2,682 research outputs found
Use of the Global Alliance for Musculoskeletal Health survey module for estimating the population prevalence of musculoskeletal pain: Findings from the Solomon Islands
Background: Musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions are common and the biggest global cause of physical disability. The objective of the current study was to estimate the population prevalence of MSK-related pain using a standardized global MSK survey module for the first time. Methods: A MSK survey module was constructed by the Global Alliance for Musculoskeletal Health Surveillance Taskforce and the Global Burden of Disease MSK Expert Group. The MSK module was included in the 2015 Solomon Islands Demographic and Health Survey. The sampling design was a two-stage stratified, nationally representative sample of households. Results: A total of 9214 participants aged 15-49 years were included in the analysis. The age-standardized four-week prevalence of activity-limiting low back pain, neck pain, and hip and/or knee pain was 16.8, 8.9, and 10.8%, respectively. Prevalence tended to increase with age, and be higher in those with lower levels of education. Conclusions: Prevalence of activity-limited pain was high in all measured MSK sites. This indicates an important public health issue for the Solomon Islands that needs to be addressed. Efforts should be underpinned by integration with strategies for other non-communicable diseases, aging, disability, and rehabilitation, and with other sectors such as social services, education, industry, and agriculture. Primary prevention strategies and strategies aimed at self-management are likely to have the greatest and most cost-effective impact
Renal biopsy findings among Indigenous Australians: a nationwide review
Australia's Indigenous people have high rates of chronic kidney disease and kidney failure. To define renal disease among these people, we reviewed 643 renal biopsies on Indigenous people across Australia, and compared them with 249 biopsies of non-Indigenous patients. The intent was to reach a consensus on pathological findings and terminology, quantify glomerular size, and establish and compare regional biopsy profiles. The relative population-adjusted biopsy frequencies were 16.9, 6.6, and 1, respectively, for Aboriginal people living remotely/very remotely, for Torres Strait Islander people, and for non-remote-living Aboriginal people. Indigenous people more often had heavy proteinuria and renal failure at biopsy. No single condition defined the Indigenous biopsies and, where biopsy rates were high, all common conditions were in absolute excess. Indigenous people were more often diabetic than non-Indigenous people, but diabetic changes were still present in fewer than half their biopsies. Their biopsies also had higher rates of segmental sclerosis, post-infectious glomerulonephritis, and mixed morphologies. Among the great excess of biopsies in remote/very remote Aborigines, females predominated, with younger age at biopsy and larger mean glomerular volumes. Glomerulomegaly characterized biopsies with mesangiopathic changes only, with IgA deposition, or with diabetic change, and with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS). This review reveals great variations in biopsy rates and findings among Indigenous Australians, and findings refute the prevailing dogma that most indigenous renal disease is due to diabetes. Glomerulomegaly in remote/very remote Aboriginal people is probably due to nephron deficiency, in part related to low birth weight, and probably contributes to the increased susceptibility to kidney disease and the predisposition to FSGS
Late Paleozoic geology of the Queensland Plateau (offshore northeastern Australia)
The southwestern Pacific region consists of segmented and translated continental fragments of the Gondwanan margin. Tectonic reconstructions of this region are challenged by the fact that many fragmented continental blocks are submerged and/or concealed under younger sedimentary cover. The Queensland Plateau (offshore northeastern Australia) is one such submerged continental block. We present detrital zircon geochronological and morphological data, complemented by petrographic observations, from samples obtained from the only two drill cores that penetrated the Paleozoic metasedimentary strata of the Queensland Plateau (Ocean Drilling Program leg 133, sites 824 and 825). Results provide maximum age constraints of 319.4 +/- 3.5 and 298.9 +/- 2.5 Ma for the time of deposition, which in conjunction with evidence for deformation, indicate that the metasedimentary successions are most likely upper Carboniferous to lower Permian. A comparison of our results with a larger dataset of detrital zircon ages from the Tasmanides suggests that the Paleozoic successions of the Queensland Plateau formed in a backarc basin that was part of the northern continuation of the New England Orogen and/or the East Australian Rift System. However, unlike most of the New England Orogen, a distinctive component of the detrital zircon age spectra of the Mossman Orogen is also recognised, suggesting the existence of a late Paleozoic drainage system that crossed the northern Tasmanides en route from the North Australian Craton. A distinctive shift from abraded zircon grains to grains with well-preserved morphology at ca 305 Ma reflects a direct drainage of first-cycle sediments, most likely from an outboard arc and/or backarc magmatism
Tensile Fracture of Welded Polymer Interfaces: Miscibility, Entanglements and Crazing
Large-scale molecular simulations are performed to investigate tensile
failure of polymer interfaces as a function of welding time . Changes in the
tensile stress, mode of failure and interfacial fracture energy are
correlated to changes in the interfacial entanglements as determined from
Primitive Path Analysis. Bulk polymers fail through craze formation, followed
by craze breakdown through chain scission. At small welded interfaces are
not strong enough to support craze formation and fail at small strains through
chain pullout at the interface. Once chains have formed an average of about one
entanglement across the interface, a stable craze is formed throughout the
sample. The failure stress of the craze rises with welding time and the mode of
craze breakdown changes from chain pullout to chain scission as the interface
approaches bulk strength. The interfacial fracture energy is calculated
by coupling the simulation results to a continuum fracture mechanics model. As
in experiment, increases as before saturating at the average
bulk fracture energy . As in previous simulations of shear strength,
saturation coincides with the recovery of the bulk entanglement density. Before
saturation, is proportional to the areal density of interfacial
entanglements. Immiscibiltiy limits interdiffusion and thus suppresses
entanglements at the interface. Even small degrees of immisciblity reduce
interfacial entanglements enough that failure occurs by chain pullout and
The Temporality of Power and the Power of Temporality:Imaginary Future Selves in Professional Services Firms
Pre-pregnancy predictors of hypertension in pregnancy among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in north Queensland, Australia; a prospective cohort study
BACKGROUND Compared to other Australian women, Indigenous women are frequently at greater risk for hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. We examined pre-pregnancy factors that may predict hypertension in pregnancy in a cohort of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in north Queensland. METHODS Data on a cohort of 1009 Indigenous women of childbearing age (15–44 years) who participated in a 1998–2000 health screening program in north Queensland were combined with 1998–2008 Queensland hospitalisations data using probabilistic data linkage. Data on the women in the cohort who were hospitalised for birth (n = 220) were further combined with Queensland perinatal data which identified those diagnosed with hypertension in pregnancy. RESULTS Of 220 women who gave birth, 22 had hypertension in the pregnancy after their health check. The mean age of women with and without hypertension was similar (23.7 years and 23.9 years respectively) however Aboriginal women were more affected compared to Torres Strait Islanders. Pre-pregnancy adiposity and elevated blood pressure at the health screening program were predictors of a pregnancy affected by hypertension. After adjusting for age and ethnicity, each 1 cm increase in waist circumference showed a 4% increased risk for hypertension in pregnancy (PR 1.04; 95% CI; 1.02-1.06); each 1 point increase in BMI showed a 9% adjusted increase in risk (1.09; 1.04-1.14). For each 1 mmHg increase in baseline systolic blood pressure there was an age and ethnicity adjusted 6% increase in risk and each 1 mmHg increase in diastolic blood pressure showed a 7% increase in risk (1.06; 1.03-1.09 and 1.07; 1.03-1.11 respectively). Among those free of diabetes at baseline, the presence of the metabolic syndrome (International Diabetes Federation criteria) predicted over a three-fold increase in age-ethnicity-adjusted risk (3.5; 1.50-8.17). CONCLUSIONS Pre-pregnancy adiposity and features of the metabolic syndrome among these young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women track strongly to increased risk of hypertension in pregnancy with associated risks to the health of babies.Sandra K Campbell, John Lynch, Adrian Esterman and Robyn McDermot
Knot Theory: from Fox 3-colorings of links to Yang-Baxter homology and Khovanov homology
This paper is an extended account of my "Introductory Plenary talk at Knots
in Hellas 2016" conference We start from the short introduction to Knot Theory
from the historical perspective, starting from Heraclas text (the first century
AD), mentioning R.Llull (1232-1315), A.Kircher (1602-1680), Leibniz idea of
Geometria Situs (1679), and J.B.Listing (student of Gauss) work of 1847. We
spend some space on Ralph H. Fox (1913-1973) elementary introduction to diagram
colorings (1956). In the second section we describe how Fox work was
generalized to distributive colorings (racks and quandles) and eventually in
the work of Jones and Turaev to link invariants via Yang-Baxter operators, here
the importance of statistical mechanics to topology will be mentioned. Finally
we describe recent developments which started with Mikhail Khovanov work on
categorification of the Jones polynomial. By analogy to Khovanov homology we
build homology of distributive structures (including homology of Fox colorings)
and generalize it to homology of Yang-Baxter operators. We speculate, with
supporting evidence, on co-cycle invariants of knots coming from Yang-Baxter
homology. Here the work of Fenn-Rourke-Sanderson (geometric realization of
pre-cubic sets of link diagrams) and Carter-Kamada-Saito (co-cycle invariants
of links) will be discussed and expanded.
Dedicated to Lou Kauffman for his 70th birthday.Comment: 35 pages, 31 figures, for Knots in Hellas II Proceedings, Springer,
part of the series Proceedings in Mathematics & Statistics (PROMS
A comparison of statistical hadronization models
We investigate the sensitivity of fits of hadron spectra produced in heavy
ion collisions to the choice of statistical hadronization model. We start by
giving an overview of statistical model ambiguities, and what they tell us
about freeze-out dynamics. We then use Montecarlo generated data to determine
sensitivity to model choice. We fit the statistical hadronization models under
consideration to RHIC data, and find that a comparison fits can shed
light on some presently contentious questions.Comment: Proceedings for SQM2003 [7th Int. Conf. on Strangeness in Quark
Matter (Atlantic Beach, NC, USA, Mar 12-17, 2003)], to be published in
Journal of Physics G (Typos corrected, reference added
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