Norbornane: An investigation into its valence electronic structure using electron momentum spectroscopy, and density functional and Green's function theories

CIRCULATION & FULFILLMENT DIV, 2 HUNTINGTON QUADRANGLE, STE 1 N O 1, MELVILLE, USA, NY, 11747-450

Gifted and talented education: The English policy highway at a crossroads?

Copyright © 2013 by Sage Publications. This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below.In 1999, the British government launched an education program for gifted and talented pupils as part of its Excellence in Cities initiative (EiC) that was initially designed to raise the educational achievement of very able pupils in state-maintained secondary schools in inner-city areas. Although some activities targeting gifted children had already been initiated by various voluntary organizations over several previous decades, this was the first time that the topic of improved provision for these pupils had been placed firmly within the national agenda. This article provides the background to the English gifted and talented policy “highway” and an overview of what was expected of schools. How practitioners responded to the policy, their beliefs and attitudes toward identifying gifted and talented pupils, and the opportunities and challenges that arose along the way to the current crossroads are explored. The need to empower teachers to feel more confident in classroom provisions for gifted and talented pupils is identified along with the potentially pivotal role of action research and “pupil voice” in the process of continued professional development and support

VPR-Bench: An Open-Source Visual Place Recognition Evaluation Framework with Quantifiable Viewpoint and Appearance Change

Visual place recognition (VPR) is the process of recognising a previously visited place using visual information, often under varying appearance conditions and viewpoint changes and with computational constraints. VPR is related to the concepts of localisation, loop closure, image retrieval and is a critical component of many autonomous navigation systems ranging from autonomous vehicles to drones and computer vision systems. While the concept of place recognition has been around for many years, VPR research has grown rapidly as a field over the past decade due to improving camera hardware and its potential for deep learning-based techniques, and has become a widely studied topic in both the computer vision and robotics communities. This growth however has led to fragmentation and a lack of standardisation in the field, especially concerning performance evaluation. Moreover, the notion of viewpoint and illumination invariance of VPR techniques has largely been assessed qualitatively and hence ambiguously in the past. In this paper, we address these gaps through a new comprehensive open-source framework for assessing the performance of VPR techniques, dubbed “VPR-Bench”. VPR-Bench (Open-sourced at: https://github.com/MubarizZaffar/VPR-Bench) introduces two much-needed capabilities for VPR researchers: firstly, it contains a benchmark of 12 fully-integrated datasets and 10 VPR techniques, and secondly, it integrates a comprehensive variation-quantified dataset for quantifying viewpoint and illumination invariance. We apply and analyse popular evaluation metrics for VPR from both the computer vision and robotics communities, and discuss how these different metrics complement and/or replace each other, depending upon the underlying applications and system requirements. Our analysis reveals that no universal SOTA VPR technique exists, since: (a) state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance is achieved by 8 out of the 10 techniques on at least one dataset, (b) SOTA technique in one community does not necessarily yield SOTA performance in the other given the differences in datasets and metrics. Furthermore, we identify key open challenges since: (c) all 10 techniques suffer greatly in perceptually-aliased and less-structured environments, (d) all techniques suffer from viewpoint variance where lateral change has less effect than 3D change, and (e) directional illumination change has more adverse effects on matching confidence than uniform illumination change. We also present detailed meta-analyses regarding the roles of varying ground-truths, platforms, application requirements and technique parameters. Finally, VPR-Bench provides a unified implementation to deploy these VPR techniques, metrics and datasets, and is extensible through templates

Electrolytic ablation of the rat pancreas: a feasibility trial

BACKGROUND: Pancreatic cancer is a biologically aggressive disease with less than 20% of patients suitable for a "curative" surgical resection. This, combined with the poor 5-year survival indicates that effective palliative methods for symptom relief are required. Currently there are no ablative techniques to treat pancreatic cancer in clinical use. Tissue electrolysis is the delivery of a direct current between an anode and cathode to induce localised necrosis. Electrolysis has been shown to be safe and reliable in producing hepatic tissue and tumour ablation in animal models and in a limited number of patients. This study investigates the feasibility of using electrolysis to produce localised pancreatic necrosis in a healthy rat model. METHOD: Ten rats were studied in total. Eight rats were treated with variable "doses" of coulombs, and the systemic and local effects were assessed; 2 rats were used as controls. RESULTS: Seven rats tolerated the procedure well without morbidity or mortality, and one died immediately post procedure. One control rat died on induction of anaesthesia. Serum amylase and glucose were not significantly affected. CONCLUSION: Electrolysis in the rat pancreas produced localised necrosis and appears both safe, and reproducible. This novel technique could offer significant advantages for patients with unresectable pancreatic tumours. The next stage of the study is to assess pancreatic electrolysis in a pig model, prior to human pilot studies

Consensus on a netball video analysis framework of descriptors and definitions by the netball video analysis consensus group.

Using an expert consensus-based approach, a netball video analysis consensus (NVAC) group of researchers and practitioners was formed to develop a video analysis framework of descriptors and definitions of physical, technical and contextual aspects for netball research. The framework aims to improve the consistency of language used within netball investigations. It also aims to guide injury mechanism reporting and identification of injury risk factors. The development of the framework involved a systematic review of the literature and a Delphi process. In conjunction with commercially used descriptors and definitions, 19 studies were used to create the initial framework of key descriptors and definitions in netball. In a two round Delphi method consensus, each expert rated their level of agreement with each of the descriptors and associated definition on a 5-point Likert scale (1-strongly disagree; 2-somewhat disagree; 3-neither agree nor disagree; 4-somewhat agree; 5-strongly agree). The median (IQR) rating of agreement was 5.0 (0.0), 5.0 (0.0) and 5.0 (0.0) for physical, technical and contextual aspects, respectively. The NVAC group recommends usage of the framework when conducting video analysis research in netball. The use of descriptors and definitions will be determined by the nature of the work and can be combined to incorporate further movements and actions used in netball. The framework can be linked with additional data, such as injury surveillance and microtechnology data

Global overview of the management of acute cholecystitis during the COVID-19 pandemic (CHOLECOVID study)

Background: This study provides a global overview of the management of patients with acute cholecystitis during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: CHOLECOVID is an international, multicentre, observational comparative study of patients admitted to hospital with acute cholecystitis during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data on management were collected for a 2-month study interval coincident with the WHO declaration of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and compared with an equivalent pre-pandemic time interval. Mediation analysis examined the influence of SARS-COV-2 infection on 30-day mortality. Results: This study collected data on 9783 patients with acute cholecystitis admitted to 247 hospitals across the world. The pandemic was associated with reduced availability of surgical workforce and operating facilities globally, a significant shift to worse severity of disease, and increased use of conservative management. There was a reduction (both absolute and proportionate) in the number of patients undergoing cholecystectomy from 3095 patients (56.2 per cent) pre-pandemic to 1998 patients (46.2 per cent) during the pandemic but there was no difference in 30-day all-cause mortality after cholecystectomy comparing the pre-pandemic interval with the pandemic (13 patients (0.4 per cent) pre-pandemic to 13 patients (0.6 per cent) pandemic; P = 0.355). In mediation analysis, an admission with acute cholecystitis during the pandemic was associated with a non-significant increased risk of death (OR 1.29, 95 per cent c.i. 0.93 to 1.79, P = 0.121). Conclusion: CHOLECOVID provides a unique overview of the treatment of patients with cholecystitis across the globe during the first months of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The study highlights the need for system resilience in retention of elective surgical activity. Cholecystectomy was associated with a low risk of mortality and deferral of treatment results in an increase in avoidable morbidity that represents the non-COVID cost of this pandemic

Effects of hospital facilities on patient outcomes after cancer surgery: an international, prospective, observational study

Background Early death after cancer surgery is higher in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) compared with in high-income countries, yet the impact of facility characteristics on early postoperative outcomes is unknown. The aim of this study was to examine the association between hospital infrastructure, resource availability, and processes on early outcomes after cancer surgery worldwide.Methods A multimethods analysis was performed as part of the GlobalSurg 3 study-a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study of patients who had surgery for breast, colorectal, or gastric cancer. The primary outcomes were 30-day mortality and 30-day major complication rates. Potentially beneficial hospital facilities were identified by variable selection to select those associated with 30-day mortality. Adjusted outcomes were determined using generalised estimating equations to account for patient characteristics and country-income group, with population stratification by hospital.Findings Between April 1, 2018, and April 23, 2019, facility-level data were collected for 9685 patients across 238 hospitals in 66 countries (91 hospitals in 20 high-income countries; 57 hospitals in 19 upper-middle-income countries; and 90 hospitals in 27 low-income to lower-middle-income countries). The availability of five hospital facilities was inversely associated with mortality: ultrasound, CT scanner, critical care unit, opioid analgesia, and oncologist. After adjustment for case-mix and country income group, hospitals with three or fewer of these facilities (62 hospitals, 1294 patients) had higher mortality compared with those with four or five (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 3.85 [95% CI 2.58-5.75]; p<0.0001), with excess mortality predominantly explained by a limited capacity to rescue following the development of major complications (63.0% vs 82.7%; OR 0.35 [0.23-0.53]; p<0.0001). Across LMICs, improvements in hospital facilities would prevent one to three deaths for every 100 patients undergoing surgery for cancer.Interpretation Hospitals with higher levels of infrastructure and resources have better outcomes after cancer surgery, independent of country income. Without urgent strengthening of hospital infrastructure and resources, the reductions in cancer-associated mortality associated with improved access will not be realised

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely