Exploration of risk factors for weight loss in head and neck cancer patients

Introduction: Head and neck cancer patients receiving radiotherapy can experience a number of toxicities, including weight loss and malnutrition, which can impact upon the quality of treatment. The purpose of this retrospective cohort study is to evaluate weight loss and identify predictive factors for this patient group. Method and materials: 40 patients treated with radiotherapy since 2012 at the study centre were selected for analysis. Data was collected from patient records. The association between potential risk factors and weight loss was investigated. Results: Mean weight loss was 5 kg (6%). 24 patients lost >5% starting body weight. Age, Tstage,N-stage, chemotherapy and starting body weight were individually associated with significant differences in weight loss. On multiple linear regression analysis age and nodal status were predictive. Conclusion: Younger patients and those with nodal disease were most at risk of weight loss. Other studies have identified the same risk factors along with several other variables. The relative significance of each along with a number of other potential factors is yet to be fully understood. Further research is required to help identify patients most at risk of weight loss; and assess interventions aimed at preventing weight loss and malnutrition.</p

Sport Specificity and Training Influence Bone and Body Composition In Women Collegiate Athletes

Sport Specificity and Training Influence Bone and Body Composition In Women Collegiate Athletes Jennifer M. Markos†, Aaron F. Carbuhn†, Tara E. Fernandez‡, Amy F. Bragg‡, John S. Green‡, FACSM, and Stephen F. Crouse‡, FACSM. Department of Health and Kinesiology and Department of Athletics, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, (Sponsor: S.F. Crouse) This is a novel descriptive study to characterize off-season, pre-season, and post-season bone and body composition measures in women collegiate athletes. PURPOSE: To quantify changes in women collegiate athletes’ bone mineral content, bone mineral density (BMD), arm BMD, leg BMD, pelvis BMD, spine BMD, and body composition (i.e., total body mass, lean mass, fat mass, and percent body fat) within each sport through the seasonal periods, and among the sports at each seasonal period. METHODS: 67 women collegiate athletes from softball (n = 17), basketball (n = 10), volleyball (n = 7), swimming (n = 16), and track jumpers and sprinters (n = 17) were scanned using duel energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) at three seasonal periods: 1) before pre-season training defined as off-season (OFF), 2) at end of preseason training (PRE), and 3) after the competitive season (POST). Summary of RESULTS: Repeated measures ANOVA within-sport seasonal changes in table; PRE/POST = highest value measured at PRE or POST. α \u3c 0.05 for all tests of significance. Seasonal Period %Body fat BMD (g/cm2) Pelvis BMD (g/cm2) Spine BMD (g/cm2) Softball OFF 27.1±5.0* 1.254±0.081* 1.385±0.127 1.216±0.149 PRE/POST 25.7±5.0 1.261±0.082 1.405±0.141 1.268±0.154 Basketball OFF 25.5±5.5* 1.333±0.064* 1.469±0.123* 1.356±0.178 PRE/POST 22.7±5.6 1.349±0.055 1.494±0.119 1.391±0.146 Volleyball OFF 27.7±4.1 1.284±0.065* 1.366±0.139 1.254±0.102* PRE/POST 27.1±5.1 1.310±0.071 1.371±0.149 1.360±0.121 Swimming OFF 22.0±4.3 1.112±0.067 1.110±0.104* 1.063±0.127* PRE/POST 21.9±4.1 1.121±0.067 1.124±0.105 1.105±0.126 Track Jumpers and Sprinters OFF 15.4±4.6* 1.292±0.075* 1.432±0.124* 1.280±0.135* PRE/POST 14.3±3.9 1.307±0.080 1.470±0.128 1.337±0.140 Values are means ± standard deviations. *Significant difference between off-season and pre or post-season ANOVA for differences by sports at the PRE/POST period showed results for both pelvis BMD and spine BMD as follows: softball = basketball = volleyball = track \u3e swimmers. CONCLUSION: These data serve as sport-specific benchmarks for comparisons at in-season and off-season training periods among women collegiate athletes in various sports. They also serve to document changes in body composition and bone density with training, and may serve to guide coaches in the development of sport specific nutritional and strength and conditioning programs to optimize athletic performance. Research supported in part by the Sydney & J.L. Huffines Institute for Sports Medicine and Human Performanc

Relatedly: Scaffolding Literature Reviews with Existing Related Work Sections

Scholars who want to research a scientific topic must take time to read, extract meaning, and identify connections across many papers. As scientific literature grows, this becomes increasingly challenging. Meanwhile, authors summarize prior research in papers' related work sections, though this is scoped to support a single paper. A formative study found that while reading multiple related work paragraphs helps overview a topic, it is hard to navigate overlapping and diverging references and research foci. In this work, we design a system, Relatedly, that scaffolds exploring and reading multiple related work paragraphs on a topic, with features including dynamic re-ranking and highlighting to spotlight unexplored dissimilar information, auto-generated descriptive paragraph headings, and low-lighting of redundant information. From a within-subjects user study (n=15), we found that scholars generate more coherent, insightful, and comprehensive topic outlines using Relatedly compared to a baseline paper list

CiteSee: Augmenting Citations in Scientific Papers with Persistent and Personalized Historical Context

When reading a scholarly article, inline citations help researchers contextualize the current article and discover relevant prior work. However, it can be challenging to prioritize and make sense of the hundreds of citations encountered during literature reviews. This paper introduces CiteSee, a paper reading tool that leverages a user's publishing, reading, and saving activities to provide personalized visual augmentations and context around citations. First, CiteSee connects the current paper to familiar contexts by surfacing known citations a user had cited or opened. Second, CiteSee helps users prioritize their exploration by highlighting relevant but unknown citations based on saving and reading history. We conducted a lab study that suggests CiteSee is significantly more effective for paper discovery than three baselines. A field deployment study shows CiteSee helps participants keep track of their explorations and leads to better situational awareness and increased paper discovery via inline citation when conducting real-world literature reviews

Mitigating Barriers to Public Social Interaction with Meronymous Communication

In communities with social hierarchies, fear of judgment can discourage communication. While anonymity may alleviate some social pressure, fully anonymous spaces enable toxic behavior and hide the social context that motivates people to participate and helps them tailor their communication. We explore a design space of meronymous communication, where people can reveal carefully chosen aspects of their identity and also leverage trusted endorsers to gain credibility. We implemented these ideas in a system for scholars to meronymously seek and receive paper recommendations on Twitter and Mastodon. A formative study with 20 scholars confirmed that scholars see benefits to participating but are deterred due to social anxiety. From a month-long public deployment, we found that with meronymity, junior scholars could comfortably ask ``newbie'' questions and get responses from senior scholars who they normally found intimidating. Responses were also tailored to the aspects about themselves that junior scholars chose to reveal.Comment: Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '24), May 11--16, 2024, Honolulu, HI, US

Validation of the Survey Simulator tool for the NEO Surveyor mission using NEOWISE data

The Near Earth Object Surveyor mission has a requirement to find two-thirds of the potentially hazardous asteroids larger than 140 meters in size. In order to determine the mission's expected progress toward this goal during design and testing, as well as the actual progress during the survey, a simulation tool has been developed to act as a consistent and quantifiable yardstick. We test that the survey simulation software is correctly predicting on-sky positions and thermal infrared fluxes by using it to reproduce the published measurements of asteroids from the NEOWISE mission. We then extended this work to find previously unreported detections of known near Earth asteroids in the NEOWISE data archive, a search that resulted in 21,661 recovery detections, including 1,166 objects that had no previously reported NEOWISE observations. These efforts demonstrate the reliability of the NEOS Survey Simulator tool, and the perennial value of searchable image and source catalog archives for extending our knowledge of the small bodies of the Solar System.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in PS

UBVRI Light Curves of 44 Type Ia Supernovae

We present UBVRI photometry of 44 type-Ia supernovae (SN Ia) observed from 1997 to 2001 as part of a continuing monitoring campaign at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The data set comprises 2190 observations and is the largest homogeneously observed and reduced sample of SN Ia to date, nearly doubling the number of well-observed, nearby SN Ia with published multicolor CCD light curves. The large sample of U-band photometry is a unique addition, with important connections to SN Ia observed at high redshift. The decline rate of SN Ia U-band light curves correlates well with the decline rate in other bands, as does the U-B color at maximum light. However, the U-band peak magnitudes show an increased dispersion relative to other bands even after accounting for extinction and decline rate, amounting to an additional ~40% intrinsic scatter compared to B-band.Comment: 84 authors, 71 pages, 51 tables, 10 figures. Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. Version with high-res figures and electronic data at http://astron.berkeley.edu/~saurabh/cfa2snIa