Radiotherapy: Impact of quality of life and need for psychological care: Results of a longitudinal study

Background: In the framework of a prospective longitudinal study, the quality of life (QoL) and support requirements of patients from a university hospital department of radiotherapy were evaluated for the first time by means of established psychodiagnostic questionnaires. Patients and Methods: At first, 732 patients were screened, of whom 446 (60.9%) fulfilled the criteria for inclusion; 39.1% did not (refusals 21.0%, low Karnofsky performance status 6.6%, management problems 3.4%, language barriers 3.0%, cognitive restrictions 2.6%, death 2.5%). Disease-specific aspects of QoL (Functional Assessment of Cancer Treatment - General, FACT-G) and moderating variables {[}Social Support Scale (SSS), Disease Coping (FKV), Self-Assessment Depression Scale (SDS), and Self-Defined Care Requirements (BB)] were self-rated by patients with different tumor types before radiotherapy (T1), after radiotherapy (T2), and 6 weeks after the end of radiotherapy (T3). We studied 265 patients (157 male, 108 female; median age 58.6 years) with complete data of three time points. Results: In general, QoL of patients decreased significantly over all time points in all subscales. Social support was rated high and remained constant throughout the treatment. Apparent coping mechanisms were active problem-oriented coping, leisure activities, and self-support. The patients' depression proved to be an important and constant factor without significant changes. The support requirement is characterized by the need for more medical information and dialogue with a physician. Conclusions: Early specific support from personnel with radiotherapeutic skills, during the disease-coping process as well as during rehabilitation, should be a permanent component of an integrated radiooncological treatment schedule

Minority Representatives' in the Netherlands: Supporting, Silencing or Suppressing?

This article focuses on how often and in what ways 'minority representatives' address cultural and/or religious rights and freedoms by analysing parliamentary questions between 2002 and 2012. The research first analysed to what extent, if any, Member of Parliaments of minority origin highlight minority-related issues in their parliamentary questions. Thereafter, it analysed the content of those questions in more detail. Unlike much previous research, we did not take a favourable content for granted. The idea of 'suppressive representation' was introduced to describe those cases in which 'minority representatives' were restrictive towards cultural and/or religious freedoms of 'immigrant minorities'. Representation patterns show differences across group-and individual-level identities. © 2015 The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society; all rights reserved

Critical Behavior of a Three-State Potts Model on a Voronoi Lattice

We use the single-histogram technique to study the critical behavior of the three-state Potts model on a (random) Voronoi-Delaunay lattice with size ranging from 250 to 8000 sites. We consider the effect of an exponential decay of the interactions with the distance,$J(r)=J_0\exp(-ar)$, with $a>0$, and observe that this system seems to have critical exponents $\gamma$ and $\nu$ which are different from the respective exponents of the three-state Potts model on a regular square lattice. However, the ratio $\gamma/\nu$ remains essentially the same. We find numerical evidences (although not conclusive, due to the small range of system size) that the specific heat on this random system behaves as a power-law for $a=0$ and as a logarithmic divergence for $a=0.5$ and $a=1.0$Comment: 3 pages, 5 figure

The effects of obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome on cardiovascular system

Obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS) is characterized by repetitive upper airway obstruction during sleep and it is commonly seen in the adult population, 4% in the men, 2% in the women. The most common nocturnal symptom is snoring while the most common daytime symptom is excessive daytime sleepiness. The gold standard in the diagnosis is polysomnography. Nasal continuous positive airway pressure is the most efficient therapy in the treatment and prevention of the disease. The OSAHS may cause cardiovascular complications in long-term, including systemic hypertension, pulmonary hypertension, congestive heart failure, arrhythmias, stroke and myocardial infarction. All these complications increase the morbidity and mortality of OSAHS. In this paper, effects of OSAHS on cardiovascular system were reviewed

A Proof Assistant Based Formalisation of a Subset of Sequential Core Erlang

We present a proof-assistant-based formalisation of a subset of Erlang, intended to serve as a base for proving refactorings correct. After discussing how we reused concepts from related work, we show the syntax and semantics of our formal description, including the abstractions involved (e.g. the concept of a closure). We also present essential properties of the formalisation (e.g. determinism) along with the summary of their machine-checked proofs. Finally, we prove expression pattern equivalences which can be interpreted as simple local refactorings

The effect of green biobased binder on structural, mechanical, liquid absorption and wetting properties of coated papers

Synthetic styrene-butadiene (SB) and styrene-acrylic (SA) latex binders used in paper coating formulations are common and based on unsustainable petroleum sources. Today\u27s papermaking industry turns towards sustainable substitutes that do not compromise quality, and reduce carbon emission, toxic substance release and waste disposal concerns related to fossil fuel sources. In this study, colloidal starch-based latex nanoparticles that do not require cooking were used for pigment coating and coated on the paper surfaces. The effects of these new biobased binders on the structural and mechanical strength properties, liquid absorption, wetting and surface topography of the paper were investigated and compared with the properties of coated paper that SB latex was used as a coating binder. The results demonstrated that the biobased latex decreases the grammage of paper while maintaining an identical thickness relative to the SB latex samples. The porosity, permeability and roughness of biobased latex are found higher than the SB latex. The biobased latex successfully replaced SB latex at 1:1 ratio and enabled an equivalent of bursting, tear, tensile strength and structural properties

Controlling unequal surface energy results caused by test liquids: the case of UV/O3 Treated PET

Ultraviolet/ozone (UV/O3) treatment has been reported to be an effective method to modify properties such as wettability, adhesion or adsorption of plastic surfaces. The change in the surface is measured by contact angle analysis, which employs liquids and their surface tensions (ST) to estimate the surface energy (SE). We found two different practices in the scientific community: (1) the majority of researchers adopted the ST value of liquids from the literature, while (2) other researchers conducted real-time measurements in the lab under ambient conditions prior to SE estimation. To the best of our knowledge, there is no study that compares the difference between the two practices. One study was found to show different SE methods generating unequal SE values for the same substrate. However, there was no definitive conclusion backed by general thermodynamics rules. In this study, we presented (1) a statistical significance test that showed the literature and experimental ST values are significantly different, and studied (2) the effect of different liquid pairs on the SE estimation for UV/O3 treated poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) substrate. Modification techniques such as atmospheric pressure plasma or chemical modification were studied previously to examine PET’s wettability and the SE. The UV/O3 treatment was studied to improve adhesion and to modify its chemical properties for adsorption. In contrast, we studied (3) the effect of UV/O3 on wettability at different timeframes and addressed (4) how to control unequal SE based on a method that was refined on a rigorous thermodynamic three-phase system. It must be noted that this method can be generalized to other types of solid surfaces to estimate thermodynamically self-consistent SE values. This work also provides (5) a web-based calculator that complements computational findings available to the readership in the data availability section