‘Making Sense’ of Urinary Incontinence: A Qualitative Study Investigating Women’s Pelvic Floor Muscle Training Adherence

Urinary incontinence is common and disabling. Pelvic floor muscle training is recommended as first-line therapy for uncomplicatedurinary incontinence. The effects of such behavioural therapies depend in part on adherence. We explored women’s experiences ofincontinence treatment and training adherence in a longitudinal qualitative design. Six women (40–80 years) with stress, urgencyor mixed urinary incontinence symptoms were interviewed twice; once at the start of treatment and again after discharge about 3months later. Interviews were transcribed and analysed using principles of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Experienceswere represented by four themes: Past experiences and meanings of leakage; the supervised treatment period; going on and lookingahead; and the relationship with and experience of others. Variable adherence was explained by how women ‘made sense of it all’.Women with the least difficulty in making sense of their incontinence and in overcoming training inertia had the best self-reportedoutcomes. Conversely, variable adherence, poorer self-reported outcomes, and ambivalence about engaging in treatment werecharacteristic of women who struggled to make sense of their apparently intermittent or unpredictable condition. Helping womenmake sense of incontinence and overcome inertia and ambivalence could improve adherence, but this may be a prolonged process

An evaluation of combined geophysical and geotechnical methods to characterize beach thickness

Beaches provide sediment stores and have an important role in the development of the coastline in response to climate change. Quantification of beach thickness and volume is required to assess coastal sediment transport budgets. Therefore, portable, rapid, non-invasive techniques are required to evaluate thickness where environmental sensitivities exclude invasive methods. Site methods and data are described for a toolbox of electrical, electromagnetic, seismic and mechanical based techniques that were evaluated at a coastal site at Easington, Yorkshire. Geophysical and geotechnical properties are shown to be dependent upon moisture content, porosity and lithology of the beach and the morphology of the beach–platform interface. Thickness interpretation, using an inexpensive geographic information system to integrate data, allowed these controls and relationships to be understood. Guidelines for efficient site practices, based upon this case history including procedures and techniques, are presented using a systematic approach. Field results indicated that a mixed sand and gravel beach is highly variable and cannot be represented in models as a homogeneous layer of variable thickness overlying a bedrock half-space

Editorial: Current Topics in Marine Organic Biogeochemical Research

Complex and incompletely understood chemical, biological and physical processes affect the delivery, transport, and storage of organic matter (OM) in the ocean. Atmospheric and climate-relevant gases, primarily carbon dioxide, are closely linked to the production and flux of organic matter within the ocean via the biological pump. Marine and continental OM is transformed in the water column, some is transported to the sediments where a fraction is stored over geological time, and some marine OM is released to the atmosphere. These functions are intimately linked to global nutrient cycles and ecosystem processes. Perhaps indicative of how the field has matured, the multidisciplinary nature of ocean carbon studies and the importance of biological processes in organic carbon cycling has resulted in a morphing of “marine organic geochemistry” into “marine organic biogeochemistry.” Marine organic biogeochemistry now provides a molecular-level window onto the functioning and scale of processes that control the behavior of OM in the ocean. New sampling tools, analytical methods, and data handling capabilities have been applied to marine chemistry since the 1970s; and in tandem with coordinated, international and interdisciplinary research programs, this has led to explosive growth of marine organic biogeochemistry

Electronic and structural properties of superconducting MgB2_2, CaSi2_2 and related compounds

We report a detailed study of the electronic and structural properties of the 39K superconductor \mgbtwo and of several related systems of the same family, namely \mgalbtwo, \bebtwo, \casitwo and \cabesi. Our calculations, which include zone-center phonon frequencies and transport properties, are performed within the local density approximation to the density functional theory, using the full-potential linearized augmented plane wave (FLAPW) and the norm-conserving pseudopotential methods. Our results indicate essentially three-dimensional properties for these compounds; however, strongly two-dimensional $\sigma$-bonding bands contribute significantly at the Fermi level. Similarities and differences between \mgbtwo and \bebtwo (whose superconducting properties have not been yet investigated) are analyzed in detail. Our calculations for \mgalbtwo show that metal substitution cannot be fully described in a rigid band model. \casitwo is studied as a function of pressure, and Be substitution in the Si planes leads to a stable compound similar in many aspects to diborides.Comment: Revised version, Phys.Rev.B in pres

Search for a W' boson decaying to a bottom quark and a top quark in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

Results are presented from a search for a W' boson using a dataset corresponding to 5.0 inverse femtobarns of integrated luminosity collected during 2011 by the CMS experiment at the LHC in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV. The W' boson is modeled as a heavy W boson, but different scenarios for the couplings to fermions are considered, involving both left-handed and right-handed chiral projections of the fermions, as well as an arbitrary mixture of the two. The search is performed in the decay channel W' to t b, leading to a final state signature with a single lepton (e, mu), missing transverse energy, and jets, at least one of which is tagged as a b-jet. A W' boson that couples to fermions with the same coupling constant as the W, but to the right-handed rather than left-handed chiral projections, is excluded for masses below 1.85 TeV at the 95% confidence level. For the first time using LHC data, constraints on the W' gauge coupling for a set of left- and right-handed coupling combinations have been placed. These results represent a significant improvement over previously published limits.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters B. Replaced with version publishe

Search for the standard model Higgs boson decaying into two photons in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV

A search for a Higgs boson decaying into two photons is described. The analysis is performed using a dataset recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC from pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV, which corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 4.8 inverse femtobarns. Limits are set on the cross section of the standard model Higgs boson decaying to two photons. The expected exclusion limit at 95% confidence level is between 1.4 and 2.4 times the standard model cross section in the mass range between 110 and 150 GeV. The analysis of the data excludes, at 95% confidence level, the standard model Higgs boson decaying into two photons in the mass range 128 to 132 GeV. The largest excess of events above the expected standard model background is observed for a Higgs boson mass hypothesis of 124 GeV with a local significance of 3.1 sigma. The global significance of observing an excess with a local significance greater than 3.1 sigma anywhere in the search range 110-150 GeV is estimated to be 1.8 sigma. More data are required to ascertain the origin of this excess.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters