Patient-reported outcome measures for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: the exclusion of people with low literacy skills and learning disabilities

<p>Background: Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are intended to reflect outcomes relevant to patients. They are increasingly used for healthcare quality improvement. To produce valid measures, patients should be involved in the development process but it is unclear whether this usually includes people with low literacy skills or learning disabilities. This potential exclusion raises concerns about whether these groups will be able to use these measures and participate in quality improvement practices.</p> <p>Methods: Taking PROMs for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) as an exemplar condition, our review determined the inclusion of people with low literacy skills and learning disabilities in research developing, validating, and using 12 PROMs for COPD patients. The studies included in our review were based on those identified in two existing systematic reviews and our update of this search. Results People with low literacy skills and/or learning disabilities were excluded from the development of PROMs in two ways: explicitly through the participant eligibility criteria and, more commonly, implicitly through recruitment or administration methods that would require high-level reading and cognitive abilities. None of the studies mentioned efforts to include people with low literacy skills or learning disabilities.</p> <p>Conclusion: Our findings suggest that people with low literacy skills or learning disabilities are left out of the development of PROMs. Given that implicit exclusion was most common, researchers and those who administer PROMs may not even be aware of this problem. Without effort to improve inclusion, unequal quality improvement practices may become embedded in the health system.</p&gt

Studies in Tautomeric Equilibrium Schemes: 3-Amino-5-sulpho- & 5-Amino-3-sulphosalicylic Acids

752-75

Studies in Cu(II) Complexes of 8-Amino-1-naphthol-5,7-,3,6- & 3,5-disulphonic Acids & 8-Amino-1-naphthol-5-sulphonic Acid

627-62

Spectrophotometric Study of the Complexes of Fe(III) with Salicylhydroxamic Acid & Its Substituted Derivatives

753-75

A Novel Loss Tolerant Data Transmission Schemes for Airborne Telemetry System of a Long Range Aerospace Vehicle

The on-board telemetry system of an aerospace vehicle sends the vehicle performance parameters to the ground receiving station at all instances of its trajectory. During the course of its trajectory, the communication channel of a long range vehicle, experiences various phenomena such as plume attenuation, stage separation, manoeuvring of a vehicle and RF blackout, causing loss of valuable telemetry data. The loss of communication link is inevitable due to these harsh conditions even when using the space diversity of ground receiving systems. Conventional telemetry systems do not provide redundant data for long range aerospace vehicles. This research work proposes an innovative delay data transmission, frame switchover and multiple frames data transmission schemes to improve the availability of telemetry data at ground receiving stations. The proposed innovative schemes are modelled using VHDL and extensive simulations have been performed to validate the results. The functionally simulated net list has been synthesised with 130 nm ACTEL flash based FPGA and verified on telemetry hardware

Online Trajectory Reshaping for a Launch Vehicle to Minimize the Final Error Caused by Navigation and Guidance

Autonomous launch vehicles, once lifted off from the launch pad, equipped with an onboard intelligence which aids in achieving the mission objectives with high accuracy. The accuracy of the mission depends basically on navigation and guidance errors caused at burnout condition, after which the vehicle follows an elliptical path upto impact. The paper describes how to handle the final impact and injection error caused by these navigation and guidance errors. In the current work the initial burnout conditions are tuned and corrected such that the terminal impact point is achieved within the desired tolerance bounds. A two point boundary value problem is solved using the gradient method, for determining the impact errors. The algorithm is validated by simulation studies for various burnout conditions.Defence Science Journal, 2013, 63(3), pp.254-261, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.63.241

Studies on CGMS Based Short Duration Hybrids of Pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.] in Terms of Combining Ability

To estimate combining ability, twenty seven hybrids were made from 12 parents in a line × tester mating design during Kharif 2015-16 and tested in a Randomized block design with three replications during Kharif 2016-17. Among these parents ICPL 161 and ICPL 149 had desirable GCA effect for grain yield per plant and its contributing characters. Ten crosses exhibited significant positive SCA effect for grain yield. Out of them most promising crosses in terms of grain yield were ICPA 2039 × ICPL 161, ICPA 2156 × ICPL 86022 and ICPA 2039 × ICPL 90048. On the basis of per se performance and combining ability, the parents ICPA 2039, ICPL 88039, ICPL 161 and ICPL 149 can be used for future hybridization programmes

Study of CGMS based Short Duration Hybrids of Pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.] In Terms of Heterosis

Twenty seven pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.] hybrids were developed by hand pollination using three CMS lines (A lines) and nine testers (R lines). These hybrids along with their parents and two standard checks (VL Arhar1 and ICPL 161) were evaluated in a randomized block design with three replications during kharif 2016-17 for the heterosis studies. Results indicated that the crosses ICPA 2039 x ICPL161 and ICPA 2039 x ICPL 90048 had manifested significant heterobeltiosis and standard heterosis over two checks viz., VL Arhar1 and ICPL 161 for grain yield per plant and yield contributing characters. The stability of these promising crosses can be studied across the different environments and feasibility for their commercial utilisation could be tested in further generations

Performance of Parents and Hybrids of Pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.) in terms of Yield and Yield Contributing Characters

Twelve parents were used in the crossing programme to produce 27 hybrids in L×T fashion during kharif 2015-16. In the field conditions, parents and hybrids were planted in Randomized Block Design of three replications and evaluated for the performance in terms of yield and yield contributing characters during kharif 2016-17. Observations were recorded on ten characters viz., plant height, days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, number of primary branches per plant, number of secondary branches per plant, number of pods per plant, number of seeds per pod, 100 seed weight, grain yield per plant and harvest index. It was observed that increase in number of pods per plant directly contributed to increased yield. Among the twenty seven hybrids, ICPA 2039 × ICPL 161, ICPA 2039 × ICPL 90048 and ICPA 2039 × ICPL149 had high grain yield