The health state preferences and logistical inconsistencies of New Zealanders: a tale of two tariffs

Notwithstanding the proposed use of Cost-Utility Analysis (CUA) to inform health care priority setting in New Zealand, to date there has been no research into New Zealanders’ valuations of health-related quality of life. This paper reports the results of a study of the health state preferences of adult New Zealanders generated from a postal survey to which 1360 people responded (a 50% response rate). The survey employed a self-completed questionnaire in which a selection of health states were described using the EQ-5D health state classification system and respondents’ valuations were sought using a visual analogue scale (VAS). Close attention is paid to the quality of the data, in particular to the ‘logical inconsistencies’ in respondents’ valuations. Regression analysis is used to interpolate values over the 245 possible EQ-5D states. Two tariffs of health state preferences, arising from contrasting treatments of the logical inconsistencies, are reported.New Zealand, EuroQol, EQ-5D

System Tests of the ATLAS Pixel Detector

The innermost part of the ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) experiment at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) will be a pixel detector, which is presently under construction. Once installed into the experimental area, access will be extremely limited. To ensure that the integrated detector assembly operates as expected, a fraction of the detector which includes the power supplies and monitoring system, the optical readout, and the pixel modules themselves, has been assembled and operated in a laboratory setting for what we refer to as system tests. Results from these tests are presented.Comment: 5 Pages, 9 Figures, to appear in Proceedings of the Eleventh Workshop on Electronics for LHC and Future Experiment

EQ-5D-3L Derived Population Norms for Health Related Quality of Life in Sri Lanka

Background Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) is an important outcome measure in health economic evaluation that guides health resource allocations. Population norms for HRQoL are an essential ingredient in health economics and in the evaluation of population health. The aim of this study was to produce EQ-5D-3L-derived population norms for Sri Lanka. Method A population sample (n =  780) was selected from four districts of Sri Lanka. A stratified cluster sampling approach with probability proportionate to size was employed. Twenty six clusters of 30 participants each were selected; each participant completed the EQ-5D-3L in a face-to-face interview. Utility weights for their EQ-5D-3L health states were assigned using the Sri Lankan EQ-5D-3L algorithm. The population norms are reported by age and socio-economic variables. Results The EQ-5D-3L was completed by 736 people, representing a 94% response rate. Sixty per cent of the sample reported being in full health. The percentage of people responding to any problems in the five EQ-5D-3L dimensions increased with age. The mean EQ-5D-3L weight was 0.85 (SD 0.008; 95%CI 0.84-0.87). The mean EQ-5D-3L weight was significantly associated with age, housing type, disease experience and religiosity. People above 70 years of age were 7.5 times more likely to report mobility problems and 3.7 times more likely to report pain/discomfort than those aged 18-29 years. Those with a tertiary education were five times less likely to report any HRQoL problems than those without a tertiary education. A person living in a shanty was 4.3 more likely to have problems in usual activities than a person living in a single house. Conclusion The population norms in Sri Lanka vary with socio-demographic characteristics. The socioeconomically disadvantaged have a lower HRQoL. The trends of population norms observed in this lower middle income country were generally similar to those previously reported in high income countries

On the propagation of jump discontinuities in relativistic cosmology

A recent dynamical formulation at derivative level \ptl^{3}g for fluid spacetime geometries $({\cal M}, {\bf g}, {\bf u})$, that employs the concept of evolution systems in first-order symmetric hyperbolic format, implies the existence in the Weyl curvature branch of a set of timelike characteristic 3-surfaces associated with propagation speed |v| = \sfrac{1}{2} relative to fluid-comoving observers. We show it is the physical role of the constraint equations to prevent realisation of jump discontinuities in the derivatives of the related initial data so that Weyl curvature modes propagating along these 3-surfaces cannot be activated. In addition we introduce a new, illustrative first-order symmetric hyperbolic evolution system at derivative level \ptl^{2}g for baryotropic perfect fluid cosmological models that are invariant under the transformations of an Abelian $G_{2}$ isometry group.Comment: 19 pages, 1 table, REVTeX v3.1 (10pt), submitted for publication to Physical Review D; added Report-No, corrected typo

Unsupervised machine learning of integrated health and social care data from the Macmillan Improving the Cancer Journey service in Glasgow

Background: Improving the Cancer Journey (ICJ) was launched in 2014 by Glasgow City Council and Macmillan Cancer Support. As part of routine service, data is collected on ICJ users including demographic and health information, results from holistic needs assessments and quality of life scores as measured by EQ-5D health status. There is also data on the number and type of referrals made and feedback from users on the overall service. By applying artificial intelligence and interactive visualization technologies to this data, we seek to improve service provision and optimize resource allocation.Method: An unsupervised machine-learning algorithm was deployed to cluster the data. The classical k-means algorithm was extended with the k-modes technique for categorical data, and the gap heuristic automatically identified the number of clusters. The resulting clusters are used to summarize complex data sets and produce three-dimensional visualizations of the data landscape. Furthermore, the traits of new ICJ clients are predicted by approximately matching their details to the nearest existing cluster center.Results: Cross-validation showed the model’s effectiveness over a wide range of traits. For example, the model can predict marital status, employment status and housing type with an accuracy between 2.4 to 4.8 times greater than random selection. One of the most interesting preliminary findings is that area deprivation (measured through Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation-SIMD) is a better predictor of an ICJ client’s needs than primary diagnosis (cancer type).Conclusion: A key strength of this system is its ability to rapidly ingest new data on its own and derive new predictions from those data. This means the model can guide service provision by forecasting demand based on actual or hypothesized data. The aim is to provide intelligent person-centered recommendations. The machine-learning model described here is part of a prototype software tool currently under development for use by the cancer support community.Disclosure: Funded by Macmillan Cancer Support</p

The quantum paraelectric behavior of SrTiO_{3} revisited: relevance of the structural phase transition temperature

It has been known for a long time that the low temperature behavior shown by the dielectric constant of quantum paraelectric $SrTiO_{3}$ can not be fitted properly by Barrett's formula using a single zero point energy or saturation temperature ($T_{1}$). As it was originally shown [K. A. M\"{u}ller and H. Burkard, Phys. Rev. B {\bf 19}, 3593 (1979)] a crossover between two different saturation temperatures ($T_{1l}$=77.8K and $T_{1h}$=80K) at $T\sim10K$ is needed to explain the low and high temperature behavior of the dielectric constant. However, the physical reason for the crossover between these two particular values of the saturation temperature at $T\sim10K$ is unknown. In this work we show that the crossover between these two values of the saturation temperature at $T\sim10K$ can be taken as a direct consequence of (i) the quantum distribution of frequencies $g(\Omega)\propto\Omega^{2}$ associated with the complete set of low-lying modes and (ii) the existence of a definite maximum phonon frequency given by the structural transition critical temperature $T_{tr}$.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Initial data for fluid bodies in general relativity

We show that there exist asymptotically flat almost-smooth initial data for Einstein-perfect fluid's equation that represent an isolated liquid-type body. By liquid-type body we mean that the fluid energy density has compact support and takes a strictly positive constant value at its boundary. By almost-smooth we mean that all initial data fields are smooth everywhere on the initial hypersurface except at the body boundary, where tangential derivatives of any order are continuous at that boundary. PACS: 04.20.Ex, 04.40.Nr, 02.30.JrComment: 38 pages, LaTeX 2e, no figures. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Identifying metabolites by integrating metabolome databases with mass spectrometry cheminformatics.

Novel metabolites distinct from canonical pathways can be identified through the integration of three cheminformatics tools: BinVestigate, which queries the BinBase gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) metabolome database to match unknowns with biological metadata across over 110,000 samples; MS-DIAL 2.0, a software tool for chromatographic deconvolution of high-resolution GC-MS or liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS); and MS-FINDER 2.0, a structure-elucidation program that uses a combination of 14 metabolome databases in addition to an enzyme promiscuity library. We showcase our workflow by annotating N-methyl-uridine monophosphate (UMP), lysomonogalactosyl-monopalmitin, N-methylalanine, and two propofol derivatives

First and Second Order Perturbations of Hypersurfaces

In this paper we find the first and second order perturbations of the induced metric and the extrinsic curvature of a non-degenerate hypersurface $\Sigma$ in a spacetime $(M,g)$, when the metric $g$ is perturbed arbitrarily to second order and the hypersurface itself is allowed to change perturbatively (i.e. to move within spacetime) also to second order. The results are fully general and hold in arbitrary dimensions and signature. An application of these results for the perturbed matching theory between spacetimes is presented.Comment: 31 pages, no figures. To be published in Classical and Quantum Gravit

Causal propagation of geometrical fields in relativistic cosmology

We employ the extended 1+3 orthonormal frame formalism for fluid spacetime geometries $({\cal M}, {\bf g}, {\bf u})$, which contains the Bianchi field equations for the Weyl curvature, to derive a 44-D evolution system of first-order symmetric hyperbolic form for a set of geometrically defined dynamical field variables. Describing the matter source fields phenomenologically in terms of a barotropic perfect fluid, the propagation velocities $v$ (with respect to matter-comoving observers that Fermi-propagate their spatial reference frames) of disturbances in the matter and the gravitational field, represented as wavefronts by the characteristic 3-surfaces of the system, are obtained. In particular, the Weyl curvature is found to account for two (non-Lorentz-invariant) Coulomb-like characteristic eigenfields propagating with $v = 0$ and four transverse characteristic eigenfields propagating with $|v| = 1$, which are well known, and four (non-Lorentz-invariant) longitudinal characteristic eigenfields propagating with |v| = \sfrac{1}{2}. The implications of this result are discussed in some detail and a parallel is drawn to the propagation of irregularities in the matter distribution. In a worked example, we specialise the equations to cosmological models in locally rotationally symmetric class II and include the constraints into the set of causally propagating dynamical variables.Comment: 25 pages, RevTeX (10pt), accepted for publication by Physical Review