The association of neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio and lymphocyte-monocyte ratio with 3-month clinical outcome after mechanical thrombectomy following stroke

Background and aim Neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and lymphocyte-monocyte ratio (LMR) are associated with clinical outcomes in malignancy, cardiovascular disease and stroke. Here we investigate their association with outcome after acute ischaemic stroke treated by mechanical thrombectomy (MT). Methods Patients were selected using audit data for MT for acute anterior circulation ischaemic stroke at a UK centre from May 2016–July 2017. Clinical and laboratory data including neutrophil, lymphocyte and monocyte count tested before and 24 h after MT were collected. Poor functional outcome was defined as modified Rankin Scale (mRS) of 3–6 at 3 months. Multivariable logistic regression analyses were performed to explore the relationship of NLR and LMR with functional outcome. Results One hundred twenty-one patients (mean age 66.4 ± 16.7, 52% female) were included. Higher NLR (adjusted OR 0.022, 95% CI, 0.009–0.34, p = 0.001) and lower LMR (adjusted OR − 0.093, 95% CI (− 0.175)−(− 0.012), p = 0.025) at 24-h post-MT were significantly associated with poorer functional outcome when controlling for age, baseline NIHSS score, infarct size, presence of good collateral supply, recanalisation and symptomatic intracranial haemorrhage on multivariate logistic regression. Admission NLR or LMR were not significant predictors of mRS at 3 months. The optimal cut-off values of NLR and LMR at 24-h post-MT that best discriminated poor outcome were 5.5 (80% sensitivity and 60% specificity) and 2.0 (80% sensitivity and 50% specificity), respectively on receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. Conclusion NLR and LMR tested at 24 h after ictus or intervention may predict 3-month functional outcome

Assessment of Physical, Technical, and Tactical Analysis in the Australian Football League: A Systematic Review.

BACKGROUND: Elite Australian Football (AF) match-play requires proficiency in physical, technical, and tactical elements. However, when analysing player movement practitioners commonly exclude technical and tactical considerations, failing to recognise the multifactorial nature of AF match-play and providing little context into the movement requirements of the players. OBJECTIVES: This systematic review aimed to identify the physical, technical, and tactical requirements of the Australian Football League (AFL) and to highlight the importance of integrating data from multiple sources when analysing player output. METHODS: A systematic search of electronic databases (CINAHL, PubMed, Scopus, SPORTDiscus, and Web of Science) was conducted from January 2009 to June 2022. Keywords relating to physical, technical, and tactical match requirements were used. RESULTS: Forty-eight studies met the inclusion criteria. In isolation, physical requirements were the most analysed construct within the AFL (n = 17), followed by technical (n = 9) and then tactical (n = 6). Thirteen studies integrated physical and technical elements, one study integrated technical and tactical elements, one study integrated physical and tactical elements, and one study integrated all three elements. Movement analysis centred around average 'whole' match requirements, whereas technical and tactical match analyses focused on key performance indicators of match performance. CONCLUSION: While the physical requirements of the AFL have been well documented, there is little understanding of how player technical output and various team tactics influence player movement requirements. Knowledge of how the elements of AF match-play interact with one another could enhance our understanding of match performance and provide a greater resource for training prescription

Flexible and Robust Privacy-Preserving Implicit Authentication

Implicit authentication consists of a server authenticating a user based on the user's usage profile, instead of/in addition to relying on something the user explicitly knows (passwords, private keys, etc.). While implicit authentication makes identity theft by third parties more difficult, it requires the server to learn and store the user's usage profile. Recently, the first privacy-preserving implicit authentication system was presented, in which the server does not learn the user's profile. It uses an ad hoc two-party computation protocol to compare the user's fresh sampled features against an encrypted stored user's profile. The protocol requires storing the usage profile and comparing against it using two different cryptosystems, one of them order-preserving; furthermore, features must be numerical. We present here a simpler protocol based on set intersection that has the advantages of: i) requiring only one cryptosystem; ii) not leaking the relative order of fresh feature samples; iii) being able to deal with any type of features (numerical or non-numerical). Keywords: Privacy-preserving implicit authentication, privacy-preserving set intersection, implicit authentication, active authentication, transparent authentication, risk mitigation, data brokers.Comment: IFIP SEC 2015-Intl. Information Security and Privacy Conference, May 26-28, 2015, IFIP AICT, Springer, to appea

Counting with DNA in metabarcoding studies: How should we convert sequence reads to dietary data?

Advances in DNA sequencing technology have revolutionized the field of molecular analysis of trophic interactions, and it is now possible to recover counts of food DNA sequences from a wide range of dietary samples. But what do these counts mean? To obtain an accurate estimate of a consumer's diet should we work strictly with data sets summarizing frequency of occurrence of different food taxa, or is it possible to use relative number of sequences? Both approaches are applied to obtain semi-quantitative diet summaries, but occurrence data are often promoted as a more conservative and reliable option due to taxa-specific biases in recovery of sequences. We explore representative dietary metabarcoding data sets and point out that diet summaries based on occurrence data often overestimate the importance of food consumed in small quantities (potentially including low-level contaminants) and are sensitive to the count threshold used to define an occurrence. Our simulations indicate that using relative read abundance (RRA) information often provides a more accurate view of population-level diet even with moderate recovery biases incorporated; however, RRA summaries are sensitive to recovery biases impacting common diet taxa. Both approaches are more accurate when the mean number of food taxa in samples is small. The ideas presented here highlight the need to consider all sources of bias and to justify the methods used to interpret count data in dietary metabarcoding studies. We encourage researchers to continue addressing methodological challenges and acknowledge unanswered questions to help spur future investigations in this rapidly developing area of research

Prevalence and correlates of physical activity across kidney disease stages: an observational multicentre study

Background: People with chronic kidney disease (CKD) report high levels of physical inactivity, a major modifiable risk factor for morbidity and mortality. Understanding the biological, psychosocial and demographic causes of physical activity behaviour is essential for the development and improvement of potential health interventions and promotional initiatives. This study investigated the prevalence of physical inactivity and determined individual correlates of this behaviour in a large sample of patients across the spectrum of kidney disease. / Methods: A total of 5656 people across all stages of CKD (1–2, 3, 4–5, haemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis and renal transplant recipients) were recruited from 17 sites in England from July 2012 to October 2018. Physical activity was evaluated using the General Practice Physical Activity Questionnaire. Self-reported cardiorespiratory fitness, self-efficacy and stage of change were also assessed. Binominal generalized linear mutually adjusted models were conducted to explore the associations between physical activity and correlate variables. This cross-sectional observational multi-centre study was registered retrospectively as ISRCTN87066351 (October 2015). / Results: The prevalence of physical activity (6–34%) was low and worsened with disease progression. Being older, female and having a greater number of comorbidities were associated with greater odds of being physically inactive. Higher haemoglobin, cardiorespiratory fitness and self-efficacy levels were associated with increased odds of being active. Neither ethnicity nor smoking history had any effect on physical activity. / Conclusions: Levels of physical inactivity are high across all stages of CKD. The identification of stage-specific correlates of physical activity may help to prioritize factors in target groups of kidney patients and improve the development and improvement of public health interventions

Working with cancer: Health and employment among cancer survivors

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Purpose: Cancer affects a growing proportion of US workers. Factors contributing to whether they continue or return to work after cancer diagnosis include: age, physical and mental health, health insurance, education, and cancer site. The purpose of this study was to assess the complex relationships between health indicators and employment status for adult cancer survivors. Methods: We analyzed pooled data from the 1997-2012 US National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). Our sample included adults with a self-reported physician diagnosis of cancer (n = 24,810) and adults with no cancer history (n = 382,837). Using structural equation modeling (SEM), we evaluated the relationship between sociodemographic factors, cancer site, and physical and mental health indicators on the overall health and employment status among adults with a cancer history. Results: The overall model for cancer survivors fit the data well (χ2 (374) = 3654.7, P < .001; comparative fit index = 0.98; root mean square error of approximation = 0.04). Although black cancer survivors were less likely to report good-to-excellent health, along with Hispanic survivors, they were more likely to continue to work after diagnosis compared with their white counterparts. Health insurance status and educational level were strongly and positively associated with health status and current employment. Age and time since diagnosis were not significantly associated with health status or employment, but there were significant differences by cancer site. Conclusions: A proportion of cancer survivors may continue to work because of employment-based health insurance despite reporting poor health and significant physical and mental health limitations. Acute and long-term health and social support are essential for the continued productive employment and quality of life of all cancer survivors.The work was supported in part by a National Cancer Institute (NCI) fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (1F31CA153937); the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH R01 OH03915); and the European Regional Development Fund Programme and European Social Fund Convergence Programme for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (the University of Exeter Medical School)

Heterogeneity of surrogate outcome measures used in critical care studies: A systematic review.

BACKGROUND: The choice of outcome measure is a critical decision in the design of any clinical trial, but many Phase III clinical trials in critical care fail to detect a difference between the interventions being compared. This may be because the surrogate outcomes used to show beneficial effects in early phase trials (which informed the design of the subsequent Phase III trials) are not valid guides to the differences between the interventions for the main outcomes of the Phase III trials. We undertook a systematic review (1) to generate a list of outcome measures used in critical care trials, (2) to determine the variability in the outcome reporting in the respiratory subgroup and (3) to create a smaller list of potential early phase endpoints in the respiratory subgroup. METHODS: Data related to outcomes were extracted from studies published in the six top-ranked critical care journals between 2010 and 2020. Outcomes were classified into subcategories and categories. A subset of early phase endpoints relevant to the respiratory subgroup was selected for further investigation. The variability of the outcomes and the variability in reporting was investigated. RESULTS: A total of 6905 references were retrieved and a total of 294 separate outcomes were identified from 58 studies. The outcomes were then classified into 11 categories and 66 subcategories. A subset of 22 outcomes relevant for the respiratory group were identified as potential early phase outcomes. The summary statistics, time points and definitions show the outcomes are analysed and reported in different ways. CONCLUSION: The outcome measures were defined, analysed and reported in a variety of ways. This creates difficulties for synthesising data in systematic reviews and planning definitive trials. This review once again highlights an urgent need for standardisation and validation of surrogate outcomes reported in critical care trials. Future work should aim to validate and develop a core outcome set for surrogate outcomes in critical care trials

Working with cancer: health and employment among cancer survivors.

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Available online 4 August 2015PURPOSE: Cancer affects a growing proportion of US workers. Factors contributing to whether they continue or return to work after cancer diagnosis include: age, physical and mental health, health insurance, education, and cancer site. The purpose of this study was to assess the complex relationships between health indicators and employment status for adult cancer survivors. METHODS: We analyzed pooled data from the 1997-2012 US National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). Our sample included adults with a self-reported physician diagnosis of cancer (n = 24,810) and adults with no cancer history (n = 382,837). Using structural equation modeling (SEM), we evaluated the relationship between sociodemographic factors, cancer site, and physical and mental health indicators on the overall health and employment status among adults with a cancer history. RESULTS: The overall model for cancer survivors fit the data well (χ(2) (374) = 3654.7, P < .001; comparative fit index = 0.98; root mean square error of approximation = 0.04). Although black cancer survivors were less likely to report good-to-excellent health, along with Hispanic survivors, they were more likely to continue to work after diagnosis compared with their white counterparts. Health insurance status and educational level were strongly and positively associated with health status and current employment. Age and time since diagnosis were not significantly associated with health status or employment, but there were significant differences by cancer site. CONCLUSIONS: A proportion of cancer survivors may continue to work because of employment-based health insurance despite reporting poor health and significant physical and mental health limitations. Acute and long-term health and social support are essential for the continued productive employment and quality of life of all cancer survivors.The work was supported in part by a National Cancer Institute (NCI) fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (1F31CA153937); the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH R01 OH03915); and the European Regional Development Fund Programme and European Social Fund Convergence Programme for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (the University of Exeter Medical School)

Incremental bounded model checking for embedded software

Program analysis is on the brink of mainstream usage in embedded systems development. Formal verification of behavioural requirements, finding runtime errors and test case generation are some of the most common applications of automated verification tools based on bounded model checking (BMC). Existing industrial tools for embedded software use an off-the-shelf bounded model checker and apply it iteratively to verify the program with an increasing number of unwindings. This approach unnecessarily wastes time repeating work that has already been done and fails to exploit the power of incremental SAT solving. This article reports on the extension of the software model checker CBMC to support incremental BMC and its successful integration with the industrial embedded software verification tool BTC EMBEDDED TESTER. We present an extensive evaluation over large industrial embedded programs, mainly from the automotive industry. We show that incremental BMC cuts runtimes by one order of magnitude in comparison to the standard non-incremental approach, enabling the application of formal verification to large and complex embedded software. We furthermore report promising results on analysing programs with arbitrary loop structure using incremental BMC, demonstrating its applicability and potential to verify general software beyond the embedded domain