52,893 research outputs found
Podiatry services for patients with arthritis: an unmet need
Foot problems are extremely common in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
There is ample evidence that foot pain, either alone or as a comorbidity, contributes
significantly to disability. Despite the high prevalence of foot disease in RA, this
problem is often trivialised or underappreciated. The inequity in foot health provision
for patients with rheumatic disorders in New Zealand has recently been highlighted.
Expertise in dealing with foot problems is often limited among healthcare
professionals, and it has been argued that better integration of podiatric services into
rheumatology services would be beneficial. The aim of this paper is to highlight the
major issues related to foot care for patients with arthritis and provide key
recommendations that should implemented to improve access to podiatric services in
New Zealand
Examining the relationship between pubertal stage, adolescent health behaviours and stress
Background. This paper examines the associations between puberty and three important health behavlours (smoking, food intake and exercise) and explores whether these associations are mediated by puberty's relationship to stress and psychological difficulties.Method. Data were taken from the first year of the ongoing, 5-year, Health and Behaviours in Teenagers Study (HABITS). This is a school-based study set in 36 schools in London. In the first year of the study, 4320 students (2578 boys, 1742 girls) in their first year of secondary education took part.Results. Among girls, being more pubertally advanced was associated with a greater likelihood of having tried smoking. Among boys, being more pubertally advanced was associated with a greater likelihood of having tried smoking, a higher intake of high-fat food and higher levels of exercise. More pubertally advanced girls experienced more stress but not more psychological difficulties. There were no associations between puberty and either stress or psychological difficulties in boys. Stress and psychological difficulties were associated with health behaviours in girls and boys, but neither of these factors mediated the relationship between pubertal stage and health behaviours found in girls.Conclusions. These results suggest that the onset of puberty has a marked effect on the development of health behaviours. Puberty was related to an acceleration of the development of unhealthy behaviours, except for exercise behaviour in boys, where advanced puberty was associated with more exercise. These changes were unrelated to adolescent issues of stress and a causal explanation for these associations must be sought elsewhere
Deadlock detection of Java Bytecode
This paper presents a technique for deadlock detection of Java programs. The
technique uses typing rules for extracting infinite-state abstract models of
the dependencies among the components of the Java intermediate language -- the
Java bytecode. Models are subsequently analysed by means of an extension of a
solver that we have defined for detecting deadlocks in process calculi. Our
technique is complemented by a prototype verifier that also covers most of the
Java features.Comment: Pre-proceedings paper presented at the 27th International Symposium
on Logic-Based Program Synthesis and Transformation (LOPSTR 2017), Namur,
Belgium, 10-12 October 2017 (arXiv:1708.07854
Effect Of Ethanolic Extract From Elaeophorbia drupifera Leaves On The Gastrointestinal Smooth Muscle Of The Rabbi
The crude extract from E. drupifera leaves was prepared using standard methods. The rabbit intestine was removed and separated into three segments (duodenum, jejunum and ileum). About 3-4cm of each segment was mounted in an organ bath containing Tyrode solution at 37 Ā± 1oC. The spontaneous and rhythmic contractions were recorded and the effects of the crude extract (2-g/ml) on the tissue responses were investigated. The effect of Ca2+ concentration and temperature of the bathing fluid were also studied. From the results, the extract (2-300g/ml) increased the amplitudes of contractions in a dose-dependent manner. However, regional differences occurred in the responsiveness of the tissue preparations. The ED50 values were found to be 25.12, 44.67 and 15.85 Ī¼g/ml for the duodenum, jejunum and ileum respectively. Certain conditions such as calcium availability and increase in bath temperature favoured the action of the extract on the tissue preparations. Drugs like mepyramine or methysergide failed to influence the action of the extract. However, the extract-induced contractions were prevented or blocked by noradrenaline or atropine sulphate. The contractions were however ameliorated by the addition of acetyleholine or neostigmine to the bath solution. From the results, it is likely that the extract causes increased contractions of the tissue preparation via acetylcholine-like agent, which stimulates the muscarinic cholinoceptors.
Key words: E. drupifera, extract, leaves, intestinal contractions, increase, cholinergic.
Nigerian Journal of Physiological Sciences Vol.19(1&2) 2004: 60-6
Conductance interaction identification by means of Boltzmann distribution and mutual information analysis in conductance-based neuron models
Conductance interaction identification by means of Boltzmann distribution and mutual information analysis in conductance-based neuron models
Group Strategyproof Pareto-Stable Marriage with Indifferences via the Generalized Assignment Game
We study the variant of the stable marriage problem in which the preferences
of the agents are allowed to include indifferences. We present a mechanism for
producing Pareto-stable matchings in stable marriage markets with indifferences
that is group strategyproof for one side of the market. Our key technique
involves modeling the stable marriage market as a generalized assignment game.
We also show that our mechanism can be implemented efficiently. These results
can be extended to the college admissions problem with indifferences
Self-adaptation of Mutation Rates in Non-elitist Populations
The runtime of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) depends critically on their
parameter settings, which are often problem-specific. Automated schemes for
parameter tuning have been developed to alleviate the high costs of manual
parameter tuning. Experimental results indicate that self-adaptation, where
parameter settings are encoded in the genomes of individuals, can be effective
in continuous optimisation. However, results in discrete optimisation have been
less conclusive. Furthermore, a rigorous runtime analysis that explains how
self-adaptation can lead to asymptotic speedups has been missing. This paper
provides the first such analysis for discrete, population-based EAs. We apply
level-based analysis to show how a self-adaptive EA is capable of fine-tuning
its mutation rate, leading to exponential speedups over EAs using fixed
mutation rates.Comment: To appear in the Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on
Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN
Bilateral invasive lobular breast cancer in a female teenager: A rare finding of a common disease - Case report and review of literature
Management of cancer patients in low-resource communities presents enormous challenges. Breast cancer is a public health problem in Cameroon and occurs mostly in elderly women. The predominant histological type is a duct carcinoma. Lobular carcinoma in teenagers is rare. In this report we present a case of bilateral invasive lobular carcinoma of the breast that was confirmed on biopsies in a 22-year-old female. We present this rare finding and review the pathological, clinical and radiographic challenges of the disease. Nodules in the breast from patients of any age should be submitted for histology. Public education is beneficial and should be intensified
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