Informing the development of online weight management interventions:a qualitative investigation of primary care patient perceptions

Background: The internet is a potentially promising medium for delivering weight loss interventions. The current study sought to explore factors that might influence primary care patients’ initial uptake and continued use (up to four-weeks) of such programmes to help inform the development of novel, or refinement of existing, weight management interventions.Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 patients purposively sampled based on age, gender and BMI from a single rural general practice. The interviews were conducted 4 weeks after recruitment at the general practice and focused on experiences with using one of three freely available weight loss websites. Thematic Analysis was used to analyse the data.Results: Findings suggested that patients were initially motivated to engage with internet-based weight loss programmes by their accessibility and novelty. However, continued use was influenced by substantial facilitators and barriers, such as time and effort involved, reaction to prompts/reminders, and usefulness of information. Facilitation by face-to-face consultations with the GP was reported to be helpful in supporting change.Conclusions: Although primary care patients may not be ready yet to solely depend on online interventions for weight loss, their willingness to use them shows potential for use alongside face–to-face weight management advice or intervention. Recommendations to minimise barriers to engagement are provided

Domain integral equations for electromagnetic band-gap slab simulations

Trabajo presentado al International Symposium on Electromagnetic Theory, URSI 2004.Electromagnetic band-gap substrates o er advantages regarding cross-coupling in sub-mm range imaging array applications. Electromagnetic scattering by such substrates may e ectively be formulated in terms of integro- di erential equations. The scattered elds are evaluated via the spectral domain in which the 3-D problem reduces to an in nite system of coupled 1-D integro-di erential equations. The associated matrix-vector products are dominated by FFTs. For moderate frequencies an elementary preconditioner in combination with a prudent initial estimate usually su ces to reach rapid convergence using the transpose-free quasi-minimal residual method.The research presented above has been financially supported by ESA/ESTEC, under Contract No. 15632/01/NL/JA

A comparison of clinical pharmacodynamics of different administration schedules of oral topotecan (Hycamtin)

Prolonged exposure to topotecan in in vitro and in vivo experiments has yielded the highest antitumor efficacy. An oral formulation of topotecan with a bioavailability of 32-44% in humans enables convenient prolonged administration. Pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic relationships from four Phase I studies with different schedules of administration of oral topotecan in 99 adult patients with malignant solid tumors refractory to standard forms of chemotherapy were compared. Topotecan was administered as follows: (a) once daily (o.d.) for 5 days every 21 days (29 patients); (b) o.d. for 10 days every 21 days (19 patients); (c) twice daily (b.i.d.) for 10 days every 21 days (20 patients); and (d) b.i.d. for 21 days every 28 days (31 patients). Pharmacokinetic analysis was performed in 55 patients using a validated high-performance liquid chromatographic assay and noncompartmental pharmacokinetic me

Applicability of the Broken-Bond Rule to the Surface Energy of the fcc Metals

We apply the Green's function based full-potential screened Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker method in conjunction with the local density approximation to study the surface energies of the noble and the fcc transition and $sp$ metals. The orientation dependence of the transition metal surface energies can be well described taking into account only the broken bonds between first neighbors, quite analogous to the behavior we recently found for the noble metals [see cond-mat/0105207]. The (111) and (100) surfaces of the $sp$ metals show a jellium like behavior but for the more open surfaces we find again the noble metals behavior but with larger deviation from the broken-bond rule compared to the transition metals. Finally we show that the use of the full potential is crucial to obtain accurate surface energy anisotropy ratios for the vicinal surfaces.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, to appear in July in Surface Science Vol. 511,1 (2002

Work-related upper extremity disorders: one-year follow-up in an occupational diseases registry

To study the course and consequences of work-related upper extremity disorders in the registry of the Netherlands Centre for Occupational Diseases (NCvB). A follow-up study was performed in a sample of consecutive cases of work-related upper extremity disorders notified to the NCvB. Perceived severity was measured with VAS (0-100), quality of life with VAS (0-100) and SF-36, functional impairment with DASH and sickness absence with a questionnaire. Measurements took place directly after notification (T0) and after 3, 6 and 12 months (T1-T3). A linear mixed model was used to compare scores over time. Average age of the 48 consecutive patients (89% response) was 42 years; 48% were men. Perceived severity, functional impairment and sickness absence decreased statistically significant during the follow-up period, and quality of life scores improved. Patients older than 45 years scored worse on perceived severity of the disease, functional impairment and quality of life than did younger patients. The role of registries of occupational diseases for preventive policy can be extended by creating longitudinal data in sample projects. In the sample from our registry, work-related upper extremity disorders had a favourable cours