1,581 research outputs found
Knee Osteoarthritis and the Efficacy of Kinesthesia, Balance & Agility Exercise Training: A Pilot Study
Kinesthesia, balance and agility (KBA) neuromuscular exercises are commonly used for rehabilitation of lower extremity injuries. KBA combined with strength training (ST) reportedly improves function among persons with knee osteoarthritis (OA), but independent effects of KBA are unknown. The purpose of this study was to determine the efficacy of KBA exercises, independent of ST, to improve function among persons with knee OA. Twenty participants (69.3, SD 11.4 y) were randomized to 8 weeks, 3-days per week, instructor-lead KBA or ST groups. Self-reported physical function (difficulty with daily living activities such as walking, bending, stair climbing, etc.) was measured at baseline and every two weeks. Community physical activity level, negative and positive outcome expectancies for exercise, self-reported knee stability, and timed 10-stair climb, 10-stair descent, and ‘get up and go’ 15 m walk were measured at baseline and follow-up. Physical function improved 59% (p = 0.02) with KBA and 40% (p = 0.02) with ST at 8 weeks. Community physical activity level improved only in KBA (p = 0.04); knee stability improved in both KBA (p = 0.04) and ST (p = 0.01). There were no significant between-group differences (p \u3e 0.05). In conclusion, both interventions appear to improve function and knee stability among persons with symptomatic knee OA. As KBA has never been studied as an independent treatment program, our results indicate it is a promising stand-alone intervention worthy of further study
Small scale irrigation using collector wells pilot project - Zimbabwe. Final report October 1992 - January 1996
The comparative clinical course of pregnant and non-pregnant women hospitalised with influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 infection
Introduction: The Influenza Clinical Information Network (FLU-CIN) was established to gather detailed clinical and epidemiological information about patients with laboratory confirmed A(H1N1)pdm09 infection in UK hospitals. This report focuses on the clinical course and outcomes of infection in pregnancy.Methods: A standardised data extraction form was used to obtain detailed clinical information from hospital case notes and electronic records, for patients with PCR-confirmed A(H1N1)pdm09 infection admitted to 13 sentinel hospitals in five clinical 'hubs' and a further 62 non-sentinel hospitals, between 11th May 2009 and 31st January 2010.Outcomes were compared for pregnant and non-pregnant women aged 15-44 years, using univariate and multivariable techniques.Results: Of the 395 women aged 15-44 years, 82 (21%) were pregnant; 73 (89%) in the second or third trimester. Pregnant women were significantly less likely to exhibit severe respiratory distress at initial assessment (OR?=?0.49 (95% CI: 0.30-0.82)), require supplemental oxygen on admission (OR?=?0.40 (95% CI: 0.20-0.80)), or have underlying co-morbidities (p-trend <0.001). However, they were equally likely to be admitted to high dependency (Level 2) or intensive care (Level 3) and/or to die, after adjustment for potential confounders (adj. OR?=?0.93 (95% CI: 0.46-1.92). Of 11 pregnant women needing Level 2/3 care, 10 required mechanical ventilation and three died.Conclusions: Since the expected prevalence of pregnancy in the source population was 6%, our data suggest that pregnancy greatly increased the likelihood of hospital admission with A(H1N1)pdm09. Pregnant women were less likely than non-pregnant women to have respiratory distress on admission, but severe outcomes were equally likely in both groups
Lassoing and corraling rooted phylogenetic trees
The construction of a dendogram on a set of individuals is a key component of
a genomewide association study. However even with modern sequencing
technologies the distances on the individuals required for the construction of
such a structure may not always be reliable making it tempting to exclude them
from an analysis. This, in turn, results in an input set for dendogram
construction that consists of only partial distance information which raises
the following fundamental question. For what subset of its leaf set can we
reconstruct uniquely the dendogram from the distances that it induces on that
subset. By formalizing a dendogram in terms of an edge-weighted, rooted
phylogenetic tree on a pre-given finite set X with |X|>2 whose edge-weighting
is equidistant and a set of partial distances on X in terms of a set L of
2-subsets of X, we investigate this problem in terms of when such a tree is
lassoed, that is, uniquely determined by the elements in L. For this we
consider four different formalizations of the idea of "uniquely determining"
giving rise to four distinct types of lassos. We present characterizations for
all of them in terms of the child-edge graphs of the interior vertices of such
a tree. Our characterizations imply in particular that in case the tree in
question is binary then all four types of lasso must coincide
Approximate and exact nodes of fermionic wavefunctions: coordinate transformations and topologies
A study of fermion nodes for spin-polarized states of a few-electron ions and
molecules with one-particle orbitals is presented. We find exact nodes
for some cases of two electron atomic and molecular states and also the first
exact node for the three-electron atomic system in state using
appropriate coordinate maps and wavefunction symmetries. We analyze the cases
of nodes for larger number of electrons in the Hartree-Fock approximation and
for some cases we find transformations for projecting the high-dimensional node
manifolds into 3D space. The node topologies and other properties are studied
using these projections. We also propose a general coordinate transformation as
an extension of Feynman-Cohen backflow coordinates to both simplify the nodal
description and as a new variational freedom for quantum Monte Carlo trial
wavefunctions.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure
Geometric Interpretation of the Mixed Invariants of the Riemann Spinor
Mixed invariants are used to classify the Riemann spinor in the case of
Einstein-Maxwell fields and perfect fluids. In the Einstein-Maxwell case these
mixed invariants provide information as to the relative orientation of the
gravitational and electromagnetic principal null directions. Consideration of
the perfect fluid case leads to some results about the behaviour of the
Bel-Robinson tensor regarded as a quartic form on unit timelike vectors.Comment: 31 pages, AMS-LaTe
Absolute measurement of the tissue origins of cell-free DNA in the healthy state and following paracetamol overdose
Random tree growth by vertex splitting
We study a model of growing planar tree graphs where in each time step we
separate the tree into two components by splitting a vertex and then connect
the two pieces by inserting a new link between the daughter vertices. This
model generalises the preferential attachment model and Ford's -model
for phylogenetic trees. We develop a mean field theory for the vertex degree
distribution, prove that the mean field theory is exact in some special cases
and check that it agrees with numerical simulations in general. We calculate
various correlation functions and show that the intrinsic Hausdorff dimension
can vary from one to infinity, depending on the parameters of the model.Comment: 47 page
Computational comparison of human genomic sequence assemblies for a region of chromosome 4
Much of the available human genomic sequence data exist in a fragmentary draft state following the completion of the initial high-volume sequencing performed by the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium (IHGSC) and Celera Genomics (CG). We compared six draft genome assemblies over a region of chromosome 4p (D4S394–D4S403), two consecutive releases by the IHGSC at University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), two consecutive releases from the National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), the public release from CG, and a hybrid assembly we have produced using IHGSC and CG sequence data. This region presents particular problems for genomic sequence assembly algorithms as it contains a large tandem repeat and is sparsely covered by draft sequences. The six assemblies differed both in terms of their relative coverage of sequence data from the region and in their estimated rates of misassembly. The CG assembly method attained the lowest level of misassembly, whereas NCBI and UCSC assemblies had the highest levels of coverage. All assemblies examined included <60% of the publicly available sequence from the region. At least 6% of the sequence data within the CG assembly for the D4S394–D4S403 region was not present in publicly available sequence data. We also show that even in a problematic region, existing software tools can be used with high-quality mapping data to produce genomic sequence contigs with a low rate of rearrangements. [All sequence accessions for the genomic sequence assemblies analyzed and the data sets used to assess coverage and rates of misassembly are available from http://www.ed.ac.uk/∼csemple.
Quadrupole and Hexadecapole Correlations in Rotating Nuclei Studied within the Single-j Shell Model
The influence of quadrupole and hexadecapole residual interactions on
rotational bands is investigated in a single-j shell model. An exact
shell-model diagonalization of quadrupole-plus-hexadecapole interaction can
sometimes produce a staggering of energy levels in the yrast bands.Comment: 15 pages, 9 Postscript figures, REVTEX, to be published in PR
- …