Quality of Life Following Massive Weight Loss and Body Contouring Surgery: an Exploratory Study.

Reconstructive surgery is a major growth intervention for body improvement, enhancing appearance and psychological well-being following massive weight loss. The psychosocial benefits include greater capacity for social networking, lower scores of body uneasiness, body image satisfaction, improved mental well-being and physical function. However little collective evidence exists regarding the impact of body contouring on patients Quality of Life (QoL) and there is a lack of systematic review and randomised controlled trials (RCTs) with a scarcity of high level evidence. The purpose of this exploratory study was to explore the QoL perceptions, experiences and outcomes of patients who have undergone body contouring following significant weight loss and to explore the relevance and potential utility of the Obesity Psychosocial State Questionnaire (OPSQ) as a valuable QoL outcomes measuring tool for use in clinical research. Data were collected in a community setting in the south of England via digitally recorded semi-structured interviews with twenty participants (18 women and 2 men), who also self-completed the Obesity Psychosocial State Questionnaire (OBSQ). Medical notes were reviewed retrospectively to gather data about body mass index (BMI), co-morbidities, eating profiles/lifestyle, uptake of bariatric surgery and type/number of body contouring procedures undergone. A thematic approach was adopted to analyse the interviews and medical record data, supported by Nvivo7 qualitative software, and a statistical approach to analyse the questionnaire data, supported by Statistical Analysis Software. The results provide unique glimpses of the body contouring interventions for empowering and facilitating a ‘transformation’, a ‘new identity’, a ‘new start’ in life, improved physical function, greater body image satisfaction, a stronger sense of well-being and an improved quality of life. A few of the participants who reported that their weight gain was powered by childhood traumas (abuse, neglect, abandonment) continued to struggle for ‘normality’, with fragile eating control and addictive traits. Eating disordered trauma survivors mentioned post traumatic flashbacks and underlying conflicts that triggered powerlessness and emotional eating. The emotional flooding with psychological and body related memories did not appear to be fully processed or released, despite counselling and binge eating programmes. The participants also confirmed the value of the OBSQ, whilst highlighting its limited set of three questions on feelings of self-efficacy towards eating habits. The study findings show that body contouring optimises quality of life with significant improvement in physical function, body image, mental health and psychosocial function. Further research is warranted to extent the scope of the findings within a sample drawn from multiple treatment centres. This would valuably: • Explore gender, ethnic and cultural variables, important to optimising quality of life. • Clarify distinguishing features between short and long-term QoL outcomes. • Lead to the development of national policy and guidelines on reconstructive ‘body contouring’ surgery following massive weight loss, in line with the call from the British Association for Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons (BAPRAS) A future multi-centre collaborative study could employ the OBSQ, supplemented by an additional tool to explore factors that influence eating habits such as the three factor eating questionnaire (such as the TFEQ-R1 21 Scale). Such research could enhance understanding of quality of life and long-term weight management

Improved BPSO for optimal PMU placement

Optimal phasor measurement unit (PMU) placement involves the process of minimizing the number of PMU needed while ensuring entire power system network completely observable. This paper presents the improved binary particle swarm (IBPSO) method that converges faster and also manage to maximize the measurement redundancy compared to the existing BPSO method. This method is applied to IEEE-30 bus system for the case of considering zero-injection bus and its effectiveness is verified by the simulation results done by using MATLAB software

Short circuit study of fixed speed wind turbines with STATCOM in distribution networks

The increased penetration of wind farm in distribution networks has brought changes in the performance of the whole system. Such disadvantages when connecting one of these distributed generation sources is reduced voltage and power stability of the AC network. This phenomena can cause the connected electricity consumers to suffer from disturbances. This paper investigates the use of a static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) to improve the short circuit current contribution in the network which will include balanced and unbalanced faults. The wind farm is equipped with fixed-speed wind turbines driving squirrel-cage induction generators. The IEEE 30-bus distribution test system is used to see the performance of the system under distribution level. Simulation studies are carried out in the DIgSILENT software

Exploring the evidence base for acupuncture in the treatment of Meniere’s Syndrome — A systematic review

Meniere’s syndrome is a long-term, progressive disease that damages the balance and hearing parts of the inner ear. To address the paucity of information on which evidence-based treatment decisions should be made, a systematic review of acupuncture for Meniere’s syndrome was undertaken. The method used was a systematic review of English and Chinese literature, from six databases for randomized, non-randomized and observational studies. All studies were critically appraised and a narrative approach to data synthesis was adopted. Twenty-seven studies were included in this review (9 in English and 18 in Chinese languages): three randomized controlled trials, three non-randomized controlled studies and four pre-test, post-test designs. All but one of the studies was conducted in China. The studies covered body acupuncture, ear acupuncture, scalp acupuncture, fluid acupuncture point injection and moxibustion. The studies were of varying quality. The weight of evidence, across all study types, is of beneficial effect from acupuncture, for those in an acute phase or those who have had Meniere’s syndrome for a number of years. The review reinforces the importance of searching for studies from English and Chinese literature. The transferability of the findings from China to a Western context needs confirmation. Further research is also needed to clarify questions around the appropriate frequency and number of treatment/courses of acupuncture. The weight of evidence suggests a potential benefit of acupuncture for persons with Meniere’s disease, including those in an acute phase and reinforces the importance of searching for published studies in the Chinese language

Optimal allocation of FACTS devices in distribution networks using Imperialist Competitive Algorithm

Copyright © 2005-2015 Praise Worthy Prize. The publisher granted a permission to the author to archive this article in BURA.FACTS devices are used for controlling the voltage, stability, power flow and security of transmission lines. Imperialist Competitive is a recently developed optimization technique, used widely in power systems. This paper presents an approach to finding the optimal location and size of FACTS devices in a distribution network using the Imperialist Competitive technique. IEEE 30-bus system is used as a case study. The results show the advantages of the Imperialist Competitive technique over the conventional approaches. © 2013 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved

Monitoring of power factor for induction machines using estimation techniques

Power factor is a significant element in power systems which is defined as the angle difference between voltages and currents that produces power fluctuation between sources and loads. Since, 40-50% of consumption of electrical power in industry is induction machines which are inductive loads, monitoring of the power factor is necessary in order to protect systems. To monitor the power factor on induction machines, it would require both voltage and current waveforms measurement in order to apply the displacement method which require equipments. In this paper, we present a mathematical method using Kriging to determine the operating power factor for an induction machine. Estimation of the operating power factor would be effectively implemented for under load detection and compensation for improving the power quality. Experimental results will be indicated to substantiate the feasibility of the proposed methods

Conclusions from CDF Results on CP Violation in D^0 \to \pi^+\pi^-, K^+K^- and Future Tasks

Within the Standard Model (SM) one predicts both direct and indirect CP violation in D^0 \to \pi^+\pi^-, K^+K^- transitions, although the effects are tiny: Indirect CP asymmetry cannot exceed O(10^{-4}), probably even O(10^{-5}); direct effects are estimated at not larger than 10^{-4}. At B factories direct and indirect asymmetries have been studied with /\tau_{D^0} ~ 1; no CP asymmetry was found with an upper bound of about 1%. CDF has shown intriguing data on CP violation in D^0 \to \pi^+\pi^- [K^+K^-] with /\tau_{D^0} ~ 2.4 [2.65]. Also, CDF has not seen any CP violation. For direct CP asymmetry, CDF has a sensitivity similar to the combination of the B factories, yet for indirect CP violation it yields a significantly smaller sensitivity of a_{cp}^{ind}=(-0.01 +- 0.06_{stat} +- 0.05_{syst})% due to it being based on longer decay times. New Physics models (NP) like Little Higgs Models with T-Parity (LHT) can produce an indirect CP asymmetry up to 1%; CDF's findings thus cover the upper range of realistic NP predictions ~ 0.1 - 1%. One hopes that LHCb and a Super-Flavour Factory will probe the lower range down to ~0.01%. Such non-ad-hoc NP like LHT cannot enhance direct CP violation significantly over the SM level in D^0 \to \pi^+\pi^-, K^+K^- and D^{\pm} \to \pi^{\pm}K^+K^- transitions, but others might well do so.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure. V2 has minor corrections and corresponds to the published versio

Estimating power factor of induction motors using regression technique

Induction motors are one of the largest power consumption in electrical systems. Since induction motors are inductive loads, they produce a lot of power quality issue in the electrical systems. Solving the power quality problem, monitoring power factor of induction motors is important because at no load or light load condition power factor is low and consequently low power factor not only provide a penalty charge, but also generates a huge current and losses in the grid systems. To measure the power factor, zero crossing and instantaneous power methods can be used. Both methods require motor voltage and current waveforms at operating times. Those methods may have a huge cost in terms of requiring the motor to be out of service for connecting devices. In this research, regression analysis will be applied to estimate the power factor of induction motor at any loading condition. The results of the proposed method will be compared with the measured power factor of induction motor in order to substantiate the feasibility of the proposed method