122 research outputs found
Efficacy of polyacrylamide hydrogel for female urinary incontinence: outcome of a single centre
Introduction: Periurethral injection with polyacrylamide hydrogel (PAHG, BulkamidÂź) is a minimally invasive treatment option to be considered for women with stress urinary incontinence. The manufacturer recommends injecting between 1.5 ml and 2 ml periurethrally. This study aims to evaluate the long-term efficacy of PAHG, and to determine whether there is a correlation between the volume of PAHG injected and the outcome in terms of symptoms.
Methods: A retrospective study was conducted between 2011 and 2018. Patients were contacted by telephone and the International Consultation on Incontinence Questionnaire â Urinary Incontinence Short Form (ICIQ-UI SF) was used to assess their symptoms. A linear regression analysis test was performed to assess the correlation between the outcome and the volume of PAHG injected.
Results: One hundred and fifteen PAHG injections were performed on 101 patients. The volume of PAHG injected ranged from 0.8 ml to 3 ml. Two patients reported procedure-related complications. Of the patients that attended their three-month follow-up, 62 (58.5%) patient-episodes reported an improvement. 62 patients were contacted by telephone and the median length of follow-up was 37.5 months. An improvement in the ICIQ-UI SF score was observed in 45.8% of patients with a mean improvement of 4 points. The volume of PAHG injected did not affect the outcome. 31% also reported a benefit with PAHG five years after their injection following previous incontinence surgery.
Conclusions: PAHG injection is safe and improves symptoms of urinary incontinence at up to 7.5 years in 45.8% of women. PAHG is also useful after previous incontinence surgery. The volume of PAHG injected did not influence the outcome
The Helpful Environment: distributed agents and services which cooperate
The University of Edinburgh and research sponsors are authorised to reproduce and distribute reprints and on-line copies for their purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation hereon. The views and conclusions contained herein are the authorâs and shouldnât be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of other parties.Imagine a future environment where networks of agents - people, robots and software agents - interact with sophisticated sensor grids and environmental actuators to provide advice, protection and aid. The systems will be integral to clothing, communications devices, vehicles, transportation systems, buildings, and pervasive in the environment. Vehicles and buildings could assist both their occupants and those around them. Systems would adapt and respond to emergencies whether communication were possible or not. Where feasible, local help would be used, with appropriate calls on shared services facilitated whenever this is both possible and necessary. Through this framework requests for assistance could be validated and brokered to available and appropriate services in a highly distributed fashion. Services would be provided to individuals or communities through this network to add value and give all sorts of assistance beyond emergency response aspects. In emergency situations, the local infrastructure would be augmented by the facilities of the responder teams at any level from local police, ambulance and fire response, all the way up to international response. An emergency zoneâs own infrastructure could be augmented when necessary by laying down temporary low cost sensor grids and placing specialized devices and robotic responders into the disaster area. These would form the basis for a distributed, adaptable, and resilient âhelpful environmentâ for every individual and organisation at personal, family, business, regional, national and international levels
Hydrellia lagarosiphon Deeming (Diptera: Ephydridae), a potential biological control agent for the submerged aquatic weed, Lagarosiphon major (Ridl.) Moss ex Wager (Hydrocharitaceae)
The leaf-mining fly, Hydrellia lagarosiphon Deeming (Diptera: Ephydridae), was investigated in its native range in South Africa, to determine its potential as a biological control agent for Lagarosiphon major (Ridl.) Moss ex Wager (Hydrocharitaceae), an invasive submerged macrophyte that is weedy in many parts of the world. The fly was found throughout the indigenous range of the plant in South Africa. High larval abundance was recorded at field sites with nearly all L. major shoots sampled ontaining larvae, with densities of up to 10 larvae per shoot. Adults laid batches of up to 15 eggs, usually on the abaxial sides of L. major leaves. The larvae mined internally, leaving the epidermal tissues of the upper and lower leaves intact. The larvae underwent three instars which took an average of 24 days and pupated within the leaf tissue, from which the adults emerged. Impact studies in the laboratory showed that H. lagarosiphon larval feeding significantly restricted the formation of L. major side branches. Based on its biology and damage caused to the plant, Hydrellia lagarosiphon could be considered as a useful biological control candidate for L. major in countries where the plant is invasive
Tractable non-local correlation density functionals for flat surfaces and slabs
A systematic approach for the construction of a density functional for van
der Waals interactions that also accounts for saturation effects is described,
i.e. one that is applicable at short distances. A very efficient method to
calculate the resulting expressions in the case of flat surfaces, a method
leading to an order reduction in computational complexity, is presented.
Results for the interaction of two parallel jellium slabs are shown to agree
with those of a recent RPA calculation (J.F. Dobson and J. Wang, Phys. Rev.
Lett. 82, 2123 1999). The method is easy to use; its input consists of the
electron density of the system, and we show that it can be successfully
approximated by the electron densities of the interacting fragments. Results
for the surface correlation energy of jellium compare very well with those of
other studies. The correlation-interaction energy between two parallel jellia
is calculated for all separations d, and substantial saturation effects are
predicted.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure
Dimensionless cosmology
Although it is well known that any consideration of the variations of
fundamental constants should be restricted to their dimensionless combinations,
the literature on variations of the gravitational constant is entirely
dimensionful. To illustrate applications of this to cosmology, we explicitly
give a dimensionless version of the parameters of the standard cosmological
model, and describe the physics of Big Bang Neucleosynthesis and recombination
in a dimensionless manner. The issue that appears to have been missed in many
studies is that in cosmology the strength of gravity is bound up in the
cosmological equations, and the epoch at which we live is a crucial part of the
model. We argue that it is useful to consider the hypothetical situation of
communicating with another civilization (with entirely different units),
comparing only dimensionless constants, in order to decide if we live in a
Universe governed by precisely the same physical laws. In this thought
experiment, we would also have to compare epochs, which can be defined by
giving the value of any {\it one} of the evolving cosmological parameters. By
setting things up carefully in this way one can avoid inconsistent results when
considering variable constants, caused by effectively fixing more than one
parameter today. We show examples of this effect by considering microwave
background anisotropies, being careful to maintain dimensionlessness
throughout. We present Fisher matrix calculations to estimate how well the fine
structure constants for electromagnetism and gravity can be determined with
future microwave background experiments. We highlight how one can be misled by
simply adding to the usual cosmological parameter set
Priorities for mitigating greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions to meet UK policy targets
Agriculture is essential for providing food and maintaining food security while concurrently delivering multiple other ecosystem services. However, agricultural systems are generally a net source of greenhouse gases and ammonia. They, therefore, need to substantively contribute to climate change mitigation and net zero ambitions. It is widely acknowledged that there is a need to further reduce and mitigate emissions across sectors, including agriculture to address the climate emergency and emissions gap. This discussion paper outlines a collation of opinions from a range of experts within agricultural research and advisory roles following a greenhouse gas and ammonia emission mitigation workshop held in the UK in March 2022. The meeting identified the top mitigation priorities within the UKâs agricultural sector to achieve reductions in greenhouse gases and ammonia that are compatible with policy targets. In addition, experts provided an overview of what they believe are the key knowledge gaps, future opportunities and co-benefits to mitigation practices as well as indicating the potential barriers to uptake for mitigation scenarios discussed
Greenhouse gas and ammonia emission mitigation priorities for UK policy targets
Acknowledgements Many thanks to the Association of Applied Biologistâs for organising and hosting the âAgricultural greenhouse gases and ammonia mitigation: Solutions, challenges, and opportunitiesâ workshop. This work was supported with funding from the Scottish Governmentâs Strategic Research Programme (2022-2027, C2-1 SRUC) and BBSRC (BBS/E/C/000I0320 and BBS/E/C/000I0330). We also acknowledge support from UKRI694 BBSRC (United Kingdom Research and Innovation-Biotechnology and Biological Sciences 695 Research Council; United Kingdom) via grants BBS/E/C/000I0320 and BBS/E/C/000I0330. and Rothamsted Research's Science Initiative Catalyst Award (SICA) supported by BBSRC.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in âs = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector
A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fbâ1 of protonâproton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results
Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC
provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of
lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated
luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with
a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the
transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the
anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the
nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of
the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp.
Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in
the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies
smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating
nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and
transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of
inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous
measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables,
submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are
available at
http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02
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