Design of the WHIP-PD study: a phase II, twelve-month, dual-site, randomized controlled trial evaluating the effects of a cognitive-behavioral approach for promoting enhanced walking activity using mobile health technology in people with Parkinson-disease

BACKGROUND: Parkinson disease (PD) is a debilitating and chronic neurodegenerative disease resulting in ambulation difficulties. Natural walking activity often declines early in disease progression despite the relative stability of motor impairments. In this study, we propose a paradigm shift with a "connected behavioral approach" that targets real-world walking using cognitive-behavioral training and mobile health (mHealth) technology. METHODS/DESIGN: The Walking and mHealth to Increase Participation in Parkinson Disease (WHIP-PD) study is a twelve-month, dual site, two-arm, randomized controlled trial recruiting 148 participants with early to mid-stage PD. Participants will be randomly assigned to connected behavioral or active control conditions. Both conditions will include a customized program of goal-oriented walking, walking-enhancing strengthening exercises, and eight in-person visits with a physical therapist. Participants in the connected behavioral condition also will (1) receive cognitive-behavioral training to promote self-efficacy for routine walking behavior and (2) use a mHealth software application to manage their program and communicate remotely with their physical therapist. Active control participants will receive no cognitive-behavioral training and manage their program on paper. Evaluations will occur at baseline, three-, six-, and twelve-months and include walking assessments, self-efficacy questionnaires, and seven days of activity monitoring. Primary outcomes will include the change between baseline and twelve months in overall amount of walking activity (mean number of steps per day) and amount of moderate intensity walking activity (mean number of minutes per day in which > 100 steps were accumulated). Secondary outcomes will include change in walking capacity as measured by the six-minute walk test and ten-meter walk test. We also will examine if self-efficacy mediates change in amount of walking activity and if change in amount of walking activity mediates change in walking capacity. DISCUSSION: We expect this study to show the connected behavioral approach will be more effective than the active control condition in increasing the amount and intensity of real-world walking activity and improving walking capacity. Determining effective physical activity interventions for persons with PD is important for preserving mobility and essential for maintaining quality of life. Clinical trials registration NCT03517371, May 7, 2018. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT03517371. Date of registration: May 7, 2018. Protocol version: Original.R01 HD092444 - NICHD NIH HHS; 1R01HD092444-01A1 - National Institute of Child Health and Human DevelopmentPublished versio

Search for supersymmetry with a dominant R-parity violating LQDbar couplings in e+e- collisions at centre-of-mass energies of 130GeV to 172 GeV

A search for pair-production of supersymmetric particles under the assumption that R-parity is violated via a dominant LQDbar coupling has been performed using the data collected by ALEPH at centre-of-mass energies of 130-172 GeV. The observed candidate events in the data are in agreement with the Standard Model expectation. This result is translated into lower limits on the masses of charginos, neutralinos, sleptons, sneutrinos and squarks. For instance, for m_0=500 GeV/c^2 and tan(beta)=sqrt(2) charginos with masses smaller than 81 GeV/c^2 and neutralinos with masses smaller than 29 GeV/c^2 are excluded at the 95% confidence level for any generation structure of the LQDbar coupling.Comment: 32 pages, 30 figure

Human Resource Flexibility as a Mediating Variable Between High Performance Work Systems and Performance

Much of the human resource management literature has demonstrated the impact of high performance work systems (HPWS) on organizational performance. A new generation of studies is emerging in this literature that recommends the inclusion of mediating variables between HPWS and organizational performance. The increasing rate of dynamism in competitive environments suggests that measures of employee adaptability should be included as a mechanism that may explain the relevance of HPWS to firm competitiveness. On a sample of 226 Spanish firms, the study’s results confirm that HPWS influences performance through its impact on the firm’s human resource (HR) flexibility

Search for supersymmetry in the photon(s) plus missing energy channels at s\sqrt{s}=161 GeV and 172 GeV

Searches for supersymmetric particles in channels with one or more photons and missing energy have been performed with data collected by the ALEPH detector at LEP. The data consist of 11.1 \pb\ at $\sqrt{s} = 161 ~\, \rm GeV$, 1.1 \pb\ at 170 \gev\ and 9.5 \pb\ at 172 GeV. The \eenunu\ cross se ction is measured. The data are in good agreement with predictions based on the Standard Model, and are used to set upper limits on the cross sections for anomalous photon production. These limits are compared to two different SUSY models and used to set limits on the neutralino mass. A limit of 71 \gevsq\ at 95\% C.L. is set on the mass of the lightest neutralin o ($\tau_{\chi_{1}^{0}} \leq$ 3 ns) for the gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking and LNZ models

Search for jet extinction in the inclusive jet-pT spectrum from proton-proton collisions at s=8 TeV

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published articles title, journal citation, and DOI.The first search at the LHC for the extinction of QCD jet production is presented, using data collected with the CMS detector corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 10.7  fb−1 of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. The extinction model studied in this analysis is motivated by the search for signatures of strong gravity at the TeV scale (terascale gravity) and assumes the existence of string couplings in the strong-coupling limit. In this limit, the string model predicts the suppression of all high-transverse-momentum standard model processes, including jet production, beyond a certain energy scale. To test this prediction, the measured transverse-momentum spectrum is compared to the theoretical prediction of the standard model. No significant deficit of events is found at high transverse momentum. A 95% confidence level lower limit of 3.3 TeV is set on the extinction mass scale

Searches for electroweak neutralino and chargino production in channels with Higgs, Z, and W bosons in pp collisions at 8 TeV

Searches for supersymmetry (SUSY) are presented based on the electroweak pair production of neutralinos and charginos, leading to decay channels with Higgs, Z, and W bosons and undetected lightest SUSY particles (LSPs). The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of about 19.5 fb(-1) of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV collected in 2012 with the CMS detector at the LHC. The main emphasis is neutralino pair production in which each neutralino decays either to a Higgs boson (h) and an LSP or to a Z boson and an LSP, leading to hh, hZ, and ZZ states with missing transverse energy (E-T(miss)). A second aspect is chargino-neutralino pair production, leading to hW states with E-T(miss). The decays of a Higgs boson to a bottom-quark pair, to a photon pair, and to final states with leptons are considered in conjunction with hadronic and leptonic decay modes of the Z and W bosons. No evidence is found for supersymmetric particles, and 95% confidence level upper limits are evaluated for the respective pair production cross sections and for neutralino and chargino mass values