Chronic Pain and Pain Management among Older Veterans

The aim of the study was to examine chronic pain in older veterans (65+) and the pain treatment that they received at the Veteran Medical Center. Using a cross-sectional research design, a survey was administered to 107 older veteran participants with self-reported chronic pain recruited from outpatient centers of the Veterans Administration Medical Center: Pain Management Center, Geriatric Clinic, Arthritis Treatment Center, Mental Health Clinic, and Primary Care Clinic. Severity of pain, functional status, depression, spirituality, social support, and social network were assessed, and demographic data were collected. A majority of the participants (92.5%, n = 99) reported having had chronic pain for more than 6 months and having suffered from chronic pain, including back pain, knee pain, hip pain, and foot/toe pain. For chronic pain management, 17.8 % (n = 19) of the participants had received treatment from a pain specialist in the pain management clinic, but most of the participants (82.2%, n = 88) had received pharmacological treatment from their primary care doctor or other specialist, rather than specialized pain therapy. The prevalence of chronic pain is fairly high in older veterans, although most were receiving pain medication. The study analyses revealed that lower levels of functional status, higher levels of depressive symptoms, and lower levels of spirituality were associated with higher levels of pain intensity. Health care providers could ensure that routine screening for chronic pain is a part of their regular interaction with patients. They should be able to identify and address major barriers to effective pain management in older adults

Older Women with Psychoactive Medication Abuse

The older population of the United States has dramatically increased over the past few decades; currently, approximately 13% of the nation’s population is categorized as older adults (persons over 65 years old). Moreover, it is expected that both absolute number and percentage of older people in the population will continue to increase. The number of persons over age 65 is projected to reach more than 70 million by the year 2030 and to constitute approximately 21% of the U.S. population (American Society on Aging, n.d.)

k-Space Deep Learning for Reference-free EPI Ghost Correction

Nyquist ghost artifacts in EPI are originated from phase mismatch between the even and odd echoes. However, conventional correction methods using reference scans often produce erroneous results especially in high-field MRI due to the non-linear and time-varying local magnetic field changes. Recently, it was shown that the problem of ghost correction can be reformulated as k-space interpolation problem that can be solved using structured low-rank Hankel matrix approaches. Another recent work showed that data driven Hankel matrix decomposition can be reformulated to exhibit similar structures as deep convolutional neural network. By synergistically combining these findings, we propose a k-space deep learning approach that immediately corrects the phase mismatch without a reference scan in both accelerated and non-accelerated EPI acquisitions. To take advantage of the even and odd-phase directional redundancy, the k-space data is divided into two channels configured with even and odd phase encodings. The redundancies between coils are also exploited by stacking the multi-coil k-space data into additional input channels. Then, our k-space ghost correction network is trained to learn the interpolation kernel to estimate the missing virtual k-space data. For the accelerated EPI data, the same neural network is trained to directly estimate the interpolation kernels for missing k-space data from both ghost and subsampling. Reconstruction results using 3T and 7T in-vivo data showed that the proposed method outperformed the image quality compared to the existing methods, and the computing time is much faster.The proposed k-space deep learning for EPI ghost correction is highly robust and fast, and can be combined with acceleration, so that it can be used as a promising correction tool for high-field MRI without changing the current acquisition protocol.Comment: To appear in Magnetic Resonance in Medicin

Relationship Between Audience Engagement On Social Media And Broadcast Media Ratings

People often share their opinions or impressions about TV shows (e.g., dramas) with other viewers through social media such as personal blogs and Twitter. As such, broadcast media, especially TV, lead to audience engagement on social media. Moreover, the audience engagement, in turn, impacts broadcast media ratings. Social TV analyzes audience’s TV-related social media behaviors and tries to use the behaviors in marketing activities such as advertisement; however, this is purely based on the quantity of engagement in social media. In this study, we analyze the subjects of the audience engagement on social media about specific TV dramas through topic modeling, and examines the relationship between changes in the topics and viewer ratings of the TV dramas

Trends of legionellosis reported in Jeju Province, Republic of Korea, 2015–2022

Objectives The number of reported cases of Legionnaires’ disease (LD) in the Republic of Korea surged nationally in 2016; however, in 2022, this number was higher in Jeju Province than the previous national peak. A descriptive epidemiological study was conducted to analyze trends in the incidence of reported LD cases in Jeju Island from 2015 to 2022. Methods The data for this study were obtained from case reports submitted to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency through its Disease and Health Integrated Management System. The selection criteria were cases or suspected cases of LD reported among Jeju residents between 2015 and 2022. The 95% confidence interval of the crude incidence rate was calculated using the Poisson distribution. Results Since 2020, the incidence rate of LD in Jeju has risen sharply, showing a statistically significant difference from the national incidence rate. A particular medical institution in Jeju reported a significant number of LD cases. Screening with the urine antigen test (UAT) also increased significantly. Conclusion Our findings indicate that the rapid increase in cases of LD in Jeju Province since 2020 was due to the characteristics of medical-care use among Jeju residents, which were focused on a specific medical institution. According to their clinical practice guidelines, this medical institution conducted UATs to screen patients suspected of pneumonia

Optical tweezers throw and catch single atoms

Single atoms movable from one place to another would enable a flying quantum memory that can be used for quantum communication and quantum computing at the same time. Guided atoms, e.g., by optical tweezers, provide a partial solution, but the benefit of flying qubits could be lost if they still interact with the guiding means. Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate freely-flying atoms that are not guided but are instead thrown and caught by optical tweezers. In experiments, cold atoms at 40 micro Kelvin temperature are thrown up to a free-flying speed of 0.65 m/s over a travel distance of 12.6 micrometer at a transportation efficiency of 94(3)%, even in the presence of other optical tweezers or atoms en route. This performance is not fundamentally limited but by current settings of optical tweezers with limited potential depth and width. We provide a set of proof-of-principle flying atom demonstrations, which include atom transport through optical tweezers, atom arrangements by flying atoms, and atom scattering off optical tweezers. Our study suggests possible applications of flying atoms, not only in fundamental studies such as single-atom low-energy collisions, but also non-photon quantum communication and flying-qubit-based quantum computing.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Targeted and Reversible Blood-Retinal Barrier Disruption via Focused Ultrasound and Microbubbles

The blood-retinal barrier (BRB) prevents most systemically-administered drugs from reaching the retina. This study investigated whether burst ultrasound applied with a circulating microbubble agent can disrupt the BRB, providing a noninvasive method for the targeted delivery of systemically administered drugs to the retina. To demonstrate the efficacy and reversibility of such a procedure, five overlapping targets around the optic nerve head were sonicated through the cornea and lens in 20 healthy male Sprague-Dawley rats using a 690 kHz focused ultrasound transducer. For BRB disruption, 10 ms bursts were applied at 1 Hz for 60 s with different peak rarefactional pressure amplitudes (0.81, 0.88 and 1.1 MPa). Each sonication was combined with an IV injection of a microbubble ultrasound contrast agent (Definity). To evaluate BRB disruption, an MRI contrast agent (Magnevist) was injected IV immediately after the last sonication, and serial T1-weighted MR images were acquired up to 30 minutes. MRI contrast enhancement into the vitreous humor near targeted area was observed for all tested pressure amplitudes, with more signal enhancement evident at the highest pressure amplitude. At 0.81 MPa, BRB disruption was not detected 3 h post sonication, after an additional MRI contrast injection. A day after sonication, the eyes were processed for histology of the retina. At the two lower exposure levels (0.81 and 0.88 MPa), most of the sonicated regions were indistinguishable from the control eyes, although a few tiny clusters of extravasated erythrocytes (petechaie) were observed. More severe retinal damage was observed at 1.1 MPa. These results demonstrate that focused ultrasound and microbubbles can offer a noninvasive and targeted means to transiently disrupt the BRB for ocular drug delivery

Evaluation of Penalized and Nonpenalized Methods for Disease Prediction with Large-Scale Genetic Data

Owing to recent improvement of genotyping technology, large-scale genetic data can be utilized to identify disease susceptibility loci and this successful finding has substantially improved our understanding of complex diseases. However, in spite of these successes, most of the genetic effects for many complex diseases were found to be very small, which have been a big hurdle to build disease prediction model. Recently, many statistical methods based on penalized regressions have been proposed to tackle the so-called "large P and small N" problem. Penalized regressions including least absolute selection and shrinkage operator (LASSO) and ridge regression limit the space of parameters, and this constraint enables the estimation of effects for very large number of SNPs. Various extensions have been suggested, and, in this report, we compare their accuracy by applying them to several complex diseases. Our results show that penalized regressions are usually robust and provide better accuracy than the existing methods for at least diseases under consideration

A continuous-wave and pulsed X-band electron spin resonance spectrometer operating in ultra-high vacuum for the study of low dimensional spin ensembles

We report the development of a continuous-wave and pulsed X-band electron spin resonance (ESR) spectrometer for the study of spins on ordered surfaces down to cryogenic temperatures. The spectrometer operates in ultra-high vacuum and utilizes a half-wavelength microstrip line resonator realized using epitaxially grown copper films on single crystal Al$_2$O$_3$ substrates. The one-dimensional microstrip line resonator exhibits a quality factor of more than 200 at room temperature, close to the upper limit determined by radiation losses. The surface characterizations of the copper strip of the resonator by atomic force microscope, low-energy electron diffraction, and scanning tunneling microscope show that the surface is atomically clean, flat, and single crystalline. Measuring the ESR spectrum at 15 K from a few nm thick molecular film of YPc$_2$, we find a continuous-wave ESR sensitivity of $2.6 \cdot 10^{11}~\text{spins}/\text{G} \cdot \text{Hz}^{1/2}$ indicating that a signal-to-noise ratio of $3.9~\text{G} \cdot \text{Hz}^{1/2}$ is expected from a monolayer of YPc$_2$ molecules. Advanced pulsed ESR experimental capabilities including dynamical decoupling and electron-nuclear double resonance are demonstrated using free radicals diluted in a glassy matrix.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure