1,603 research outputs found
Estimating the burden of minor ailment consultations in general practices and emergency departments through retrospective review of routine data in North East Scotland
Minor ailment attendances in general practices and emergency departments (EDs) place significant burden on health care resources
Morphology and the gradient of a symmetric potential predicts gait transitions of dogs
Gaits and gait transitions play a central role in the movement of animals. Symmetry is thought to govern the structure of the nervous system, and constrain the limb motions of quadrupeds. We quantify the symmetry of dog gaits with respect to combinations of bilateral, fore-aft, and spatio-temporal symmetry groups. We tested the ability of symmetries to model motion capture data of dogs walking, trotting and transitioning between those gaits. Fully symmetric models performed comparably to asymmetric with only a 22% increase in the residual sum of squares and only one-quarter of the parameters. This required adding a spatio-temporal shift representing a lag between fore and hind limbs. Without this shift, the symmetric model residual sum of squares was 1700% larger. This shift is related to (linear regression, n = 5, p = 0.0328) dog morphology. That this symmetry is respected throughout the gaits and transitions indicates that it generalizes outside a single gait. We propose that relative phasing of limb motions can be described by an interaction potential with a symmetric structure. This approach can be extended to the study of interaction of neurodynamic and kinematic variables, providing a system-level model that couples neuronal central pattern generator networks and mechanical models
The prevalence of medical reasons for non-participation in the Scottish breast and bowel cancer screening programmes
Objective: Increasing uptake of cancer screening is a priority for health systems internationally, however, some patients may not attend because they are undergoing active treatment for the cancer of interest or have other medical reasons that mean participation would be inappropriate. This study aims to quantify the proportion of non-participants who have a medical reason for not attending cancer screening.<p></p>
Methods: Medical reasons for not participating in breast and bowel screening were defined a priori on the basis of a literature review and expert opinion. The notes of 700 patients at two GP practices in Scotland were reviewed, to ascertain the prevalence of medical reasons amongst non-participants. Simple proportions and confidence intervals were calculated.<p></p>
Results: 17.4% of breast and 2.3% of bowel screening non-participants had a medical reason to not participate. The two most common reasons were previous breast cancer follow up (8.86%) and recent mammogram (6.57%).<p></p>
Conclusion: These patients may not benefit from screening while also being distressed by receiving an invitation. This issue also makes accurate monitoring and target-setting for improving uptake difficult. Further work is needed to estimate robustly the extent to which medical reasons account for screening non-participation in a larger population.<p></p>
'Help for hay fever', a goal-focused intervention for people with intermittent allergic rhinitis, delivered in Scottish community pharmacies: study protocol for a pilot cluster randomized controlled trial
<b>Background</b> Despite the availability of evidence-based guidelines for managing allergic rhinitis in primary care, management of the condition in the United Kingdom (UK) remains sub-optimal. Its high prevalence and negative effects on quality of life, school performance, productivity and co-morbid respiratory conditions (in particular, asthma), and high health and societal costs, make this a priority for developing novel models of care. Recent Australian research demonstrated the potential of a community pharmacy-based āgoal-focusedā intervention to help people with intermittent allergic rhinitis to self-manage their condition better, reduce symptom severity and improve quality of life. In this pilot study we will assess the transferability of the goal-focused intervention to a UK context, the suitability of the intervention materials, procedures and outcome measures and collect data to inform a future definitive UK randomized controlled trial (RCT). <p></p>
<b>Methods/design</b> A pilot cluster RCT with associated preliminary economic analysis and embedded qualitative evaluation. The pilot trial will take place in two Scottish Health Board areas: Grampian and Greater Glasgow and Clyde. Twelve community pharmacies will be randomly assigned to intervention or usual care group. Each will recruit 12 customers seeking advice or treatment for intermittent allergic rhinitis. Pharmacy staff in intervention pharmacies will support recruited customers in developing strategies for setting and achieving goals that aim to avoid/minimize triggers for, and eliminate/minimize symptoms of allergic rhinitis. Customers recruited in non-intervention pharmacies will receive usual care. The co-primary outcome measures, selected to inform a sample size calculation for a future RCT, are: community pharmacy and customer recruitment and completion rates; and effect size of change in the validated mini-Rhinoconjunctivitis Quality of Life Questionnaire between baseline, one-week and six-weeks post-intervention. Secondary outcome measures relate to changes in symptom severity, productivity, medication adherence and self-efficacy. Quantitative data about accrual, retention and economic measures, and qualitative data about participantsā experiences during the trial will be collected to inform the future RCT.<P></P>
<b>Discussion</b> This work will lay the foundations for a definitive RCT of a community pharmacy-based āgoal-focusedā self-management intervention for people with intermittent allergic rhinitis. Results of the pilot trial are expected to be available in April 2013
A cohort study of influences, health outcomes and costs of patients' health-seeking behaviour for minor ailments from primary and emergency care settings
To compare health-related and cost-related outcomes of consultations for symptoms suggestive of minor ailments in emergency departments (EDs), general practices and community pharmacies
An Interactive Narrative Platform for Story Understanding Experiments
Interactive Narratives are systems that use automated narrative generation
techniques to create multiple story variants which can be
shown to an audience, as virtual narratives, using cinematic staging
techniques. The focus of previous research has included aspects
such as the quality of automatically generated narratives and the
way in which audiences respond to them. However in this work we
have developed a mechanism for control of interactive narratives
that supports their use in experiments to assess story understanding.
This is implemented in our demonstration system, which features
two parts: an interface that allows high-level specification of criteria
for story understanding experiments; and a participant interface in
which virtual narratives, conforming to the experimental design, are
presented as 3D visualizations. The virtual narrative is based on a
pre-existing childrenās story, and features a cast of virtual characters
Trombe walls with nanoporous aerogel insulation applied to UK housing refurbishments
There is an opportunity to improve the efficiency of passive Trombe walls and active solar air collectors by replacing their conventional glass covers with lightweight polycarbonate panels filled with nanoporous aerogel insulation. This study investigates the thermal performance, energy savings, and financial payback period of passive Aerogel Trombe walls applied to the existing UK housing stock. Using parametric modeling, a series of design guidance tables have been generated, providing estimates of the energy savings and overheating risk associated with applying areas of Trombe wall to four different house types across the UK built to six notional construction standards. Calculated energy savings range from 183 kWh/m2/year for an 8 m2 system retrofitted to a solid walled detached house to 62 kWh/m2/year for a 32 m2 system retrofitted to a super insulated flat. Predicted energy savings from Trombe walls up to 24 m2 are found to exceed the energy savings from external insulation across all house types and constructions. Small areas of Trombe wall can provide a useful energy contribution without creating a significant overheating risk. If larger areas are to be installed, then detailed calculations would be recommended to assess and mitigate potential overheating issues.The EPSRC, Brunel University, and Buro Happold Lt
Constrained generalized supersymmetries and superparticles with tensorial central charges. A classification
We classify the admissible types of constraint (hermitian, holomorphic, with
reality conditions on the bosonic sectors, etc.) for generalized
supersymmetries in the presence of complex spinors. We further point out which
constrained generalized supersymmetries admit a dual formulation. For both real
and complex spinors generalized supersymmetries are constructed and classified
as dimensional reductions of supersymmetries from {\em oxidized} space-times
(i.e. the maximal space-times associated to -component Clifford irreps). We
apply these results to sistematically construct a class of models describing
superparticles in presence of bosonic tensorial central charges, deriving the
consistency conditions for the existence of the action, as well as the
constrained equations of motion. Examples of these models (which, in their
twistorial formulation, describe towers of higher-spin particles) were first
introduced by Rudychev and Sezgin (for real spinors) and later by Bandos and
Lukierski (for complex spinors).Comment: 32 pages, LaTe
Revisiting Clifford algebras and spinors III: conformal structures and twistors in the paravector model of spacetime
This paper is the third of a series of three, and it is the continuation of
math-ph/0412074 and math-ph/0412075. After reviewing the conformal spacetime
structure, conformal maps are described in Minkowski spacetime as the twisted
adjoint representation of the group Spin_+(2,4), acting on paravectors.
Twistors are then presented via the paravector model of Clifford algebras and
related to conformal maps in the Clifford algebra over the lorentzian R{4,1}$
spacetime. We construct twistors in Minkowski spacetime as algebraic spinors
associated with the Dirac-Clifford algebra Cl(1,3)(C) using one lower spacetime
dimension than standard Clifford algebra formulations, since for this purpose
the Clifford algebra over R{4,1} is also used to describe conformal maps,
instead of R{2,4}. Although some papers have already described twistors using
the algebra Cl(1,3)(C), isomorphic to Cl(4,1), the present formulation sheds
some new light on the use of the paravector model and generalizations.Comment: 17 page
Hermitian versus holomorphic complex and quaternionic generalized supersymmetries of the M-theory. A classification
Relying upon the division-algebra classification of Clifford algebras and
spinors, a classification of generalized supersymmetries (or, with a slight
abuse of language,"generalized supertranslations") is provided. In each given
space-time the maximal, saturated, generalized supersymmetry, compatible with
the division-algebra constraint that can be consistently imposed on spinors and
on superalgebra generators, is furnished. Constraining the superalgebra
generators in both the complex and the quaternionic cases gives rise to the two
classes of constrained hermitian and holomorphic generalized supersymmetries.
In the complex case these two classes of generalized supersymmetries can be
regarded as complementary. The quaternionic holomorphic supersymmetry only
exists in certain space-time dimensions and can admit at most a single bosonic
scalar central charge.
The results here presented pave the way for a better understanding of the
various algebra-type of structures which can be introduced in different
space-time signatures and in association with different division algebras, as
well as their mutual relations. In a previous work, e.g., the introduction of a
complex holomorphic generalized supersymmetry was shown to be necessary in
order to perform the analytic continuation of the standard -theory to the
11-dimensional Euclidean space. As an application of the present results, it is
shown that the above algebra also admits a 12-dimensional, Euclidean,
-algebra presentation.Comment: 25 pages, LaTe
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