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Differences in the Experience of Caregiving Between Spouse and Adult Child Caregivers in Dementia With Lewy Bodies.
Background and objectivesDementia caregiving has been associated with increased burden, depression, grief, a decreased sense of well-being and quality of life, and a weakening of social support. Little is known about the experience of caregiving in Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB). The present study examines differences in the caregiving experience of spouse versus adult child caregivers of individuals with DLB.Research design and methodsIn this cross-sectional analytic study of spouses (n = 255) and adult children (n = 160) caregivers of individuals with DLB, participants completed an online survey of burden, grief, depression, well-being, quality of life, and social support.ResultsAdult child caregivers were more likely to care for women (p < .001) and see the care recipient less often (p < .001) than spouses. Adult child caregivers reported lower quality of life (p < .001) and more caregiver burden (p < .009), but also greater social support (p < .001) than spouses. Between group analyses of caregiver type by disease severity demonstrated that spousal caregivers experience greater grief with advancing disease (p = .005), while adult child caregivers increase social support with advancing disease (p < .001).Discussion and implicationsSpouses and adult children experience DLB caregiving differently. This was explained by the younger age of the adult child caregiver, frequency of contact with the care recipient, and differences in the care recipient's characteristics, frequency of neuropsychiatric symptoms, and disease severity. DLB caregiver support for this population should target psychoeducation for complicated neuropsychiatric symptoms in the care recipient. Screening all DLB caregivers for burden, grief, and depression is suggested to identify those that may benefit most from intervention. Spouses specifically may benefit from interventions that target increasing social support, while adult child caregivers may benefit from interventions aimed at mitigating burden and improving quality of life
Patient preferences for adjuvant radiotherapy in early breast cancer are strongly influenced by treatment received through random assignment
Objective: TARGITâA randomised women with early breast cancer to receive external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) or intraoperative radiotherapy (TARGITâIORT). This study aimed to identify what extra risk of recurrence patients would accept for perâ ceived benefits and risks of different radiotherapy treatments.
Methods: Patient preferences were determined by selfârated tradeâoff questionâ naires in two studies: Stage (1) 209 TARGITâA participants (TARGITâIORT n = 108, EBRT n = 101); Stage (2) 123 nonâtrial patients yet to receive radiotherapy (preâtreatâ ment group), with 85 also surveyed postâradiotherapy. Patients tradedâoff risks of local recurrence in preference selection between TARGITâIORT and EBRT.
Results: TARGITâIORT patients were more accepting of IORT than EBRT patients with 60% accepting the highest increased risk presented (4%â6%) compared to 12% of EBRT patients, and 2% not accepting IORT at all compared to 43% of EBRT paâ tients. Preâtreatment patients were more accepting of IORT than postâtreatment paâ tients with 23% accepting the highest increased risk presented compared to 15% of postâtreatment patients, and 15% not accepting IORT at all compared to 41% of preâ treatment patients.
Conclusions: Breast cancer patients yet to receive radiotherapy accept a higher recurrence risk than the actual risk found in TARGITâA. Measured patient preferences are highly influenced by experience of treatment received. This finding challenges the validity of postâtreatment preference studies
Comparison of the Caregiving Experience of Grief, Burden, and Quality of Life in Dementia with Lewy Bodies, Alzheimerâs Disease, and Parkinsonâs Disease Dementia
Background: Caregivers of persons living with Alzheimerâs disease (AD), dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), and Parkinsonâs disease dementia (PDD) are faced with numerous challenges. However, little is known about the caregiving experience across different dementias. Objective: The aims of this cross-sectional study were to examine the differences in the caregiver experience between DLB, PDD, and AD. Methods: Respondents were caregivers (Nâ=â515; 384 DLB, 69 AD, 62 PDD) who completed a 230-question survey including sociodemographics, disease severity, neuropsychiatric symptoms, and measures of grief, burden, depression, quality of life, social support, well-being, care confidence, and mastery/self-efficacy. Results: There were no differences in caregiver age, sex, race, or education, or in the distribution of disease severity between diagnostic groups. Constructs were highly intercorrelated with positive attributes (caregiver QoL, care recipient QoL, social support, well-being, mastery and care confidence) being inversely correlated with negative attributes (burden, grief, and depression). Across dementia etiologies, no differences were reported for quality of life, social support, depression, well-being, psychological well-being, mastery, care confidence, burden or grief. Instead, we found that the caregiverâs experience was dependent on caregiver characteristics, person living with dementia characteristics and their most disturbing symptom, with behavior, personality changes, and sleep having the greatest effect on constructs. Conclusion: Caregiver ratings of psychosocial constructs may be more dependent on care recipient-caregiver dyad characteristics and the current symptoms than the underlying cause of those symptoms. Interventions to improve the caregiving experience should be developed to address specific psychosocial constructs rather than focusing on disease etiology or stage
Replicability of nitrogen recommendations from ramped calibration strips in winter wheat
Ramped calibration strips have been suggested as a way for grain producers to determine nitrogen needs more accurately. The strips use incrementally increasing levels of nitrogen and enable producers to conduct an experiment in each field to determine nitrogen needs. This study determines whether predictions from the program Ramp Analyzer 1.2 are replicable in Oklahoma hard red winter wheat (Triticum aestivum). Predictions are derived from 36 individual strips from on-farm experimentsâtwo pairs of adjacent strips at each of nine winter wheat fields in Canadian County, OK. The two pairs of strips within each field were between 120 and 155 m apart. Each strip was analyzed three times during the 2006â2007 growing season. Nitrogen recommendations from Ramp Analyzer 1.2 are not correlated even for strips that were placed side by side, and recommendations from strips in the same field show no more homogeneity than randomly selected strips throughout the county. The results indicate that ramped calibration strips are unlikely to produce accurate nitrogen requirement predictions at any spatial scale, whether at the county level or for subsections of a single field. In contrast, a procedure that uses only measures from the plot with no nitrogen and the plot with the highest level of nitrogen applied does show replicability. Thus, improvements in the ramped calibration strip technology are needed if it is to become viable.Fertilizer; Nitrogen; Precision agriculture; Ramped calibration strip; Winter wheat
Physics of Rheologically-Enhanced Propulsion: Different Strokes in Generalized Stokes
Shear-thinning is an important rheological property of many biological
fluids, such as mucus, whereby the apparent viscosity of the fluid decreases
with shear. Certain microscopic swimmers have been shown to progress more
rapidly through shear-thinning fluids, but is this behavior generic to all
microscopic swimmers, and what are the physics through which shear-thinning
rheology affects a swimmer's propulsion? We examine swimmers employing
prescribed stroke kinematics in two-dimensional, inertialess Carreau fluid:
shear-thinning "Generalized Stokes" flow. Swimmers are modeled, using the
method of femlets, by a set of immersed, regularized forces. The equations
governing the fluid dynamics are then discretized over a body-fitted mesh and
solved with the finite element method. We analyze the locomotion of three
distinct classes of microswimmer: (1) conceptual swimmers comprising sliding
spheres employing both one- and two-dimensional strokes, (2) slip-velocity
envelope models of ciliates commonly referred to as "squirmers" and (3)
monoflagellate pushers, such as sperm. We find that morphologically identical
swimmers with different strokes may swim either faster or slower in
shear-thinning fluids than in Newtonian fluids. We explain this kinematic
sensitivity by considering differences in the viscosity of the fluid
surrounding propulsive and payload elements of the swimmer, and using this
insight suggest two reciprocal sliding sphere swimmers which violate Purcell's
Scallop theorem in shear-thinning fluids. We also show that an increased flow
decay rate arising from shear-thinning rheology is associated with a reduction
in the swimming speed of slip-velocity squirmers. For sperm-like swimmers, a
gradient of thick to thin fluid along the flagellum alters the force it exerts
upon the fluid, flattening trajectories and increasing instantaneous swimming
speed.Comment: 22 pages, 28 figure
Gravitational oscillations of a liquid column
We report gravity oscillations of a liquid column partially immersed in a
bath of liquid. We stress in particular some peculiarities of this system,
namely (i) the fact that the mass of this oscillator constantly changes with
time; (ii) the singular character of the beginning of the rise, for which the
mass of the oscillator is zero; (iii) the sources of dissipation in this
system, which is found to be dominated at low viscosity by the entrance (or
exit) effects, leading to a long-range damping of the oscillations. We conclude
with some qualitative description of a second-order phenomenon, namely the
eruption of a jet at the beginning of the rise.Comment: 22 pages, pdf. Submitted to Physics of Fluid
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