Who benefits most from participating in chronic disease self-management programs?

Objectives: To quantify the benefits that people receive from participating in self-management courses and identify subgroups that benefit most.Research Design: People with a wide range of chronic conditions attending self-management courses (N=1,341 individuals) were administered the generic Health Education Impact Questionnaire (HEI-Q). Data were collected before the first session (baseline) and at the end of courses (follow-up) resulting in 842 complete responses. The median (interquartile range) age was 64 (54 to 73) years and most participants were female (75%). Outcomes were categorized as Substantial improvement (Effect Size, ES &ge; 0.5), Minimal/No change (ES -0.49 to 0.49) and Substantial decline (ES &le; -0.5).Results: On average, one third of participants reported substantial benefits after attending a self-management course. Proportions of participants reporting substantial benefits ranged from 49% in Skill and technique acquisition to 27% in Health service navigation. Stratification by gender, age and education showed that younger participants were more likely to benefit, particularly young women. No further subgroup differences were observed.Conclusions: Given that the health of people with chronic diseases tends to decline, this evaluation is reassuring in that about one third of participants coming from a wide range of backgrounds receive substantial improvements in their self-management skills.<br /

Detection of solar-like oscillations in relics of the Milky Way: Asteroseismology of K giants in M4 using data from the NASA K2 mission

Asteroseismic constraints on K giants make it possible to infer radii, masses and ages of tens of thousands of field stars. Tests against independent estimates of these properties are however scarce, especially in the metal-poor regime. Here, we report the detection of solar-like oscillations in eight stars belonging to the red-giant branch (RGB) and red-horizontal branch (RHB) of the globular cluster M4. The detections were made in photometric observations from the K2 Mission during its Campaign 2. Making use of independent constraints on the distance, we estimate masses of the eight stars by utilizing different combinations of seismic and non-seismic inputs. When introducing a correction to the ν scaling relation as suggested by stellar models, for RGB stars we find excellent agreement with the expected masses from isochrone fitting, and with a distance modulus derived using independent methods. The offset with respect to independent masses is lower, or comparable with, the uncertainties on the average RGB mass (4–10 per cent, depending on the combination of constraints used). Our results lend confidence to asteroseismic masses in the metal-poor regime. We note that a larger sample will be needed to allow more stringent tests to be made of systematic uncertainties in all the observables (both seismic and non-seismic), and to explore the properties of RHB stars, and of different populations in the cluster

The K2 Galactic Caps Project - going beyond the Kepler field and ageing the Galactic disc

Analyses of data from spectroscopic and astrometric surveys have led to conflicting results concerning the vertical characteristics of the Milky Way. Ages are often used to provide clarity, but typical uncertainties of >40 per cent from photometry restrict the validity of the inferences made. Using the Kepler APOKASC sample for context, we explore the global population trends of two K2 campaign fields (3 and 6), which extend further vertically out of the Galactic plane than APOKASC. We analyse the properties of red giant stars utilizing three asteroseismic data analysis methods to cross-check and validate detections. The Bayesian inference tool PARAM is used to determine the stellar masses, radii, and ages. Evidence of a pronounced red giant branch bump and an [α/Fe] dependence on the position of the red clump is observed from the K2 fields radius distribution. Two peaks in the age distribution centred at ∼5 and ∼12 Gyr are found using a sample with σage 0.1) stars. As a function of vertical distance from the Galactic mid-plane (|Z|), the age distribution shows a transition from a young to old stellar population with increasing |Z| for the K2 fields. Further coverage of campaign targets with high-resolution spectroscopy is required to increase the yield of precise ages achievable with asteroseismology.We gratefully acknowledge the support of the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). BMR, AM, GRD, BM, LG, and SK are grateful to the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) for support provided to the asteroSTEP ISSI International Team. AM acknowledges support from the ERC Consolidator Grant funding scheme (project ASTEROCHRONOMETRY, G.A. no. 772293). CC acknowledges support from DFG Grant CH1188/2- 1 and from the ChETEC COST Action (CA16117), supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). BMR would like to thank the AIP for temporarily hosting him during the studies for this work. LC is the recipient of the ARC Future Fellowship FT160100402. SM acknowledges support from NASA grants NNX16AJ17G and NNX15AF13G, by the National Science Foundation grant AST-1411685 and the Ramon y Cajal fellowship number RYC-2015–17697. RAG acknowledges the funding received from the CNES through the PLATO grant. PJ acknowledges FONDECYT Iniciacion Grant Number 11170174. ´ TSR acknowledges financial support from Premiale 2015 MITiC (PI B. Garilli). AG acknowledges support from theSwedish National Space Board. Funding for the Stellar Astrophysics Centre is provided by the Danish National Research Foundation (Grant DNRF106). Funding for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, and the Participating Institutions. SDSS acknowledges support and resources from the Center for HighPerformance Computing at the University of Utah. The SDSS web site is www.sdss.org

KOI-3158: The oldest known system of terrestrial-size planets

The first discoveries of exoplanets around Sun-like stars have fueled efforts to find ever smaller worlds evocative of Earth and other terrestrial planets in the Solar System. While gas-giant planets appear to form preferentially around metal-rich stars, small planets (with radii less than four Earth radii) can form under a wide range of metallicities. This implies that small, including Earth-size, planets may have readily formed at earlier epochs in the Universe's history when metals were far less abundant. We report Kepler spacecraft observations of KOI-3158, a metal-poor Sun-like star from the old population of the Galactic thick disk, which hosts five planets with sizes between Mercury and Venus. We used asteroseismology to directly measure a precise age of 11.2 ± 1.0 Gyr for the host star, indicating that KOI-3158 formed when the Universe was less than 20 % of its current age and making it the oldest known system of terrestrial-size planets. We thus show that Earth-size planets have formed throughout most of the Universe's 13.8-billion-year history, providing scope for the existence of ancient life in the Galaxy

The phenomenology of solar-cycle-induced acoustic eigenfrequency variations: a comparative and complementary analysis of GONG, BiSON and VIRGO/LOI data

We use high-quality helioseismic data collected by three different observational programmes during the declining phase of activity cycle 22, and a substantial portion of the rising phase of the current cycle (23), to study the phenomenological nature of the cycle-induced (centroid) eigenfrequency variations. We have analysed the frequency dependence of the shifts by fitting a power law of the form delta nu (nl) proportional to (nu (nl))(alpha)/E-nl to the data (where the E-nl are the mode inertias, and alpha is the power-law index to be extracted). Previous studies have suggested that a relation with alpha = 0 provides an adequate description of the shifts up to nu approximate to 3500 mu Hz. However, here we show that while nevertheless describing the shifts well up to similar to 2500 mu Hz, the linear scaling breaks down conspicuously at higher frequencies. Above this threshold, the shifts follow a power-law dependence with alpha similar to2. Our analyses (for 1600 less than or equal to nu less than or equal to 4000 mu Hz) make use of observations made by the ground-based GONG over the angular degree range 4 less than or equal tol less than or equal to 150; the ground-based BiSON over 0 less than or equal tol less than or equal to2; and the VIRGO/LOI instrument on board the ESA/NASA SOHO satellite over 0 less than or equal tol less than or equal to8. We show that GONG shifts averaged over different ranges in l, together with the BiSON and LOI data averaged over their full quoted ranges, all scale at fixed frequency with the normalized mode inertia ratio Q(nl). This is to be expected if the solar-cycle perturbation affecting the modes is confined in the surface layers; the excellent agreement also reflects favourably on the external consistency of the different observations

Flag Hare-And Exercise: on the Extraction of Sectoral Mode Splittings from Full-Disc Sun-As Data

Proceedings of the SOHO 14 / GONG 2004 Workshop (ESA SP-559). "Helio- and Asteroseismology: Towards a Golden Future, ed. D. Danesy., n/a, p. 356 (2004)International audienc

Oscillation mode linewidths of main-sequence and subgiant stars observed by Kepler

International audienc