Estimated probabilities of positive, vs. negative, events show separable correlations with covid-19 preventive behaviours

Research has associated optimism with better health-protective behaviours, but few studies have measured optimism or pessimism directly, by asking participants to estimate probabilities of events. We used these probability estimates to examine how optimism and/or pessimism relate to protecting oneself from COVID-19. When COVID-19 first reached Turkey, we asked a snowball sample of 494 Istanbul adults how much they engaged in various COVID-protective behaviours. They also estimated the probabilities of their catching COVID-19, and of other positive and negative events happening to them. Estimated probability of general positive events (optimism) correlated positively with officially-recommended helpful behaviours (e.g. wearing masks), but not with less-helpful behaviours (e.g. sharing ‘alternative’ COVID-related information online). Estimated probabilities of general negative events (pessimism), or of catching COVID, did not correlate significantly with helpful COVID-related behaviours; but they did correlate with psychopathological symptoms, as did less-helpful COVID-related behaviours. This shows important nuances can be revealed by measuring optimism and pessimism, as separate variables, using probability estimates.WOS:000766608100006Scopus - Affiliation ID: 60105072PMID: 35228768Social Sciences Citation IndexQ2ArticleUluslararası işbirliği ile yapılan - EVETMarch2022YÖK - 2021-22Hazira

Insomnia medication use and the probability of an accidental event in an older adult population

ObjectiveThis study examined the risk of accidental events in older adults prescribed a sedating antidepressant, long-acting benzodiazepine, short-acting benzodiazepine, and nonbenzodiazepine, relative to a reference group (selective melatonin receptor agonist).MethodsThis was a retrospective cohort analysis of older adults (≥65 years) with newly initiated pharmacological treatment of insomnia. Data were collected from the Thomson MarketScan(®) Medicare Supplemental and Coordination of Benefits databases (January 1, 2000, through June 30, 2006). Probit models were used to evaluate the probability of an accidental event.ResultsData were analyzed for 445,329 patients. Patients taking a long-acting benzodiazepine (1.21 odds ratio [OR]), short-acting benzodiazepine (1.16 OR), or nonbenzodiazepine (1.12 OR) had a significantly higher probability of experiencing an accidental event during the first month following treatment initiation compared with patients taking the reference medication (P < 0.05 for all). A significantly higher probability of experiencing an accidental event was also observed during the 3-month period following the initiation of treatment (1.62 long-acting benzodiazepine, 1.60 short-acting benzodiazepine, 1.48 nonbenzodiazepine, and 1.56 sedating antidepressant; P < 0.05).ConclusionsOlder adults taking an SAD or any of the benzodiazepine receptor agonists appear to have a greater risk of an accidental event compared with a reference group taking an MR

Economic modeling of the combined effects of HIV-disease, cholesterol and lipoatrophy based on ACTG 5142 trial data

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>This study examines the cost and consequences of initiating an ARV regimen including Lopinavir/ritonavir (LPV/r) or Efavirenz (EFV), using data from a recent clinical trial in a previously published model of HIV-disease.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We populated the Markov model of HIV-disease with data from ACTG 5142 study to estimate the economic outcomes of starting ARV therapy with a PI-containing regimen as compared to an NNRTI-containing regimen, given their virologic and immunologic efficacy and effects on cholesterol and lipoatrophy. CNS toxicities and GI tolerability were not included in the model because of their transient nature or low cost remedies, and therefore lack of economic impact. CD4+ T-cell counts and the HIV-1 RNA (viral load) values from the study were used to assign a specific health state (HS) to each patient for each quarter year. The resulting frequencies used as "raw" data directly into the model obviate the reliance on statistical tests, and allow the model to reflect actual patient behavior in the clinical trial. An HS just below the last observed HS was used to replace a missing value.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The modeled estimates (undiscounted) for the LPV/r-based regimen resulted in 1.41 quality-adjusted life months (QALMs) gained over a lifetime compared to the EFV-based regimen. The LPV/r-based regimen incurred $7,458 (1.8$88,829/QALY. Most of the higher costs accrue before the 7th year of treatment and were offset by subsequent savings. The estimates are highly sensitive to the effect of lipoatrophy on Health-related Quality of Life (HRQOL), but not to the effect of cholesterol levels.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The cost effectiveness of ARV regimens may be strongly affected by enduring AEs, such as lipoatrophy. It is important to consider specific AE effects from all drugs in a regimen when ARVs are compared.</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p>(ClinicalTrials.gov number, <a href="http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00050895">NCT00050895</a><url>http://[ClinicalTrials.gov]</url>).</p

Measuring urban quality of life in Istanbul

G&uuml;n&uuml;m&uuml;zde yaşam kalitesinin &ouml;l&ccedil;&uuml;lmesi konusunda araştırmacılar temelde iki konu ile karsı karşıya kalmaktadırlar. Birincisi yaşam kalitesinin anlamı ve &ouml;l&ccedil;&uuml;lmesi, ikincisi yaşam kalitesindeki değişikliği değerlendirmede kullanılacak &ouml;l&ccedil;&uuml;tler ya da g&ouml;stergelerin belirlenmesidir. Bu &ccedil;alışmanın amacı İstanbul halkının yaşam kalitesinin değişik boyutlarını nasıl değerlendirdiklerini irdelemek ve İstanbul&rsquo;da yaşam kalitesini değerlendirmek i&ccedil;in kullanılacak g&ouml;stergeleri saptamaktır. Yirmi birinci y&uuml;zyılın başlangıcında İstanbul'da Şehirsel Yaşam Kalitesi'nin değerlendirilmesi hem İstanbul şehri hem de t&uuml;m b&ouml;lge a&ccedil;ısından &ouml;nem taşımaktadır. Son 50 yıl i&ccedil;inde hızlı bir gelişme g&ouml;steren İstanbul&rsquo;da n&uuml;fus artışı ile paralel olarak yeni konut alanları a&ccedil;ılmış, yeşil alan kaybı oluşmuş, ulaşım sistemi genişlemiş ve yanı sıra kentsel yaşam standardında y&uuml;kselme i&ccedil;in &ccedil;alışmalar başlamıştır. &Ouml;te yandan kent yaşamında konut, ulaşım, kamu hizmetleri, iş olanakları ve &ccedil;evre kalitesinde g&ouml;r&uuml;len eşitsizlikler İstanbul&rsquo;da yaşayanların yaşam kalitesini etkilemektedir. Şehir y&ouml;netimi a&ccedil;ısından, halkın değişik kesimlerinin &ccedil;evresel koşulları ne şekilde algıladığı &ouml;nemli bir konudur. Kamu hizmetlerinin etkin kullanımı, se&ccedil;ilecek ulaşım modeli, b&ouml;lgesel tesislerin kullanımı ve g&uuml;venlikten kentsel yayılmaya kadar yaşam kalitesini ilgilendiren konular hakkında halkın davranışı konusunda araştırmalara gereksinim vardır. Bu &ccedil;alışma temelde bu konulara y&ouml;nelik soruları yanıtlamaya y&ouml;neliktir. &Ouml;zet olarak &ccedil;alışma yeni y&uuml;zyıl başlangıcında İstanbul&rsquo;da yaşam kalitesinin portresinin oluşturulmasına y&ouml;neliktir. İstanbul&rsquo;da yaşam kalitesinin &ouml;l&ccedil;&uuml;lmesi &ccedil;alışması İstanbul Metropoliten Planlama B&uuml;rosu (IMP) de ger&ccedil;ekleştirilen planlama &ccedil;alışmalarının analitik et&uuml;tleri kapsamında ve kısmi olarak ITU araştırma fonu desteğinde ger&ccedil;ekleştirilen &ccedil;alışmada İstanbul&rsquo;da rasgele &ouml;rneklem &ccedil;er&ccedil;evesinde se&ccedil;ilen 423 noktada 1635 hanehalkı ile ger&ccedil;ekleştirilen anket &ccedil;alışmasının bulguları konut, ulaşım, konut &ccedil;evresi, komşuluk, katılım ve g&uuml;venlik, istihdam, alışveriş, rekreasyon ve boş vakitlerin değerlendirilmesi, sağlık, eğitim ve kentsel konular başlıkları altında değerlendirilmektedir.&nbsp;Anahtar Kelimeler: Yaşam kalitesi, İstanbul, şehir planlama.During the past quarter century, a number of scholars working in social sciences and planning have argued that quality of life has both a subjective dimension as well as an objective reality. Building on the seminal study  of Campbell et al (1976) that measured people's satisfactions, Marans and his colleagues began to explore quality of life issues from a conceptual and empirical perspective (Marans and Rodger, 1975; Lee and Marans,, 1980; Connerly and Marans, 1988, Marans, 2003). Their contention has been that quality of life in a particular geographic setting is a subjective phenomenon, and that each occupant of a setting may differ in his/her views about it. Furthermore, those views would reflect their assessments of a number of setting attributes that could be influenced by certain characteristics of the occupant. The model also suggests that the occupant's assessments of setting attributes are associated with the attributes themselves. A major research program that utilizes this model in measuring the quality of community life has been launched in metro Detroit (Marans and Gocmen, 2005). As part of the research program, parallel studies are underway in several world cities including Istanbul. This paper presents findings from the Istanbul study on quality of urban life. The study was undertaken as part of the Istanbul Strategic Plan prepared by the Greater Istanbul Municipality (BIMTAS, Istanbul Metropolitan Planning Office) and partially supported by Istanbul Technical University Research Fund. The key purpose of the research was to provide useful information for developing planning/design strategies that will foster sustainable urbanization through enhancing quality of life, which is one of the most important principles of sustainable urbanization. Another purpose was to explore the impact of environmental, economic, social, physical and health related indicators on quality of life satisfaction among Istanbul residents. Ultimately, the research will provide recommendations which will further enhance the quality of life in Istanbul at a number of levels, from empowering communities at a local level to participate in the evolution of their neighborhoods to influencing institutional and corporate objectives and regional and national government sustainability policies. The research will 'paint a picture' of the quality of life in Istanbul, and establishes the foundation for further future research that examines change. The primary means of measuring quality of life was the questionnaire which closely followed the protocol of the Detroit Area Study (DAS) 2001. As research method questionnaire survey was applied to measure quality of life in Istanbul. The questionnaire framework opted for is closely related to that of the Detroit Area Study (DAS) 2001 model. The DAS model attempts to capture the reality of community quality of life by exploring both objective and subjective indicators based around domains, thus providing the research with a more rounded and complete profile of communities. The DAS research program is successfully 'exported' around the world. For example, the cities of Beijing (China), Belo Horizonte (Brazil), Brisbane (Australia) (Stimson, et al, 2007) and Cape Town (South Africa), are in the process of, or are considering fielding the core module of DAS. DAS therefore provides a useful medium for future comparisons with a number of global cities. Whilst fielding the core modules of the DAS study the Istanbul Area Study (IAS) also contains a number of additional questions that are region specific thus establishing a bespoke criterion which best captures the community profile of Istanbul and issues relating to the city. Housing and residential mobility, residential history, travel demand, transportation and public services, educational services, health and health care facilities, parks and recreation, shopping and entertainment, neighborhood and neighboring, community participation and involvement, safety issues, employment and journey to work, environmental and regional issues are explored in the survey. In total 1635 households across 423 points within the city were interviewed. The contribution to the overall Istanbul strategic plan was to identify regions and neighbourhoods profiles and to map accordingly, to identify satisfaction levels of communities and identify problematic areas for households and identify regions of preference and to provide data to contribute to the residential development strategy. In this paper the methodology and initial findings of the study is presented. Keywords: Quality of Life, Istanbul, urban planning, residential satisfaction.

Hierarchical Motion Brushes for Animation Instancing

International audienceOur work on "motion brushes" provides a new workflow for the creation and reuse of 3D animation with a focus on stylized movement and depiction. Conceptually, motion brushes expand existing brush models by incorporating hierarchies of 3D animated content including geometry, appearance information, and motion data as core brush primitives that are instantiated using a painting interface. Because motion brushes can encompass all the richness of detail and movement offered by animation software, they accommodate complex, varied effects that are not easily created by other means. To support reuse and provide an effective means for managing complexity, we propose a hierarchical representation that allows simple brushes to be combined into more complex ones. Our system provides stroke-based control over motion-brush parameters, including tools to effectively manage the temporal nature of the motion brush instances. We demonstrate the flexibility and richness of our system with motion brushes for splashing rain, footsteps appearing in the snow, and stylized visual effects

Psychometric evaluation of the Osteoporosis Patient Treatment Satisfaction Questionnaire (OPSAT-Q™), a novel measure to assess satisfaction with bisphosphonate treatment in postmenopausal women

BACKGROUND: The Osteoporosis Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire (OPSAT-Q) is a new measure of patient satisfaction with bisphosphonate treatment for osteoporosis. The objective of this study was to evaluate the psychometric characteristics of the OPSAT-Q. METHODS: The OPSAT-Q contains 16 items in four subscales: Convenience, Confidence with Daily Activities, Side Effects, and Overall Satisfaction. All four subscale scores and an overall composite satisfaction score (CSS) can be computed. The OPSAT-Q, Osteoporosis Targeted Quality of Life (OPTQoL), and sociodemographic/clinical questionnaires, including 3 global items on convenience, functioning and side effects, were self-administered to women with osteoporosis or osteopenia recruited from four US clinics. Analyses included item and scale performance, internal consistency reliability, reproducibility, and construct validity. Reproducibility was measured using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) via a follow-up questionnaire completed by participants 2 weeks post baseline. RESULTS: 104 women with a mean age of 65.1 years participated. The majority were Caucasian (64.4%), living with someone (74%), and not currently employed (58.7%). 73% had osteoporosis and 27% had osteopenia. 80% were taking weekly bisphosphonates and 18% were taking daily medication (2% missing data). On a scale of 0–100, individual patient subscale scores ranged from 17 to 100 and CSS scores ranged from 44 to 100. All scores showed acceptable internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's alpha > 0.70) (range 0.72 to 0.89). Reproducibility ranged from 0.62 (Daily Activities) to 0.79 (Side Effects) for the subscales; reproducibility for the CSS was 0.81. Significant correlations were found between the OPSAT-Q subscales and conceptually similar global measures (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: The findings from this study confirm the validity and reliability of the OPSAT-Q and support the proposed composition of four subscales and a composite score. They also support the use of the OPSAT-Q to examine the impact of bisphosphonate dosing frequency on patient satisfaction

Theories of American Imperialism: A Critical Evaluation

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68828/2/10.1177_048661347400600303.pd

Bioinformatics tools for cancer metabolomics

It is well known that significant metabolic change take place as cells are transformed from normal to malignant. This review focuses on the use of different bioinformatics tools in cancer metabolomics studies. The article begins by describing different metabolomics technologies and data generation techniques. Overview of the data pre-processing techniques is provided and multivariate data analysis techniques are discussed and illustrated with case studies, including principal component analysis, clustering techniques, self-organizing maps, partial least squares, and discriminant function analysis. Also included is a discussion of available software packages

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure