Outcomes for Pressure Ulcer Trials (OUTPUTs) project: review and classification of outcomes reported in pressure ulcer prevention research

In order to overcome inconsistencies in the reporting of outcomes in clinical trials, core outcome sets (COSs) have been developed in many clinical areas and the awareness of this concept is growing steadily. The Outcomes for Pressure Ulcer Trials (OUTPUTs) project aims to improve the quality of evidence from pressure ulcer prevention trials by developing a COS. As an initial step in the COS process we aimed to identify and classify both outcomes and concepts that represent potential outcomes for future trials that have been reported in pressure ulcer prevention research. A review was conducted in 12 major databases covering the literature indexed until 2016. Outcomes and relevant concepts reported in primary studies and/or reviews on pressure ulcer prevention in adult patients were extracted as presented in the articles, and afterwards inductively grouped into outcome domains. The domains were then categorized according to the outcome domain taxonomy recently proposed by the COMET group. In total 332 studies were included and 68 outcome domains were identified, covering multiple aspects of pressure ulcer prevention. Pressure ulcer occurrence was reported in 71% of all included studies, representing the most frequent outcome, followed by costs (22% of all studies) and acceptability of intervention and comfort (18% of all studies). A plethora of different outcomes are applied in pressure ulcer prevention research and substantial variations in definitions and reporting of similar outcomes were observed. A COS for pressure ulcer prevention trials is needed to overcome the noncomparability of outcomes

Multi Locus Sequence Typing of Chlamydia Reveals an Association between Chlamydia psittaci Genotypes and Host Species

Chlamydia comprises a group of obligate intracellular bacterial parasites responsible for a variety of diseases in humans and animals, including several zoonoses. Chlamydia trachomatis causes diseases such as trachoma, urogenital infection and lymphogranuloma venereum with severe morbidity. Chlamydia pneumoniae is a common cause of community-acquired respiratory tract infections. Chlamydia psittaci, causing zoonotic pneumonia in humans, is usually hosted by birds, while Chlamydia abortus, causing abortion and fetal death in mammals, including humans, is mainly hosted by goats and sheep. We used multi-locus sequence typing to asses the population structure of Chlamydia. In total, 132 Chlamydia isolates were analyzed, including 60 C. trachomatis, 18 C. pneumoniae, 16 C. abortus, 34 C. psittaci and one of each of C. pecorum, C. caviae, C. muridarum and C. felis. Cluster analyses utilizing the Neighbour-Joining algorithm with the maximum composite likelihood model of concatenated sequences of 7 housekeeping fragments showed that C. psittaci 84/2334 isolated from a parrot grouped together with the C. abortus isolates from goats and sheep. Cluster analyses of the individual alleles showed that in all instances C. psittaci 84/2334 formed one group with C. abortus. Moving 84/2334 from the C. psittaci group to the C. abortus group resulted in a significant increase in the number of fixed differences and elimination of the number of shared mutations between C. psittaci and C. abortus. C. psittaci M56 from a muskrat branched separately from the main group of C. psittaci isolates. C. psittaci genotypes appeared to be associated with host species. The phylogentic tree of C. psittaci did not follow that of its host bird species, suggesting host species jumps. In conclusion, we report for the first time an association between C. psittaci genotypes with host species

Outcomes for Pressure Ulcer Trials (OUTPUTs): protocol for the development of a core domain set for trials evaluating the clinical efficacy or effectiveness of pressure ulcer prevention interventions

Background Core outcome sets (COS) are being developed in many clinical areas to increase the quality and comparability of clinical trial results as well as to ensure their relevance for patients. A COS represents an agreed standardized set of outcomes that describes the minimum that should be consistently reported in all clinical trials of a defined area. It comprises a core domain set (defining what core outcomes should be measured) and a core measurement set (defining measurement/assessment instruments for each core domain). For pressure ulcer prevention trials a COS is lacking. The great heterogeneity of reported outcomes in this field indicates the need for a COS. Methods/design The first part of this project aims to develop a core domain set by following established methods, which incorporates four steps: (1) definition of the scope, (2) conducting a scoping review, (3) organizing facilitated workshops with service users, (4) performing Delphi surveys and establishing consensus in a face-to-face meeting with different stakeholders. Discussion After achieving consensus on the core domain set, further work will be undertaken to determine a corresponding core measurement set. This will lead to better pressure ulcer prevention research in the future. There are a number of methodological challenges in the field of COS development. To meet these challenges and to ensure a high-quality COS, the OUTPUTS project affiliates to current standards and works in close collaboration with international experts and with existing international service user groups

Active liquid crystal tuning of metallic nanoantenna enhanced light emission from colloidal quantum dots

A system comprising an aluminum nanoantenna array on top of a luminescent colloidal quantum dot waveguide and covered by a thermotropic liquid crystal (LC) is introduced. By heating the LC above its critical temperature, we demonstrate that the concomitant refractive index change modifies the hybrid plasmonic-photonic resonances in the system. This enables active control of the spectrum and directionality of the narrow-band (similar to 6 nm) enhancement of quantum dot photoluminescence by the metallic nanoantennas

Does Pelletizing Catalysts Influence the Efficiency Number of Activity Measurements? Spectrochemical Engineering Considerations for an Accurate Operando Study

International audienc

Transparent Boundary Condition for Oseen-Frank Model. Application for NLC Cells With Patterned Electrodes

In the present work a novel application of Transparent Boundary Conditions (TBC) to nematic liquid crystal cells (NLCC) with planar alignment and a patterned electrode is studied. This device is attracting great interest since it allows soliton steering by optically and externally induced waveguides. We employ the continuum Oseen-Frank theory to find the tilt and twist angle distributions in the cell under the one-constant approximation. The electric field distribution takes into account the whole 2D permittivity tensor for the transverse coordinates. Standard finite difference time domain methods together with an iterative method is applied to find an approximate solution to our coupled problem. A novel class of TBC is used to correctly define the boundary for both the distortion angle problem and the electric field distribution when using patterned electrodes. Thus, we achieve an important decrease of computational needs when solving this kind of problems and we are also capable of exploring weak anchoring conditions for NLCC.Orquín Serrano, I.; Vijande, J.; Villatoro Machuca, FR.; Ferrando, A.; Fernández De Córdoba Castellá, PJ.; Michinel Alvarez, H. (2015). Transparent Boundary Condition for Oseen-Frank Model. Application for NLC Cells With Patterned Electrodes. Journal of Physics: Conference Series. 605:0120281-01202811. doi:10.1088/1742-6596/605/1/012028S012028101202811605Peccianti, M., De Rossi, A., Assanto, G., De Luca, A., Umeton, C., & Khoo, I. C. (2000). Electrically assisted self-confinement and waveguiding in planar nematic liquid crystal cells. Applied Physics Letters, 77(1), 7-9. doi:10.1063/1.126859Peccianti, M., & Assanto, G. (2001). Signal readdressing by steering of spatial solitons in bulk nematic liquid crystals. Optics Letters, 26(21), 1690. doi:10.1364/ol.26.001690Peccianti, M., Conti, C., Assanto, G., De Luca, A., & Umeton, C. (2002). All-optical switching and logic gating with spatial solitons in liquid crystals. Applied Physics Letters, 81(18), 3335-3337. doi:10.1063/1.1519101Fratalocchi, A., Assanto, G., Brzdąkiewicz, K. A., & Karpierz, M. A. (2005). All-optical switching and beam steering in tunable waveguide arrays. Applied Physics Letters, 86(5), 051112. doi:10.1063/1.1857071Fratalocchi, A., Assanto, G., Brzdąkiewicz, K. A., & Karpierz, M. A. (2005). Optical multiband vector breathers in tunable waveguide arrays. Optics Letters, 30(2), 174. doi:10.1364/ol.30.000174Beeckman, J., Neyts, K., & Haelterman, M. (2006). Patterned electrode steering of nematicons. Journal of Optics A: Pure and Applied Optics, 8(2), 214-220. doi:10.1088/1464-4258/8/2/018Peccianti, M., Dyadyusha, A., Kaczmarek, M., & Assanto, G. (2008). Escaping Solitons from a Trapping Potential. Physical Review Letters, 101(15). doi:10.1103/physrevlett.101.153902Kivshar, Y. (2006). Bending light at will. Nature Physics, 2(11), 729-730. doi:10.1038/nphys452Alexe-Ionescu, A. L., Barberi, R., Barbero, G., & Giocondo, M. (1994). Anchoring energy for nematic liquid crystals: Contribution from the spatial variation of the elastic constants. Physical Review E, 49(6), 5378-5388. doi:10.1103/physreve.49.5378Allen, M. P., & Frenkel, D. (1988). Calculation of liquid-crystal Frank constants by computer simulation. Physical Review A, 37(5), 1813-1816. doi:10.1103/physreva.37.1813He, S. (2001). Iterative finite-difference method for calculating the distribution of a liquid-crystal director. Optical Engineering, 40(11), 2552. doi:10.1117/1.1411974Engquist, B., & Majda, A. (1977). Absorbing boundary conditions for the numerical simulation of waves. Mathematics of Computation, 31(139), 629-629. doi:10.1090/s0025-5718-1977-0436612-4Grote, M. J., & Keller, J. B. (1995). Exact Nonreflecting Boundary Conditions for the Time Dependent Wave Equation. SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, 55(2), 280-297. doi:10.1137/s0036139993269266Hagstrom, T., Warburton, T., & Givoli, D. (2010). Radiation boundary conditions for time-dependent waves based on complete plane wave expansions. Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics, 234(6), 1988-1995. doi:10.1016/j.cam.2009.08.050Baskakov, V. A., & Popov, A. V. (1991). Implementation of transparent boundaries for numerical solution of the Schrödinger equation. Wave Motion, 14(2), 123-128. doi:10.1016/0165-2125(91)90053-qLubich, C., & Schädle, A. (2002). Fast Convolution for Nonreflecting Boundary Conditions. SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, 24(1), 161-182. doi:10.1137/s1064827501388741Kuska, J.-P. (1992). Absorbing boundary conditions for the Schrödinger equation on finite intervals. Physical Review B, 46(8), 5000-5003. doi:10.1103/physrevb.46.5000Di Menza, L. (1996). Absorbing boundary conditions on a hypersurface for the Schrödinger equation in a half-space. Applied Mathematics Letters, 9(4), 55-59. doi:10.1016/0893-9659(96)00051-1Schädle, A. (2002). Non-reflecting boundary conditions for the two-dimensional Schrödinger equation. Wave Motion, 35(2), 181-188. doi:10.1016/s0165-2125(01)00098-1Arnold, A., Ehrhardt, M., & Sofronov, I. (2003). Discrete transparent boundary conditions for the Schrödinger equation: fast calculation, approximation, and stability. Communications in Mathematical Sciences, 1(3), 501-556. doi:10.4310/cms.2003.v1.n3.a7Lindquist, J. M., Neta, B., & Giraldo, F. X. (2012). High-order non-reflecting boundary conditions for dispersive waves in polar coordinates using spectral elements. Applied Mathematics and Computation, 218(12), 6666-6676. doi:10.1016/j.amc.2011.12.023Sun, Z., Wu, X., Zhang, J., & Wang, D. (2012). A linearized difference scheme for semilinear parabolic equations with nonlinear absorbing boundary conditions. Applied Mathematics and Computation, 218(9), 5187-5201. doi:10.1016/j.amc.2011.10.083Hadley, G. R. (1991). Transparent boundary condition for beam propagation. Optics Letters, 16(9), 624. doi:10.1364/ol.16.000624Hadley, G. R. (1992). Transparent boundary condition for the beam propagation method. IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, 28(1), 363-370. doi:10.1109/3.119536Beeckman, J., Chałubinska, K., & Neyts, K. (2006). Lateral Light Propagation in SSFLC Devices and Thermal Optical Nonlinearities. Ferroelectrics, 344(1), 225-231. doi:10.1080/00150190600968348Peccianti, M., Dyadyusha, A., Kaczmarek, M., & Assanto, G. (2006). Tunable refraction and reflection of self-confined light beams. Nature Physics, 2(11), 737-742. doi:10.1038/nphys42

Highly seasonal climate and reproductive phenology in the Mayombe forest: contribution of historical data from the Luki Reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo

peer reviewedEn Afrique, la phénologie reproductive des arbres tropicaux, majoritairement annuelle, semble présenter une certaine régularité. Cette étude documente les variations intra- et interannuelles de la phénologie reproductive des arbres de la forêt du Mayombe à partir des données historiques de la Réserve de Luki (République démocratique du Congo). Le diamètre de reproduction des espèces exploitées pour le bois, encore largement méconnu, a été également examiné pour les espèces suffisamment représentées dans les données. Le suivi phénologique de 3 642 arbres appartenant à 158 espèces et 39 familles a été réalisé tous les 10 jours de 1948 à 1957. Les statistiques circulaires ont été utilisées pour tester le synchronisme de la phénologie entre arbres, à l’échelle de la communauté, pour la forêt dans son ensemble, et individuellement pour 87 espèces, dont 35 espèces bien représentées (n ≥ 20 arbres), 16 espèces commerciales et 36 autres espèces. Des régressions logistiques ont permis de déterminer le diamètre de fructification (minimum et régulier) de ces espèces. Pour la majorité des espèces, la floraison était régulière, annuelle et largement saisonnière (81,6 %, 71 espèces). Les pics étaient plus marqués pour la floraison que pour la fructification, plus étalée dans le temps, bien que significativement agrégée temporellement. La majorité des arbres et des espèces fleurissaient entre décembre et février, pendant la petite saison sèche, bien que des fleurs et des fruits étaient observables toute l’année à l’échelle de la communauté. Seules 13 espèces ont montré une relation significative entre le diamètre et la reproduction, parmi lesquelles sept espèces de canopée, cinq de sous-bois et une héliophile. Pour ces espèces, la moyenne du diamètre minimum de reproduction était de 17,3 cm

TRY plant trait database - enhanced coverage and open access

Plant traits-the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants-determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait-based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits-almost complete coverage for 'plant growth form'. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait-environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives