtenidos de profundización financiera en función del VAB (valor agregado bruto, captaciones y colocaciones), se aplicó modelos lineales mediante el uso del software Gretl 19 permitiendo investigar la correlación existente de la inclusión financiera frente a colocaciones y captaciones, además la aplicación de la densidad financiera. Según resultados obtenidos se concluyó que existe una incidencia positiva de las captaciones y colocaciones en el nivel de profundización financiera, sin embargo, el factor que tiene mayor influencia en la profundización desde cualquier perspectiva es el valor agregado bruto provincial, lo cual permitió inferir que, a mayor valor agregado bruto, mayor profundización financiera con el fin de fomentar la inversión en actividades productivas empresariales. Palabras clave: inclusión financiera, bancarización, software, Chimborazo

Short-range Correlations in a CBF description of closed-shell nuclei

The Correlated Basis Function theory (CBF) provides a theoretical framework to treat on the same ground mean-field and short-range correlations. We present, in this report, some recent results obtained using the CBF to describe the ground state properties of finite nuclear systems. Furthermore we show some results for the excited state obtained with a simplified model based on the CBF theory.Comment: 10 latex pages plus 6 uuencoded figure

Robust ab initio calculation of condensed matter: transparent convergence through semicardinal multiresolution analysis

We present the first wavelet-based all-electron density-functional calculations to include gradient corrections and the first in a solid. Direct comparison shows this approach to be unique in providing systematic ``transparent'' convergence, convergence with a priori prediction of errors, to beyond chemical (millihartree) accuracy. The method is ideal for exploration of materials under novel conditions where there is little experience with how traditional methods perform and for the development and use of chemically accurate density functionals, which demand reliable access to such precision.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, 4 tables. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. (updated to include GGA

Three-body continuum discretization in a basis of transformed harmonic oscillator states

The inclusion of the continuum in the study of weakly-bound three-body systems is discussed. A transformed harmonic oscillator basis is introduced to provide an appropriate discrete and finite basis for treating the continuum part of the spectrum. As examples of the application of the method the strength functions corresponding to several operators that couple the ground state to the continuum are investigated, for 6He, and compared with previous calculations. It is found that the energy moments of these distributions are accurately reproduced with a small basis set.Comment: 12 figures, submitted to PR

Four-body continuum-discretized coupled-channels calculations using a transformed harmonic oscillator basis

The scattering of a weakly bound three-body system by a target is discussed. A transformed harmonic oscillator basis is used to provide an appropriate discrete and finite basis for treating the continuum part of the spectrum of the projectile. The continuum-discretized coupled channels framework is used for the scattering calculations. The formalism is applied to different reactions, 6He+12C at 229.8 MeV, 6He+64Zn at 10 and 13.6 MeV, and 6He+208Pb at 22 MeV, induced by the Borromean nucleus 6He. Both the Coulomb and nuclear interactions with a target are taken into account.Comment: Published in Phys. Rev.

One-on-one situation decision-making according to equipment in youth basketball

The goal was to verify with which ball participants improved the attackers' decisions in one-on-one game situations during youth basketball. Participants were 88 9- to 11-year-old boys from eight teams. We organized a three-day tournament consisting of 12 games, in which four games were played with each ball among all the teams. The balls differed only in their weight (440 g, 485 g, 540 g). The videos filmed were observed by two observers trained. The dependent variables were number of decisions, appropriate decisions, inappropriate decisions and ratio of correct to incorrect decisions, in the one-on-one situation. Participants made more decisions, and more correct (but not incorrect) decisions, when using the 440 -g rather than the regulation and 540 -g ball. This view requires that youth coaches act as a facilitator of learning, designing practice context according the objective evidence.This research was supported by Fundación Séneca: Agencia Regional de Ciencia y Tecnología de la Región de Murcia: 15349/PHCS/1

Substring filtering for low-cost linked data interfaces

Recently, Triple Pattern Fragments (TPFS) were introduced as a low-cost server-side interface when high numbers of clients need to evaluate SPARQL queries. Scalability is achieved by moving part of the query execution to the client, at the cost of elevated query times. Since the TPFS interface purposely does not support complex constructs such as SPARQL filters, queries that use them need to be executed mostly on the client, resulting in long execution times. We therefore investigated the impact of adding a literal substring matching feature to the TPFS interface, with the goal of improving query performance while maintaining low server cost. In this paper, we discuss the client/server setup and compare the performance of SPARQL queries on multiple implementations, including Elastic Search and case-insensitive FM-index. Our evaluations indicate that these improvements allow for faster query execution without significantly increasing the load on the server. Offering the substring feature on TPF servers allows users to obtain faster responses for filter-based SPARQL queries. Furthermore, substring matching can be used to support other filters such as complete regular expressions or range queries