Quality Improvement of X-Ray Imaging for Unspecified Chronic Knee pain and Suspected knee osteoarthritis in the Primary Care Setting

Although a comprehensive history and physical exam are the mainstays of initial evaluation, plain X-rays are clinically indicated for chronic knee pain of greater than 6 weeks duration and acute traumatic pain in patients who meet specific evidence-based criteria, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP). However, there remains significant variation in what radiographic protocols are used in clinical practice, specifically in terms of what radiographic views are ordered and whether the imaging is performed with the patient weight-bearing (WB) or non-weight-bearing (NWB). In fact, several studies have shown that non-weight-bearing knee radiographs are frequently ordered by general practitioners for chronic knee pain and suspected osteoarthritis despite evidence that WB images are more sensitive and accurate in the assessment of joint space narrowing. Therefore, evaluation of chronic knee pain with the use of NWB radiographs has the potential to delay diagnosis and management of early osteoarthritis (OA), lead to less accurate grading of the severity of OA and delay in specialist referral, and contribute to an increase in repeat imaging during specialist consultation.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fmclerk/2088/thumbnail.jp

Ambient connections realising conformal Tractor holonomy

For a conformal manifold we introduce the notion of an ambient connection, an affine connection on an ambient manifold of the conformal manifold, possibly with torsion, and with conditions relating it to the conformal structure. The purpose of this construction is to realise the normal conformal tractor holonomy as affine holonomy of such a connection. We give an example of an ambient connection for which this is the case, and which is torsion free if we start the construction with a C-space, and in addition Ricci-flat if we start with an Einstein manifold. Thus for a $C$-space this example leads to an ambient metric in the weaker sense of \v{C}ap and Gover, and for an Einstein space to a Ricci-flat ambient metric in the sense of Fefferman and Graham.Comment: 17 page

Treatment and removal strategies for estrogens from wastewater

Natural and synthetic steroidal estrogens (estrone, 17β-estradiol and 17α-ethinylestradiol) are endocrine disrupters, that are discharged consistently from the sewage treatment works into surface waters, thereby causing endocrine disrupting effects to aquatic organisms at trace concentrations (nanogram per litre). Several years of research have been focused on their fate, behaviour and removal in the environment but primarily in the sewage treatment works which acts as a sink for these compounds. This review attempts to summarize the factors involved in the removal of these chemicals from the sewage treatment works. Biological processes, and to a limited extent physio-chemical properties, play a vital role in the endocrinal deactivation of which these compounds. The efficiency of these processes is highly dependent on operating parameters (such as sludge retention time, redox potential, etc) that govern the secondary treatment process of a functional sewage treatment works. Although advanced treatment technologies are available, cost and operational considerations do not make them a sustainable solution

The Beneficial Impact of Sorting Heavy Cattle at Re-Implant

This research examined a simple sorting strategy to reduce the prevalence of heavyweight carcass discounts. Cattle that were identified and sorted off at re-implant had a reduced prevalence of heavyweight carcasses versus unsorted cattle. Re-implant sorting was profitable at pen average in-weights of 800 pounds or less.cattle, fed cattle marketing, cattle sorting, formula marketing, Farm Management, Livestock Production/Industries, Marketing, Q11, Q16, M31,

A Correlational Analysis of Length and Nature of Relationships Between Applicant and Reference and Strength of Recommendation for CASPA Letters of Recommendation

Background: The Central Application Service for Physician Assistants (CASPA) application includes a standardized rating form in addition to the ability to submit letters of recommendation. This exploratory study examines the standardized portion of the CASPA letter of recommendation to determine whether there is a correlation between the ratings given and the relationship and length of time the writer knew the applicant. Method: Four-hundred and thirty recommendation forms were evaluated. Variables included length and nature of the relationship between the letter writer and the overall recommendation given by the writer for the applicant. Results: Almost 95% of writers highly recommended the applicant. There was a weak correlation between length of relationship and overall evaluation rating and recommendation to the program r = 0.12 and r = 0.17, respectively. A moderate correlation was found between the nature of the relationship (r = 0.34) and overall evaluation (r = 0.30). Conclusion: This study might indicate that the nature of the relationship between the writer and applicant and may provide programs with a metric to evaluate the strength of letters of recommendation

Forest Carbon Stocks in Lowland Area of Simien Mountains National Park: Implication for Climate Change Mitigation

Forests play a significant role in climate change mitigation by sequestering and storing more carbon from the atmosphere which was released by anthropogenic causes. The overall objective of this study was to estimate carbon stock potential of lowland forest of Simien Mountains National park for climate change mitigation. And it aimed to add values of the lowland forest of the park for climate change mitigation contribution in Ethiopia. The work was accomplished properly using random sampling to estimate the forest carbon in above and below ground biomass by considered each trees and shrubs which had DBH ≥5 cm. Above ground biomass was estimated by using allometric models equation of Brown (1998) while below ground biomass was determined based on the ratio of below ground biomass to above ground biomass factors of (MacDicken, 1997). Dead wood, leaf litter, herb and grass (LHG) and soil organic carbon were conducted according to sampling quadrates data and laboratory result. The results shown that, there were twenty species with a density of 2334 trees and shrubs in the study sites which had DBH ≥5 cm. The mean above ground and below ground biomass carbon stock were 270.89±154.50 and 54.18±30.81 t ha-1 respectively. The mean above ground biomass carbon per species was 20.42±17.99 ton. The mean carbon in dead wood, LHG and soil carbon were 0.7258±1.0479, 0.019±0.008and 242.51±46.42 t ha-1 respectively.Keywords: Carbon stock Climate change Mitigation Simien Mountains National Park Poisoned food techniqu

Evaluating Release Strategy for Translocated Northern Bobwhites in Cross Timbers Ecoregion of Texas: A Pilot Study

Northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) population decline is largely driven by the loss, fragmentation, and degradation of grassland habitats. Translocation is used to reintroduce or augment populations in fragmented landscapes where natural dispersal is inhibited. Northern bobwhites have been successfully translocated in the southeastern portion of their range, but outcomes of translocations in western ranges have been mixed. Our objective was to conduct a pilot study to test the feasibility of translocating northern bobwhites to a restored, but isolated, habitat in the Cross Timbers ecoregion of Texas, USA and to evaluate the influence of release strategy for improving northern bobwhite site fidelity and survival post-release. The release property was restored through brush management, native species seeding, and proper grazing management. We trapped and translocated 84 northern bobwhites from source populations in the Rolling Plains and Edwards Plateau ecoregions during March 2015. Coveys were assigned to either delayed or immediate release treatment. We radio-collared all hens (n = 40; 11 adults; 29 juveniles) and evenly divided the sample between delayed and immediate releases. Delayed release coveys were held on the release site for 4 weeks in a Surrogator® (Wildlife Management Technologies, LLC). We trapped and radio-collared resident hens (n = 15) in March and monitored all hens through breeding season (March–August; 180 days). We implemented a 2-state (alive or dead) multistate model in Program MARK to analyze survival as a function of the release treatment, resident status, and age. We found no evidence that survival differed between translocated and resident hens (β = 0.48, standard error [SE] = 0.38), release treatments (β = 0.10, SE = 0.40), or age (β = -0.16, SE = 0.54). Daily survival for all hens was 0.99 (SE = 0.009) and breeding season survival was 0.19 (SE = 0.08). Four (20%) immediate, 2 (10%) delayed release, and 0 resident hens dispersed off-property. Translocated and resident hens survived at similar rates, indicating that translocation may be a feasible management strategy for augmenting a northern bobwhite population on restored habitats in the Cross Timbers ecoregion although overall survival was low. We did not find evidence that delayed release improved daily survival post-release, but our small sample size may have prevented us from detecting a difference. However, delayed release birds were effectively sheltered from predation during peak raptor migration. Additional research is needed to fully understand population dynamics and implications of release strategy for translocated northern bobwhite

Living with Fragile X Syndrome: Occupations as an Outcome Measure in a Clinical Trial

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of semi-structured interviews as an outcome measure in a clinical trial for children with fragile X syndrome (FXS) ages 2-6. This qualitative approach was used to analyze twenty-five interviews of parents with children in a double-blind medication trial - sertraline or placebo. The aim was to assess occupational improvements in their child that may not have been detected with the use quantitative outcome measures alone. Results showed greater improvements in the sertraline group in areas of behavior, social participation, sensory-related behaviors, receptive language, education, family impact and therapeutic strategies. Our findings support the use of semi-structured interviews as an additional outcome measure in a medication trial to account for the voice and context of family experiences through an occupation centered lens.https://scholar.dominican.edu/ug-student-posters/1066/thumbnail.jp

Asymmetrical Interference Effects Between Two-Dimensional Geometric Shapes and Their Corresponding Shape Words

Nativists have postulated fundamental geometric knowledge that predates linguistic and symbolic thought. Central to these claims is the proposal for an isolated cognitive system dedicated to processing geometric information. Testing such hypotheses presents challenges due to difficulties in eliminating the combination of geometric and non-geometric information through language. We present evidence using a modified matching interference paradigm that an incongruent shape word interferes with identifying a two-dimensional geometric shape, but an incongruent two-dimensional geometric shape does not interfere with identifying a shape word. This asymmetry in interference effects between two-dimensional geometric shapes and their corresponding shape words suggests that shape words activate spatial representations of shapes but shapes do not activate linguistic representations of shape words. These results appear consistent with hypotheses concerning a cognitive system dedicated to processing geometric information isolated from linguistic processing and provide evidence consistent with hypotheses concerning knowledge of geometric properties of space that predates linguistic and symbolic thought

Understanding eye movements in face recognition with hidden Markov model

Fulltext in: http://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2013/papers/0085/paper0085.pdfIn this paper we propose a hidden Markov model (HMM)-based method to analyze eye movement data. We conducted a simple face recognition task and recorded eye movements and performance of the participants. We used a variational Bayesian framework for Gaussian mixture models to estimate the distribution of fixation locations and modelled the fixation and transition data using HMMs. We showed that using HMMs, we can describe individuals’ eye movement strategies with both fixation locations and transition probabilities. By clustering these HMMs, we found that the strategies can be categorized into two subgroups; one was more holistic and the other was more analytical. Furthermore, we found that correct and wrong recognitions were associated with distinctive eye movement strategies. The difference between these strategies lied in their transition probabilities