Body segment parameters of Paralympic athletes from dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12283-016-0200-3This research represents the first documented investigation into the body segment parameters of Paralympic athletes (e.g., individuals with spinal cord injuries and lower extremity amputations). Two-dimensional body segment parameters (i.e., mass, length, position vector of the center of mass, and principal mass moment of inertia about the center of mass) were quantified from dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). In addition to establishing a body segment parameter database of Paralympic athletes for prospective biomechanists and engineers, the mass of each body segment as experimentally measured via the DXA imaging was compared with that reported by previous research of able-bodied cadavers. In general, there were significant differences in the body segment masses between the different methods. These findings support the implementation of the proposed database for developing valid multibody biomechanical models of Paralympic athletes with distinct physical disabilities.This research was funded by Dr. John McPhee’s Tier I Canada Research Chair in Biomechatronic System Dynamics

Socio-economic status and types of childhood injury in Alberta: a population based study

BACKGROUND: Childhood injury is the leading cause of mortality, morbidity and permanent disability in children in the developed world. This research examines relationships between socio-economic status (SES), demographics, and types of childhood injury in the province of Alberta, Canada. METHODS: Secondary analysis was performed using administrative health care data provided by Alberta Health and Wellness on all children, aged 0 to 17 years, who had injuries treated by a physician, either in a physician's office, outpatient department, emergency room and/or as a hospital inpatient, between April 1(st). 1995 to March 31(st). 1996. Thirteen types of childhood injury were assessed with respect to age, gender and urban/rural location using ICD9 codes, and were related to SES as determined by an individual level SES indicator, the payment status of the Alberta provincial health insurance plan. The relationships between gender, SES, rural/urban status and injury type were determined using logistic regression. RESULTS: Twenty-four percent of Alberta children had an injury treated by physician during the one year period. Peak injury rates occurred about ages 2 and 13–17 years. All injury types except poisoning were more common in males. Injuries were more frequent in urban Alberta and in urban children with lower SES (receiving health care premium assistance). Among the four most common types of injury (78.6% of the total), superficial wounds and open wounds were more common among children with lower SES, while fractures and dislocations/sprains/strains were more common among children receiving no premium assistance. CONCLUSION: These results show that childhood injury in Alberta is a major health concern especially among males, children living in urban centres, and those living on welfare or have Treaty status. Most types of injury were more frequent in children of lower SES. Analysis of the three types of the healthcare premium subsidy allowed a more comprehensive picture of childhood injury with children whose families are on welfare and those of Treaty status presenting more frequently for an injury-related physician's consultation than other children. This report also demonstrates that administrative health care data can be usefully employed to describe injury patterns in children

The effectiveness of tobacco control television advertisements in increasing the prevalence of smoke-free homes

BACKGROUND: There is considerable evidence that tobacco control mass media campaigns can change smoking behaviour. In the UK, campaigns over the last decade have contributed to declines in smoking prevalence and been associated with falls in cigarette consumption among continuing smokers. However, it is less evident whether such campaigns can also play a role in changing smokers’ behaviour in relation to protecting others from the harmful effects of their smoking in the home. We investigated whether exposure to English televised tobacco control campaigns, and specifically campaigns targeting second hand smoking, is associated with smokers having a smoke-free home. METHODS: We used repeated cross-sectional national survey data on 9872 households which participated in the Health Survey for England between 2004 and 2010, with at least one adult current smoker living in the household. Exposure to all government-funded televised tobacco control campaigns, and to those specifically with a second hand smoking theme, was quantified in Gross Rating Points (GRPs), an average per capita measure of advert exposure where 100 GRPs indicates 100 % of adults exposed once or 50 % twice. Our outcome was self-reported presence of a smoke-free home (where no one smokes in the home on most days). Analysis used generalised additive models, controlling for individual factors and temporal trends. RESULTS: There was no association between monthly televised campaigns overall and the probability of having a smoke-free home. However, exposure to campaigns specifically targeting second hand smoke was associated with increased odds of a smoke-free home in the following month (odds ratio per additional 100 GRPs, 1.07, 95 % CI 1.01 to 1.13), though this association was not seen at other lags. These effects were not modified by socio-economic status or by presence of a child in the home. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings provide tentative evidence that mass media campaigns specifically focussing on second hand smoke may be effective in reducing smoking in the home, and further evaluation of campaigns of this type is needed. General tobacco control campaigns in England, which largely focus on promoting smoking cessation, do not impact on smoke-free homes over and above their direct effect at reducing smoking

THE TREATMENT OF COCCIDIOIDOMYCOSIS

SUMMARYTherapy of coccidioidomycosis continues to evolve. For primary pulmonary disease, antifungal therapy is frequently not required while prolonged courses of antifungals are generally needed for those in whom extrathoracic disseminated has occurred. Intravenous amphotericin B should be reserved for those with severe disease. Oral triazole antifungals have had a great impact on the management of coccidioidomycosis. Both fluconazole and itraconazole at 400 mg daily have been effective for various forms of coccidioidomycosis, including meningitis, although relapse after therapy is discontinued is a problem. Individuals with suppressed cellular immunity are at increased risk for symptomatic coccidioidomycosis and they include those with HIV infection, those on immunosuppressive medications, and those who have received a solid organ transplant. Pregnant women and African-American men have been identified as two other groups who are at an increased risk for symptomatic and severe infection

Contributions of phonological and verbal working memory to language development in adolescents with fragile X syndrome

Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is the most common inherited cause of intellectual disability. Although language delays are frequently observed in FXS, neither the longitudinal course of language development nor its cognitive predictors are well understood. The present study investigated whether phonological and working memory skills are predictive of growth in vocabulary and syntax in individuals with FXS during adolescence. Forty-four individuals with FXS (mean age = 12.61 years) completed assessments of phonological memory (nonword repetition and forward digit recall), verbal working memory (backward digit recall), vocabulary, syntax, and nonverbal cognition. Vocabulary and syntax skills were reassessed at a 2-year follow-up. In a series of analyses that controlled for nonverbal cognitive ability and severity of autism symptoms, the relative contributions of phonological and working memory to language change over time were investigated. These relationships were examined separately for boys and girls. In boys with FXS, phonological memory significantly predicted gains in vocabulary and syntax skills. Further, verbal working memory was uniquely associated with vocabulary gains among boys. In girls with FXS, phonological and working memory skills showed no relationship with language change across the 2-year time period. Our findings indicate that, for adolescent boys with FXS, acquisition of vocabulary and syntax may be constrained by the ability to maintain and manipulate phonological representations online. Implications for the identification and treatment of language disorders in this population are discussed. The present study is the first to identify specific cognitive mechanisms contributing to language growth over time in individuals with FXS

Utilisation of an operative difficulty grading scale for laparoscopic cholecystectomy

Background A reliable system for grading operative difficulty of laparoscopic cholecystectomy would standardise description of findings and reporting of outcomes. The aim of this study was to validate a difficulty grading system (Nassar scale), testing its applicability and consistency in two large prospective datasets. Methods Patient and disease-related variables and 30-day outcomes were identified in two prospective cholecystectomy databases: the multi-centre prospective cohort of 8820 patients from the recent CholeS Study and the single-surgeon series containing 4089 patients. Operative data and patient outcomes were correlated with Nassar operative difficultly scale, using Kendall’s tau for dichotomous variables, or Jonckheere–Terpstra tests for continuous variables. A ROC curve analysis was performed, to quantify the predictive accuracy of the scale for each outcome, with continuous outcomes dichotomised, prior to analysis. Results A higher operative difficulty grade was consistently associated with worse outcomes for the patients in both the reference and CholeS cohorts. The median length of stay increased from 0 to 4 days, and the 30-day complication rate from 7.6 to 24.4% as the difficulty grade increased from 1 to 4/5 (both p < 0.001). In the CholeS cohort, a higher difficulty grade was found to be most strongly associated with conversion to open and 30-day mortality (AUROC = 0.903, 0.822, respectively). On multivariable analysis, the Nassar operative difficultly scale was found to be a significant independent predictor of operative duration, conversion to open surgery, 30-day complications and 30-day reintervention (all p < 0.001). Conclusion We have shown that an operative difficulty scale can standardise the description of operative findings by multiple grades of surgeons to facilitate audit, training assessment and research. It provides a tool for reporting operative findings, disease severity and technical difficulty and can be utilised in future research to reliably compare outcomes according to case mix and intra-operative difficulty

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Search for a New Heavy Gauge Boson Wprime with Electron + missing ET Event Signature in ppbar collisions at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV

We present a search for a new heavy charged vector boson $W^\prime$ decaying to an electron-neutrino pair in $p\bar{p}$ collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96\unit{TeV}. The data were collected with the CDF II detector and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 5.3\unit{fb}^{-1}. No significant excess above the standard model expectation is observed and we set upper limits on $\sigma\cdot{\cal B}(W^\prime\to e\nu)$. Assuming standard model couplings to fermions and the neutrino from the $W^\prime$ boson decay to be light, we exclude a $W^\prime$ boson with mass less than 1.12\unit{TeV/}c^2 at the 95\unit{%} confidence level.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures Submitted to PR

Measurement of the Forward-Backward Asymmetry in the B -> K(*) mu+ mu- Decay and First Observation of the Bs -> phi mu+ mu- Decay

We reconstruct the rare decays $B^+ \to K^+\mu^+\mu^-$, $B^0 \to K^{*}(892)^0\mu^+\mu^-$, and $B^0_s \to \phi(1020)\mu^+\mu^-$ in a data sample corresponding to $4.4 {\rm fb^{-1}}$ collected in $p\bar{p}$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=1.96 {\rm TeV}$ by the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. Using $121 \pm 16$ $B^+ \to K^+\mu^+\mu^-$ and $101 \pm 12$ $B^0 \to K^{*0}\mu^+\mu^-$ decays we report the branching ratios. In addition, we report the measurement of the differential branching ratio and the muon forward-backward asymmetry in the $B^+$ and $B^0$ decay modes, and the $K^{*0}$ longitudinal polarization in the $B^0$ decay mode with respect to the squared dimuon mass. These are consistent with the theoretical prediction from the standard model, and most recent determinations from other experiments and of comparable accuracy. We also report the first observation of the $B^0_s \to \phi\mu^+\mu^- decay and measure its branching ratio${\mathcal{B}}(B^0_s \to \phi\mu^+\mu^-) = [1.44 \pm 0.33 \pm 0.46] \times 10^{-6}$using$27 \pm 6$signal events. This is currently the most rare$B^0_s$ decay observed.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let