Development of a first-contact protocol to guide assessment of adult patients in rehabilitation services networks

OBJECTIVE: This paper describes the development of the Protocol for Identification of Problems for Rehabilitation (PLPR), a tool to standardize collection of functional information based on the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). DEVELOPMENT OF THE PROTOCOL: The PLPR was developed for use during the initial contact with adult patients within a public network of rehabilitation services. Steps to develop the protocol included: survey of the ICF codes most used by clinical professionals; compilation of data from functional instruments; development and pilot testing of a preliminary version in the service settings; discussion with professionals and development of the final version. The final version includes: user identification; social and health information; brief functional description (BFD); summary of the BFD; and PLPR results. Further testing of the final version will be conducted. CONCLUSIONS: The protocol standardizes the first contact between the user and the rehabilitation service. Systematic use of the protocol could also help to create a functional database that would allow comparisons between rehabilitation services and countries over time

Spectral and Localization Properties for the One-Dimensional Bernoulli Discrete Dirac Operator

A 1D Dirac tight-binding model is considered and it is shown that its nonrelativistic limit is the 1D discrete Schr?odinger model. For random Bernoulli potentials taking two values (without correlations), for typical realizations and for all values of the mass, it is shown that its spectrum is pure point, whereas the zero mass case presents dynamical delocalization for specific values of the energy. The massive case presents dynamical localization (excluding some particular values of the energy). Finally, for general potentials the dynamical moments for distinct masses are compared, especially the massless and massive Bernoulli cases.Comment: no figure; 24 pages; to appear in Journal of Mathematical Physic

Landslide Risk: Economic Valuation in the North-Eastern Zone of Medellin City

Natural disasters of a geodynamic nature can cause enormous economic and human losses. The economic costs of a landslide disaster include relocation of communities and physical repair of urban infrastructure. However, when performing a quantitative risk analysis, generally, the indirect economic consequences of such an event are not taken into account. A probabilistic approach methodology that considers several scenarios of hazard and vulnerability to measure the magnitude of the landslide and to quantify the economic costs is proposed. With this approach, it is possible to carry out a quantitative evaluation of the risk by landslides, allowing the calculation of the economic losses before a potential disaster in an objective, standardized and reproducible way, taking into account the uncertainty of the building costs in the study zone. The possibility of comparing different scenarios facilitates the urban planning process, the optimization of interventions to reduce risk to acceptable levels and an assessment of economic losses according to the magnitude of the damage. For the development and explanation of the proposed methodology, a simple case study is presented, located in north-eastern zone of the city of Medellín. This area has particular geomorphological characteristics, and it is also characterized by the presence of several buildings in bad structural conditions. The proposed methodology permits to obtain an estimative of the probable economic losses by earthquake-induced landslides, taking into account the uncertainty of the building costs in the study zone. The obtained estimative shows that the structural intervention of the buildings produces a reduction the order of 21 % in the total landslide risk. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd

Primordial fluctuations and cosmological inflation after WMAP 1.0

The observational constraints on the primordial power spectrum have tightened considerably with the release of the first year analysis of the WMAP observations, especially when combined with the results from other CMB experiments and galaxy redshift surveys. These observations allow us to constrain the physics of cosmological inflation: (i) The data show that the Hubble distance is almost constant during inflation. While observable modes cross the Hubble scale, it changes by less than 3% during one e-folding: d(d_H)/dt < 0.032 at 2 sigma. The distance scale of inflation itself remains poorly constrained: 1.2 x 10^{-28} cm < d_H < 1 cm. (ii) We present a new classification of single-field inflationary scenarios (including scenarios beyond slow-roll inflation), based on physical criteria, namely the behaviour of the kinetic and total energy densities of the inflaton field. The current data show no preference for any of the scenarios. (iii) For the first time the slow-roll assumption could be dropped from the data analysis and replaced by the more general assumption that the Hubble scale is (almost) constant during the observable part of inflation. We present simple analytic expressions for the scalar and tensor power spectra for this very general class of inflation models and test their accuracy.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures; section on the classification of models in the plane of tilt and tensor-to-scalar ratio added, references adde

DINÁMICA DE SEROCONVERSIÓN EN HEMBRAS BOVINAS POST ELIMINACIÓN DE ANIMALES PORTADORES DEL VIRUS DE LA DIARREA VIRAL BOVINA

El objetivo del presente estudio fue determinar el efecto de la eliminación de los animales portadores del virus de la diarrea viral bovina (VDVB) sobre la seroconversión contra el virus en la nueva generación de animales de un establo lechero de crianza intensiva en Arequipa. Se colectaron muestras de suero a vaquillas entre 6 a 12 meses de edad en cuatro periodos: enero (n=73), junio (n=48) y octubre (n=48) del 2003 y enero del 2004 (n=35) para la detección de anticuerpos contra el VDVB y para la detección de animales portadores (PI) del virus, mediante las pruebas de neutralizaciónviral y ELISA captura de antigeno, respectivamente. La seroprevalencia del VDVB fue de 80.8 + 9.0, 56.3 + 14.0,50.0+ 14.2 y 22.9+ 13.9%en el primero, segundo, tercero y cuarto periodo de muestreo, respectivamente. La prevalencia de animales portadores del virus fue de 2.7% (2173) y fueron detectados únicamente en el grupo muestreado en enero del 2003. La incidencia de infección de VDVB fue 121100 (24159) al mes en el periodo enero 2003 a enero 2004. Mediante la pruebas de regresión logística se demostró que la eliminación de animales PI en enero del 2003 redujo el riesgo de infección en los animales susceptibles en los siguientes periodos de muestreo. Además, la edad mostró ser un factor de riesgo para la infección con VDVB. Los resultados indican que la infección con VDVB es altamente prevalente en hatos que albergan animales portadores y que su eliminación reduce el riesgo de infección en el resto de animales, como se describe en la literatura. Los resultados sugieren que es posible el control y erradicación de la DVB en hatos lecheros de crianza intensiva mediante la identificación y eliminación de los animales portadores y sin vacunación pero manteniendo un alto nivel de bioseguridad en el establo.A study was conducted to determine the effect of culling BVDV carrier animals on the seroconversion against BVDV in the new generation of heifers from a dairy herd located in Arequipa, Peru. Blood samples were collected to 6-12 month old females in four sampling periods: January (n=73), June (n=48), October 2003 (n=48), and January 2004 (n=35) to evaluate their serological status against BVDV and to screen for carrier animals using the virus neutralization and antigen-capture ELISA tests, respectively. The prevalence of BVDV was 80.8 ± 9.0, 56.3 ± 14.0, 50.0 ± 14.2 and 22.9 ± 13.9% in the first, second, third and fourth sampling period, respectively. There were 2.7% (2/73) of carrier heifers in the group sampled in January 2003, and none in the subsequent sampling periods. The incidence of BVDV infection was 12/100 heifers per month from January 2003 till January 2004. The logistic regression test showed that culling of carrier animals in January 2003 reduced the risk of infection in subsequent months. In addition, age was a risk factor for VDVB infection in this group of animals. The results showed that BVDV infection is highly prevalent in herds having carrier animals, and that the culling of PI animals reduce the risk of infection in herd mates as indicated in the literature. The results also suggest that the control and eradication of BVDV in intensive management dairy herds may be possible by identifying and culling carrier animals and without vaccination but ensuring high level of biosecurity

Scattering and self-adjoint extensions of the Aharonov-Bohm hamiltonian

We consider the hamiltonian operator associated with planar sec- tions of infinitely long cylindrical solenoids and with a homogeneous magnetic field in their interior. First, in the Sobolev space $\mathcal H^2$, we characterize all generalized boundary conditions on the solenoid bor- der compatible with quantum mechanics, i.e., the boundary conditions so that the corresponding hamiltonian operators are self-adjoint. Then we study and compare the scattering of the most usual boundary con- ditions, that is, Dirichlet, Neumann and Robin.Comment: 40 pages, 5 figure

(De)Localization in the Prime Schrodinger Operator

It is reported a combined numerical approach to study the localization properties of the one-dimensional tight-binding model with potential modulated along the prime numbers. A localization-delocalization transition was found as function of the potential intensity; it is also argued that there are delocalized states for any value of the potential intensity.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures; to be published in J. Phys. A: Math. Ge

Dimensionalities of Weak Solutions in Hydrogenic Systems

A close inspection on the 3D hydrogen atom Hamiltonian revealed formal eigenvectors often discarded in the literature. Although not in its domain, such eigenvectors belong to the Hilbert space, and so their time evolution is well defined. They are then related to the 1D and 2D hydrogen atoms and it is numerically found that they have continuous components, so that ionization can take place

LanderPick, a Remote Operated Trawled Vehicle to cost-effectively deploy and recover lightweight oceanographic landers

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