Young people’s experiences using electric powered indoor-outdoor wheelchairs (EPIOCs): Potential for enhancing users’ development?

Purpose: To examine the experiences of severely physically disabled young people using electric powered indoor/outdoor chairs (EPIOCs). Methods: A priori interview questions examined young people’s functioning with EPIOCs, pain and discomfort with EPIOC use and accidents or injuries resulting from EPIOC use. Eighteen young people (13 males and 5 females) aged 10 -18 (mean 15) years were interviewed by telephone using a qualitative framework approach. Participants were interviewed 10 -19 (mean 14.5) months after delivery of the chair. Diagnoses included muscular dystrophy (n = 10), cerebral palsy (n = 5), and ‘other’ (n =3). Results: Many children reported positive functioning following EPIOC use, including increased independence and social activities like wheelchair football. However, EPIOC use was also associated with pain and discomfort, as well as perceived lack of safety, and minor accidents. Most young people and their families were fairly satisfied with the service and provision of their wheelchairs. Conclusions: The findings suggest that disabled children’s development may benefit from the use of electric powered indoor/outdoor wheelchairs, although the advantages may come at certain costs to young people’s perceived and real safety. Recommendations to powered wheelchair providers include the demonstrated need for additional driving training as these young people mature

To adopt is to adapt: The process of implementing the ICF with an acute stroke multidisciplinary team in England

Copyright @ 2012 Informa Plc. The article can be accessed from the link below.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Purpose: The success of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) depends on its uptake in clinical practice. This project aimed to explore ways the ICF could be used with an acute stroke multidisciplinary team and identify key learning from the implementation process. Method: Using an action research approach, iterative cycles of observe, plan, act and evaluate were used within three phases: exploratory; innovatory and reflective. Thematic analysis was undertaken, using a model of immersion and crystallisation, on data collected via interview and focus groups, e-mail communications, minutes from relevant meetings, field notes and a reflective diary. Results: Two overall themes were determined from the data analysis which enabled implementation. There is a need to: (1) adopt the ICF in ways that meet local service needs; and (2) adapt the ICF language and format. Conclusions: The empirical findings demonstrate how to make the ICF classification a clinical reality. First, we need to adopt the ICF as a vehicle to implement local service priorities e.g. to structure a multidisciplinary team report, thus enabling ownership of the implementation process. Second, we need to adapt the ICF terminology and format to make it acceptable for use by clinicians.This study is funded by The Elizabeth Casson Trust. This article is made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund

Mechanistic analysis of an asymmetric palladium-catalyzed conjugate addition of arylboronic acids to β-substituted cyclic enones.

An asymmetric palladium-catalyzed conjugate addition reaction of arylboronic acids to enone substrates was investigated mechanistically. Desorption electrospray ionization coupled to mass spectrometry was used to identify intermediates of the catalytic cycle and delineate differences in substrate reactivity. Our findings provide evidence for the catalytic cycle proceeding through formation of an arylpalladium(II) cation, subsequent formation of an arylpalladium-enone complex, and, ultimately, formation of the new C-C bond. Reaction monitoring in both positive and negative ion modes revealed that 4-iodophenylboronic acid formed a relatively stable trimeric species under the reaction conditions

Effects of calcium antagonists on hypertension and diastolic function

Calcium antagonists are known to decrease blood pressure acutely and chronically in hypertensive patients with hypertensive heart disease, and also to improve their systolic function. However, disorders of diastolic function may occur early in hypertensive heart disease. The improvement of diastolic function by nifedipine and diltiazem is described, although it was difficult to exclude systolic unloading as a cause of the improvement. It is emphasised that diastolic dysfunction can exist in hypertensive heart disease, and that the calcium antagonists nifedipine and diltiazem can improve diastolic dysfunction.S Afr Med J 1989; 76: 89-9

Evaluation of detection methods for Legionella species using seeded water samples

South African laboratories are currently using various methods in a non-standardised approach to detect Legionella species in environmental samples. In an attempt to provide guidelines for the development of a standard method, a number of currently available detection methods were evaluated, using seeded samples of sterile and non-sterile tap water, cooling water and make-up water. The samples were seeded with a type strain of L. pneumophila serogroup 1 (American Type Culture Collection 33152). The effect of sample concentration by centrifugation and membrane filtration followed by either vortex or sonication for resuspension of organisms was studied. Three currently available culture methods were evaluated: the International standard method (ISO/DIS 11731), the Australian standard method (AS 3896 - 1991) and a locally-developed adaptation of the most probable number method (MPN). In addition, the direct immunofluorescence test and a commercially available latex agglutination test kit were included in the evaluations. The usefulness of treatment with acid or heat prior to culture was also compared. Our results indicated that concentration by membrane filtration using nitro-cellulose filters with a pore size of 0.45 ?m, followed by sonication for 10 min, would be the most appropriate concentration and resuspension method for the samples. In the absence of sample pretreatment with acid or heat, organism recovery from sterile seeded samples on BCYE ranged from 85.9 - 98.7%. However, in the non-sterile samples, these figures dropped to 8.1 - 38.5%. Sample pretreatment resulted in a further loss of at least 50% of organisms in all the samples, regardless of the pretreatment method or culture medium used. In general, the ISO and AS methods were more appropriate than the MPN method for organism recovery from sterile seeded samples. However, for the nonsterile samples, the MPN method yielded better recovery. WaterSA Vol.27(4) 2001: 523-52

Selexipag in the management of pulmonary arterial hypertension: an update

Selexipag is a compound that was designed to overcome the issues associated with oral administration of prostanoid compounds, beraprost and treprostinil in the treatment of pulmonary hypertension (PAH). As a selective IP agonist, it was designed to avoid the off-target prostanoid effects especially in the gastrointestinal system. To place this compound in context, this paper briefly reviews the efficacy, tolerability, and safety of subcutaneous, inhaled, and oral prostanoid preparations and comparesthemto selexipag. Selexipag is the first agent targeting a prostanoid receptor where a reduction in the primary efficacy morbidity/mortality composite end-point has been demonstrated. While safety outcomes favor selexipag over placebo, tolerability issues remain. Efficacy in terms of improvement in effort tolerance, hemodynamic and mortality benefit is less than seen with IV therapy. This is the first prostanoid demonstrated in a clinical trial to have added benefit in those on background double combination therapy and the first non IV prostanoid to demonstrate outcome benefit in the connective tissue disease (CTD) population in a randomized controlled trial

Determination of biomembrane bending moduli in fully atomistic simulations.

The bilayer bending modulus (Kc) is one of the most important physical constants characterizing lipid membranes, but precisely measuring it is a challenge, both experimentally and computationally. Experimental measurements on chemically identical bilayers often differ depending upon the techniques employed, and robust simulation results have previously been limited to coarse-grained models (at varying levels of resolution). This Communication demonstrates the extraction of Kc from fully atomistic molecular dynamics simulations for three different single-component lipid bilayers (DPPC, DOPC, and DOPE). The results agree quantitatively with experiments that measure thermal shape fluctuations in giant unilamellar vesicles. Lipid tilt, twist, and compression moduli are also reported

Hamming distance kernelisation via topological quantum computation

We present a novel approach to computing Hamming distance and its kernelisation within Topological Quantum Computation. This approach is based on an encoding of two binary strings into a topological Hilbert space, whose inner product yields a natural Hamming distance kernel on the two strings. Kernelisation forges a link with the field of Machine Learning, particularly in relation to binary classifiers such as the Support Vector Machine (SVM). This makes our approach of potential interest to the quantum machine learning community

Improving Domain Generalization by Learning without Forgetting: Application in Retail Checkout

Designing an automatic checkout system for retail stores at the human level accuracy is challenging due to similar appearance products and their various poses. This paper addresses the problem by proposing a method with a two-stage pipeline. The first stage detects class-agnostic items, and the second one is dedicated to classify product categories. We also track the objects across video frames to avoid duplicated counting. One major challenge is the domain gap because the models are trained on synthetic data but tested on the real images. To reduce the error gap, we adopt domain generalization methods for the first-stage detector. In addition, model ensemble is used to enhance the robustness of the 2nd-stage classifier. The method is evaluated on the AI City challenge 2022 -- Track 4 and gets the F1 score $40\%$ on the test A set. Code is released at the link https://github.com/cybercore-co-ltd/aicity22-track4