BokSmart: Pre-participation screening of rugby players by coaches based on internationally accepted medical standards

A comprehensive medical history forms a significant part of any medical assessment or screening. In the athlete, pre-participation screening is aimed at determining those aspects of personal and family history that place the participant at greater risk of sudden death, serious illness or musculoskeletal injury. In rugby union, where the incidence of head and neck injuries is higher than in other sports, emphasis needs to be placed on screening for potential risk factors for neurological injury. In a South African rugby environment, pre-season medical screening is not standard and indeed rarely practised. In most club and school settings, the rugby coach may well be the person most in contact with players and therefore in the best position to conduct an initial screening. This article reviews the relevant literature pertinent to such a guideline

SynGAP isoforms exert opposing effects on synaptic strength

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Polynomial Interrupt Timed Automata

Interrupt Timed Automata (ITA) form a subclass of stopwatch automata where reachability and some variants of timed model checking are decidable even in presence of parameters. They are well suited to model and analyze real-time operating systems. Here we extend ITA with polynomial guards and updates, leading to the class of polynomial ITA (PolITA). We prove the decidability of the reachability and model checking of a timed version of CTL by an adaptation of the cylindrical decomposition method for the first-order theory of reals. Compared to previous approaches, our procedure handles parameters and clocks in a unified way. Moreover, we show that PolITA are incomparable with stopwatch automata. Finally additional features are introduced while preserving decidability

An analysis of the relationships between peer support and diabetes outcomes in adolescents with type 1 diabetes

This study explores the relationships between the various subtypes of global and diabetes-specific peer support and health outcomes in adolescents with type 1 diabetes. Global peer support significantly predicted self-care and glycated haemoglobin, although no associations were identified for diabetes-specific support overall, nor its factors. When comparing participants with above or below average glycaemic control, significantly greater diabetes-specific support was reported in those with poorer control. It is suggested that this may be related to feelings of nagging, in which diabetes-specific support is perceived as harassment

Sports-related concussion relevant to the South African rugby environment – A review

Guidelines for returning a concussed player to sport had been somewhat controversial and nebulous until the emergence of a series of international consensus meetings and statements initiated in 2001. The Vienna (2001), Prague (2004) and Zurich (2009 statements as well as the American National Athletic Trainers Association (2004) and the American College of Sports Medicine (2005) position stands have given all clinicians better guidance that is more evidence-based than the somewhat subjective guidelines of the latter 20th century. Some impetus to research and the re-evaluation of assessment and management guidelines has been provided by the emergence of computerised neuropsychological test batteries as a useful barometer of cognitive recovery. However, the clinical evaluation of a concussed player remains the cornerstone of management and should incorporate a thorough symptom analysis, general, cognitive and neurological examination, and balance testing. The Sports Concussion Assessment Tool (SCAT) 2 card is a clinical evaluation tool intended to summarise the most significant aspects of clinical assessment. In addition, and as an essential ‘final stress’ test, the athlete must be subjected to a series of graded exercise sessions, increasing in severity, before being returned to contact or collision sport. A structured clinical evaluation is particularly important in the South African context, where computerised testing may not be accessible to many. This article serves to collate and highlight the evidence-based and consensus data available for management of the concussed rugby player in 2010

Зональные фораминиферовые схемы нижнего карбона западных регионов Украины

Запропоновано зональні форамініферові схеми нижнього карбону Придобруджинського прогину та Львівсько-Волинського басейну. У Придобруджинському прогині нараховується вісім зон і дві підзони, з них одна зона і дві підзони виділені вперше. У п'яти зон змінено види-індекси, У Львівсько-Волинському басейні є п’ять зон і дві підзони, з них одна зона нова. Дві колишні зони об'єднано в одну — з двома підзонами. Змінено види-індекси трьох зон. В обох регіонах уточнено обсяг зон та їх межі. Границі зон і підзон проведено за першою появою видів-індексів. Проведено зіставлення цих зональних схем із форамініферовими зонами Доно-Дніпровського регіону і Східно-Європейської платформи.Foraminiferal zonal schemes of the Lower Carboniferous of the Dobrudja Foredeep and Lvov-Volynian basin are proposed in the paper. The first scheme includes eight zones and two subzones; among them one zone and two subzones are specified for the first time. In five zones species-index is changed. The second scheme includes five zones and two subzones; one zone is specified for the first time. Two preceding zones are united into one with two subzones. In three zones species-index is changed. The boundaries of zones and subzones are determined according to the first occurrence of species-index. Correlation of these zones with foraminiferal zones of Dono-Dnieper region and East-European platform is performed

Clinical guidelines for the management of craniofacial fibrous dysplasia

Fibrous dysplasia (FD) is a non-malignant condition caused by post-zygotic, activating mutations of the GNAS gene that results in inhibition of the differentiation and proliferation of bone-forming stromal cells and leads to the replacement of normal bone and marrow by fibrous tissue and woven bone. The phenotype is variable and may be isolated to a single skeletal site or multiple sites and sometimes is associated with extraskeletal manifestations in the skin and/or endocrine organs (McCune-Albright syndrome). The clinical behavior and progression of FD may also vary, thereby making the management of this condition difficult with few established clinical guidelines. This paper provides a clinically-focused comprehensive description of craniofacial FD, its natural progression, the components of the diagnostic evaluation and the multi-disciplinary management, and considerations for future research

Quantum networks reveal quantum nonlocality

The results of local measurements on some composite quantum systems cannot be reproduced classically. This impossibility, known as quantum nonlocality, represents a milestone in the foundations of quantum theory. Quantum nonlocality is also a valuable resource for information processing tasks, e.g. quantum communication, quantum key distribution, quantum state estimation, or randomness extraction. Still, deciding if a quantum state is nonlocal remains a challenging problem. Here we introduce a novel approach to this question: we study the nonlocal properties of quantum states when distributed and measured in networks. Using our framework, we show how any one-way entanglement distillable state leads to nonlocal correlations. Then, we prove that nonlocality is a non-additive resource, which can be activated. There exist states, local at the single-copy level, that become nonlocal when taking several copies of it. Our results imply that the nonlocality of quantum states strongly depends on the measurement context.Comment: 4 + 3 pages, 4 figure

An exploratory study of a NoSQL database for a clinical data repository

The need to implement a distributed Clinical Data Repository (CDR) at a healthcare facility, rose in large part due to the high volume of data and the discrepancy of their sources. Over the years, Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) began to present difficulties in responding to the needs of various organizations when it comes to manipulating a large amount of data and to its scalability. Therefore, it was necessary to explore other techniques to choose the appropriate technology to build the CDR. In this way, NoSQL emerged as a new type of database that is quite useful to work with multiple and different types of data. In addition, NoSQL introduces a number of user-friendly features such as a distributed, scalable, elastic and also fault tolerant system. In this way, Oracle NoSQL Database was the NoSQL solution chosen to develop this case study, using the key-value storage. This article was motivated to propose a CDR architecture based on Oracle NoSQL Database functionalities. A one-single node database was deployed for better comprehension, in order to enhance their features for future implementation.The work has been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope UID/CEC/00319/2019 and DSAIPA/DS/0084/2018