Secondary analysis of an RCT on Emergency Department-Initiated Tobacco Control: Repeatedly assessed point-prevalence abstinence up to 12 months and extension of results through a 10-year follow-up.

INTRODUCTION:Emergency departments (EDs) are opportune places for tobacco control interventions. The 'Tobacco Control in an Urban Emergency Department' (TED) study, ISRCTN41527831, originally evaluated the effect of motivational interviewing on-site plus up to four booster telephone calls on 12-month abstinence. This study's aim was to evaluate the effect of the intervention on 7-day point-prevalence abstinence at 10 years follow-up (primary outcome) as well as on repeated point-prevalence abstinence at 1, 3, 6, 12 months and at 10 years (continual smoking abstinence, secondary outcome). METHODS:At the 10 years follow-up and after informed consent, study participants responded to a mailed questionnaire. The primary outcome was analyzed in observed-only and in all-cases analyses. The secondary outcomes were analyzed using a multiple adjusted GLMM for binary outcomes. RESULTS:Out of 1012 TED-study participants, 986 (97.4%) were alive and 231 (23.4% of 986) responded to the follow-up at 10 years. For observed-only and all-cases analyses, the effect of the baseline intervention on 7-day point-prevalence abstinence at the 10 years follow-up was statistically non-significant. However, when taking into account all repeated measures, the intervention significantly influenced continual abstinence with odds ratio 1.32 (95% CI: 1.01-1.73; p=0.042). Baseline motivation, perceived self-efficacy to stop smoking, and nicotine dependency were independently associated with long-term continual smoking abstinence (all p<0.05). CONCLUSIONS:A conventional analysis failed to confirm a significant effect of the ED-initiated tobacco control intervention on the point-prevalence abstinence at 10 years. Results from a more integrative analysis nonetheless indicated an enduring intervention effect on continual abstinence among smokers first encountered in the emergency department setting 10 years earlier

Object Oriented and Rule-based Design of Visual Languages using Tiger

In this paper we present the state-of-the-art of the TIGER environment for the generation of visual editor plug-ins in Eclipse, with the focus on its Designer component, a visual environment for object oriented and rule-based design of visual languages. Based on an alphabet for finite automata we show how a visual language can be designed by defining the abstract and concrete syntax of the visual language and syntax directed editing operations in the generated editor plug-in. For the graphical layout we use the Graphical Editing Framework (GEF) of ECLIPSE which offers an efficient and standardized way for graphical layouting

Giant magnetoresistance and extraordinary magnetoresistance in inhomogeneous semiconducting DyNiBi

The semiconducting half-Heulser compound DyNiBi shows a negative giant magnetoresistance (GMR) below 200 K. Except for a weak deviation, this magnetoresistance scales roughly with the square of the magnetization in the paramagnetic state, and is related to the metal-insulator transition. At low temperature, a positive magnetoresistance is found, which can be suppressed by high fields. The magnitude of the positive magnetoresistance changes slightly with the amount of impurity phase.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figure

Eine Studie der Fachhochschule Bern untersucht «Männer in der Langzeitpflege»

Warum gibt es nicht mehr Männer in der Langzeitpflege? Von wem möchten die Bewohnerinnen und Bewohner denn gepflegt werden? Diesen Fragen geht eine Studie der Fachhochschule Bern nach. Gute Richtlinien seien gefragt – und viele Männer, sagt der Studienleiter Jonathan Bennett

HOW TO ANALYZE PARTICIPATION IN A (C)MOOC?

Abstract The paper takes a deeper look at participation rates in cMOOCs. To get a better insight into the behavior of learners in MOOCs, studiumdigitale has developed a tool which helps to analyze the contribution of participants in the so called cMOOCs. These are MOOCs which are fostering the active participation of learners in various tools and which are based on the concept of connectivis

Case Report Intravenous Lormetazepam during Sedation Weaning in a 26-Year-Old Critically Ill Woman

Recent evidence revealed that sedation is related to adverse outcomes including a higher mortality. Despite this fact, patients sometimes require deep sedation for a limited period of time to control, for example, intracranial hypertension. In particular in these cases, weaning from sedation is often challenging due to emerging agitation, stress, and delirium. The submitted research letter reports a rare case of severe and persisting agitation that was unresponsive to all available treatments. Ultimately, lormetazepam which has recently become available for intravenous use in Germany resolved the problem by stress-reduction and anxiolysis without leading to measurable sedation