Изменение статуса книги в общественном сознании в цифровую эпоху

Материалы X Международной научной конференции

Higher CSF/serum free-T4 ratio is associated with improvement of quality of life during treatment with L-thyroxine

Up to 20% of individuals with primary hypothyroidism treated with L-thyroxine still suffer from severe symptoms. These are supposedly brain derived and involve both cognitive and emotional domains. Previously, no consistent relationship has been found between thyroid hormones (TH) or TSH levels in blood and quality of life (QoL). Recently, we reported an association between cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)/serum free-thyroxine (f-T4) ratio and QoL, in juvenile hypothyroid patients. Here, we investigated if CSF/serum f-T4 ratio and QoL estimates correlate also during L-thyroxine treatment. Moreover, the CSF biomarker neurogranin (Ng) was used as a biomarker for synaptic function and integrity in clinical research. Ng is partially controlled by TH and therefore we investigated the relationship between QoL parameters and Ng levels. Patients diagnosed with primary hypothyroidism were investigated using vital parameters, serum and CSF analyses of TH, TSH, Ng and QoL questionnaires. Similar procedures were performed after 6 months of treatment. The most marked associations with QoL were found for CSF/serum f-T4 ratio, which was strongly related to several QoL parameters such as the mental subscore of SF-36 (r = 0.83, p <.0005). Ng, which did not differ from that in our healthy controls, was lower in some patients during treatment and higher in others. However, the change in Ng during treatment was significantly correlated with QoL parameters including the mental subscore of SF-36 (r = −0.86, p <.0001). In addition, the CSF/serum f-T4 ratio correlated with the change in Ng (r = −0.75, p =.001). Our results suggest that the ratio between CSF and serum f-T4 is an important biomarker for QoL during treatment of patients with primary hypothyroidism, so far in research, but in the future maybe also in clinical settings. Moreover, this ratio also correlates with the changes in Ng levels during L-thyroxine treatment, further supporting the impact of the TH balance between serum and CSF on QoL

How was it for you? Experiences of participatory design in the UK health service

Improving co-design methods implies that we need to understand those methods, paying attention to not only the effect of method choices on design outcomes, but also how methods affect the people involved in co-design. In this article, we explore participants' experiences from a year-long participatory health service design project to develop ‘Better Outpatient Services for Older People’. The project followed a defined method called experience-based design (EBD), which represented the state of the art in participatory service design within the UK National Health Service. A sample of participants in the project took part in semi-structured interviews reflecting on their involvement in and their feelings about the project. Our findings suggest that the EBD method that we employed was successful in establishing positive working relationships among the different groups of stakeholders (staff, patients, carers, advocates and design researchers), although conflicts remained throughout the project. Participants' experiences highlighted issues of wider relevance in such participatory design: cost versus benefit, sense of project momentum, locus of control, and assumptions about how change takes place in a complex environment. We propose tactics for dealing with these issues that inform the future development of techniques in user-centred healthcare design

Persistent and nonpersistent Listeria monocytogenes contamination in meat and poultry processing plants

Reprinted with permission from the Journal of Food Protection. Copyright held by the International Association for Food Protection, Des Moines, Iowa, U.S.A

The morality of attitudes toward nanotechnology: about God, techno-scientific progress, and interfering with nature

Using survey data, we examine public attitudes toward and awareness of nanotechnology in Germany (N = 750). First, it is shown that a majority of the people are still not familiar with nanotechnology. In addition, diffusion of information about nanotechnology thus far mostly seems to reach men and people with a relative higher educational background. Also, pro-science and technology views are positively related with nanotech familiarity. Results further show that a majority of the people have an indifferent, ambiguous, or non-attitude toward nanotechnology. Multinomial logit analyses further reveal that nanotech familiarity is positively related with people’s attitudes. In addition, it is shown that traditional religiosity is unrelated to attitudes and that individual religiosity is weakly related to nanotechnology attitudes. However, moral covariates other than religiosity seem of major importance. In particular, our results show that more negative views on technological and scientific progress as well as more holistic views about the relation between people and the environment increase the likelihood of having a negative attitude toward nanotechnology

On local linearization of control systems

We consider the problem of topological linearization of smooth (C infinity or real analytic) control systems, i.e. of their local equivalence to a linear controllable system via point-wise transformations on the state and the control (static feedback transformations) that are topological but not necessarily differentiable. We prove that local topological linearization implies local smooth linearization, at generic points. At arbitrary points, it implies local conjugation to a linear system via a homeomorphism that induces a smooth diffeomorphism on the state variables, and, except at "strongly" singular points, this homeomorphism can be chosen to be a smooth mapping (the inverse map needs not be smooth). Deciding whether the same is true at "strongly" singular points is tantamount to solve an intriguing open question in differential topology