Health behaviour change and lifestyle-related condition prevalence: Comparison of two epochs based on systematic review of the physical therapy literature

AbstractUnhealthy lifestyle behaviours are primary contributors to the prevalence of lifestyle-related conditions this century. To examine the potential impact of the seminal World Health Organization-endorsed Ottawa Charter on health promotion in 1986 on physical therapy practice, we systematically reviewed articles that focused on physical activity for general health, smoking cessation, optimal nutrition, weight control, stress management, and sleep hygiene over two epochs. A search strategy was conducted in Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature to retrieve articles published between 1986 and 1989, and between 2006 and 2009 in five leading generalist physical therapy journals, and to compare numbers of relevant articles that focused on the lifestyle behaviours of interest. Articles were retrieved through title page searches of online and in print issues. Changes over time were evaluated with the Fisher exact test. Over 20 years, only the number of articles on physical activity and sleep hygiene increased. Although no benchmark exists, publication trends in physical therapy with respect to lifestyle-related conditions are somewhat consistent with epidemiological priorities, at least with respect to physical activity. Our findings could further sensitise the physical therapy community to health promotion and the prevention of lifestyle-related conditions to meet societal needs this century, specifically, the need to develop clinical competencies related to multiple health behaviour change

Accommodating quality and service improvement research within existing ethical principles

Funds were provided by a Canadian Institute of Health Research grant (Nominated PI: Monica Taljaard, PJT – 153045). Funds were also generously provided by Charles Weijer, who is funded by a Tier 1 Canadian Research Chair.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Principles of Principia: Some Notes on the Print Run for the First Edition

This article is a response to the 2020 census of known copies of the first edition of Isaac Newton's Principia, published in a preliminary draft form by Mordechai Feingold and Andrej Svorenčík. In our capacity as History of Science librarians, and as custodians of two of the recorded copies of Principia’s first edition, we recommend amendments to one of the core claims to come out of the new census: a revised estimate for the size of Principia's print run. In arguing that Principia was widely read and collected, Feingold and Svorencik eagerly extend previous estimates made by A.N.L. Munby and Henry Macomber. However, the particular metric that they use raises concerns from a book historical perspective. Their methodology, based on a combination of surviving copies and the contemporary price set by publishers, betrays a misunderstanding about the relationship between print runs and edition survival. In this article, we approach the issue of print runs from a bibliographic perspective, drawing on the existing literature about edition survival. We then offer an argument for a return to Munby's earlier estimate of Principia's print run, based on the wealth of bibliographic and historical evidence surrounding its production. Our essay is both an examination of the first edition of Principia and a tacit reminder that book history and bibliography is foundational to any discussion of first editions, and to any durable census of books

Towards a Deep Improviser: a prototype deep learning post-tonal free music generator

Two modest-sized symbolic corpora of post-tonal and post-metrical keyboard music have been constructed, one algorithmic, the other improvised. Deep learning models of each have been trained. The purpose was to obtain models with sufficient generalisation capacity that in response to separate fresh input seed material, they can generate outputs that are statistically distinctive, neither random nor recreative of the learned corpora or the seed material. This objective has been achieved, as judged by k-sample Anderson-Darling and Cramer tests. Music has been generated using the approach, and preliminary informal judgements place it roughly on a par with an example of composed music in a related form. Future work will aim to enhance the model such that it deserves to be fully evaluated in relation to expression, meaning and utility in real-time performance

Towards Understanding Photodegradation Pathways in Lignins:The Role of Intramolecular Hydrogen Bonding in Excited States

The photoinduced dynamics of the lignin building blocks syringol, guaiacol, and phenol were studied using time-resolved ion yield spectroscopy and velocity map ion imaging. Following irradiation of syringol and guaiacol with a broad-band femtosecond ultraviolet laser pulse, a coherent superposition of out-of-plane OH torsion and/or OMe torsion/flapping motions is created in the first excited 1ππ* (S1) state, resulting in a vibrational wavepacket, which is probed by virtue of a dramatic nonplanar → planar geometry change upon photoionization from S1 to the ground state of the cation (D0). Any similar quantum beat pattern is absent in phenol. In syringol, the nonplanar geometry in S1 is pronounced enough to reduce the degree of intramolecular H bonding (between OH and OMe groups), enabling H atom elimination from the OH group. For guaiacol, H bonding is preserved after excitation, despite the nonplanar geometry in S1, and prevents O–H bond fission. This behavior affects the propensities for forming undesired phenoxyl radical sites in these three lignin chromophores and provides important insight into their relative “photostabilities” within the larger biopolymer

Can patient decision aids help people make good decisions about participating in clinical trials? A study protocol

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Evidence shows that the standard process for obtaining informed consent in clinical trials can be inadequate, with study participants frequently not understanding even basic information fundamental to giving informed consent. Patient decision aids are effective decision support tools originally designed to help patients make difficult treatment or screening decisions. We propose that incorporating decision aids into the informed consent process will improve the extent to which participants make decisions that are informed and consistent with their preferences. A mixed methods study will test this proposal.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Phase one of this project will involve assessment of a stratified random sample of 50 consent documents from recently completed investigator-initiated clinical trials, according to existing standards for supporting good decision making. Phase two will involve interviews of a purposive sample of 50 trial participants (10 participants from each of five different clinical areas) about their experience of the informed consent process, and how it could be improved. In phase three, we will convert consent forms for two completed clinical trials into decision aids and pilot test these new tools using a user-centered design approach, an iterative development process commonly employed in computer usability literature. In phase four, we will conduct a pilot observational study comparing the new tools to standard consent forms, with potential recruits to two hypothetical clinical trials. Outcomes will include knowledge of key aspects of the decision, knowledge of the probabilities of different outcomes, decisional conflict, the hypothetical participation decision, and qualitative impressions of the experience.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>This work will provide initial evidence about whether a patient decision aid can improve the informed consent process. The larger goal of this work is to examine whether study recruitment can be improved from (barely) informed consent based on disclosure-oriented documents, towards a process of high-quality participant decision-making.</p

A hybrid patient-specific biomechanical model based image registration method for the motion estimation of lungs

This paper presents a new hybrid biomechanical model-based non-rigid image registration method for lung motion estimation. In the proposed method, a patient-specific biomechanical modelling process captures major physically realistic deformations with explicit physical modelling of sliding motion, whilst a subsequent non-rigid image registration process compensates for small residuals. The proposed algorithm was evaluated with 10 4D CT datasets of lung cancer patients. The target registration error (TRE), defined as the Euclidean distance of landmark pairs, was significantly lower with the proposed method (TRE = 1.37 mm) than with biomechanical modelling (TRE = 3.81 mm) and intensity-based image registration without specific considerations for sliding motion (TRE = 4.57 mm). The proposed method achieved a comparable accuracy as several recently developed intensity-based registration algorithms with sliding handling on the same datasets. A detailed comparison on the distributions of TREs with three non-rigid intensity-based algorithms showed that the proposed method performed especially well on estimating the displacement field of lung surface regions (mean TRE = 1.33 mm, maximum TRE = 5.3 mm). The effects of biomechanical model parameters (such as Poisson’s ratio, friction and tissue heterogeneity) on displacement estimation were investigated. The potential of the algorithm in optimising biomechanical models of lungs through analysing the pattern of displacement compensation from the image registration process has also been demonstrated