Relearning the lesson – amelanotic malignant melanoma: a case report

Although not as common as the other melanomas, amelanotic melanoma often evades diagnosis by masquerading as other pathology. A high index of suspicion is therefore required for early and appropriate intervention. We present a patient who was diagnosed and managed as having paronychia of the middle finger while in actual fact he had a subungual amelanotic melanoma. By the time of his referral to the orthopaedic team it had progressed to an advanced stage. Our case underlies the importance of early recognition and referral of this rare but malignant lesion by primary care physicians

When Covid-19 first struck: analysis of the influence of structural characteristics of countries - technocracy is strengthened by open democracy

Context: The Covid-19 pandemic hit the developed world differentially due to accidental factors, and countries had to respond rapidly within existing resources, structures, and processes to manage totally new health challenges. This study aimed to identify which pre-existing structural factors facilitated better outcomes despite different starting points, as understanding of the relative impact of structural aspects should facilitate achieving optimal forward progress. Methods: Desk study, based on selecting and collecting a range of measures for 48 representative characteristics of 42 countries’ demography, society, health system, and policy-making profiles, matched to three pandemic time points. Different analytic approaches were employed including correlation, multiple regression, and cluster analysis in order to seek triangulation. Findings: Population structure (except country size), and volume and nature of health resources, had only minor links to Covid impact. Depth of social inequality, poverty, population age structure, and strength of preventive health measures unexpectedly had no moderating effect. Strongest measured influences were population current enrolment in tertiary education, and country leaders’ strength of seeking scientific evidence. The representativeness, and by interpretation the empathy, of government leadership also had positive effects. Conclusion: Strength of therapeutic health system, and indeed of preventive health services, surprisingly had little correlation with impact of the pandemic in the first nine months measured in death- or case-rates. However, specific political system features, including proportional representation electoral systems, and absence of a strong single party majority, were consistent features of the most successful national responses, as was being of a small or moderate population size, and with tertiary education facilitated. It can be interpreted that the way a country was lead, and whether leadership sought evidence and shared the reasoning behind resultant policies, had notable effects. This has significant implications within health system development and in promoting the population’s health

Using AI-Enhanced Social Robots to Improve Children’s Healthcare Experiences

This paper describes a new research project that aims to develop an autonomous and responsive social robot designed to help children cope with painful procedures in hospital emergency departments. While this is an application domain where psychological interventions have been previously demonstrated to be effective at reducing pain and distress using a variety of devices and techniques, in recent years, social robots have been trialled in this area with promising initial results. However, until now, the social robots that have been tested have generally been teleoperated, which has limited their flexibility and robustness, as well as the potential to offer personalized, adaptive procedural support. Using co-design techniques, this project plans to define and validate the necessary robot behaviour together with participant groups that include children, parents and caregivers, and healthcare professionals. Identified behaviours will be deployed on a robot platform, incorporating AI reasoning techniques that will enable the robot to adapt autonomously to the child’s behaviour. The final robot system will be evaluated through a two-site clinical trial. Throughout the project, we will also monitor and analyse the ethical and social implications of robotics and AI in paediatric healthcare

Genetic diversity of Brazilian isolates of feline immunodeficiency virus

We isolated Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) from three adult domestic cats, originating from two open shelters in Brazil. Viruses were isolated from PBMC following co-cultivation with the feline T-lymphoblastoid cell line MYA-1. All amplified env gene products were cloned directly into pGL8MYA. The nucleic acid sequences of seven clones were determined and then compared with those of previously described isolates. The sequences of all of the Brazilian virus clones were distinct and phylogenetic analysis revealed that all belong to subtype B. Three variants isolated from one cat and two variants were isolated from each of the two other cats, indicating that intrahost diversity has the potential to pose problems for the treatment and diagnosis of FIV infection

Proceedings of the Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference (SPARC) 2011

These proceedings bring together a selection of papers from the 2011 Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference(SPARC). It includes papers from PhD students in the arts and social sciences, business, computing, science and engineering, education, environment, built environment and health sciences. Contributions from Salford researchers are published here alongside papers from students at the Universities of Anglia Ruskin, Birmingham City, Chester,De Montfort, Exeter, Leeds, Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores and Manchester

A survey of statistics in three UK general practice journal

Background Many medical specialities have reviewed the statistical content of their journals. To our knowledge this has not been done in general practice. Given the main role of a general practitioner as a diagnostician we thought it would be of interest to see whether the statistical methods reported reflect the diagnostic process. Methods Hand search of three UK journals of general practice namely the British Medical Journal (general practice section), British Journal of General Practice and Family Practice over a one-year period (1 January to 31 December 2000). Results A wide variety of statistical techniques were used. The most common methods included t-tests and Chi-squared tests. There were few articles reporting likelihood ratios and other useful diagnostic methods. There was evidence that the journals with the more thorough statistical review process reported a more complex and wider variety of statistical techniques. Conclusions The BMJ had a wider range and greater diversity of statistical methods than the other two journals. However, in all three journals there was a dearth of papers reflecting the diagnostic process. Across all three journals there were relatively few papers describing randomised controlled trials thus recognising the difficulty of implementing this design in general practice

Reflected near-field blast pressure measurements using high speed video

Background: The design and analysis of protective systems requires a detailed understanding of, and the ability to accurately predict, the distribution of pressure loads acting on an obstacle following an explosive detonation. In particular, there is a pressing need for accurate characterisation of blast loads in the region very close to a detonation, where even small improvised devices can produce serious structural or material damage. Objective: Accurate experimental measurement of these near-field blast events, using intrusive methods, is demanding owing to the high magnitudes (> 100 MPa) and short durations (< 1 ms) of loading. The objective of this article is to develop a non-intrusive method for measuring reflected blast pressure distributions using image analysis. Methods: This article presents results from high speed video analysis of near-field spherical PE4 explosive blasts. The Canny edge detection algorithm is used to track the outer surface of the explosive fireball, with the results used to derive a velocity-radius relationship. Reflected pressure distributions are calculated using this velocity-radius relationship in conjunction with the Rankine-Hugoniot jump conditions. Results: The indirectly measured pressure distributions from high speed video are compared with directly measured pressure distributions and are shown to be in good qualitative agreement with respect to distribution of reflected pressures, and in good quantitative agreement with peak reflected pressures (within 10% of the maximum recorded value). Conclusions: The results indicate that it is possible to accurately measure blast loads in the order of 100s MPa using techniques which do not require sensitive recording equipment to be located close to the source of the explosion

CHIMPS: Physical properties of molecular clumps across the inner Galaxy

The latest generation of high-angular-resolution unbiased Galactic plane surveys in molecular-gas tracers are enabling the interiors of molecular clouds to be studied across a range of environments. The CO Heterodyne Inner MilkyWay Plane Survey (CHIMPS) simultaneously mapped a sector of the inner Galactic plane, within 27:8 . 46:2 and jbj 0: 5, in 13CO (3-2) and C18O (3-2) at an angular resolution of 15 arcsec. The combination of the CHIMPS data with 12CO (3-2) data from the CO High Resolution Survey (COHRS) has enabled us to perform a voxel-by-voxel local-thermodynamic-equilibrium (LTE) analysis, determining the excitation temperature, optical depth, and column density of 13CO at each; b; v position. Distances to discrete sources identified by FELLWALKER in the 13CO (3-2) emission maps were determined, allowing the calculation of numerous physical properties of the sources, and we present the first source catalogues in this paper.We find that, in terms of size and density, the CHIMPS sources represent an intermediate population between large-scale molecular clouds identified by CO and dense clumps seen in thermal dust continuum emission, and therefore represent the bulk transition from the diffuse to the dense phase of molecular gas.We do not find any significant systematic variations in the masses, column densities, virial parameters, mean excitation temperature, or the turbulent pressure over the range of Galactocentric distance probed, but we do find a shallow increase in the mean volume density with increasing Galactocentric distance. We find that inter-arm clumps have significantly narrower linewidths, and lower virial parameters and excitation temperatures than clumps located in spiral arms. When considering the most reliable distance-limited subsamples, the largest variations occur on the clump-to-clump scale, echoing similar recent studies that suggest that the star-forming process is largely insensitive to the Galactic-scale environment, at least within the inner disc

Generalised joint regression for count data: a penalty extension for competitive settings

We propose a versatile joint regression framework for count responses. The method is implemented in the R add-on package GJRM and allows for modelling linear and non-linear dependence through the use of several copulae. Moreover, the parameters of the marginal distributions of the count responses and of the copula can be specified as flexible functions of covariates. Motivated by competitive settings, we also discuss an extension which forces the regression coefficients of the marginal (linear) predictors to be equal via a suitable penalisation. Model fitting is based on a trust region algorithm which estimates simultaneously all the parameters of the joint models. We investigate the proposal’s empirical performance in two simulation studies, the first one designed for arbitrary count data, the other one reflecting competitive settings. Finally, the method is applied to football data, showing its benefits compared to the standard approach with regard to predictive performance

Seek Help from Teachers or Fight Back? Student Perceptions of Teachers’ Actions during Conflicts and Responses to Peer Victimization

Previous research has shown that teachers’ actions when addressing conflict on school grounds can shape adolescent perceptions regarding how well the school manages victimization. Our objective in this study was to determine how these perceptions influenced the likelihood that adolescent students would react to victimization scenarios by either seeking help from school authority or physically fighting back. Vignettes describing two events of victimization were administered to 148 ethnic minority adolescents (Latino, African American, and Asian backgrounds; 49% female) attending an urban high school with high rates of conflict. Positive perceptions of teachers’ actions during conflicts—assessed via a questionnaire tapping how teachers manage student conflicts both generally and in a specific instance of strife—predicted a greater willingness to seek help from school authority, which in turn negatively predicted self-reported aggressive responses to the victimization scenarios. Path analysis established the viability of this indirect effect model, even when we controlled for sex, beliefs about the acceptability of aggression, and previous levels of reactive aggression. Adolescents’ perceptions of teachers’ actions during conflicts are discussed in relation to social information processing models, improving student–teacher relations, and decreasing aggression at schools