Physical Activity and Fall Prevention in Older Adults, an Educational Intervention

Falls in adults over 65 years of age constitute a significant health burden in our country, and this age group is growing rapidly. Falls are addressed with a multifactorial approach, addressing comorbidities, medications, and the physical environment, however, an effective point of intervention accessible by most older adults is physical activity. A brief educational presentation about the morbidity and mortality associated with falls, and the protective effects of physical activity, was provided to Meadowbrook Healthcare subacute nursing home residents in Plattsburgh, NY. Questions were encouraged and answered afterwards, and copies of the presentation were left for the residents to review in hopes of increasing motivation to participate in the Meadowbrook Healthcare rehabilitative classes and exercises.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fmclerk/1420/thumbnail.jp

The desire to blame Greece for the eurocrisis ensures that the Greek people pay the price, while the elites responsible get away free

In the first of two articles on the Greek crisis as a ‘trope’, Daniel M. Knight writes that Greece now finds itself subject to a narrative of blame from the countries of the European north, with the Greek people portrayed as the cause of the eurozone crisis, rather than as victims. He argues that this narrative, alongside new waves of austerity, is helping to create a tangible sense of destitution and persecution among the Greek people

A fast algorithm for matrix balancing

As long as a square nonnegative matrix A contains sufficient nonzero elements, then the matrix can be balanced, that is we can find a diagonal scaling of A that is doubly stochastic. A number of algorithms have been proposed to achieve the balancing, the most well known of these being Sinkhorn-Knopp. In this paper we derive new algorithms based on inner-outer iteration schemes. We show that Sinkhorn-Knopp belongs to this family, but other members can converge much more quickly. In particular, we show that while stationary iterative methods offer little or no improvement in many cases, a scheme using a preconditioned conjugate gradient method as the inner iteration can give quadratic convergence at low cost

Role of the microbiome, probiotics, and 'dysbiosis therapy' in critical illness.

Purpose of reviewLoss of 'health-promoting' microbes and overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria (dysbiosis) in ICU is believed to contribute to nosocomial infections, sepsis, and organ failure (multiple organ dysfunction syndrome). This review discusses new understanding of ICU dysbiosis, new data for probiotics and fecal transplantation in ICU, and new data characterizing the ICU microbiome.Recent findingsICU dysbiosis results from many factors, including ubiquitous antibiotic use and overuse. Despite advances in antibiotic therapy, infections and mortality from often multidrug-resistant organisms (i.e., Clostridium difficile) are increasing. This raises the question of whether restoration of a healthy microbiome via probiotics or other 'dysbiosis therapies' would be an optimal alternative, or parallel treatment option, to antibiotics. Recent clinical data demonstrate probiotics can reduce ICU infections and probiotics or fecal microbial transplant (FMT) can treat Clostridium difficile. This contributes to recommendations that probiotics should be considered to prevent infection in ICU. Unfortunately, significant clinical variability limits the strength of current recommendations and further large clinical trials of probiotics and FMT are needed. Before larger trials of 'dysbiosis therapy' can be thoughtfully undertaken, further characterization of ICU dysbiosis is needed. To addressing this, we conducted an initial analysis demonstrating a rapid and marked change from a 'healthy' microbiome to an often pathogen-dominant microbiota (dysbiosis) in a broad ICU population.SummaryA growing body of evidence suggests critical illness and ubiquitous antibiotic use leads to ICU dysbiosis that is associated with increased ICU infection, sepsis, and multiple organ dysfunction syndrome. Probiotics and FMT show promise as ICU therapies for infection. We hope future-targeted therapies using microbiome signatures can be developed to correct 'illness-promoting' dysbiosis to restore a healthy microbiome post-ICU to improve patient outcomes

Unsupervised Neural Hidden Markov Models

In this work, we present the first results for neuralizing an Unsupervised Hidden Markov Model. We evaluate our approach on tag in- duction. Our approach outperforms existing generative models and is competitive with the state-of-the-art though with a simpler model easily extended to include additional context.Comment: accepted at EMNLP 2016, Workshop on Structured Prediction for NLP. Oral presentatio

Temporal vertigo and time vortices on Greece’s Central Plain

The consequences of prolonged fiscal austerity have left people in Trikala, central Greece, with feelings of intense temporal vertigo: confusion and anxiety about where and when they belong in overarching timelines of pasts and futures. Some people report feeling ‘thrown back in time’ to past eras of poverty and suffering, while others discuss their experiences of the current crisis situation as reliving multiple moments of the past assembled in the present. This article analyses how locals understand their complex experiences of time and temporality, and promotes the accommodation of messy narratives of time that can otherwise leave the researcher feeling sea-sick.PostprintPeer reviewe

Energy talk, temporality, and belonging in austerity Greece

Dramatic changes in the energy landscape provide a lens through which to understand local perceptions of temporality, modernity, and belonging in austerity Greece. Re-launched in 2011, the European Union supported solar energy initiative encourages installation of futuristic, high-tech photovoltaic panels on fertile agricultural land. However, winter 2012-13 and 2013-14 witnessed a return en-masse to open-fires and wood-burning stoves as a means for people to heat their homes, something locals associate with material poverty, pre-modernity, and pre-Europeanization. Drawing on ethnographic research in the town of Trikala, central Greece, this article demonstrates how “energy talk” provides a prism through which locals discuss the past, the future, increasing poverty and reassess their belonging in a modern Europe.PostprintPeer reviewe

Book review: Macedonia: the political, social, economic and cultural foundations of a Balkan state

Macedonia: The Political, Social, Economic and Cultural Foundations of a Balkan State is a collection of twelve essays taking an in-depth look at the multi-layered relationships between different groups in Macedonia from an anthropological perspective. Daniel M. Knight finds the book to offer revealing insights into the rich tapestry of life in modern-day Macedonia, especially in the areas of religion and ethnicity