Editorial: Philosophical Perspectives on Covid-19

Editoria

Does maternal oral health predict child oral health-related quality of life in adulthood?

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>A parental/family history of poor oral health may influence the oral-health-related quality of life (OHRQOL) of adults.</p> <p>Objectives</p> <p>To determine whether the oral health of mothers of young children can predict the OHRQOL of those same children when they reach adulthood.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Oral examination and interview data from the Dunedin Study's age-32 assessment, as well as maternal self-rated oral health data from the age-5 assessment were used. The main outcome measure was study members' short-form Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP-14) at age 32. Analyses involved 827 individuals (81.5% of the surviving cohort) dentally examined at both ages, who also completed the OHIP-14 questionnaire at age 32, and whose mothers were interviewed at the age-5 assessment.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There was a consistent gradient of relative risk across the categories of maternal self-rated oral health status at the age-5 assessment for having one or more impacts in the overall OHIP-14 scale, whereby risk was greatest among the study members whose mothers rated their oral health as "poor/edentulous", and lowest among those with an "excellent/fairly good" rating. In addition, there was a gradient in the age-32 mean OHIP-14 score, and in the mean number of OHIP-14 impacts at age 32 across the categories of maternal self-rated oral health status. The higher risk of having one or more impacts in the psychological discomfort subscale, when mother rated her oral health as "poor/edentulous", was statistically significant.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These data suggest that maternal self-rated oral health when a child is young has a bearing on that child's OHRQOL almost three decades later. The adult offspring of mothers with poor self-rated oral health had poorer OHRQOL outcomes, particularly in the psychological discomfort subscale.</p

Health state utility values for diabetic retinopathy: protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background People with diabetic retinopathy tend to have lower levels of health-related quality of life than individuals with no retinopathy. Strategies for screening and treatment have been shown to be cost-effective. In order to reduce the bias in cost-effectiveness estimates, systematic reviews of health state utility values (HSUVs) are crucial for health technology assessment and the development of decision analytic models. A review and synthesis of HSUVs for the different stages of disease progression in diabetic retinopathy has not previously been conducted. Methods/Design We will conduct a systematic review of the available literature that reports HSUVs for people with diabetic retinopathy, in correspondence with current stage of disease progression and/or visual acuity. We will search Medline, EMBASE, Web of Science, Cost-Effectiveness Analysis Registry, Centre for Reviews and Dissemination Database, and EconLit to identify relevant English-language articles. Data will subsequently be synthesized using linear mixed effects modeling meta-regression. Additionally, reported disease severity classifications will be mapped to a four-level grading scale for diabetic retinopathy. Discussion The systematic review and meta-analysis will provide important evidence for future model-based economic evaluations of technologies for diabetic retinopathy. The meta-regression will enable the estimation of utility values at different disease stages for patients with particular characteristics and will also highlight where the design of the study and HSUV instrument have influenced the reported utility values. We believe this protocol to be the first of its kind to be published

Association of Childhood Lead Exposure with Adult Personality Traits and Lifelong Mental Health

Importance. Millions of adults now entering middle-age were exposed to high levels of lead, a developmental neurotoxin, as children. While childhood lead exposure has been linked to disrupted behavioral development, the long-term consequences for adult mental and behavioral health have not been fully characterized. Objective. To test the hypothesis that childhood lead exposure is associated with greater psychopathology across the life-course and with differences in adult personality. Design, Setting, and Participants. Prospective cohort study based on a population-representative 1972-73 birth cohort from New Zealand, the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, followed to age 38 years. Exposure. Childhood lead exposure ascertained as blood-lead levels measured at age 11 years. Blood-lead levels were unrelated to family socioeconomic status. Main Outcomes and Measures. Primary outcomes were: adult mental disorder symptoms, assessed via clinical interview at ages 18, 21, 26, 32, and 38, and transformed through confirmatory factor analysis into continuous measures of General Psychopathology (the "p-factor") and Internalizing, Externalizing, and Thought Disorder symptoms (all standardized to M=100, SD=15); and adult personality, assessed via informant-report using the Big Five Personality Inventory (assessing Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness-to-Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness) at ages 26, 32, and 38 (all scores standardized to M=0, SD=1). Hypotheses were formulated after data-collection; an analysis plan was posted in advance.Results. Of 1037 original participants, 579 (56%) were lead-tested at age 11 years (54% male). Mean blood-lead level was 11.08µg/dL (SD=4.96). After adjusting for study covariates, each 5µg/dL increase in childhood blood lead-level was associated with a 1.34-point increase in General Psychopathology (95%CI: 0.11, 2.57, P=.033), driven by Internalizing (b=1.41, 95%CI: 0.19, 2.62, P=.024) and Thought Disorder (b=1.30, 95%CI: 0.06, 2.54, P=.040) symptoms. Each 5µg/dL increase in childhood blood lead-level was also associated with a .10-SD increase in Neuroticism (95%CI:.02, .18, P=.016), a .09-SD decrease in Agreeableness (95%CI:.-.18, -.01, P=.033), and a .14-SD decrease in Conscientiousness (95%CI:.-.25, -.03, P=.010). Associations with informant-rated Extraversion and Openness-to-Experience were non-significant. Conclusion and Relevance. In this multi-decade, longitudinal study of lead-exposed children, higher childhood blood-lead level predicted greater psychopathology across the life-course and more problematic adult personality styles. Childhood lead exposure may have long-term consequences for adult mental health and personality <br/

On the logical structure of Bell theorems without inequalities

Bell theorems show how to experimentally falsify local realism. Conclusive falsification is highly desirable as it would provide support for the most profoundly counterintuitive feature of quantum theory - nonlocality. Despite the preponderance of evidence for quantum mechanics, practical limits on detector efficiency and the difficulty of coordinating space-like separated measurements have provided loopholes for a classical worldview; these loopholes have never been simultaneously closed. A number of new experiments have recently been proposed to close both loopholes at once. We show some of these novel designs fail in the most basic way, by not ruling out local hidden variable models, and we provide an explicit classical model to demonstrate this. They share a common flaw, which reveals a basic misunderstanding of how nonlocality proofs work. Given the time and resources now being devoted to such experiments, theoretical clarity is essential. Our explanation is presented in terms of simple logic and should serve to correct misconceptions and avoid future mistakes. We also show a nonlocality proof involving four participants which has interesting theoretical properties.Comment: 8 pages, text clarified, explicit LHV model provided for flawed nonlocality tes

Unboundedness and downward closures of higher-order pushdown automata

We show the diagonal problem for higher-order pushdown automata (HOPDA), and hence the simultaneous unboundedness problem, is decidable. From recent work by Zetzsche this means that we can construct the downward closure of the set of words accepted by a given HOPDA. This also means we can construct the downward closure of the Parikh image of a HOPDA. Both of these consequences play an important role in verifying concurrent higher-order programs expressed as HOPDA or safe higher-order recursion schemes

Cigarette smoking and periodontal disease among 32-year-olds: a prospective study of a representative birth cohort

Smoking is recognized as the primary behavioural risk factor for periodontal attachment loss (AL), but confirmatory data from prospective cohort studies are scarce

A genomic and evolutionary approach reveals non-genetic drug resistance in malaria

Background: Drug resistance remains a major public health challenge for malaria treatment and eradication. Individual loci associated with drug resistance to many antimalarials have been identified, but their epistasis with other resistance mechanisms has not yet been elucidated. Results: We previously described two mutations in the cytoplasmic prolyl-tRNA synthetase (cPRS) gene that confer resistance to halofuginone. We describe here the evolutionary trajectory of halofuginone resistance of two independent drug resistance selections in Plasmodium falciparum. Using this novel methodology, we discover an unexpected non-genetic drug resistance mechanism that P. falciparum utilizes before genetic modification of the cPRS. P. falciparum first upregulates its proline amino acid homeostasis in response to halofuginone pressure. We show that this non-genetic adaptation to halofuginone is not likely mediated by differential RNA expression and precedes mutation or amplification of the cPRS gene. By tracking the evolution of the two drug resistance selections with whole genome sequencing, we further demonstrate that the cPRS locus accounts for the majority of genetic adaptation to halofuginone in P. falciparum. We further validate that copy-number variations at the cPRS locus also contribute to halofuginone resistance. Conclusions: We provide a three-step model for multi-locus evolution of halofuginone drug resistance in P. falciparum. Informed by genomic approaches, our results provide the first comprehensive view of the evolutionary trajectory malaria parasites take to achieve drug resistance. Our understanding of the multiple genetic and non-genetic mechanisms of drug resistance informs how we will design and pair future anti-malarials for clinical use. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13059-014-0511-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

LED-based photometric stereo-imaging employing frequency-division multiple access

Among the many techniques developed for 3D imaging, photometric stereo-imaging excels through the simplicity of the hardware required. It can be used stand-alone or in fusion with other 3D imaging techniques for applications such as 3D scanners, face recognition or surveillance applications [1], [2][2], [3][3], [4][4], [5]. In photometric stereo-imaging, the subject is illuminated by different light sources from different angles, and the surface shades created by each light source allow reconstruction of 3D information

Lighting as a service that provides simultaneous 3D imaging and optical wireless connectivity

Light-emitting diodes enable optical wireless data transmission and advanced imaging methods such as photometric stereo-imaging. Both, wireless communications into a scene and 3D imaging of that scene is enabled in parallel using the same set of LEDs thus providing lighting-based infrastructure e.g. for automated agents