Concerns with AED conversion: comparison of patient and physician perspectives.

When discussing AED conversion in the clinic, both the patient and physician perspectives on the goals and risks of this change are important to consider. To identify patient-reported and clinician-perceived concerns, a panel of epilepsy specialists was questioned about the topics discussed with patients and the clinician's perspective of patient concerns. Findings of a literature review of articles that report patient-expressed concerns regarding their epilepsy and treatment were also reviewed. Results showed that the specialist panel appropriately identified patient-reported concerns of driving ability, medication cost, seizure control, and medication side effects. Additionally, patient-reported concerns of independence, employment issues, social stigma, medication dependence, and undesirable cognitive effects are important to address when considering and initiating AED conversion

Access to Optometric Education: Challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa

Access to education was identified as a key international priority by UNESCO as far back as 1998 when it called for “equality of access”. The profession of optometry has been challenged to educate practitioners in increasing numbers in order to meet the eye care needs. The World Health Organization reported that globally, an estimated 285 million people are visually impaired and in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) uncorrected refractive error is the main cause of visual impairment. The number of optometrists trained on the continent is currently insufficient to meet these eye care needs with limited access to education remaining a stark reality for students. A qualitative research design framed in phenomenology was used to conduct structured interviews with academic leaders in optometry across SSA. Finance for tuition andstudent maintenance, lack of knowledge of optometry and optometrists, high admission criteria, limited spaces at institutions,poor mathematics and science results, gender inequalities and geographical location were cited as barriers to optometric education. Lack of funding was the main contributing factor for the high attrition rate from university in countries where students have to pay their own fees.Where tertiary education is free, the limited number of spaces available in the programmes was the major barrier to access to optometric education for the ever-increasing number of aspiring applicants. The profession of optometry has a key role to play in eye care service delivery in Africa. Therefore educators, policymakers and health professionals must together formulate strategies to increase access to optometric education

A point mass in an isotropic universe: III. The region R≤2mR\leq 2m

McVittie's solution of Einstein's field equations, representing a point mass embedded into an isotropic universe, possesses a scalar curvature singularity at proper radius $R=2m$. The singularity is space-like and precedes, in the expanding case, all other events in the space-time. It is shown here that this singularity is gravitationally weak, and the possible structure of the region $R\leq 2m$ is investigated. A characterization of this solution which does not involve asymptotics is given.Comment: Revtex, 11pp. To appear in Class.Quant.Grav. Paper II appeared as Class. Quant. Grav. 16 (1999) 122

A note on behaviour at an isotropic singularity

The behaviour of Jacobi fields along a time-like geodesic running into an isotropic singularity is studied. It is shown that the Jacobi fields are crushed to zero length at a rate which is the same in every direction orthogonal to the geodesic. We show by means of a counter-example that this crushing effect depends crucially on a technicality of the definition of isotropic singularities, and not just on the uniform degeneracy of the metric at the singularity.Comment: 13 pp. plain latex. To appear in Classical and Quantum Gravit

Echo-Mapping of Swift J1753.5-0127

We present two epochs of coordinated X-ray-optical timing observations of the black hole candidate Swift J1753.5-0127 during its 2005 outburst. The first epoch in July occurred at outburst peak. Two consecutive nights of observations using the McDonald Observatory Argos camera with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer show a consistent correlation with an immediate response and an extended tail lasting ~5s. The properties of the variability and the correlation are consistent with thermal reprocessing in an accretion disk. The shortness of the lag suggests a short orbital period consistent with that recently claimed. The second epoch in August used the VLT FORS2 HIT mode again in conjunction with RXTE. Again a repeatable correlation is seen between two independent subsets of the data. In this case, though, the cross-correlation function has an unusual structure comprising a dip followed by a double-peak. We suggest that this may be equivalent to the dip plus single peak structure seen by Kanbach et al. (2001) in XTE J1118+480 and attributed there to synchrotron emission; a similar structure was seen during later activity of Swift J1753.5-0127 by Durant et al. (2008).Comment: 7 pages, accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Societ

You’re either with us or against us! Moral conviction determines how the politicized distinguish friend from foe

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from SAGE Publications via the DOI in this recordThree studies investigated how politicized collective identification affects individuals’ reactions towards others. We hypothesized that a strong politicized identity tends to be accompanied by a moral conviction about the politicized cause, which in turn determines how the politicized respond to those less committed to their cause. Consistent with this, Study 1 showed that politicized (feminist) identification is associated with lower identification with women who place moderate (vs. high) moral value on gender equality. Study 2 showed that politicized identification was associated with negative emotions towards people who disagree with this cause and this was mediated by the extent to which participants saw supporting the activist goal as morally obligatory. Study 3 showed that politicized identification, to the extent to which it implied holding a moral conviction about the activist cause, is associated with a desire for more social distance to an attitudinally dissimilar other, but not from an attitudinally similar other.The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research reported in this article was partially funded by a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship (328485) awarded to Maarten Zaal

CV19017

This report provides the results of the seventh underwater television on the ‘Porcupine Bank Nephrops grounds’ ICES assessment area; Functional Unit 16. The survey was multi-disciplinary in nature collecting UWTV, CTD and other ecosystem data. In total 65 UWTV stations were successfully completed in a randomised 6 nautical mile isometric grid covering the full spatial extent of the stock. The mean burrow density observed in 2019, adjusted for edge effect, was 0.14 burrows/m². The final krigged abundance estimate was 1010 million burrows with a relative standard error of 5% and an estimated stock area of 7,130 km2. The 2019 abundance estimate was 9.5% lower than in 2018. Using the 2019 estimate of abundance and updated stock data implies catches between 2127 and 2637 tonnes in 2020 that correspond to the F ranges in the EU multi annual plan for Western Waters (assuming that all catch is landed). Four species of sea-pen; Virgularia mirabilis, Funiculina quadrangularis, Pennatula phosphorea and the deepwater sea-pen Kophobelemnon stelliferum were observed during the survey. Trawl marks were also observed on 31% of the stations surveyed

Human and murine IFIT1 proteins do not restrict infection of negative-sense RNA viruses of the Orthomyxoviridae, Bunyaviridae, and Filoviridae families

UNLABELLED: Interferon-induced protein with tetratricopeptide repeats 1 (IFIT1) is a host protein with reported cell-intrinsic antiviral activity against several RNA viruses. The proposed basis for the activity against negative-sense RNA viruses is the binding to exposed 5\u27-triphosphates (5\u27-ppp) on the genome of viral RNA. However, recent studies reported relatively low binding affinities of IFIT1 for 5\u27-ppp RNA, suggesting that IFIT1 may not interact efficiently with this moiety under physiological conditions. To evaluate the ability of IFIT1 to have an impact on negative-sense RNA viruses, we infected Ifit1(-/-) and wild-type control mice and primary cells with four negative-sense RNA viruses (influenza A virus [IAV], La Crosse virus [LACV], Oropouche virus [OROV], and Ebola virus) corresponding to three distinct families. Unexpectedly, a lack of Ifit1 gene expression did not result in increased infection by any of these viruses in cell culture. Analogously, morbidity, mortality, and viral burdens in tissues were identical between Ifit1(-/-) and control mice after infection with IAV, LACV, or OROV. Finally, deletion of the human IFIT1 protein in A549 cells did not affect IAV replication or infection, and reciprocally, ectopic expression of IFIT1 in HEK293T cells did not inhibit IAV infection. To explain the lack of antiviral activity against IAV, we measured the binding affinity of IFIT1 for RNA oligonucleotides resembling the 5\u27 ends of IAV gene segments. The affinity for 5\u27-ppp RNA was approximately 10-fold lower than that for non-2\u27-O-methylated (cap 0) RNA oligonucleotides. Based on this analysis, we conclude that IFIT1 is not a dominant restriction factor against negative-sense RNA viruses. IMPORTANCE: Negative-sense RNA viruses, including influenza virus and Ebola virus, have been responsible for some of the most deadly outbreaks in recent history. The host interferon response and induction of antiviral genes contribute to the control of infections by these viruses. IFIT1 is highly induced after virus infection and reportedly has antiviral activity against several RNA and DNA viruses. However, its role in restricting infection by negative-sense RNA viruses remains unclear. In this study, we evaluated the ability of IFIT1 to inhibit negative-sense RNA virus replication and pathogenesis both in vitro and in vivo. Detailed cell culture and animal studies demonstrated that IFIT1 is not a dominant restriction factor against three different families of negative-sense RNA viruses

On isotropic cylindrically symmetric stellar models

We attempt to match the most general cylindrically symmetric vacuum space-time with a Robertson-Walker interior. The matching conditions show that the interior must be dust filled and that the boundary must be comoving. Further, we show that the vacuum region must be polarized. Imposing the condition that there are no trapped cylinders on an initial time slice, we can apply a result of Thorne's and show that trapped cylinders never evolve. This results in a simplified line element which we prove to be incompatible with the dust interior. This result demonstrates the impossibility of the existence of an isotropic cylindrically symmetric star (or even a star which has a cylindrically symmetric portion). We investigate the problem from a different perspective by looking at the expansion scalars of invariant null geodesic congruences and, applying to the cylindrical case, the result that the product of the signs of the expansion scalars must be continuous across the boundary. The result may also be understood in relation to recent results about the impossibility of the static axially symmetric analogue of the Einstein-Straus model.Comment: 13 pages. To appear in Classical and Quantum Gravit