Women’s pelvic floor muscle strength and urinary and anal incontinence after childbirth: a cross-sectional study

Abstract OBJECTIVE To analyse pelvic floor muscle strength (PFMS) and urinary and anal incontinence (UI and AI) in the postpartum period. METHOD Cross-sectional study carried out with women in their first seven months after child birth. Data were collected through interviews, perineometry (Peritron™), and the International Consultation on Incontinence Questionnaire-Short Form (ICIQ-SF). RESULTS 128 women participated in the study. The PFMS mean was 33.1 (SD=16.0) cmH2O and the prevalence of UI and AI was 7.8% and 5.5%, respectively. In the multiple analyses, the variables associated with PFMS were type of birth and cohabitation with a partner. Newborn’s weight, previous pregnancy, UI during pregnancy, and sexual activity showed an association with UI after child birth. Only AI prior to pregnancy was associated with AI after childbirth. CONCLUSION Vaginal birth predisposes to the reduction of PFMS, and caesarean section had a protective effect to its reduction. The occurrence of UI during pregnancy is a predictor of UI after childbirth, and women with previous pregnancies and newborns with higher weights are more likely to have UI after childbirth.AI prior to pregnancy is the only risk factor for its occurrence after childbirth. Associations between PFMS and cohabitation with a partner, and between UI and sexual activity do not make possible to conclude that these variables are directly associated

Spin-Nematic Squeezed Vacuum in a Quantum Gas

Using squeezed states it is possible to surpass the standard quantum limit of measurement uncertainty by reducing the measurement uncertainty of one property at the expense of another complementary property. Squeezed states were first demonstrated in optical fields and later with ensembles of pseudo spin-1/2 atoms using non-linear atom-light interactions. Recently, collisional interactions in ultracold atomic gases have been used to generate a large degree of quadrature spin squeezing in two-component Bose condensates. For pseudo spin-1/2 systems, the complementary properties are the different components of the total spin vector , which fully characterize the state on an SU(2) Bloch sphere. Here, we measure squeezing in a spin-1 Bose condensate, an SU(3) system, which requires measurement of the rank-2 nematic or quadrupole tensor as well to fully characterize the state. Following a quench through a nematic to ferromagnetic quantum phase transition, squeezing is observed in the variance of the quadratures up to -8.3(-0.7 +0.6) dB (-10.3(-0.9 +0.7) dB corrected for detection noise) below the standard quantum limit. This spin-nematic squeezing is observed for negligible occupation of the squeezed modes and is analogous to optical two-mode vacuum squeezing. This work has potential applications to continuous variable quantum information and quantum-enhanced magnetometry

Promoting menstrual health among persian adolescent girls from low socioeconomic backgrounds: a quasi-experimental study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Research in the past decade has revealed average to poor menstrual health among many Iranian girls. The present study investigated the effectiveness of a health promotion project on improving menstrual health in adolescent girls in Iran.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A quasi-experimental study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the health intervention program. A total of 698 students (study participants and controls) in several schools in Mazandaran province, Iran were included. The project comprised 10 two-hour educational sessions. Educational topics included the significance of adolescence, physical and emotional changes during adolescence, pubertal and menstruation health and premenstrual syndrome. A self-administered questionnaire measuring demographic characteristics, behaviors during menstruation, menstrual patterns, sources of information about menstruation and personal health data was administered. The questionnaire was administered to all participating students after the experimental group received the training.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Among the most significant results was the impact of educational sessions on bathing and genital hygiene. A total of 61.6% in the experimental group compared with 49.3% in the control group engaged in usual bathing during menstruation (p = 0.002). Individual health status was significantly statistically correlated with menstrual health. Attitude towards menstruation was also significantly related to menstrual health.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The present study confirms that educational interventions, such as the health promotion project in this study, can be quite effective in promoting menstrual health.</p

ASCORE: an up-to-date cardiovascular risk score for hypertensive patients reflecting contemporary clinical practice developed using the (ASCOT-BPLA) trial data.

A number of risk scores already exist to predict cardiovascular (CV) events. However, scores developed with data collected some time ago might not accurately predict the CV risk of contemporary hypertensive patients that benefit from more modern treatments and management. Using data from the randomised clinical trial Anglo-Scandinavian Cardiac Outcomes Trial-BPLA, with 15 955 hypertensive patients without previous CV disease receiving contemporary preventive CV management, we developed a new risk score predicting the 5-year risk of a first CV event (CV death, myocardial infarction or stroke). Cox proportional hazard models were used to develop a risk equation from baseline predictors. The final risk model (ASCORE) included age, sex, smoking, diabetes, previous blood pressure (BP) treatment, systolic BP, total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol, fasting glucose and creatinine baseline variables. A simplified model (ASCORE-S) excluding laboratory variables was also derived. Both models showed very good internal validity. User-friendly integer score tables are reported for both models. Applying the latest Framingham risk score to our data significantly overpredicted the observed 5-year risk of the composite CV outcome. We conclude that risk scores derived using older databases (such as Framingham) may overestimate the CV risk of patients receiving current BP treatments; therefore, 'updated' risk scores are needed for current patients

A Genetic Polymorphism (rs17251221) in the Calcium-Sensing Receptor Gene (CASR) Is Associated with Stone Multiplicity in Calcium Nephrolithiasis

Calcium nephrolithiasis is one of the most common causes of renal stones. While the prevalence of this disease has increased steadily over the last 3 decades, its pathogenesis is still unclear. Previous studies have indicated that a genetic polymorphism (rs17251221) in the calcium-sensing receptor gene (CASR) is associated with the total serum calcium levels. In this study, we collected DNA samples from 480 Taiwanese subjects (189 calcium nephrolithiasis patients and 291 controls) for genotyping the CASR gene. Our results indicated no significant association between the CASR polymorphism (rs17251221) and the susceptibility of calcium nephrolithiasis. However, we found a significant association between rs17251221 and stone multiplicity. The risk of stone multiplicity was higher in patients with the GG+GA genotype than in those with the AA genotype (chi-square test:P = 0.008;odds ratio  =  4.79;95% confidence interval, 1.44–15.92;Yates' correction for chi-square test:P = 0.013). In conclusion, our results provide evidence supporting the genetic effects of CASR on the pathogenesis of calcium nephrolithiasis

Tutte polynomial of pseudofractal scale-free web

The Tutte polynomial of a graph is a 2-variable polynomial which is quite important in both combinatorics and statistical physics. It contains various numerical invariants and polynomial invariants, such as the number of spanning trees, the number of spanning forests, the number of acyclic orientations, the reliability polynomial, chromatic polynomial and flow polynomial. In this paper, we study and gain recursive formulas for the Tutte polynomial of pseudofractal scale-free web (PSW) which implies logarithmic complexity algorithm is obtained to calculate the Tutte polynomial of PSW although it is NP-hard for general graph. We also obtain the rigorous solution for the the number of spanning trees of PSW by solving the recurrence relations derived from Tutte polynomial, which give an alternative approach for explicitly determining the number of spanning trees of PSW. Further more, we analysis the all-terminal reliability of PSW and compare the results with that of Sierpinski gasket which has the same number of nodes and edges with PSW. In contrast with the well-known conclusion that scale-free networks are more robust against removal of nodes than homogeneous networks (e.g., exponential networks and regular networks). Our results show that Sierpinski gasket (which is a regular network) are more robust against random edge failures than PSW (which is a scale-free network). Whether it is true for any regular networks and scale-free networks, is still a unresolved problem.Comment: 19pages,7figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1006.533

Surface Structures Determined by Kinetic Processes: Adsorption and Diffusion of Oxygen on Pd(100)

Atomic oxygen forms a metastable c(2×2) phase on Pd(100) under conditions of rapid adsorption (high pressure) and slow diffusion (low sample temperature). One possible explanation is that oxygen molecules require an 8-fold ensemble of empty sites for dissociative chemisorption, and that subsequent adatom motion is limited and creates no neighboring pairs of filled sites. We describe the properties of the adlayer predicted by such a model

The Cosmology of Composite Inelastic Dark Matter

Composite dark matter is a natural setting for implementing inelastic dark matter - the O(100 keV) mass splitting arises from spin-spin interactions of constituent fermions. In models where the constituents are charged under an axial U(1) gauge symmetry that also couples to the Standard Model quarks, dark matter scatters inelastically off Standard Model nuclei and can explain the DAMA/LIBRA annual modulation signal. This article describes the early Universe cosmology of a minimal implementation of a composite inelastic dark matter model where the dark matter is a meson composed of a light and a heavy quark. The synthesis of the constituent quarks into dark mesons and baryons results in several qualitatively different configurations of the resulting dark matter hadrons depending on the relative mass scales in the system.Comment: 31 pages, 4 figures; references added, typos correcte