Four layer bandage compared with short stretch bandage for venous leg ulcers: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials with data from individual patients

<p><b>Objective:</b> To compare the effectiveness of two types of compression treatment (four layer bandage and short stretch bandage) in people with venous leg ulceration.</p> <p><b>Design:</b> Systematic review and meta-analysis of patient level data.</p> <p><b>Data:</b> sources Electronic databases (the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, the Cochrane Wounds Group Specialised Register, Medline, Embase, CINAHL, and National Research Register) and reference lists of retrieved articles searched to identify relevant trials and primary investigators. Primary investigators of eligible trials were invited to contribute raw data for re-analysis.</p> <p><b>Review:</b> methods Randomised controlled trials of four layer bandage compared with short stretch bandage in people with venous leg ulceration were eligible for inclusion. The primary outcome for the meta-analysis was time to healing. Cox proportional hazards models were run to compare the methods in terms of time to healing with adjustment for independent predictors of healing. Secondary outcomes included incidence and number of adverse events per patient.</p> <p><b>Results:</b> Seven eligible trials were identified (887 patients), and patient level data were retrieved for five (797 patients, 90% of known randomised patients). The four layer bandage was associated with significantly shorter time to healing: hazard ratio (95% confidence interval) from multifactorial model based on five trials was 1.31 (1.09 to 1.58), P=0.005. Larger ulcer area at baseline, more chronic ulceration, and previous ulceration were all independent predictors of delayed healing. Data from two trials showed no evidence of a difference in adverse event profiles between the two bandage types.</p> <p><b>Conclusions:</b> Venous leg ulcers in patients treated with four layer bandages heal faster, on average, than those of people treated with the short stretch bandage. Benefits were consistent across patients with differing prognostic profiles.</p&gt

Investigation of the collapse of the skewness and kurtosis exhibited in atmospheric dispersion data

This paper studies the collapse of the estimators for skewness and kurtosis of concentration onto a near universal curve. This phenomenon is observed for data taken from atmospheric dispersion experiments under a variety of different conditions. By means of careful investigation of the high concentration tails, modelled by means of the generalized Pareto distribution, and the fundamental physics of the problem, a set of envelope curves encompassing the data will be established. The implications of these results for modelling the probability density function of concentration are discussed

Is attending a mental process?

The nature of attention has been the topic of a lively research programme in psychology for over a century. But there is widespread agreement that none of the theories on offer manage to fully capture the nature of attention. Recently, philosophers have become interested in the debate again after a prolonged period of neglect. This paper contributes to the project of explaining the nature of attention. It starts off by critically examining Christopher Mole’s prominent “adverbial” account of attention, which traces the failure of extant psychological theories to their assumption that attending is a kind of process. It then defends an alternative, process-based view of the metaphysics of attention, on which attention is understood as an activity and not, as psychologists seem to implicitly assume, an accomplishment. The entrenched distinction between accomplishments and activities is shown to shed new light on the metaphysics of attention. It also provides a novel diagnosis of the empirical state of play

Two Ising-like magnetic excitations in a single-layer cuprate superconductor

There exists increasing evidence that the phase diagram of the high-transition temperature (Tc) cuprate superconductors is controlled by a quantum critical point. One distinct theoretical proposal is that, with decreasing hole-carrier concentration, a transition occurs to an ordered state with two circulating orbital currents per CuO2 square. Below the 'pseudogap' temperature T* (T* > Tc), the theory predicts a discrete order parameter and two weakly-dispersive magnetic excitations in structurally simple compounds that should be measurable by neutron scattering. Indeed, novel magnetic order and one such excitation were recently observed. Here, we demonstrate for tetragonal HgBa2CuO4+d the existence of a second excitation with local character, consistent with the theory. The excitations mix with conventional antiferromagnetic fluctuations, which points toward a unifying picture of magnetism in the cuprates that will likely require a multi-band description.Comment: Including supplementary informatio

Drivers use active gaze to monitor waypoints during automated driving

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Homophobia and national collective narcissism in populist Poland

Opposition to sexual minority rights in Poland is among the highest in the EU. Populist political actors in the country repeatedly scapegoat gays and lesbians, presenting them as a threat to the Polish nation and its shared norms and values, particularly those derived from religion. Building upon previous research which shows how discourse constructing homosexuality as a threat to the nation has been used by social and political actors to legitimize homophobic rhetoric and behaviour, our paper shows whether nationalism—understood here as national collective narcissism—predicts prejudice towards gays and lesbians at the level of individual beliefs