Assessing planning decisions by activity type during the scheduling process

Existing activity-based models still make assumptions about scheduling decision processes that are not well-informed by empirical evidence. In this article, a step forward is taken to better understand the activity-scheduling process and to improve activity-based models. In particular, different planning decision mechanisms depending on several activity type classifications are explored. First, models describing the planning of several aggregate activity types are considered. For these activities, three planning decisions are studied: location, planning time horizon and rescheduling. The 'with whom' planning decision is also studied when subtypes of recreational/entertainment activities are investigated in depth. Significant differences are found in modelling results for each activity type and subtype and each planning decision. These results confirm the existence of different mechanisms underlying the activity-travel decision process when activity types and subtypes are considered. Important conclusions related to the improvement of microsimulation models are highlighted.Ruiz Sánchez, T.; Roorda, MJ. (2011). Assessing planning decisions by activity type during the scheduling process. Transportmetrica. 7(6):417-442. doi:10.1080/18128602.2010.520276S4174427

"Even if the test result is negative, they should be able to tell us what is wrong with us": a qualitative study of patient expectations of rapid diagnostic tests for malaria.

BACKGROUND: The debate on rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) for malaria has begun to shift from whether RDTs should be used, to how and under what circumstances their use can be optimized. This has increased the need for a better understanding of the complexities surrounding the role of RDTs in appropriate treatment of fever. Studies have focused on clinician practices, but few have sought to understand patient perspectives, beyond notions of acceptability. METHODS: This qualitative study aimed to explore patient and caregiver perceptions and experiences of RDTs following a trial to assess the introduction of the tests into routine clinical care at four health facilities in one district in Ghana. Six focus group discussions and one in-depth interview were carried out with those who had received an RDT with a negative test result. RESULTS: Patients had high expectations of RDTs. They welcomed the tests as aiding clinical diagnoses and as tools that could communicate their problem better than they could, verbally. However, respondents also believed the tests could identify any cause of illness, beyond malaria. Experiences of patients suggested that RDTs were adopted into an existing system where patients are both physically and intellectually removed from diagnostic processes and where clinicians retain authority that supersedes tests and their results. In this situation, patients did not feel able to articulate a demand for test-driven diagnosis. CONCLUSIONS: Improvements in communication between the health worker and patient, particularly to explain the capabilities of the test and management of RDT negative cases, may both manage patient expectations and promote patient demand for test-driven diagnoses

A review of wearable motion tracking systems used in rehabilitation following hip and knee replacement

Clinical teams are under increasing pressure to facilitate early hospital discharge for total hip replacement and total knee replacement patients following surgery. A wide variety of wearable devices are being marketed to assist with rehabilitation following surgery. A review of wearable devices was undertaken to assess the evidence supporting their efficacy in assisting rehabilitation following total hip replacement and total knee replacement. A search was conducted using the electronic databases including Medline, CINAHL, Cochrane, PsycARTICLES, and PubMed of studies from January 2000 to October 2017. Five studies met the eligibility criteria, and all used an accelerometer and a gyroscope for their technology. A review of the studies found very little evidence to support the efficacy of the technology, although they show that the use of the technology is feasible. Future work should establish which wearable technology is most valuable to patients, which ones improve patient outcomes, and the most economical model for deploying the technolog

Lay perceptions of predictive testing for diabetes based on DNA test results versus family history assessment: a focus group study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>This study assessed lay perceptions of issues related to predictive genetic testing for multifactorial diseases. These perceived issues may differ from the "classic" issues, e.g. autonomy, discrimination, and psychological harm that are considered important in predictive testing for monogenic disorders. In this study, type 2 diabetes was used as an example, and perceptions with regard to predictive testing based on DNA test results and family history assessment were compared.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Eight focus group interviews were held with 45 individuals aged 35-70 years with (n = 3) and without (n = 1) a family history of diabetes, mixed groups of these two (n = 2), and diabetes patients (n = 2). All interviews were transcribed and analysed using Atlas-ti.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Most participants believed in the ability of a predictive test to identify people at risk for diabetes and to motivate preventive behaviour. Different reasons underlying motivation were considered when comparing DNA test results and a family history risk assessment. A perceived drawback of DNA testing was that diabetes was considered not severe enough for this type of risk assessment. In addition, diabetes family history assessment was not considered useful by some participants, since there are also other risk factors involved, not everyone has a diabetes family history or knows their family history, and it might have a negative influence on family relations. Respect for autonomy of individuals was emphasized more with regard to DNA testing than family history assessment. Other issues such as psychological harm, discrimination, and privacy were only briefly mentioned for both tests.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The results suggest that most participants believe a predictive genetic test could be used in the prevention of multifactorial disorders, such as diabetes, but indicate points to consider before both these tests are applied. These considerations differ with regard to the method of assessment (DNA test or obtaining family history) and also differ from monogenic disorders.</p

Microdissection of Shoot Meristem Functional Domains

The shoot apical meristem (SAM) maintains a pool of indeterminate cells within the SAM proper, while lateral organs are initiated from the SAM periphery. Laser microdissection–microarray technology was used to compare transcriptional profiles within these SAM domains to identify novel maize genes that function during leaf development. Nine hundred and sixty-two differentially expressed maize genes were detected; control genes known to be upregulated in the initiating leaf (P0/P1) or in the SAM proper verified the precision of the microdissections. Genes involved in cell division/growth, cell wall biosynthesis, chromatin remodeling, RNA binding, and translation are especially upregulated in initiating leaves, whereas genes functioning during protein fate and DNA repair are more abundant in the SAM proper. In situ hybridization analyses confirmed the expression patterns of six previously uncharacterized maize genes upregulated in the P0/P1. P0/P1-upregulated genes that were also shown to be downregulated in leaf-arrested shoots treated with an auxin transport inhibitor are especially implicated to function during early events in maize leaf initiation. Reverse genetic analyses of asceapen1 (asc1), a maize D4-cyclin gene upregulated in the P0/P1, revealed novel leaf phenotypes, less genetic redundancy, and expanded D4-CYCLIN function during maize shoot development as compared to Arabidopsis. These analyses generated a unique SAM domain-specific database that provides new insight into SAM function and a useful platform for reverse genetic analyses of shoot development in maize

Enchytraeus albidus Microarray: Enrichment, Design, Annotation and Database (EnchyBASE)

Enchytraeus albidus (Oligochaeta) is an ecologically relevant species used as standard test organisms for risk assessment. Effects of stressors in this species are commonly determined at the population level using reproduction and survival as endpoints. The assessment of transcriptomic responses can be very useful e.g. to understand underlying mechanisms of toxicity with gene expression fingerprinting. In the present paper the following is being addressed: 1) development of suppressive subtractive hybridization (SSH) libraries enriched for differentially expressed genes after metal and pesticide exposures; 2) sequencing and characterization of all generated cDNA inserts; 3) development of a publicly available genomic database on E. albidus. A total of 2100 Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs) were isolated, sequenced and assembled into 1124 clusters (947 singletons and 177 contigs). From these sequences, 41% matched known proteins in GenBank (BLASTX, e-value≤10-5) and 37% had at least one Gene Ontology (GO) term assigned. In total, 5.5% of the sequences were assigned to a metabolic pathway, based on KEGG. With this new sequencing information, an Agilent custom oligonucleotide microarray was designed, representing a potential tool for transcriptomic studies. EnchyBASE (http://bioinformatics.ua.pt/enchybase/) was developed as a web freely available database containing genomic information on E. albidus and will be further extended in the near future for other enchytraeid species. The database so far includes all ESTs generated for E. albidus from three cDNA libraries. This information can be downloaded and applied in functional genomics and transcription studies

TOI-3235 b: A Transiting Giant Planet around an M4 Dwarf Star

We present the discovery of TOI-3235 b, a short-period Jupiter orbiting an M dwarf with a stellar mass close to the critical mass at which stars transition from partially to fully convective. TOI-3235 b was first identified as a candidate from TESS photometry and confirmed with radial velocities from ESPRESSO and ground-based photometry from HATSouth, MEarth-South, TRAPPIST-South, LCOGT, and ExTrA. We find that the planet has a mass of 0.665 ± 0.025 M J and a radius of 1.017 ± 0.044 R J. It orbits close to its host star, with an orbital period of 2.5926 days but has an equilibrium temperature of ≈ 604 K, well below the expected threshold for radius inflation of hot Jupiters. The host star has a mass of 0.3939 ± 0.0030 M ☉, a radius of 0.3697 ± 0.0018 R ☉, an effective temperature of 3389 K, and a J-band magnitude of 11.706 ± 0.025. Current planet formation models do not predict the existence of gas giants such as TOI-3235 b around such low-mass stars. With a high transmission spectroscopy metric, TOI-3235 b is one of the best-suited giants orbiting M dwarfs for atmospheric characterization

Measurement and Interpretation of Fermion-Pair Production at LEP energies above the Z Resonance

This paper presents DELPHI measurements and interpretations of cross-sections, forward-backward asymmetries, and angular distributions, for the e+e- -> ffbar process for centre-of-mass energies above the Z resonance, from sqrt(s) ~ 130 - 207 GeV at the LEP collider. The measurements are consistent with the predictions of the Standard Model and are used to study a variety of models including the S-Matrix ansatz for e+e- -> ffbar scattering and several models which include physics beyond the Standard Model: the exchange of Z' bosons, contact interactions between fermions, the exchange of gravitons in large extra dimensions and the exchange of sneutrino in R-parity violating supersymmetry.Comment: 79 pages, 16 figures, Accepted by Eur. Phys. J.

A Determination of the Centre-of-Mass Energy at LEP2 using Radiative 2-fermion Events

Using e+e- -> mu+mu-(gamma) and e+e- -> qqbar(gamma) events radiative to the Z pole, DELPHI has determined the centre-of-mass energy, sqrt{s}, using energy and momentum constraint methods. The results are expressed as deviations from the nominal LEP centre-of-mass energy, measured using other techniques. The results are found to be compatible with the LEP Energy Working Group estimates for a combination of the 1997 to 2000 data sets.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, Accepted by Eur. Phys. J.

A Measurement of the Tau Hadronic Branching Ratios

The exclusive and semi-exclusive branching ratios of the tau lepton hadronic decay modes (h- v_t, h- pi0 v_t, h- pi0 pi0 v_t, h- \geq 2pi0 v_t, h- \geq 3pi0 v_t, 2h- h+ v_t, 2h- h+ pi0 v_t, 2h- h+ \geq 2pi0 v_t, 3h- 2h+ v_t and 3h- 2h+ \geq 1pi0 v_t) were measured with data from the DELPHI detector at LEP.Comment: 53 pages, 18 figures, Accepted by Eur. Phys. J.