CIRCULAR COMPARISON OF CONVENTIONAL PRESSURE STANDARDS USING A TRANSPORTABLE OPTICAL REFRACTOMETER: PREPARATION AND TRANSPORTATION

Using a transportable Fabry-Pérot cavity refractometer, a circular comparison of existing primary standards at several national metrology institutes is currently underway. This paper provides information about the refractometer, the preparation for the comparison, and the transportation procedur

An investigation of the apparent breast cancer epidemic in France: screening and incidence trends in birth cohorts

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Official descriptive data from France showed a strong increase in breast-cancer incidence between 1980 to 2005 without a corresponding change in breast-cancer mortality. This study quantifies the part of incidence increase due to secular changes in risk factor exposure and in overdiagnosis due to organised or opportunistic screening. Overdiagnosis was defined as non progressive tumours diagnosed as cancer at histology or progressive cancer that would remain asymptomatic until time of death for another cause.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Comparison between age-matched cohorts from 1980 to 2005. All women residing in France and born 1911-1915, 1926-1930 and 1941-1945 are included. Sources are official data sets and published French reports on screening by mammography, age and time specific breast-cancer incidence and mortality, hormone replacement therapy, alcohol and obesity. Outcome measures include breast-cancer incidence differences adjusted for changes in risk factor distributions between pairs of age-matched cohorts who had experienced different levels of screening intensity.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There was an 8-fold increase in the number of mammography machines operating in France between 1980 and 2000. Opportunistic and organised screening increased over time. In comparison to age-matched cohorts born 15 years earlier, recent cohorts had adjusted incidence proportion over 11 years that were 76% higher [95% confidence limits (CL) 67%, 85%] for women aged 50 to 64 years and 23% higher [95% CL 15%, 31%] for women aged 65 to 79 years. Given that mortality did not change correspondingly, this increase in adjusted 11 year incidence proportion was considered as an estimate of overdiagnosis.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Breast cancer may be overdiagnosed because screening increases diagnosis of slowly progressing non-life threatening cancer and increases misdiagnosis among women without progressive cancer. We suggest that these effects could largely explain the reported "epidemic" of breast cancer in France. Better predictive classification of tumours is needed in order to avoid unnecessary cancer diagnoses and subsequent procedures.</p

Facilitators and barriers to physical activity following pulmonary rehabilitation in COPD: a systematic review of qualitative studies

Pulmonary rehabilitation has short-term benefits on dyspnea, exercise capacity and quality of life in COPD, but evidence suggests these do not always translate to increased daily physical activity on a patient level. This is attributed to a limited understanding of the determinants of physical activity maintenance following pulmonary rehabilitation. This systematic review of qualitative research was conducted to understand COPD patients’ perceived facilitators and barriers to physical activity following pulmonary rehabilitation. Electronic databases of published data, non-published data, and trial registers were searched to identify qualitative studies (interviews, focus groups) reporting the facilitators and barriers to physical activity following pulmonary rehabilitation for people with COPD. Thematic synthesis of qualitative data was adopted involving line-by-line coding of the findings of the included studies, development of descriptive themes, and generation of analytical themes. Fourteen studies including 167 COPD patients met the inclusion criteria. Seven sub-themes were identified as influential to physical activity following pulmonary rehabilitation. These included: intentions, self-efficacy, feedback of capabilities and improvements, relationship with health care professionals, peer interaction, opportunities following pulmonary rehabilitation and routine. These encapsulated the facilitators and barriers to physical activity following pulmonary rehabilitation and were identified as sub-themes within the three analytical themes, which were beliefs, social support, and the environment. The findings highlight the challenge of promoting physical activity following pulmonary rehabilitation in COPD and provide complementary evidence to aid evaluations of interventions already attempted in this area, but also adds insight into future development of interventions targeting physical activity maintenance in COPD

Simulation of pressure-induced cavity deformation : the 18SIB04 Quantumpascal EMPIR project

The 18SIB04 QuantumPascal EMPIR project aims for development of photon-based standards that can replace primary standards of the SI unit of pressure, the Pascal. In this project, four partners simulated the pressure-induced deformation of a given Fabry-Pérot cavity, using various versions of two types of software, COMSOL Multiphysics® and ANSYS Workbench. It was demonstrated that, for a given geometry and set of material parameters, simulations of the deformation could be performed by the various partners with such small discrepancies that methodological mistakes of the simulation procedures will solely contribute to a sub-ppm uncertainty in the assessments of refractivity of N2

Procedure for automated low uncertainty assessment of empty cavity mode frequencies in Fabry-Pérot cavity based refractometry

A procedure for automated low uncertainty assessment of empty cavity mode frequencies in Fabry-Pérot cavity based refractometry that does not require access to laser frequency measuring instrumentation is presented. It requires a previously well-characterized system regarding mirror phase shifts, Gouy phase, and mode number, and is based on the fact that the assessed refractivity should not change when mode jumps take place. It is demonstrated that the procedure is capable of assessing mode frequencies with an uncertainty of 30 MHz, which, when assessing pressure of nitrogen, corresponds to an uncertainty of 0.3 mPa.