141 research outputs found
New Light on Chromotherapy: Grakov's ‘Virtual Scanning’ System of Medical Assessment and Treatment
Virtual Scanning incorporates novel uses of colored light into its system of health assessment and therapy. Independent investigations of its effectiveness in Russia and the UK have revealed unique abilities to correct incipient and fully developed chronic conditions. As such it forms an important new addition to the field of Chromotherapy. It differs from most others, in that its development depended on discoveries in neuroscience by its inventor, and subsequent application of new models in computational neuroscience
ISGylation drives basal breast tumour progression by promoting EGFR recycling and Akt signalling
ISG15 is an ubiquitin-like modifier that is associated with reduced survival rates in breast cancer patients. The mechanism by which ISG15 achieves this however remains elusive. We demonstrate that modification of Rab GDP-Dissociation Inhibitor Beta (GDI2) by ISG15 (ISGylation) alters endocytic recycling of the EGF receptor (EGFR) in non-interferon stimulated cells using CRISPR-knock out models for ISGylation. By regulating EGFR trafficking, ISGylation enhances EGFR recycling and sustains Akt-signalling. We further show that Akt signalling positively correlates with levels of ISG15 and its E2-ligase in basal breast cancer cohorts, confirming the link between ISGylation and Akt signalling in human tumours. Persistent and enhanced Akt activation explains the more aggressive tumour behaviour observed in human breast cancers. We show that ISGylation can act as a driver of tumour progression rather than merely being a bystander.</p
Intention to use sport concussion guidelines among community-level coaches and sports trainers
Objectives: Sporting bodies have developed guidelines for managing community-level players with suspected concussion in response to international consensus statements on concussion in sport. The purpose of this study was to examine the factors that influence the intended use of concussion guidelines among community-level coaches and sports trainers from two popular football codes in Australia: Australian football and rugby league. Design: Cross-sectional survey. Methods: The survey, based on an extended theory of planned behaviour model, was completed by 183 Australian football coaches, 121 Australian football sports trainers, 171 rugby league coaches, and 142 rugby league sports trainers. Results: Personal norms and self-efficacy were significant predictors of intention to use concussion guidelines, although the relationship between self-efficacy and intention was stronger among Australian football coaches than rugby league coaches. Analysis of the salient beliefs that underpin self-efficacy found that coaches, irrespective of football code, felt less familiar (2 = 25.70, p < 0.001) and less experienced (2 = 31.56, p < 0.001) than sports trainers in using the concussion guidelines. At the same time, Australian football personnel, irrespective oftheir team role, feltthatthey had insufficienttime (2 = 8.04, p < 0.01) and resources (2 = 12.31, p < 0.001) to implement the concussion guidelines relative to rugby league personnel. Conclusions: Programmes aimed at increasing the intended use of sport concussion guidelines should focus on enhancing self-efficacy and leveraging personal norms. Increasing coaches’ familiarity and experience in using the concussion guidelines would also be warranted, as would finding ways to overcome the perceived time and resource constraints identified among Australian football personnel
Walk well:a randomised controlled trial of a walking intervention for adults with intellectual disabilities: study protocol
Background - Walking interventions have been shown to have a positive impact on physical activity (PA) levels, health and wellbeing for adult and older adult populations. There has been very little work carried out to explore the effectiveness of walking interventions for adults with intellectual disabilities. This paper will provide details of the Walk Well intervention, designed for adults with intellectual disabilities, and a randomised controlled trial (RCT) to test its effectiveness. Methods/design - This study will adopt a RCT design, with participants allocated to the walking intervention group or a waiting list control group. The intervention consists of three PA consultations (baseline, six weeks and 12 weeks) and an individualised 12 week walking programme. A range of measures will be completed by participants at baseline, post intervention (three months from baseline) and at follow up (three months post intervention and six months from baseline). All outcome measures will be collected by a researcher who will be blinded to the study groups. The primary outcome will be steps walked per day, measured using accelerometers. Secondary outcome measures will include time spent in PA per day (across various intensity levels), time spent in sedentary behaviour per day, quality of life, self-efficacy and anthropometric measures to monitor weight change. Discussion - Since there are currently no published RCTs of walking interventions for adults with intellectual disabilities, this RCT will examine if a walking intervention can successfully increase PA, health and wellbeing of adults with intellectual disabilities
A binary tree approach to template placement for searches for gravitational waves from compact binary mergers
We demonstrate a new geometric method for fast template placement for
searches for gravitational waves from the inspiral, merger and ringdown of
compact binaries. The method is based on a binary tree decomposition of the
template bank parameter space into non-overlapping hypercubes. We use a
numerical approximation of the signal overlap metric at the center of each
hypercube to estimate the number of templates required to cover the hypercube
and determine whether to further split the hypercube. As long as the expected
number of templates in a given cube is greater than a given threshold, we split
the cube along its longest edge according to the metric. When the expected
number of templates in a given hypercube drops below this threshold, the
splitting stops and a template is placed at the center of the hypercube. Using
this method, we generate aligned-spin template banks covering the mass range
suitable for a search of Advanced LIGO data. The aligned-spin bank required ~24
CPU-hours and produced 2 million templates. In general, we find that other
methods, namely stochastic placement, produces a more strictly bounded loss in
match between waveforms, with the same minimal match between waveforms
requiring about twice as many templates with our proposed algorithm. Though we
note that the average match is higher, which would lead to a higher detection
efficiency. Our primary motivation is not to strictly minimize the number of
templates with this algorithm, but rather to produce a bank with useful
geometric properties in the physical parameter space coordinates. Such
properties are useful for population modeling and parameter estimation
Template bank for compact binary mergers in the fourth observing run of Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo, and KAGRA
Template banks containing gravitational wave (GW) waveforms are essential for
matched-filtering GW search pipelines. We describe the generation method, the
design, and validation of the template bank used by the GstLAL-based inspiral
pipeline to analyze data from the fourth observing run of LIGO scientific,
Virgo, and KAGRA collaboration. This paper presents a template bank containing
templates that include merging neutron star - neutron star,
neutron star - black hole, and black hole - black hole systems up to a total
mass of . Motivated by observations, component masses below
have dimensionless spins ranging between , while component
masses between to have dimensionless spins ranging between
, where we assume spin-aligned systems. The low-frequency cutoff is
Hz. The templates are placed in the parameter space according to the
metric via a binary tree approach which took
minutes when jobs were parallelized. The template bank generated with this
method has a match or higher for of the injections, thus being as
effective as the template placement method used for the previous observation
runs. The volumes of the templates are computed prior to template placement and
the nearby templates have similar volumes in the coordinate space, henceforth,
enabling a more efficient and less biased implementation of population models.
SVD sorting of the O4 template bank has been renewed to use post-Newtonian
phase terms, which improved the computational efficiency of SVD by nearly times as compared to conventional SVD sorting schemes. Template banks
and searches focusing on the sub-solar mass parameter space and
intermediate-mass black hole parameter space are conducted separately
Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial
Background
Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy
When to Point Your Telescopes: Gravitational Wave Trigger Classification for Real-Time Multi-Messenger Followup Observations
We develop a robust and self-consistent framework to extract and classify
gravitational wave candidates from noisy data, for the purpose of assisting in
real-time multi-messenger follow-ups during LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA's fourth observing
run~(O4). Our formalism implements several improvements to the low latency
calculation of the probability of astrophysical origin~(\PASTRO{}), so as to
correctly account for various factors such as the sensitivity change between
observing runs, and the deviation of the recovered template waveform from the
true gravitational wave signal that can strongly bias said calculation. We
demonstrate the high accuracy with which our new formalism recovers and
classifies gravitational wave triggers, by analyzing replay data from previous
observing runs injected with simulated sources of different categories. We show
that these improvements enable the correct identification of the majority of
simulated sources, many of which would have otherwise been misclassified. We
carry out the aforementioned analysis by implementing our formalism through the
\GSTLAL{} search pipeline even though it can be used in conjunction with
potentially any matched filtering pipeline. Armed with robust and
self-consistent \PASTRO{} values, the \GSTLAL{} pipeline can be expected to
provide accurate source classification information for assisting in
multi-messenger follow-up observations to gravitational wave alerts sent out
during O4.Comment: v2 upload was accidental. revert back to v
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