THE HEALTHY MONDAY CAMPAIGN: HEALTH AWARENESS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

Childhood obesity is a major public health concern for Americans. Many school-based health interventions and campaigns have been in place in the elementary school setting to help lower the rates of childhood obesity and to make students aware of their health. This study focuses on the implementation of the Healthy Monday campaign to fourth and fifth grade students in two Kentucky elementary schools. Particularly the focal points of the campaign consist of nutrition and physical activity. The campaign highlights two spin-off campaigns from the Healthy Monday campaign titled the Monday Mile and Meatless Monday. This study looks at the effectiveness of the overall health campaign to the fourth and fifth grade students, their parents, and teachers in the two schools. Pre and post surveys were developed in order to test four components of the health campaign: campaign awareness, attitudes, nutrition knowledge, and behavior change. This study shows that the health campaign increased student’s awareness, nutrition knowledge, and behavior change. Also the parent and teacher population showed significant increase in campaign awareness and behavior change. Overall, the health campaign created awareness among all three populations

An investigation into the management of the deep carious lesion by general dental practitioners in the UK

Objectives: As techniques and dental materials have evolved, the management of deep carious lesions has also changed. This study investigated how UK-based general dental practitioners (GDPs) managed deep carious lesions in permanent, vital teeth and factors that influence their choices. / Methods: This mixed-method study employed an online questionnaire as its primary source of quantitative data collection. The questionnaire enquired about GDPs': a) demographics; b) working environment; and c) whether they had postgraduate training that covered caries management/minimally invasive dentistry (MID). Respondents were presented with a clinical case to elicit qualitative data. Relevant questions were asked in order to examine current practice and explore treatment among the respondents. / Results: In total, 239 responses were received. Overall, 168 (70% [95% CI 64%, 76%]) of the respondents chose a partial caries removal technique, 155 (69.3% [95% CI 60%, 72%]) used an adhesive restorative material and 205 (85.8% [95% CI 81%, 89%]) advised fluoride adjuncts. However, rubber dam (75; 31.4% [95% CI 26%, 38%]) and saliva testing (17; 7.1% [95% CI 4%, 11%]) were not routinely used. A significant relationship between those who had postgraduate training and those who chose partial caries removal as their treatment choice (χ2 = 6.27; p = 0.01) was noted. Respondents working in an NHS-based practice were significantly (χ2 = 34.98; p <0.001) more likely to restore teeth with amalgam. / Conclusions: There is an inconsistent management protocol when presented with a deep carious lesion, but partial caries removal is more widely adopted than previously reported. Rubber dam isolation was not routinely used when choosing to restore a deep carious lesion. Those who have had postgraduate training felt more confident in offering MID, so there is a clear need for further education to ensure its engagement

Associations between inflammation, coagulation, cardiac strain and injury, and subclinical vascular disease with frailty in older men: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Inflammation, coagulation activation, endothelial dysfunction and subclinical vascular disease are cross-sectionally associated with frailty. Cardiac-specific biomarkers are less-well characterised. We assessed associations between these and frailty, in men with, and without, cardiovascular disease (CVD). METHODS: Cross-sectional analysis of 1096 men without, and 303 with, CVD, aged 71–92, from the British Regional Heart Study. Multinominal logistic regression was performed to examine the associations between frailty status (robust/pre-frail/frail) and, separately, C-reactive protein (CRP), interleukin-6 (IL-6), tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), D-dimer, von Willebrand factor (vWF), high-sensitivity cardiac troponin-T (hs-cTnT), N-terminal pro B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) (all natural log-transformed), and, in men without CVD, carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT), carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV), carotid distensibility coefficient (DC), and ankle-brachial pressure index (ABPI), adjusted for age, renal function, BMI, social class, smoking, polypharmacy, cognition, multimorbidity and systolic blood pressure. Explanatory variables with p < 0.05 were carried forward into mutually-adjusted analysis. RESULTS: In men without CVD, higher CRP, IL-6, vWF, tPA, hs-cTnT, NT-proBNP, cfPWV, and lower DC were significantly associated with frailty; mutually-adjusted, log IL-6 (OR for frailty = 2.02, 95%CI 1.38–2.95), log hs-cTnT (OR = 1.95, 95%CI 1.24–3.05) and DC (OR = 0.92, 95%CI 0.86–0.99) retained associations. In men with CVD, higher CRP, IL-6, and hs-cTnT, but not vWF, tPA, NT-proBNP or D-dimer, were significantly associated with frailty; mutually-adjusted, log hs-cTnT (OR 3.82, 95%CI 1.84–7.95) retained a significant association. CONCLUSIONS: In older men, biomarkers of myocardial injury are associated with frailty. Inflammation is associated with frailty in men without CVD. Carotid artery stiffness is associated with frailty in men without CVD, independently of these biomarkers

Comparison of investigator-delineated gross tumour volumes and quality assurance in pancreatic cancer: analysis of the on-trial cases for the SCALOP trial

Background and purpose We performed a retrospective central review of tumour outlines in patients undergoing radiotherapy in the SCALOP trial. Materials and methods The planning CT scans were reviewed retrospectively by a central review team, and the accuracy of investigators’ GTV (iGTV) and PTV (iPTV) was compared to the trials team-defined gold standard (gsGTV and gsPTV) using the Jaccard Conformity Index (JCI) and Geographical Miss Index (GMI). The prognostic value of JCI and GMI was also assessed. The RT plans were also reviewed against protocol-defined constraints. Results 60 patients with diagnostic-quality planning scans were included. The median whole volume JCI for GTV was 0.64 (IQR: 0.43–0.82), and the median GMI was 0.11 (IQR: 0.05–0.22). For PTVs, the median JCI and GMI were 0.80 (IQR: 0.71–0.88) and 0.04 (IQR: 0.02–0.12) respectively. Tumour was completely missed in 1 patient, and ⩾ 50% of the tumour was missed in 3. Patients with JCI for GTV ⩾ 0.7 had 7.12 (95% CIs: 1.83–27.67, p = 0.005) higher odds of progressing by 9 months in multivariate analysis. Major deviations in RT planning were noted in 4.5% of cases. Conclusions Radiotherapy workshops and real-time central review of contours are required in RT trials of pancreatic cancer

Laser induced phase transition in epitaxial FeRh layers studied by pump-probe valence band photoemission

We use time-resolved X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy to probe the electronic and magnetization dynamics in FeRh films after ultrafast laser excitations. We present experimental and theoretical results which investigate the electronic structure of FeRh during the first-order phase transition, identifying a clear signature of the magnetic phase.We find that a spin polarized feature at the Fermi edge is a fingerprint of the magnetic status of the system that is independent of the long-range ferromagnetic alignment of the magnetic domains.We use this feature to follow the phase transition induced by a laser pulse in a pump-probe experiment and find that the magnetic transition occurs in less than 50 ps and reaches its maximum in 100 ps

Ultrafast domain dilation induced by optical pumping in ferromagnetic CoFe/Ni multilayers

Ultrafast optical pumping of systems with spatially nonuniform magnetic textures is known to cause far-from-equilibrium spin transport effects, such as the broadening of domain-walls. Here, we study the dynamics of labyrinth domain networks in ferromagnetic CoFe/Ni multilayers subject to a femtosecond optical pump and find an ultrafast domain dilation by 6% within 1.6 ps. This surprising result is based on the unambiguous determination of a harmonically-related shift of ultrafast magnetic X-ray diffraction for the first- and third-order rings. Domain dilation is plausible from conservation of momentum arguments, whereby inelastic scattering from a hot, quasi-ballistic, radial current transfers momentum to the magnetic domains. Our results suggest a potentially rich variety of unexpected physical phenomena associated with far-from-equilibrium inelastic electron-magnon scattering processes in the presence of spin textures

A growing toolbox of techniques for studying β-barrel outer membrane protein folding and biogenesis

Great strides into understanding protein folding have been made since he seminal work of Anfinsen over 40 years ago, but progress in the study of membrane protein folding has lagged behind that of their water soluble counterparts. Researchers in these fields continue to turn to more advanced techniques such as NMR, mass spectrometry, molecular dynamics (MD) and single molecule methods to interrogate how proteins fold. Our understanding of β-barrel outer membrane protein (OMP) folding has benefited from these advances in the last decade. This class of proteins must traverse the periplasm and then insert into an asymmetric lipid membrane in the absence of a chemical energy source. In this review we discuss old, new and emerging techniques used to examine the process of OMP folding and biogenesis in vitro and describe some of the insights and new questions these techniques have revealed