Building and sustaining Work Engagement – A participatory action intervention to increase Work Engagement in nursing staff

This study evaluated whether a participatory action research intervention with nursing staff on acute care older people NHS wards in the UK was effective for increasing work engagement. Mediation analyses between job resources, (social support, influence in decision-making), job demands, work-related needs (autonomy, competence, relatedness), and work engagement explored the presumed psychological mechanisms underlying the intervention. A nonrandomised, matched control group, pre-test, post-test design involved three intervention and five control wards. A significant decrease in relatedness, and a borderline significant decrease in competence, was observed in the intervention group compared to the control group, with no effect on work engagement (N=45). Work-related needs mediated between resources and work engagement, supporting the Job Demands-Resources model and Self-Determination Theory as an underlying explanatory theory. Intervention implementation was difficult, highlighting the need for participant and organisational readiness for change, and strong management support. This is the first known study to apply participatory techniques to increase work engagement in nursing staff and explore the underlying explanatory psychological mechanisms, offering a novel means of taking work engagement research forward. Crucially, it highlights the challenges involved in intervention research and the importance of including evaluations of intervention implementation alongside statistical evaluations to avoid erroneous conclusions

Niche-breadth of freshwater macrophytes occurring in tropical southern African rivers predicts species global latitudinal range

The study tested the hypothesis that measurement, using multivariate Principal Components Analy-sis (PCA), of the niche-breadth of river macrophyte species in southern tropical Africa, may predicttheir larger-scale biogeographical range. Two measures of niche-breadth were calculated for 44 riverinemacrophyte species, from 20 families commonly occurring in Zambia, using an approach based on PCAordination with 16 bio-physico-chemical input variables. These included altitude, stream order, streamflow, pH, conductivity and soluble reactive phosphate concentration (SRP). In the absence of additionalchemical water quality data for Zambian rivers, invertebrate-based measures of general water qualitywere also used. These were benthic macroinvertebrate Average Score per Taxon (ASPT), and individualabundance of nine macroinvertebrate families with differing water quality tolerance, indicated by theirSensitivity Weightings within the Zambian Invertebrate Scoring System (ZISS). Macrophyte large-scalelatitudinal range was derived from world geopositional records held by online databases, and additionalrecords held by the authors. The two niche-breadth metrics divided the species into narrow-niche andintermediate/broad-niche categories, showing significant variation (from one or both of correlation andANOVA test outcomes) in altitude, stream flow, conductivity, SRP, pH and ASPT, but not stream order.Macrophyte alpha-diversity (as a measure of number of individual niches co-existing per habitat) showedno significant relationship with individual species niche-breadth. Narrow-niche species included a higherproportion of Afrotropical endemics than did species with broader niche size. There were significant pre-dictive relationships between macrophyte niche-breadth and latitudinal range of the target species atglobal and Afrotropical scales, but not for the Neotropics.Fil: Kennedy, Michael. University Of Aberdeen; Reino UnidoFil: Lang, Pauline. University of Glasgow; Reino UnidoFil: Tapia Grimaldo, Julissa. University of Glasgow; Reino UnidoFil: Varandas Martins, Sara. University of Glasgow; Reino UnidoFil: Bruce, Alannah. University of Glasgow; Reino UnidoFil: Moore, Isabel. University of Glasgow; Reino UnidoFil: Taubert, Rebeca. University of Glasgow; Reino UnidoFil: Macleod-Nolan, Chantal. University of Glasgow; Reino UnidoFil: McWaters, Stephanie. University of Glasgow; Reino UnidoFil: Briggs, John. University of Glasgow; Reino UnidoFil: Lowe, Steve. University of Glasgow; Reino UnidoFil: Saili, Kochelani. University Of Zambia;Fil: SICHINGABULA, Henry. University Of Zambia;Fil: Dallas, Helen. Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Sudafrica; SudáfricaFil: Morrison, Sean. University of Glasgow; Reino UnidoFil: Franceschini, Maria Celeste. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Centro de Ecología Aplicada del Litoral. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Centro de Ecología Aplicada del Litoral; ArgentinaFil: Willems, Frank. The Kasanka Trust; ZambiaFil: Bottino, Flavia. Universidad Federal de San Carlos; BrasilFil: MURPHY Kevin. University of Glasgow; Reino Unid

Characterizing the Optical Variability of Bright Blazars: Variability-based Selection of Fermi Active Galactic Nuclei

We investigate the use of optical photometric variability to select and identify blazars in large-scale time-domain surveys, in part to aid in the identification of blazar counterparts to the ∼30% of γ -ray sources in the Fermi 2FGL catalog still lacking reliable associations. Using data from the optical LINEAR asteroid survey, we characterize the optical variability of blazars by fitting a damped random walk model to individual light curves with two main model parameters, the characteristic timescales of variability τ , and driving amplitudes on short timescales σ . Imposing cuts on minimum τ and σ allows for blazar selection with high efficiency E and completeness C. To test the efficacy of this approach, we apply this method to optically variable LINEAR objects that fall within the several arcminute error ellipses of γ -ray sources in the Fermi 2FGL catalog. Despite the extreme stellar contamination at the shallow depth of the LINEAR survey, we are able to recover previously associated optical counterparts to Fermi active galactic nuclei with E ≥ 88% and C = 88% in Fermi 95% confidence error ellipses having semimajor axis r < 8'. We find that the suggested radio counterpart to Fermi source 2FGL J1649.6+5238 has optical variability consistent with other γ -ray blazars and is likely to be the γ -ray source. Our results suggest that the variability of the non-thermal jet emission in blazars is stochastic in nature, with unique variability properties due to the effects of relativistic beaming. After correcting for beaming, we estimate that the characteristic timescale of blazar variability is ∼3 years in the rest frame of the jet, in contrast with the ∼320 day disk flux timescale observed in quasars. The variability-based selection method presented will be useful for blazar identification in time-domain optical surveys and is also a probe of jet physics

Impact of primary kidney disease on the effects of empagliflozin in patients with chronic kidney disease: secondary analyses of the EMPA-KIDNEY trial

Background: The EMPA KIDNEY trial showed that empagliflozin reduced the risk of the primary composite outcome of kidney disease progression or cardiovascular death in patients with chronic kidney disease mainly through slowing progression. We aimed to assess how effects of empagliflozin might differ by primary kidney disease across its broad population. Methods: EMPA-KIDNEY, a randomised, controlled, phase 3 trial, was conducted at 241 centres in eight countries (Canada, China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, the UK, and the USA). Patients were eligible if their estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) was 20 to less than 45 mL/min per 1·73 m2, or 45 to less than 90 mL/min per 1·73 m2 with a urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio (uACR) of 200 mg/g or higher at screening. They were randomly assigned (1:1) to 10 mg oral empagliflozin once daily or matching placebo. Effects on kidney disease progression (defined as a sustained ≥40% eGFR decline from randomisation, end-stage kidney disease, a sustained eGFR below 10 mL/min per 1·73 m2, or death from kidney failure) were assessed using prespecified Cox models, and eGFR slope analyses used shared parameter models. Subgroup comparisons were performed by including relevant interaction terms in models. EMPA-KIDNEY is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03594110. Findings: Between May 15, 2019, and April 16, 2021, 6609 participants were randomly assigned and followed up for a median of 2·0 years (IQR 1·5–2·4). Prespecified subgroupings by primary kidney disease included 2057 (31·1%) participants with diabetic kidney disease, 1669 (25·3%) with glomerular disease, 1445 (21·9%) with hypertensive or renovascular disease, and 1438 (21·8%) with other or unknown causes. Kidney disease progression occurred in 384 (11·6%) of 3304 patients in the empagliflozin group and 504 (15·2%) of 3305 patients in the placebo group (hazard ratio 0·71 [95% CI 0·62–0·81]), with no evidence that the relative effect size varied significantly by primary kidney disease (pheterogeneity=0·62). The between-group difference in chronic eGFR slopes (ie, from 2 months to final follow-up) was 1·37 mL/min per 1·73 m2 per year (95% CI 1·16–1·59), representing a 50% (42–58) reduction in the rate of chronic eGFR decline. This relative effect of empagliflozin on chronic eGFR slope was similar in analyses by different primary kidney diseases, including in explorations by type of glomerular disease and diabetes (p values for heterogeneity all &gt;0·1). Interpretation: In a broad range of patients with chronic kidney disease at risk of progression, including a wide range of non-diabetic causes of chronic kidney disease, empagliflozin reduced risk of kidney disease progression. Relative effect sizes were broadly similar irrespective of the cause of primary kidney disease, suggesting that SGLT2 inhibitors should be part of a standard of care to minimise risk of kidney failure in chronic kidney disease. Funding: Boehringer Ingelheim, Eli Lilly, and UK Medical Research Council

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe