Comparison of breast and bowel cancer screening uptake patterns in a common cohort of South Asian women in England

Background: Inequalities in uptake of cancer screening by ethnic minority populations are well documented in a number of international studies. However, most studies to date have explored screening uptake for a single cancer only. This paper compares breast and bowel cancer screening uptake for a cohort of South Asian women invited to undertake both, and similarly investigates these women's breast cancer screening behaviour over a period of fifteen years. Methods: Screening data for rounds 1, 2 and 5 (1989-2004) of the NHS breast cancer screening programme and for round 1 of the NHS bowel screening pilot (2000-2002) were obtained for women aged 50-69 resident in the English bowel screening pilot site, Coventry and Warwickshire, who had been invited to undertake breast and bowel cancer screening in the period 2000-2002. Breast and bowel cancer screening uptake levels were calculated and compared using the chi-squared test. Results: 72,566 women were invited to breast and bowel cancer screening after exclusions. Of these, 3,539 were South Asian and 69,027 non-Asian; 18,730 had been invited to mammography over the previous fifteen years (rounds 1 to 5). South Asian women were significantly less likely to undertake both breast and bowel cancer screening; 29.9% (n = 1,057) compared to 59.4% (n = 40,969) for non-Asians (p < 0.001). Women in both groups who consistently chose to undertake breast cancer screening in rounds 1, 2 and 5 were more likely to complete round 1 bowel cancer screening. However, the likelihood of completion of bowel cancer screening was still significantly lower for South Asians; 49.5% vs. 82.3% for non-Asians, p < 0.001. South Asian women who undertook breast cancer screening in only one round were no more likely to complete bowel cancer screening than those who decided against breast cancer screening in all three rounds. In contrast, similar women in the non-Asian population had an increased likelihood of completing the new bowel cancer screening test. The likelihood of continued uptake of mammography after undertaking screening in round 1 differed between South Asian religio-linguistic groups. Noticeably, women in the Muslim population were less likely to continue to participate in mammography than those in other South Asian groups. Conclusions: Culturally appropriate targeted interventions are required to reduce observed disparities in cancer screening uptakes

The risks and rewards of covariate adjustment in randomized trials: an assessment of 12 outcomes from 8 studies

Adjustment for prognostic covariates can lead to increased power in the analysis of randomized trials. However, adjusted analyses are not often performed in practice

What is the crisis of Western sciences?

© 2016, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. This article is an attempt to formulate a clear definition of the concept of crisis of Western sciences introduced by Husserl in his last work. The attempt will be based on a reading of the Krisis, which will stress its underlying continuity with Husserl’s life-long concerns about the theoretical insufficiency of positive sciences, and downplay the novelty of the idea of crisis itself within Husserl’s work. After insisting on the fact that, according to Husserl, only an account of the shortcomings of the scientificity of Western sciences can justify the claim that they are undergoing a crisis, it will be argued that the common definition of the crisis of the sciences as the loss of their significance for life rests on a misunderstanding. The crisis of Western sciences will be characterized, instead, as the repercussion of the crisis of the scientificity of philosophy (and, specifically, of metaphysics) on the scientificity of positive sciences. The loss of significance of scientific knowledge for our existence will in turn appear as a further, inevitable consequence of the uprooting of the sciences from the soil of a universal philosophy culminating in metaphysics, and thus, as a phenomenon deeply intertwined with the crisis of Western sciences, but not identical to it

Improvements in survival of the uncemented Nottingham Total Shoulder prosthesis: a prospective comparative study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The uncemented Nottingham Total Shoulder Replacement prosthesis system (Nottingham TSR) was developed from the previous BioModular^®shoulder prosthesis taking into consideration the causes of the initial implant's failure.</p> <p>We investigated the impact of changes in the design of Nottingham TSR prosthesis on its survivorship rate.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Survivorship analyses of three types of uncemented total shoulder arthroplasty prostheses (BioModular^®, initial Nottingham TSR and current Nottingham TSR systems with 11, 8 and 4 year survivorship data respectively) were compared. All these prostheses were implanted for the treatment of disabling pain in the shoulder due to primary and secondary osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis. Each type of the prosthesis studied was implanted in consecutive group of patients – 90 patients with BioModular^®system, 103 with the initial Nottingham TSR and 34 patients with the current Nottingham TSR system.</p> <p>The comparison of the annual cumulative survivorship values in the compatible time range between the three groups was done according to the paired <it>t </it>test.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The 8-year and 11-year survivorship rates for the initially used modified BioModular^®uncemented prosthesis were relatively low (75.6% and 71.7% respectively) comparing to the reported survivorship of the conventional cemented implants. The 8-year survivorship for the uncemented Nottingham TSR prosthesis was significantly higher (81.8%), but still not in the desired range of above 90%, that is found in other cemented designs. Glenoid component loosening was the main factor of prosthesis failure in both prostheses and mainly occurred in the first 4 postoperative years. The 4-year survivorship of the currently re-designed Nottingham TSR prosthesis, with hydroxylapatite coating of the glenoid baseplate, was significantly higher, 93.1% as compared to 85.1% of the previous Nottingham TSR.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The initial Nottingham shoulder prosthesis showed significantly higher survivorship than the BioModular^®uncemented prosthesis, but lower than expected. Subsequently re-designed Nottingham TSR system presented a high short term survivorship rate that encourages its ongoing use</p

Gravitational collapse with tachyon field and barotropic fluid

A particular class of space-time, with a tachyon field, \phi, and a barotropic fluid constituting the matter content, is considered herein as a model for gravitational collapse. For simplicity, the tachyon potential is assumed to be of inverse square form i.e., V(\phi) \sim \phi^{-2}. Our purpose, by making use of the specific kinematical features of the tachyon, which are rather different from a standard scalar field, is to establish the several types of asymptotic behavior that our matter content induces. Employing a dynamical system analysis, complemented by a thorough numerical study, we find classical solutions corresponding to a naked singularity or a black hole formation. In particular, there is a subset where the fluid and tachyon participate in an interesting tracking behaviour, depending sensitively on the initial conditions for the energy densities of the tachyon field and barotropic fluid. Two other classes of solutions are present, corresponding respectively, to either a tachyon or a barotropic fluid regime. Which of these emerges as dominant, will depend on the choice of the barotropic parameter, \gamma. Furthermore, these collapsing scenarios both have as final state the formation of a black hole.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures. v3: minor changes. Final version to appear in GR

A New Era in the Quest for Dark Matter

There is a growing sense of `crisis' in the dark matter community, due to the absence of evidence for the most popular candidates such as weakly interacting massive particles, axions, and sterile neutrinos, despite the enormous effort that has gone into searching for these particles. Here, we discuss what we have learned about the nature of dark matter from past experiments, and the implications for planned dark matter searches in the next decade. We argue that diversifying the experimental effort, incorporating astronomical surveys and gravitational wave observations, is our best hope to make progress on the dark matter problem.Comment: Published in Nature, online on 04 Oct 2018. 13 pages, 1 figur

Frequency-Invariant Representation of Interaural Time Differences in Mammals

Interaural time differences (ITDs) are the major cue for localizing low-frequency sounds. The activity of neuronal populations in the brainstem encodes ITDs with an exquisite temporal acuity of about . The response of single neurons, however, also changes with other stimulus properties like the spectral composition of sound. The influence of stimulus frequency is very different across neurons and thus it is unclear how ITDs are encoded independently of stimulus frequency by populations of neurons. Here we fitted a statistical model to single-cell rate responses of the dorsal nucleus of the lateral lemniscus. The model was used to evaluate the impact of single-cell response characteristics on the frequency-invariant mutual information between rate response and ITD. We found a rough correspondence between the measured cell characteristics and those predicted by computing mutual information. Furthermore, we studied two readout mechanisms, a linear classifier and a two-channel rate difference decoder. The latter turned out to be better suited to decode the population patterns obtained from the fitted model

Dark Matter Search in a Proton Beam Dump with MiniBooNE

6 pages, 7 figures6 pages, 7 figure

Sport and transgender people: a systematic review of the literature relating to sport participation and competitive sport policies

Background Whether transgender people should be able to compete in sport in accordance with their gender identity is a widely contested question within the literature and among sport organisations, fellow competitors and spectators. Owing to concerns surrounding transgender people (especially transgender female individuals) having an athletic advantage, several sport organisations place restrictions on transgender competitors (e.g. must have undergone gender-confirming surgery). In addition, some transgender people who engage in sport, both competitively and for leisure, report discrimination and victimisation. Objective To the authors’ knowledge, there has been no systematic review of the literature pertaining to sport participation or competitive sport policies in transgender people. Therefore, this review aimed to address this gap in the literature. Method Eight research articles and 31 sport policies were reviewed. Results In relation to sport-related physical activity, this review found the lack of inclusive and comfortable environments to be the primary barrier to participation for transgender people. This review also found transgender people had a mostly negative experience in competitive sports because of the restrictions the sport’s policy placed on them. The majority of transgender competitive sport policies that were reviewed were not evidence based. Conclusion Currently, there is no direct or consistent research suggesting transgender female individuals (or male individuals) have an athletic advantage at any stage of their transition (e.g. cross-sex hormones, gender-confirming surgery) and, therefore, competitive sport policies that place restrictions on transgender people need to be considered and potentially revised