3,990 research outputs found
A Primary Care Nurse-Delivered Walking Intervention in Older Adults: PACE (Pedometer Accelerometer Consultation Evaluation)-Lift Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial.
Background:
Brisk walking in older people can increase step-counts and moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity (MVPA) in ≥10-minute bouts, as advised in World Health Organization guidelines. Previous interventions have reported step-count increases, but not change in objectively measured MVPA in older people. We assessed whether a primary care nurse-delivered complex intervention increased objectively measured step-counts and MVPA.
Methods and Findings:
A total of 988 60–75 year olds, able to increase walking and randomly selected from three UK family practices, were invited to participate in a parallel two-arm cluster randomised trial; randomisation was by household. Two-hundred-ninety-eight people from 250 households were randomised between 2011 and 2012; 150 individuals to the intervention group, 148 to the usual care control group. Intervention participants received four primary care nurse physical activity (PA) consultations over 3 months, incorporating behaviour change techniques, pedometer step-count and accelerometer PA intensity feedback, and an individual PA diary and plan. Assessors were not blinded to group status, but statistical analyses were conducted blind. The primary outcome was change in accelerometry assessed average daily step-counts between baseline and 3 months, with change at 12 months a secondary outcome. Other secondary outcomes were change from baseline in time in MVPA weekly in ≥10-minute bouts, accelerometer counts, and counts/minute at 3 months and 12 months. Other outcomes were adverse events, anthropometric measures, mood, and pain. Qualitative evaluations of intervention participants and practice nurses assessed the intervention’s acceptability. At 3 months, eight participants had withdrawn or were lost to follow-up, 280 (94%) individuals provided primary outcome data. At 3 months changes in both average daily step-counts and weekly MVPA in ≥10-minute bouts were significantly higher in the intervention than control group: by 1,037 (95% CI 513–1,560) steps/day and 63 (95% CI 40–87) minutes/week, respectively. At 12 months corresponding differences were 609 (95% CI 104–1,115) steps/day and 40 (95% CI 17–63) minutes/week. Counts and counts/minute showed similar effects to steps and MVPA. Adverse events, anthropometry, mood, and pain were similar in the two groups. Participants and practice nurses found the intervention acceptable and enjoyable.
Conclusions :
The PACE-Lift trial increased both step-counts and objectively measured MVPA in ≥10-minute bouts in 60–75 year olds at 3 and 12 months, with no effect on adverse events. To our knowledge, this is the first trial in this age group to demonstrate objective MVPA increases and highlights the value of individualised support incorporating objective PA assessment in a primary care setting.
Trial Registration:
Controlled-Trials.com ISRCTN4212256
Probabilistic representation for solutions of an irregular porous media type equation: the degenerate case
We consider a possibly degenerate porous media type equation over all of
with , with monotone discontinuous coefficients with linear
growth and prove a probabilistic representation of its solution in terms of an
associated microscopic diffusion. This equation is motivated by some singular
behaviour arising in complex self-organized critical systems. The main idea
consists in approximating the equation by equations with monotone
non-degenerate coefficients and deriving some new analytical properties of the
solution
The initial conditions of star formation in the Ophiuchus main cloud: Kinematics of the protocluster condensations
The earliest phases of clustered star formation and the origin of the stellar
initial mass function (IMF) are currently much debated. In order to constrain
the origin of the IMF, we investigated the internal and relative motions of
starless condensations and protostars previously detected by us in the dust
continuum at 1.2mm in the L1688 protocluster of the Ophiuchus molecular cloud
complex. The starless condensations have a mass spectrum resembling the IMF and
are therefore likely representative of the initial stages of star formation in
the protocluster. We carried out detailed molecular line observations,
including some N2H+(1-0) mapping, of the Ophiuchus protocluster condensations
using the IRAM 30m telescope. We measured subsonic or at most transonic levels
of internal turbulence within the condensations, implying virial masses which
generally agree within a factor of ~ 2 with the masses derived from the 1.2mm
dust continuum. This supports the notion that most of the L1688 starless
condensations are gravitationally bound and prestellar in nature. We measured a
global one-dimensional velocity dispersion of less than 0.4 km/s between
condensations. This small relative velocity dispersion implies that, in
general, the condensations do not have time to interact with one another before
evolving into pre-main sequence objects. Our observations support the view that
the IMF is partly determined by cloud fragmentation at the prestellar stage.
Competitive accretion is unlikely to be the dominant mechanism at the
protostellar stage in the Ophiuchus protocluster, but it may possibly govern
the growth of starless, self-gravitating condensations initially produced by
gravoturbulent fragmentation toward an IMF, Salpeter-like mass spectrum.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures. A&A, in press (v2: notes added to Table 3
Index Theorem and Overlap Formalism with Naive and Minimally Doubled Fermions
We present a theoretical foundation for the Index theorem in naive and
minimally doubled lattice fermions by studying the spectral flow of a Hermitean
version of Dirac operators. We utilize the point splitting method to implement
flavored mass terms, which play an important role in constructing proper
Hermitean operators. We show the spectral flow correctly detects the index of
the would-be zero modes which is determined by gauge field topology. Using the
flavored mass terms, we present new types of overlap fermions from the naive
fermion kernels, with a number of flavors that depends on the choice of the
mass terms. We succeed to obtain a single-flavor naive overlap fermion which
maintains hypercubic symmetry.Comment: 27 pages, 17 figures; references added, version accepted in JHE
On the AdS/CFT Dual of Deconstruction
We consider a class of non-supersymmetric gauge theories obtained by
orbifolding the N=4 super-Yang-Mills theories. We focus on the resulting quiver
theories in their deconstructed phase, both at small and large coupling, where
a fifth dimension opens up. In particular we investigate the r\^ole played by
this extra dimension when evaluating the rectangular Wilson loops encoding the
interaction potential between quarks located at different points in the
orbifold. The large coupling potential of the deconstructed quiver theory is
determined using the AdS/CFT correspondence and analysing the corresponding
minimal surface solution for the dual gravitational metric. At small coupling,
the potential between quarks decreases with their angular distance while at
strong coupling we find a linear dependence at large distance along the
(deconstructed) fifth dimension.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figure
Asymptotic behaviour of a semilinear elliptic system with a large exponent
Consider the problem \begin{eqnarray*} -\Delta u &=& v^{\frac 2{N-2}},\quad
v>0\quad {in}\quad \Omega, -\Delta v &=& u^{p},\:\:\:\quad u>0\quad {in}\quad
\Omega, u&=&v\:\:=\:\:0 \quad {on}\quad \partial \Omega, \end{eqnarray*} where
is a bounded convex domain in with smooth boundary
We study the asymptotic behaviour of the least energy
solutions of this system as We show that the solution remain
bounded for large and have one or two peaks away form the boundary. When
one peak occurs we characterize its location.Comment: 16 pages, submmited for publicatio
Formation of a stable deacagonal quasicrystalline Al-Pd-Mn surface layer
We report the in situ formation of an ordered equilibrium decagonal Al-Pd-Mn
quasicrystal overlayer on the 5-fold symmetric surface of an icosahedral
Al-Pd-Mn monograin. The decagonal structure of the epilayer is evidenced by
x-ray photoelectron diffraction, low-energy electron diffraction and electron
backscatter diffraction. This overlayer is also characterized by a reduced
density of states near the Fermi edge as expected for quasicrystals. This is
the first time that a millimeter-size surface of the stable decagonal Al-Pd-Mn
is obtained, studied and compared to its icosahedral counterpart.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Ref. Lett. (18 July 2001
A multi-wavelength census of star formation activity in the young embedded cluster around Serpens/G3-G6
Aims. The aim of this paper is to characterise the star formation activity in
the poorly studied embedded cluster Serpens/G3-G6, located ~ 45' (3 pc) to the
south of the Serpens Cloud Core, and to determine the luminosity and mass
functions of its population of Young Stellar Objects (YSOs).
Methods. Multi-wavelength broadband photometry was obtained to sample the
near and mid-IR spectral energy distributions to separate YSOs from field stars
and classify the YSO evolutionary stage. ISOCAM mapping in the two filters LW2
(5-8.5 um) and LW3 (12-18 um) of a 19' x 16' field was combined with JHKs data
from 2MASS, Ks data from Arnica/NOT, and L' data from SIRCA/NOT. Continuum
emission at 1.3 mm (IRAM) and 3.6 cm (VLA) was mapped to study the cloud
structure and the coldest/youngest sources. Deep narrow band imaging at the
2.12 um S(1) line of H2 from NOTCam/NOT was obtained to search for signs of
bipolar outflows.
Results. We have strong evidence for a stellar population of 31 Class II
sources, 5 flat-spectrum sources, 5 Class I sources, and two Class 0 sources.
Our method does not sample the Class III sources. The cloud is composed of two
main dense clumps aligned along a ridge over ~ 0.5 pc plus a starless core
coinciding with absorption features seen in the ISOCAM maps. We find two
S-shaped bipolar collimated flows embedded in the NE clump, and propose the two
driving sources to be a Class 0 candidate (MMS3) and a double Class I (MMS2).
For the Class II population we find a best age of ~ 2 Myr and compatibility
with recent Initial Mass Functions (IMFs) by comparing the observed Class II
luminosity function (LF), which is complete to 0.08 L_sun, to various model LFs
with different star formation scenarios and input IMFs.Comment: 18 pages, 16 figures, 3 online tables, accepted by A&
Numerical properties of staggered quarks with a taste-dependent mass term
The numerical properties of staggered Dirac operators with a taste-dependent
mass term proposed by Adams [1,2] and by Hoelbling [3] are compared with those
of ordinary staggered and Wilson Dirac operators. In the free limit and on
(quenched) interacting configurations, we consider their topological
properties, their spectrum, and the resulting pion mass. Although we also
consider the spectral structure, topological properties, locality, and
computational cost of an overlap operator with a staggered kernel, we call
attention to the possibility of using the Adams and Hoelbling operators without
the overlap construction. In particular, the Hoelbling operator could be used
to simulate two degenerate flavors without additive mass renormalization, and
thus without fine-tuning in the chiral limit.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures. V2: published version; important note added
regarding Hoelbling fermions, otherwise minor change
Configurational Entropy and Diffusivity of Supercooled Water
We calculate the configurational entropy S_conf for the SPC/E model of water
for state points covering a large region of the (T,rho) plane. We find that (i)
the (T,rho) dependence of S_conf correlates with the diffusion constant and
(ii) that the line of maxima in S_conf tracks the line of density maxima. Our
simulation data indicate that the dynamics are strongly influenced by S_conf
even above the mode-coupling temperature T_MCT(rho).Comment: Significant update of reference
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