Study protocol for a randomised controlled trial of electronic cigarettes versus nicotine patch for smoking cessation

PMCID: PMC3602285This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Maximizing Neumann fundamental tones of triangles

We prove sharp isoperimetric inequalities for Neumann eigenvalues of the Laplacian on triangular domains. The first nonzero Neumann eigenvalue is shown to be maximal for the equilateral triangle among all triangles of given perimeter, and hence among all triangles of given area. Similar results are proved for the harmonic and arithmetic means of the first two nonzero eigenvalues

Curvilinear crosscuts of subdivision for a domain decomposition method in numerical conformal mapping

Let $Q:=\{\Omega;z_1,z_2,z_3,z_4\}$ be a quadrilateral consisting of a Jordan domain $\Omega$ and four distinct points $z_1$, $z_2$, $z_3$ and $z_4$ in counterclockwise order on $\partial \Omega$. We consider a domain decomposition method for computing approximations to the conformal module $m(Q)$ of $Q$ in cases where $Q$ is "long'' or, equivalently, $m(Q)$ is "large''. This method is based on decomposing the original quadrilateral $Q$ into two or more component quadrilaterals $Q_1$, $Q_2,\ldots$ and then approximating $m(Q)$ by the sum of the the modules of the component quadrilaterals. The purpose of this paper is to consider ways for determining appropriate crosscuts of subdivision and, in particular, to show that there are cases where the use of curved crosscuts is much more appropriate than the straight line crosscuts that have been used so far

A research pathway for experimental psychopathology: the role of external validity criteria

This paper outlines a putative pathway for experimental psychopathology research developing psychological models of clinical disorders. The pathway uses established external validity criteria to define the pathway and clarifies the important role that research conducted on healthy participants can play in our understanding of clinical disorders. Defining a research pathway for experimental psychopathology in this way has a number of benefits It would (1) make explicit the need to address the external validity of developed models, (2) provide a clear set of criteria that would be required to extend research on healthy individuals to diagnostic populations, and (3) recommend using general psychological knowledge when developing models of psychopathology

The MuTHRE Model for High Quality Sub-seasonal Streamflow Forecasts

Conference theme 'Digital Water.'Sub-seasonal streamflow forecasts, with lead times up to 30 days, can provide valuable information for water management, including reservoir operation to meet environmental flow, irrigation demands, and managing flood protection storage. A key aim is to produce “seamless” probabilistic forecasts, with high quality performance across the full range of lead times (1-30 days) and time scales (daily to monthly). This paper demonstrates that the Multi-Temporal Hydrological Residual Error (MuTHRE) model can address the challenge of “seamless” sub-seasonal forecasting. The MuTHRE model is designed to capture key features of hydrological errors, namely seasonality, dynamic biases due to hydrological non-stationarity, and extreme errors poorly represented by the common Gaussian distribution. The MuTHRE model is evaluated comprehensively over 11 catchments in the MurrayDarling Basin using multiple performance metrics, across a range of lead times, months and years, and at daily and monthly time scales. It is shown to provide “high” improvements, in terms of reliability for short lead times (up to 10 days), in dry months, and dry years. Forecast performance also improved in terms of sharpness. Importantly, improvements are consistent across multiple time scales (daily and monthly). This study highlights the benefits of modelling multiple temporal characteristics of hydrological errors, and demonstrates the power of the MuTHRE model for producing seamless sub-seasonal streamflow forecasts that can be utilized for a wide range of applications.David McInerney, Mark Thyer, Dmitri Kavetski, Richard Laugesen, Narendra Tuteja, and George Kuczer

Attendance in a national screening program for diabetic retinopathy:a population-based study of 205,970 patients

AIMS: A nationwide diabetic retinopathy (DR) screening program has been established in Denmark since 2013. We aimed to perform an evaluation of adherence to DR screenings and to examine whether non-adherence was correlated to DR progression. METHODS: The population consisted of a register-based cohort, who participated in the screening program from 2013 to 2018. We analyzed age, gender, marital status, DR level (International Clinical DR severity scale, none, mild-, moderate-, severe non-proliferative DR (NPDR) and proliferative DR (PDR)), comorbidities and socioeconomic factors. The attendance pattern of patients was grouped as either timely (no delays > 33%), delayed (delays > 33%) or one-time attendance (unexplained). RESULTS: We included 205,970 patients with 591,136 screenings. Rates of timely, delayed and one-time attendance were 53.0%, 35.5% and 11.5%, respectively. DR level at baseline was associated with delays (mild-, moderate-, severe NPDR and PDR) and one-time attendance (moderate-, severe NPDR and PDR) with relative risk ratios (RRR) of 1.68, 2.27, 3.14, 2.44 and 1.18, 2.07, 1.26, respectively (P < 0.05). Delays at previous screenings were associated with progression to severe NPDR or PDR (hazard ratio (HR) 2.27, 6.25 and 12.84 for 1, 2 and 3+ delays, respectively). Any given delay doubled the risk of progression (HR 2.28). CONCLUSIONS: In a national cohort of 205,970 patients, almost half of the patients attended DR screening later than scheduled or dropped out after first screening episode. This was, in particular, true for patients with any levels of DR at baseline. DR progression in patients with delayed attendance, increased with the number of missed appointments

Diabetic retinopathy as a potential marker of Parkinson's disease:a register-based cohort study

Neurodegeneration is an early event in the pathogenesis of diabetic retinopathy, and an association between diabetic retinopathy and Parkinson’s disease has been proposed. In this nationwide register-based cohort study, we investigated the prevalence and incidence of Parkinson’s disease among patients screened for diabetic retinopathy in a Danish population-based cohort. Cases (n = 173 568) above 50 years of age with diabetes included in the Danish Registry of Diabetic Retinopathy between 2013 and 2018 were matched 1:5 by gender and birth year with a control population without diabetes (n = 843 781). At index date, the prevalence of Parkinson’s disease was compared between cases and controls. To assess the longitudinal relationship between diabetic retinopathy and Parkinson’s disease, a multivariable Cox proportional hazard model was estimated. The prevalence of Parkinson’s disease was 0.28% and 0.44% among cases and controls, respectively. While diabetic retinopathy was not associated with present (adjusted odds ratio 0.93, 95% confidence interval 0.72–1.21) or incident Parkinson’s disease (adjusted hazard ratio 0.77, 95% confidence interval 0.56–1.05), cases with diabetes were in general less likely to have or to develop Parkinson’s disease compared to controls without diabetes (adjusted odds ratio 0.79, 95% confidence interval 0.71–0.87 and adjusted hazard ratio 0.88, 95% confidence interval 0.78–1.00). In a national cohort of more than 1 million persons, patients with diabetes were 21% and 12% were less likely to have prevalent and develop incident Parkinson’s disease, respectively, compared to an age- and gender-matched control population without diabetes. We found no indication for diabetic retinopathy as an independent risk factor for incident Parkinson’s disease