223 research outputs found
DISCHARGED BUT NOT DISSATISFIED Outcomes and satisfaction of patients discharged from the Edinburgh Trauma Triage Clinic
The effectiveness of therapeutic exercise for joint hypermobility syndrome: A systematic review
Background: Joint hypermobility syndrome (JHS) is a heritable connective tissue disorder characterised by excessive range of movement at multiple joints accompanied by pain. Exercise is the mainstay of management yet its effectiveness is unclear. Objectives: To establish the effectiveness of therapeutic exercise for JHS. Design: Systematic literature review. Data sources: A search of nine online databases, supplemented by a hand search and snowballing. Study eligibility criteria (participants and interventions): People diagnosed with JHS (rather than asymptomatic generalised joint laxity); therapeutic exercise (of any type) used as an intervention; primary data reported; English language; published research. Study appraisal and synthesis methods: Methodological quality was appraised by each reviewer using Critical Appraisal Skills Programme checklists. Articles were then discussed collectively and disagreements resolved through debate. Results: 2001 titles were identified. Four articles met the inclusion criteria, comprising one controlled trial, one comparative trial and two cohort studies. All studies found clinical improvements over time. However there was no convincing evidence that exercise was better than control or that joint-specific and generalised exercise differed in effectiveness. Limitations: The studies used heterogeneous outcome measures, preventing pooling of results. Only one study was a true controlled trial which failed to report between-group statistical analyses post-treatment. Conclusions and implications of key findings: There is some evidence that people with JHS improve with exercise but there is no convincing evidence for specific types of exercise or that exercise is better than control. Further high quality research is required to establish the effectiveness of exercise for JHS. © 2013 Chartered Society of Physiotherapy
Kepler-16: A Transiting Circumbinary Planet
We report the detection of a planet whose orbit surrounds a pair of low-mass
stars. Data from the Kepler spacecraft reveal transits of the planet across
both stars, in addition to the mutual eclipses of the stars, giving precise
constraints on the absolute dimensions of all three bodies. The planet is
comparable to Saturn in mass and size, and is on a nearly circular 229-day
orbit around its two parent stars. The eclipsing stars are 20% and 69% as
massive as the sun, and have an eccentric 41-day orbit. The motions of all
three bodies are confined to within 0.5 degree of a single plane, suggesting
that the planet formed within a circumbinary disk.Comment: Science, in press; for supplemental material see
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2011/09/14/333.6049.1602.DC1/1210923.Doyle.SOM.pd
Planetary Candidates Observed by Kepler, III: Analysis of the First 16 Months of Data
New transiting planet candidates are identified in sixteen months (May 2009 -
September 2010) of data from the Kepler spacecraft. Nearly five thousand
periodic transit-like signals are vetted against astrophysical and instrumental
false positives yielding 1,091 viable new planet candidates, bringing the total
count up to over 2,300. Improved vetting metrics are employed, contributing to
higher catalog reliability. Most notable is the noise-weighted robust averaging
of multi-quarter photo-center offsets derived from difference image analysis
which identifies likely background eclipsing binaries. Twenty-two months of
photometry are used for the purpose of characterizing each of the new
candidates. Ephemerides (transit epoch, T_0, and orbital period, P) are
tabulated as well as the products of light curve modeling: reduced radius
(Rp/R*), reduced semi-major axis (d/R*), and impact parameter (b). The largest
fractional increases are seen for the smallest planet candidates (197% for
candidates smaller than 2Re compared to 52% for candidates larger than 2Re) and
those at longer orbital periods (123% for candidates outside of 50-day orbits
versus 85% for candidates inside of 50-day orbits). The gains are larger than
expected from increasing the observing window from thirteen months (Quarter 1--
Quarter 5) to sixteen months (Quarter 1 -- Quarter 6). This demonstrates the
benefit of continued development of pipeline analysis software. The fraction of
all host stars with multiple candidates has grown from 17% to 20%, and the
paucity of short-period giant planets in multiple systems is still evident. The
progression toward smaller planets at longer orbital periods with each new
catalog release suggests that Earth-size planets in the Habitable Zone are
forthcoming if, indeed, such planets are abundant.Comment: Submitted to ApJS. Machine-readable tables are available at
http://kepler.nasa.gov, http://archive.stsci.edu/kepler/results.html, and the
NASA Exoplanet Archiv
Dating the detachment fault system of the Ruby Mountains, Nevada: Significance for the kinematics of low‐angle normal faults
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/94601/1/tect2138.pd
US Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in Dark Matter 2017: Community Report
This white paper summarizes the workshop "U.S. Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in
Dark Matter" held at University of Maryland on March 23-25, 2017.Comment: 102 pages + reference
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
The state of the Martian climate
60°N was +2.0°C, relative to the 1981–2010 average value (Fig. 5.1). This marks a new high for the record. The average annual surface air temperature (SAT) anomaly for 2016 for land stations north of starting in 1900, and is a significant increase over the previous highest value of +1.2°C, which was observed in 2007, 2011, and 2015. Average global annual temperatures also showed record values in 2015 and 2016. Currently, the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of lower latitudes
Transiting circumbinary planets Kepler-34 b and Kepler-35 b
Most Sun-like stars in the Galaxy reside in gravitationally bound pairs of stars (binaries). Although long anticipated the existence of a ‘circumbinary planet’ orbiting such a pair of normal stars was not definitively established until the discovery of the planet transiting (that is, passing in front of) Kepler-16. Questions remained, however, about the prevalence of circumbinary planets and their range of orbital and physical properties. Here we report two additional transiting circumbinary planets: Kepler-34 (AB)b and Kepler-35 (AB)b, referred to here as Kepler-34 b and Kepler-35 b, respectively. Each is a low-density gas-giant planet on an orbit closely aligned with that of its parent stars. Kepler-34 b orbits two Sun-like stars every 289 days, whereas Kepler-35 b orbits a pair of smaller stars (89% and 81% of the Sun’s mass) every 131 days. The planets experience large multi-periodic variations in incident stellar radiation arising from the orbital motion of the stars. The observed rate of circumbinary planets in our sample implies that more than ~1% of close binary stars have giant planets in nearly coplanar orbits, yielding a Galactic population of at least several million
Transit Timing Observations from Kepler: IV. Confirmation of 4 Multiple Planet Systems by Simple Physical Models
Eighty planetary systems of two or more planets are known to orbit stars
other than the Sun. For most, the data can be sufficiently explained by
non-interacting Keplerian orbits, so the dynamical interactions of these
systems have not been observed. Here we present 4 sets of lightcurves from the
Kepler spacecraft, which each show multiple planets transiting the same star.
Departure of the timing of these transits from strict periodicity indicates the
planets are perturbing each other: the observed timing variations match the
forcing frequency of the other planet. This confirms that these objects are in
the same system. Next we limit their masses to the planetary regime by
requiring the system remain stable for astronomical timescales. Finally, we
report dynamical fits to the transit times, yielding possible values for the
planets' masses and eccentricities. As the timespan of timing data increases,
dynamical fits may allow detailed constraints on the systems' architectures,
even in cases for which high-precision Doppler follow-up is impractical.Comment: In the proofs process, corrections were made to tables -- most
crucially, the timing data for Kepler-30b and the depths and radii of planets
in Kepler-31 and 3
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