Prevalence of traumatic brain injury amongst children admitted to hospital in one health district : a population-based study

There is a dearth of information regarding the prevalence of brain injury, serious enough to require hospital admission, amongst children in the United Kingdom. In North Staffordshire a register of all children admitted with traumatic brain injury (TBI) has been maintained since 1992 presenting an opportunity to investigate the incidence of TBI within the region in terms of age, cause of injury, injury severity and social deprivation. The register contains details of 1553 children with TBI, two thirds of whom are male. This population-based study shows that TBI is most prevalent amongst children from families living in more deprived areas, however, social deprivation was not related to the cause of injury. Each year, 280 per 100,000 children are admitted for ≥24 hours with a TBI, of these 232 will have a mild brain injury, 25 moderate, 17 severe, and 2 will die. The incidence of moderate and severe injuries is higher than previous estimates. Children under 2 years old account for 18.5% of all TBIs, usually due to falls, being dropped or non-accidental injuries. Falls account for 60% of TBIs in the under 5s. In the 10-15 age group road traffic accidents were the most common cause (185, 36.7%). These findings will help to plan health services and target accident prevention initiatives more accurately

Chlamydia trachomatis and the risk of spontaneous preterm birth, babies who are born small for gestational age, and stillbirth: A population-based cohort study

Background: Chlamydia trachomatis is one of the most commonly diagnosed sexually transmitted infections worldwide, but reports in the medical literature of an association between genital chlamydia infection and adverse obstetric outcomes are inconsistent. Methods: The Western Australia Data Linkage Branch created a cohort of women of reproductive age by linking records of birth registrations with the electoral roll for women in Western Australia who were born from 1974 to 1995. The cohort was then linked to both chlamydia testing records and the state perinatal registry for data on preterm births and other adverse obstetric outcomes. We determined associations between chlamydia testing, test positivity, and adverse obstetric outcomes using multivariate logistic regression analyses. Findings: From 2001 to 2012, 101558 women aged 15 to 38 years had a singleton birth. Of these women, 3921 (3·9%) had a spontaneous preterm birth, 9762 (9·6% of 101371 women with available data) had a baby who was small for gestational age, and 682 (0·7%) had a stillbirth. During their pregnancy, 21267 (20·9%) of these women had at least one chlamydia test record, and 1365 (6·4%) of those tested were positive. Before pregnancy, 19157 (18·9%) of these women were tested for chlamydia, of whom 1595 (8·3%) tested positive for chlamydia. Among all women with a test record, after adjusting for age, ethnicity, maternal smoking, and history of other infections, we found no significant association between a positive test for chlamydia and spontaneous preterm birth (adjusted odds ratio 1·08 [95% CI 0·91–1·28]; p=0·37), a baby who was small for gestational age (0·95 [0·85–1·07]; p=0·39), or stillbirth (0·93 [0·61–1·42]; p=0·74). Interpretation: A genital chlamydia infection that is diagnosed and, presumably, treated either during or before pregnancy does not substantially increase a woman’s risk of having a spontaneous preterm birth, having a baby who is small for gestational age, or having a stillbirth. Funding: Australian National Health and Medical Research Counci

A qualitative study of CVD management and dietary changes: problems of ‘too much’ and ‘contradictory’ information

This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated

Seeing with sound? Exploring different characteristics of a visual-to-auditory sensory substitution device

Sensory substitution devices convert live visual images into auditory signals, for example with a web camera (to record the images), a computer (to perform the conversion) and headphones (to listen to the sounds). In a series of three experiments, the performance of one such device (‘The vOICe’) was assessed under various conditions on blindfolded sighted participants. The main task that we used involved identifying and locating objects placed on a table by holding a webcam (like a flashlight) or wearing it on the head (like a miner’s light). Identifying objects on a table was easier with a hand-held device, but locating the objects was easier with a head-mounted device. Brightness converted into loudness was less effective than the reverse contrast (dark being loud), suggesting that performance under these conditions (natural indoor lighting, novice users) is related more to the properties of the auditory signal (ie the amount of noise in it) than the cross-modal association between loudness and brightness. Individual differences in musical memory (detecting pitch changes in two sequences of notes) was related to the time taken to identify or recognise objects, but individual differences in self-reported vividness of visual imagery did not reliably predict performance across the experiments. In general, the results suggest that the auditory characteristics of the device may be more important for initial learning than visual associations

Dynamic Structure Of N-Hexadecane Solubilized In A Nonionic Surfactant Bilayer Measured By Deuteron Magnetic Resonance

A 2H NMR study was made of the order parameters of n-hexadecane molecules solubilized up to 55% (w/w) in a lyotropic lamellar liquid crystal of tetra ethylene glycol n-dodecyl ether and water for a range of compositions of varying water and hydrocarbon content. The NMR data supported a model with only a small amount of penetration of the hydrocarbon between the amphiphilic molecules and a rapid exchange on the 2H NMR time scale between the penetrated segments and the nonpenetrating molecules which latter are essentially isotropic. © 1985, American Chemical Society. All rights reserved

Order Parameters Of Hydrocarbons Solubilized In A Lamellar Liquid Crystal

A preliminary study of the 2H NMR spectrum of n-hexadecane-d34 solubilized in the lamellar phase of tetra ethylene glycol n-dodecyl ether has been made as a function of solubilization content. Complex spectra comprising eight overlapping powder spectra were observed, which showed a complex oil concentration dependence. These spectra were unusually rich in detail and indicate a considerably higher degree of complexity than has earlier been reported for solubilized hydrocarbons. The derived order profile was found to be different from that normally found for amphiphiles in lamellar environments. A tentative model involving some penetration of solubilize molecules between the host amphiphiles at low concentration while nonpenetrating oil molecules exist between the host layers at high oil contents is proposed. © 1984 American Chemical Society

An Estimate of \Lambda in Resummed Quantum Gravity in the Context of Asymptotic Safety

We show that, by using recently developed exact resummation techniques based on the extension of the methods of Yennie, Frautschi and Suura to Feynman's formulation of Einstein's theory, we get quantum field theoretic descriptions for the UV fixed-point behaviors of the dimensionless gravitational and cosmological constants postulated by Weinberg. Connecting our work to the attendant phenomenological asymptotic safety analysis of Planck scale cosmology by Bonanno and Reuter, we estimate the value of the cosmological constant \Lambda. We find the encouraging estimate \rho_\Lambda\equiv \frac{\Lambda}{8\pi G_N} \simeq (2.4\times 10^{-3}eV)^4. While this numerical value is close to recent experimental observations, we caution the reader that the estimate involves a number of model parameters that still possess significant levels of uncertainty, such as the value of the transition time between the Planck scale cosmology era and the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker radiation dominated era, where our current understanding allows for at least two orders of magnitude in its uncertainty and this would change our estimate of \rho_\Lambda by at least four orders of magnitude. We discuss such theoretical uncertainties as well. We show why GUT and EW scale vacuum energies from spontaneous symmetry breaking are suppressed in our approach to the estimation of \rho_\Lambda. As a bonus, we show how our estimate constrains susy GUTS.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure; more systematic presentation; extended text, two new figures for self-containment - now 37 pages; corrected grammar, improved references to published version. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:hep-ph/060719