Outcome and quality of life after surgically treated ankle fractures in patients 65 years or older

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Despite high incidence of ankle fractures in the elderly, studies evaluating outcome and impact of quality of life in this age group specifically are sparse. The aim of this study was to evaluate outcome and quality of life 6 and 12 months after injury in patients 65 years or older who had been operated on due to an ankle fracture.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Sixty patients 65 years or older were invited to participate in the study. 6 and 12 months after the injury a questionnaire including inquiry to participate, the Olerud-Molander Ankle Score (OMAS), Short-Form 36 (SF-36), Linear Analogue Scale (LAS), Self-rated Ankle Function and some supplementary questions was sent home to the patients. The supplementary questions concerned subjective experience of ankle instability, sporting and physical activity level before injury and recaptured activity level at follow-ups, need of walking aid before injury, state of living before injury and at follow-ups and co-morbidities. After the 12-month follow-up the patients were also called for a radiological examination.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Fifty patients (83%) answered the questionnaire at 6-month and 46 (77%) at the 12-month follow-up. Although, 45 (90%) fractures were low-energy trauma 44 (88%) were bi- or trimalleolar and post-operative reduction results were complete in 23 (46%) ankles. The median OMAS improved from 60 (Interquartile range (IQR) 36) at 6-month to 70 (IQR 35) at 12-month (p = 0.002), but at 12-month still sixty percent or more of the patients reported pain, swelling, problems when stair-climbing and reduced activities of daily life. Twenty (40%) rated their ankle function as 'good' or 'very good' at 6-month and 30 (60%) at 12-month. Forty-one (82%) were physically active before injury but still one year after only 18/41 had returned to their pre-injury physical activity level. According to SF-36 four dimensions differed from the age- and gender matched normative data of the Swedish population, 'physical function', 'role physical' and 'role emotional' were below norms at 6-month for women (p = 0.010, p = 0.024 and 0.031) and 'general health' was above norms at 12-month for men (p = 0.044).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>One year after surgically treated ankle fractures a majority of patients continue to have symptoms and reported functional limitations. However, SF-36 scores indicate that only females had functional status below the age- and gender matched normative data of the Swedish population.</p

Modularity in Protein Complex and Drug Interactions Reveals New Polypharmacological Properties

Recent studies have highlighted the importance of interconnectivity in a large range of molecular and human disease-related systems. Network medicine has emerged as a new paradigm to deal with complex diseases. Connections between protein complexes and key diseases have been suggested for decades. However, it was not until recently that protein complexes were identified and classified in sufficient amounts to carry out a large-scale analysis of the human protein complex system. We here present the first systematic and comprehensive set of relationships between protein complexes and associated drugs and analyzed their topological features. The network structure is characterized by a high modularity, both in the bipartite graph and in its projections, indicating that its topology is highly distinct from a random network and that it contains a rich and heterogeneous internal modular structure. To unravel the relationships between modules of protein complexes, drugs and diseases, we investigated in depth the origins of this modular structure in examples of particular diseases. This analysis unveils new associations between diseases and protein complexes and highlights the potential role of polypharmacological drugs, which target multiple cellular functions to combat complex diseases driven by gain-of-function mutations

Kollektiv stöttning i samtal mellan inlärare av svenska som främmandespråk

Syftet med studien är att undersöka förekomster av kollektiv stöttning i samtal mellan inlärare som studerar svenska som främmandespråk. Undersökningsmaterialet består av inspelningar av två grupper som löser en didaktisk uppgift. Deltagarna studerar samtliga svenska som främmandespråk i Frankrike och har alla franska som förstaspråk. Grupperna har dock olika lång erfarenhet av svenskstudier. Uppsatsens frågeställningar är följande: Förekommer kollektiv stöttning vid lösningarna av uppgifterna och hur kan man i så fall beskriva den? På vilket sätt utnyttjas kommunikativa strategier och språkliga funktioner och vilken betydelse får de för den kollektiva stöttningen? Vilken relation finns mellan den kollektiva stöttningen och uppgiftens instruktioner? Vilka likheter och skillnader finns mellan de två undersökningsgrupperna och vilken betydelse får resultatet för lärarprofessionen? Materialet undersöks genom en analys av samtalen där sekventiering, närhetspar och turtagning fungerar som den ram inom vilken stöttning antas vara verksam. Inom denna ram undersöks stöttande processerna med hjälp av ett antal språkteoretiska begrepp som relateras till en sociokulturell syn på lärande. Centrala är kommunikativa strategier och språkliga funktioner vilka ses som viktiga för att interaktionella och potentiellt stöttande processer skall möjliggöras. Resultatet visar att kollektiv stöttning förekommer i samtalen genom att deltagarna utnyttjar varandra som språkliga resurser. Stöttningen är starkt knuten till två för grupperna gemensamma projekt – ett målspråkligt och ett interaktionellt. Inom dessa tar sig stöttningen för grupperna olika uttryck. I gruppen med kortare erfarenhet av svenska sker den ofta öppet med hjälp av kodväxling medan den i gruppen med längre erfarenhet ofta sker genom att deltagarna tar efter varandra. Ur ett didaktiskt perspektiv visar undersökningen bland annat på instruktionernas betydelse för vilka kollektiva stöttningsprocesser aktualiseras.Interdisciplinärt arbete, SSA133, 15 hp Ämne: Svenska som andraspråk Termin: Vt 2014 Handledare: Ann-Christine Randah

Bayesian semantic instance segmentation in open set world

This paper addresses the semantic instance segmentation task in the open-set conditions, where input images can contain known and unknown object classes. The training process of existing semantic instance segmentation methods requires annotation masks for all object instances, which is expensive to acquire or even infeasible in some realistic scenarios, where the number of categories may increase boundlessly. In this paper, we present a novel open-set semantic instance segmentation approach capable of segmenting all known and unknown object classes in images, based on the output of an object detector trained on known object classes. We formulate the problem using a Bayesian framework, where the posterior distribution is approximated with a simulated annealing optimization equipped with an efficient image partition sampler. We show empirically that our method is competitive with state-of-the-art supervised methods on known classes, but also performs well on unknown classes when compared with unsupervised methods