Determinants of tracheostomy decannulation: an international survey

Ye

An Investigation of the Role of Macular Pigment in Attenuating Photostress through Comparison between Blue and Green Photostress Recovery Times

Purpose: Photostress recovery time (PSRT) is the time required for the macula to return to its normal functioning after the bleaching of cone photopigments due to light exposure, usually white. This work investigates the role of macular pigment (MP) as an optical filter that attenuates photostress by analyses of PSRT at different wavelengths. Methods: Thirty-nine subjects (19–28 years) were exposed to blue/green photostress varying in irradiance. During photostress, pupil constriction (Cp) was measured. Twenty-seven subjects (20–27 years) were exposed to white photostress. After 25 s of photostress, the time (PSRT) required to read correctly a 0.2 logMAR letter was measured. Correlation was studied between PSRT, CP, and irradiance. Statistical significance of differences between PSRTs was evaluated at Log(irradiance(quanta s−1 cm−2)) = 14 by Student’s t statistics. Results: Cp and PSRT were found linearly correlated to Log(irradiance) for blue, green, and white. At Log(irradiance(quanta s−1 cm−2)) = 14, blue and green mean PSRTs resulted different (p 0.05). Conclusions: MP plays the role of an optical filter attenuating photostress. PSRT was substantially proportional to the number of incident photons corrected for the MP optical absorption, regardless of their wavelength

A situational mapping overview of training programmes for community-based rehabilitation workers in Southern Africa: strategies for strengthening accessible rural rehabilitation practice

In 2018, the United Nations global report showed that people with disabilities, who make up 15% of the worlds’ population, have poorer health and rehabilitation access (SDG 3). Without improving the needed person-centered health and rehabilitation services at household level, SDG 3 cannot be achieved. This includes addressing human resource shortages through training multi-skilled community based rehabilitation workers (CRWs) to build rural workforce capacity and enhance the lives of people with disabilities, particularly in LMICs where the need is higher but resources are lower. However, to date, there is no documentation and analysis of existing training and its scope for this workforce in LMICs. A situational mapping overview was undertaken to review the current status of rural rehabilitation training programs offered in Southern Africa for CRWs. CRWs are rehabilitation personnel, based in the home/community, who are not professionals (without a bachelor qualification) but render non-institutional rehabilitation and inclusive development in communities, under the supervision of rehabilitation practitioners. Information on these programs was obtained using a two-step process. Firstly, a descriptive list of university courses for rehabilitation workers offered in the Southern African countries was collected via an internet and literature search. Secondly, detailed information about the disability and rural rehabilitation courses was collected from the respective institutions and their designated websites. There are six training courses targeted at CRWs or disability practitioners with a disability focus being offered at universities in Southern Africa, five of these in South Africa and one in Zimbabwe. Additionally, four training courses are offered as online/open resources by global organizations and are self-directed with no accreditation. While other key competencies feature, none of these programmes’ learning outcomes make direct reference to the rural practice context and its complexities in relation to disability and poverty. The situational mapping overview shows limited training targeted at CRWs in Southern Africa, to effectively facilitate rural rehabilitation, poverty reduction and social inclusion. There is a need for an articulated community-orientated rural training to respond to the unmet needs. This may require a different set of competencies and assessment standards for trainees as well as additional competencies for their supervisors and mentors

Stripe orders in the extended Hubbard model

We study stripe orders of charge and spin density waves in the extended Hubbard model with the nearest-neighbor Coulomb repulsion V within the mean field approximation. We obtain V vs. T(temperature) phase diagram for the on-site Coulomb interaction U/t=8.0 and the filling n=0.8, here t is a nearest-neighbor transfer energy. Our result shows that the diagonal stripe spin density wave state (SDW) is stable for small V, but for large V the most stable state changes to a charge density wave-antiferromagnetic (CDW-AF) state. Especially we find at low temperature and for a certain range of value of V, a vertical stripe CDW-AF state becomes stable.Comment: LaTeX 9 pages, 17 figures, uses jpsj.st

Use of Non-concurrent Common Control in Master Protocols in Oncology Trials: Report of an American Statistical Association Biopharmaceutical Section Open Forum Discussion

This article summarizes the discussions from the American Statistical Association (ASA) Biopharmaceutical (BIOP) Section Open Forum that took place on December 10, 2020 and was organized by the ASA BIOP Statistical Methods in Oncology Scientific Working Group, in coordination with the US FDA Oncology Center of Excellence. Diverse stakeholders including experts from international regulatory agencies, academicians, and representatives of the pharmaceutical industry engaged in a discussion on the use of non-concurrent control in Master Protocols for oncology trials. While the use of non-concurrent control with the concurrent control may increase the power of detecting the therapeutic difference between a treatment and the control, the panelists had diverse opinion on the statistical approaches for modeling non-concurrent and concurrent controls. Some were more concerned about the temporality of the non-concurrent control and bias introduced by different confounders related to time, e.g., changes in standard of care, changes in patient population, changes in recruiting strategies, changes in assessment of endpoints. Nevertheless, in some situations such as when the recruitment is extremely challenging for a rare disease, the panelists concluded that the use of a non-concurrent control can be justified

Gamma-Linolenic Acid Levels Correlate with Clinical Efficacy of Evening Primrose Oil in Patients with Atopic Dermatitis

Introduction: Atopic dermatitis (AD) has been related to a deficiency of delta-6-desaturase, an enzyme responsible for the conversion of linoleic acid to gamma-linolenic acid (GLA). Evening primrose oil (EPO) contains high amounts of GLA. Therefore, this study investigated whether EPO supplementation results in an increase in plasma GLA and its metabolite dihomo-gamma-linolenic acid (DGLA) correlating with clinical improvement of AD, assessed by the SCORing Atopic Dermatitis (SCORAD) index. Methods: The open study included 21 patients with AD. EPO (4-6g) was administered daily for 12weeks. Before treatment, and 4 and 12weeks after initiation of EPO supplementation, objective SCORAD was assessed and plasma concentrations of GLA and DGLA were determined by gas chromatography. Results: A significant increase in plasma GLA and DGLA levels and a decrease in the objective SCORAD were observed 4 and 12weeks after initiation of EPO treatment. In the per-protocol population (n=14), a significant inverse correlation between the changes in plasma GLA levels and SCORAD was found (P=0.008). Conclusion: The clinical disease activity under EPO treatment correlates with the individual increase in plasma GLA levels. Thus, the results of this pilot study indicate that an increase in plasma GLA might be used as predictive parameter for responsiveness of AD to EPO therapy

Standalone vertex finding in the ATLAS muon spectrometer

A dedicated reconstruction algorithm to find decay vertices in the ATLAS muon spectrometer is presented. The algorithm searches the region just upstream of or inside the muon spectrometer volume for multi-particle vertices that originate from the decay of particles with long decay paths. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using both a sample of simulated Higgs boson events, in which the Higgs boson decays to long-lived neutral particles that in turn decay to bbar b final states, and pp collision data at √s = 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC during 2011

Measurements of Higgs boson production and couplings in diboson final states with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements are presented of production properties and couplings of the recently discovered Higgs boson using the decays into boson pairs, H →γ γ, H → Z Z∗ →4l and H →W W∗ →lνlν. The results are based on the complete pp collision data sample recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider at centre-of-mass energies of √s = 7 TeV and √s = 8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 25 fb−1. Evidence for Higgs boson production through vector-boson fusion is reported. Results of combined fits probing Higgs boson couplings to fermions and bosons, as well as anomalous contributions to loop-induced production and decay modes, are presented. All measurements are consistent with expectations for the Standard Model Higgs boson