A 5 item version of the Compliance Questionnaire for Rheumatology (CQR5) successfully identifies low adherence to DMARDs

© 2013 Hughes et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly citedTaking DMARDs as prescribed is an essential part of self-management for patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis. To date, the Compliance Questionnaire for Rheumatology (CQR) is the only self-report adherence measure created specifically for and validated in rheumatic diseases. However, the factor structure of the CQR has not been reported and it can be considered lengthy at 19 items. The aim of this study was to test the factor structure of the CQR and reduce the number of items whilst retaining robust explanation of non-adherence to DMARDs. Such a reduction would increase the clinical utility of the scale, to identify patients with sub-optimal adherence to DMARDs in the clinic as well as for research purposes.Peer reviewe

Patients' Expectations before and Satisfaction after Ultrasound Guided Foam Sclerotherapy for Varicose Veins

AbstractObjectivesUltrasound guided foam sclerotherapy (UGFS) is a minimally invasive treatment for varicose veins (VV) whose clinical and cost-effectiveness remains incompletely defined. The aim of the current study was to examine patients' expectations before and satisfaction after UGFS for VV in terms of relief of lower limb symptoms, improvement in appearance, and beneficial effect on life-style.MethodsA consecutive series of 351 patients (464 limbs) undergoing UGFS for VV completed questionnaires one week prior to and six months after treatment.ResultsPre and post-treatment response rates were 80%; 60% returned both questionnaires. Virtually all patients were expecting improvement in lower limb symptoms; these were exceeded in a third. Most patients expected cosmetic improvement and these were largely met. Two-thirds of patients expected significant life-style (clothes, work, social) benefits and outcomes were slightly less than expected. A quarter expected improvement in their interpersonal relationships. This benefit was greater than expected occurring in one-third of patients. Overall, a quarter of patients had their expectations exceeded and 10% (appearance and relationships) to 25% (clothing, work and social and leisure activities) were left with unmet expectations.DiscussionWhen specifically asked most patients admit to having a wide range of expectations in relation to their VV treatment, many of them probably unanticipated by the clinician. However, present data indicate that UGFS is usually able to meet, and often exceeds, these physical and psychosocial needs and expectations. UGFS is, therefore, a highly effective treatment for VV from the patients' perspective

You ≠ Me: Individual differences in the structure of social cognition

This study investigated the structure of social cognition, and how it is influenced by personality; specifically, how various socio-cognitive capabilities, and the pattern of inter-relationships and co-dependencies among them differ between divergent personality styles. To measure social cognition, a large non-clinical sample (n = 290) undertook an extensive battery of self-report and performance-based measures of visual perspective taking, imitative tendencies, affective empathy, interoceptive accuracy, emotion regulation, and state affectivity. These same individuals then completed the Personality Styles and Disorders Inventory. Latent Profile Analysis revealed two dissociable personality profiles that exhibited contrasting cognitive and affective dispositions, and multivariate analyses indicated further that these profiles differed on measures of social cognition; individuals characterised by a flexible and adaptive personality profile expressed higher action orientation (emotion regulation) compared to those showing more inflexible tendencies, along with better visual perspective taking, superior interoceptive accuracy, less imitative tendencies, and lower personal distress and negativity. These characteristics point towards more efficient self-other distinction, and to higher cognitive control more generally. Moreover, low-level cognitive mechanisms served to mediate other higher level socio-emotional capabilities. Together, these findings elucidate the cognitive and affective underpinnings of individual differences in social behaviour, providing a data-driven model that should guide future research in this area

Integrability and Conformal Symmetry in the BCS model

The exactly solvable BCS Hamiltonian of superconductivity is considered from several viewpoints: Richardson's ansatz, conformal field theory, integrable inhomogenous vertex models and Chern-Simons theory.Comment: Latex with macros included, 12 pages, Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Statistical Field Theories, Como 18-23 June 2001. Editors: Andrea Cappelli and Giuseppe Mussardo. to be published by Kluwer, Academic Publishers. Corrected some typos and further acknowledgment

Compact boson stars in K field theories

We study a scalar field theory with a non-standard kinetic term minimally coupled to gravity. We establish the existence of compact boson stars, that is, static solutions with compact support of the full system with self-gravitation taken into account. Concretely, there exist two types of solutions, namely compact balls on the one hand, and compact shells on the other hand. The compact balls have a naked singularity at the center. The inner boundary of the compact shells is singular, as well, but it is, at the same time, a Killing horizon. These singular, compact shells therefore resemble black holes.Comment: Latex, 45 pages, 25 figures, some references and comments adde

Ugandan stakeholder hopes and concerns about gene drive mosquitoes for malaria control:New directions for gene drive risk governance

This is the final version. Available on open access from BMC via the DOI in this record. Availability of data and materials: The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the UK DATA SERVICE repository, https://ukdataservice.ac.uk/. The datasets during and/or analyzed during the current study are also available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.Background: The African Union’s High-Level Panel on Emerging Technologies identified gene drive mosquitoes as a priority technology for malaria elimination. The first field trials are expected in 5–10 years in Uganda, Mali or Burkina Faso. In preparation, regional and international actors are developing risk governance guidelines which will delineate the framework for identifying and evaluating risks. Scientists and bioethicists have called for African stakeholder involvement in these developments, arguing the knowledge and perspectives of those people living in malaria-afflicted countries is currently missing. However, few African stakeholders have been involved to date, leaving a knowledge gap about the local social-cultural as well as ecological context in which gene drive mosquitoes will be tested and deployed. This study investigates and analyses Ugandan stakeholders’ hopes and concerns about gene drive mosquitoes for malaria control and explores the new directions needed for risk governance. Methods: This qualitative study draws on 19 in-depth semi-structured interviews with Ugandan stakeholders in 2019. It explores their hopes for the technology and the risks they believed pertinent. Coding began at a workshop and continued through thematic analysis. Results: Participants’ hopes and concerns for gene drive mosquitoes to address malaria fell into three themes: (1) ability of gene drive mosquitoes to prevent malaria infection; (2) impacts of gene drive testing and deployment; and, (3) governance. Stakeholder hopes fell almost exclusively into the first theme while concerns were spread across all three. The study demonstrates that local stakeholders are able and willing to contribute relevant and important knowledge to the development of risk frameworks. Conclusions: International processes can provide high-level guidelines, but risk decision-making must be grounded in the local context if it is to be robust, meaningful and legitimate. Decisions about whether or not to release gene drive mosquitoes as part of a malaria control programme will need to consider the assessment of both the risks and the benefits of gene drive mosquitoes within a particular social, political, ecological, and technological context. Just as with risks, benefits—and importantly, the conditions that are necessary to realize them—must be identified and debated in Uganda and its neighbouring countries.British Academ

Temperature dependence of the charge carrier mobility in gated quasi-one-dimensional systems

The many-body Monte Carlo method is used to evaluate the frequency dependent conductivity and the average mobility of a system of hopping charges, electronic or ionic on a one-dimensional chain or channel of finite length. Two cases are considered: the chain is connected to electrodes and in the other case the chain is confined giving zero dc conduction. The concentration of charge is varied using a gate electrode. At low temperatures and with the presence of an injection barrier, the mobility is an oscillatory function of density. This is due to the phenomenon of charge density pinning. Mobility changes occur due to the co-operative pinning and unpinning of the distribution. At high temperatures, we find that the electron-electron interaction reduces the mobility monotonically with density, but perhaps not as much as one might intuitively expect because the path summation favour the in-phase contributions to the mobility, i.e. the sequential paths in which the carriers have to wait for the one in front to exit and so on. The carrier interactions produce a frequency dependent mobility which is of the same order as the change in the dc mobility with density, i.e. it is a comparably weak effect. However, when combined with an injection barrier or intrinsic disorder, the interactions reduce the free volume and amplify disorder by making it non-local and this can explain the too early onset of frequency dependence in the conductivity of some high mobility quasi-one-dimensional organic materials.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, to be published in Physical Review

Pulse-mode quantum projection synthesis: Effects of mode mismatch on optical state truncation and preparation

Quantum projection synthesis can be used for phase-probability-distribution measurement, optical-state truncation and preparation. The method relies on interfering optical lights, which is a major challenge in experiments performed by pulsed light sources. In the pulsed regime, the time frequency overlap of the interfering lights plays a crucial role on the efficiency of the method when they have different mode structures. In this paper, the pulsed mode projection synthesis is developed, the mode structure of interfering lights are characterized and the effect of this overlap (or mode match) on the fidelity of optical-state truncation and preparation is investigated. By introducing the positive-operator-valued measure (POVM) for the detection events in the scheme, the effect of mode mismatch between the photon-counting detectors and the incident lights are also presented.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.