A systematic review of musculoskeletal disorders among school teachers

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) represent one of the most common and most expensive occupational health problems in both developed and developing countries. School teachers represent an occupational group among which there appears to be a high prevalence of MSD. Given that causes of MSD have been described as multi-factorial and prevalence rates vary between body sites and location of study, the objective of this systematic review was to investigate the prevalence and risk factors for MSD among teaching staff.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The study involved an extensive search of MEDLINE and EMBASE databases in 2011. All studies which reported on the prevalence and/or risk factors for MSD in the teaching profession were initially selected for inclusion. Reference lists of articles identified in the original search were then examined for additional publications. Of the 80 articles initially located, a final group of 33 met the inclusion criteria and were examined in detail.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>This review suggests that the prevalence of self-reported MSD among school teachers ranges between 39% and 95%. The most prevalent body sites appear to be the back, neck and upper limbs. Nursery school teachers appear to be more likely to report suffering from low back pain. Factors such as gender, age, length of employment and awkward posture have been associated with higher MSD prevalence rates.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Overall, this study suggests that school teachers are at a high risk of MSD. Further research, preferably longitudinal, is required to more thoroughly investigate the issue of MSD among teachers, with a greater emphasis on the possible wider use of ergonomic principles. This would represent a major step forward in the prevention of MSD among teachers, especially if easy to implement control measures could be recommended.</p

Ecological and evolutionary consequences of alternative sex-change pathways in fish

Sequentially hermaphroditic fish change sex from male to female (protandry) or vice versa (protogyny), increasing their fitness by becoming highly fecund females or large dominant males, respectively. These life-history strategies present different social organizations and reproductive modes, from near-random mating in protandry, to aggregate- and harem-spawning in protogyny. Using a combination of theoretical and molecular approaches, we compared variance in reproductive success (V k*) and effective population sizes (N e) in several species of sex-changing fish. We observed that, regardless of the direction of sex change, individuals conform to the same overall strategy, producing more offspring and exhibiting greater V k* in the second sex. However, protogynous species show greater V k*, especially pronounced in haremic species, resulting in an overall reduction of N e compared to protandrous species. Collectively and independently, our results demonstrate that the direction of sex change is a pivotal variable in predicting demographic changes and resilience in sex-changing fish, many of which sustain highly valued and vulnerable fisheries worldwide

Psychometric properties of the Italian versions of the Gambling Urge Scale (GUS) and the Gambling Refusal Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (GRSEQ)

Gambling urges and gambling refusal self-efficacy beliefs play a major role in the development and maintenance of problem gambling. This study aimed to translate the Gambling Urge Scale (GUS) and the Gambling Refusal Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (GRSEQ) from English to Italian (GUS-I, GRSEQ-I) and to test their factor structure, internal consistency, construct validity, concurrent validity, and gender differences in 513 individuals from the Italian community. Factor structure and construct validity were tested through Confirmatory Factor Analysis, internal consistency through Cronbach’s alpha, concurrent validity through correlations with gambling-related cognitions (GRCS-I), probable pathological gambling (SOGS-I), and gambling functioning (GFA-R-I). Results confirmed that the 6 items of the GUS-I load highly on one dimension of Gambling Urge, and each of the 26 items of the GRSEQ-I load highly on their relevant sub-dimension, among the following: situations/thoughts, drugs, positive emotions, negative emotions. Both scales are internally consistent and show concurrent validity with gambling-related cognitions, probable pathological gambling, and gambling functioning. Males score higher than females at the GUS-I; females score higher than males at the GRSEQ-I. The findings from the present study suggest that the GUS-I and the GRSEQ-I are internally consistent and valid scales for the assessment of gambling urges and gambling refusal self-efficacy in Italian individuals from the community, with significant repercussions in terms of assessment, prevention, and intervention

Intraneuronal Aβ immunoreactivity is not a predictor of brain amyloidosis-β or neurofibrillary degeneration

Amyloid β (Aβ) immunoreactivity in neurons was examined in brains of 32 control subjects, 31 people with Down syndrome, and 36 patients with sporadic Alzheimer’s disease to determine if intraneuronal Aβ immunoreactivity is an early manifestation of Alzheimer-type pathology leading to fibrillar plaque formation and/or neurofibrillary degeneration. The appearance of Aβ immunoreactivity in neurons in infants and stable neuron-type specific Aβ immunoreactivity in a majority of brain structures during late childhood, adulthood, and normal aging does not support this hypothesis. The absence or detection of only traces of reaction with antibodies against 4–13 aa and 8–17 aa of Aβ in neurons indicated that intraneuronal Aβ was mainly a product of α- and γ-secretases (Aβ(17–40/42)). The presence of N-terminally truncated Aβ(17–40) and Aβ(17–42) in the control brains was confirmed by Western blotting and the identity of Aβ(17–40) was confirmed by mass spectrometry. The prevalence of products of α- and γ -secretases in neurons and β- and γ-secretases in plaques argues against major contribution of Aβ-immunopositive material detected in neuronal soma to amyloid deposit in plaques. The strongest intraneuronal Aβ(17–42) immunoreactivity was observed in structures with low susceptibility to fibrillar Aβ deposition, neurofibrillary degeneration, and neuronal loss compared to areas more vulnerable to Alzheimer-type pathology. These observations indicate that the intraneuronal Aβ immunoreactivity detected in this study is not a predictor of brain amyloidosis or neurofibrillary degeneration. The constant level of Aβ immunoreactivity in structures free from neuronal pathology during essentially the entire life span suggests that intraneuronal amino-terminally truncated Aβ represents a product of normal neuronal metabolism

A genetic cause of Alzheimer disease: mechanistic insights from Down syndrome

Down syndrome, caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21, is associated with a greatly increased risk of early onset Alzheimer disease. It is thought that this risk is conferred by the presence of three copies of the gene encoding amyloid precursor protein (APP), an Alzheimer risk factor, although the possession of extra copies of other chromosome 21 genes may also play a role. Further study of the mechanisms underlying the development of Alzheimer disease in Down syndrome could provide insights into the mechanisms that cause dementia in the general population

Determinants of recovery from post-COVID-19 dyspnoea: analysis of UK prospective cohorts of hospitalised COVID-19 patients and community-based controls

Background The risk factors for recovery from COVID-19 dyspnoea are poorly understood. We investigated determinants of recovery from dyspnoea in adults with COVID-19 and compared these to determinants of recovery from non-COVID-19 dyspnoea. Methods We used data from two prospective cohort studies: PHOSP-COVID (patients hospitalised between March 2020 and April 2021 with COVID-19) and COVIDENCE UK (community cohort studied over the same time period). PHOSP-COVID data were collected during hospitalisation and at 5-month and 1-year follow-up visits. COVIDENCE UK data were obtained through baseline and monthly online questionnaires. Dyspnoea was measured in both cohorts with the Medical Research Council Dyspnoea Scale. We used multivariable logistic regression to identify determinants associated with a reduction in dyspnoea between 5-month and 1-year follow-up. Findings We included 990 PHOSP-COVID and 3309 COVIDENCE UK participants. We observed higher odds of improvement between 5-month and 1-year follow-up among PHOSP-COVID participants who were younger (odds ratio 1.02 per year, 95% CI 1.01–1.03), male (1.54, 1.16–2.04), neither obese nor severely obese (1.82, 1.06–3.13 and 4.19, 2.14–8.19, respectively), had no pre-existing anxiety or depression (1.56, 1.09–2.22) or cardiovascular disease (1.33, 1.00–1.79), and shorter hospital admission (1.01 per day, 1.00–1.02). Similar associations were found in those recovering from non-COVID-19 dyspnoea, excluding age (and length of hospital admission). Interpretation Factors associated with dyspnoea recovery at 1-year post-discharge among patients hospitalised with COVID-19 were similar to those among community controls without COVID-19. Funding PHOSP-COVID is supported by a grant from the MRC-UK Research and Innovation and the Department of Health and Social Care through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) rapid response panel to tackle COVID-19. The views expressed in the publication are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the National Health Service (NHS), the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care. COVIDENCE UK is supported by the UK Research and Innovation, the National Institute for Health Research, and Barts Charity. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the funders

Muon reconstruction and identification efficiency in ATLAS using the full Run 2 pp collision data set at \sqrt{s}=13 TeV

This article documents the muon reconstruction and identification efficiency obtained by the ATLAS experiment for 139 \hbox {fb}^{-1} of pp collision data at \sqrt{s}=13 TeV collected between 2015 and 2018 during Run 2 of the LHC. The increased instantaneous luminosity delivered by the LHC over this period required a reoptimisation of the criteria for the identification of prompt muons. Improved and newly developed algorithms were deployed to preserve high muon identification efficiency with a low misidentification rate and good momentum resolution. The availability of large samples of Z\rightarrow \mu \mu and J/\psi \rightarrow \mu \mu decays, and the minimisation of systematic uncertainties, allows the efficiencies of criteria for muon identification, primary vertex association, and isolation to be measured with an accuracy at the per-mille level in the bulk of the phase space, and up to the percent level in complex kinematic configurations. Excellent performance is achieved over a range of transverse momenta from 3 GeV to several hundred GeV, and across the full muon detector acceptance of |\eta |<2.7

Measurements of Higgs bosons decaying to bottom quarks from vector boson fusion production with the ATLAS experiment at √=13TeV

The paper presents a measurement of the Standard Model Higgs Boson decaying to b-quark pairs in the vector boson fusion (VBF) production mode. A sample corresponding to 126 fb−1 of s√=13TeV proton–proton collision data, collected with the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, is analyzed utilizing an adversarial neural network for event classification. The signal strength, defined as the ratio of the measured signal yield to that predicted by the Standard Model for VBF Higgs production, is measured to be 0.95+0.38−0.36 , corresponding to an observed (expected) significance of 2.6 (2.8) standard deviations from the background only hypothesis. The results are additionally combined with an analysis of Higgs bosons decaying to b-quarks, produced via VBF in association with a photon

The ATLAS inner detector trigger performance in pp collisions at 13 TeV during LHC Run 2

The design and performance of the inner detector trigger for the high level trigger of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider during the 2016-2018 data taking period is discussed. In 2016, 2017, and 2018 the ATLAS detector recorded 35.6 fb(-1), 46.9 fb(-1), and 60.6 fb(-1) respectively of proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of 13TeV. In order to deal with the very high interaction multiplicities per bunch crossing expected with the 13TeV collisions the inner detector trigger was redesigned during the long shutdown of the Large Hadron Collider from 2013 until 2015. An overview of these developments is provided and the performance of the tracking in the trigger for the muon, electron, tau and b-jet signatures is discussed. The high performance of the inner detector trigger with these extreme interaction multiplicities demonstrates how the inner detector tracking continues to lie at the heart of the trigger performance and is essential in enabling the ATLAS physics programme