Bathing adaptations in the homes of older adults (BATH-OUT): protocol for a feasibility randomised controlled trial (RCT)

Introduction The Care Act 2014 has placed a responsibility on local authorities in England to provide services that prevent deterioration and minimise the use of other health and social care services. Housing adaptations have been identified as 1 of the 10 most promising prevention services for older adults, with bathing adaptations being the most requested. However, many local authorities have lengthy waiting times which may increase costs, reduce effectiveness and reduce the preventive effect. There is no robust evidence of the effect of these adaptations on: health, well-being and functional ability. Methods and analysis This is a feasibility randomised controlled trial (RCT) with nested qualitative interview study. The RCT will recruit between 40 and 60 people who have been referred for an accessible showering facility, and their carers, from 1 local authority in England. They will be randomised to either usual adaptations (∼3-month wait) or immediate adaptations (no wait). The primary outcome is the feasibility of conducting a powered study. The outcomes assessed will be: health and social care-related quality of life, independence in activities of daily living and bathing, falls and use of health and social care services. Outcomes will be assessed at 3 and 6 months. Preliminary health economic feasibility will be established. Ethics and dissemination Favourable ethical opinion was provided by the Social Care Research Ethics Committee (reference number 16/IEC08/0017). The results of this study will lay the foundations for a further powered study. This would investigate the effect of bathing adaptations on quality of life and whether increased waiting times are associated with poorer outcomes and increased costs. The results have further potential to inform trials of other housing or social care interventions using the novel waiting list control method. Dissemination will include peer-reviewed publications and presentations at national and international conferences. Trial registration number ISRCTN14876332; Pre-results

On Gauge Invariance of Breit-Wigner Propagators

We present an approach to bosonic ($Z^0, W^{\pm}$) as well as fermionic (top-quark) Breit-Wigner propagators which is consistent with gauge invariance arguments. In particular, for the $Z^0$-boson propagator we extend previous analyses and show that the part proportional to $k_{\mu} k_{\nu}/M^2$ must be modified near the resonance. We derive a mass shift which agrees with results obtained elsewhere by different methods. The modified form of a resonant heavy fermion propagator is also given.Comment: 16 p., TeX, (final version

Muscular Adaptations to Whole Body Blood Flow Restriction Training and Detraining

Resistance training with blood flow restriction is typically performed during single exercises for the lower- or upper-body, which may not replicate real world programming. The present study examined the change in muscle strength and mass in a young healthy population during an 8-week whole body resistance training program, as well as monitoring these adaptations following a 4-week detraining period. Thirty-nine participants (27 males, 12 females) were allocated into four groups: blood flow restriction training (BFR-T); moderate-heavy load training (HL-T), light-load training (LL-T) or a non-exercise control (CON). Testing measurements were taken at Baseline, during mid-point of training (week 4), end of training (week 8) and following four weeks of detraining (week 12) and included anthropometrics, body composition, muscle thickness (MTH) at seven sites, and maximal dynamic strength (1RM) for six resistance exercises. Whole body resistance training with BFR significantly improved lower- and upper-body strength (overall; 11% increase in total tonnage), however, this was similar to LL-T (12%), but both groups were lower in comparison with HL-T (21%) and all groups greater than CON. Some markers of body composition (e.g., lean mass) and MTH significantly increased over the course of the 8-week training period, but these were similar across all groups. Following detraining, whole body strength remained significantly elevated for both BFR-T (6%) and HL-T (14%), but only the HL-T group remained higher than all other groups. Overall, whole body resistance training with blood flow restriction was shown to be an effective training mode to increase muscular strength and mass. However, traditional moderate-heavy load resistance training resulted in greater adaptations in muscle strength and mass as well as higher levels of strength maintenance following detraining

What is the evidence for giving chemoprophylaxis to children or students attending the same preschool, school or college as a case of meningococcal disease?

We performed a systematic literature review to assess the effectiveness of chemoprophylaxis for contacts of sporadic cases of invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) in educational settings. No studies directly compared IMD risk in contacts with/without chemoprophylaxis. However, compared to the background incidence, an elevated IMD risk was identified in settings without a general recommendation for chemoprophylaxis in pre-schools [pooled risk difference (RD) 58·2/10⁵, 95% confidence interval (CI) 27·3-89·0] and primary schools (pooled RD 4·9/10⁵, 95% CI 2·9-6·9) in the ~30 days after contact with a sporadic IMD case, but not in other educational settings. Thus, limited but consistent evidence suggests the risk of IMD in pre-school contacts of sporadic IMD cases is significantly increased above the background risk, but lower than in household contacts (pooled RD for household contacts with no chemoprophylaxis vs. background incidence: 480·1/10⁵, 95% CI 321·5-639·9). We recommend chemoprophylaxis for pre-school contacts depending on an assessment of duration and closeness of contact

Automated computation of one-loop integrals in massless theories

We consider one-loop tensor and scalar integrals, which occur in a massless quantum field theory and we report on the implementation into a numerical program of an algorithm for the automated computation of these one-loop integrals. The number of external legs of the loop integrals is not restricted. All calculations are done within dimensional regularization.Comment: 28 pages, version to be publishe

Asymptotic properties of Born-improved amplitudes with gauge bosons in the final state

For processes with gauge bosons in the final state we show how to continuously connect with a single Born-improved amplitude the resonant region, where resummation effects are important, with the asymptotic region far away from the resonance, where the amplitude must reduce to its tree-level form. While doing so all known field-theoretical constraints are respected, most notably gauge-invariance, unitarity and the equivalence theorem. The calculations presented are based on the process $f\bar{f}\to ZZ$, mediated by a possibly resonant Higgs boson; this process captures all the essential features, and can serve as a prototype for a variety of similar calculations. By virtue of massive cancellations the resulting closed expressions for the differential and total cross-sections are particularly compact.Comment: 23 pages, Latex, 4 Figures, uses axodra

Radiative Corrections to ZZ->ZZ in the Electroweak Standard Model

The cross-section for ZZ->ZZ with arbitrarily polarized Z bosons is calculated within the electroweak Standard Model including the complete O(alpha) corrections. We show the numerical importance of the radiative corrections and elaborate its characteristic features. The treatment of the Higgs-boson resonance is discussed in different schemes including the S-matrix-motivated pole scheme and the background-field method. The numerical accuracy of the equivalence theorem is investigated by comparing the cross-sections for purely longitudinal Z bosons obtained from the equivalence theorem and from the complete calculation. In this context the full O(alpha) corrections are also confronted with the enhanced corrections of O(alpha M_H^2/s_w^2 M_W^2), which were frequently used in the literature.Comment: 35 pages LaTeX, 19 postscript figures include

An update on vector boson pair production at hadron colliders

We present numerical results (including full one-loop QCD corrections) for the processes p p-bar and pp -> W+ W-, W+/- Z/gamma* and Z/gamma* Z/gamma* followed by the decay of the massive vector bosons into leptons. In addition to their intrinsic importance as tests of the standard model, these processes are also backgrounds to conjectured non-standard model processes. Because of the small cross sections at the Tevatron, full experimental control of these backgrounds will be hard to achieve. This accentuates the need for up-to-date theoretical information. A comparison is made with earlier work and cross section results are presented for p p-bar collisions at sqrt{s}=2 TeV and pp collisions at sqrt{s}=14 TeV. Practical examples of the use of our calculations are presented.Comment: 18 pages, 5 embedded figures, included extra reference [7

Testing nonperturbative techniques in the scalar sector of the standard model

We discuss the current picture of the standard model's scalar sector at strong coupling. We compare the pattern observed in the scalar sector in perturbation theory up to two-loop with the nonperturbative solution obtained by a next-to-leading order 1/N expansion. In particular, we analyze two resonant Higgs scattering processes, ff -> H -> f'f' and ff -> H -> ZZ, WW. We describe the ingredients of the nonperturbative calculation, such as the tachyonic regularization, the higher order 1/N intermediate renormalization, and the numerical methods for evaluating the graphs. We discuss briefly the perspectives and usefulness of extending these nonperturbative methods to other theories

The Higgs resonance in vector boson scattering

A heavy Higgs resonance is described in a representation-independent way which is valid for the whole energy range of 2 -> 2 scattering processes, including the asymptotic behavior at low and high energies. The low-energy theorems which follow from to the custodial SU_2 symmetry of the Higgs sector restrict the possible parameterizations of the lineshape that are consistent in perturbation theory. Matching conditions are specified which are necessary and sufficient to relate the parameters arising in different expansions. The construction is performed explicitly up to next-to-leading order.Comment: 25 pages, revtex, uses epsf, amssym