Placenta praevia: Preach and perception

Placenta praevia is a known obstetric condition that causes complications to mother and fetus. This study was done to evaluate the knowledge of placenta praevia amongst the obstetric patients. A cross sectional study was carried out in Hospital Ipoh, Perak among 323 antenatal and postnatal patients. Socio-demographic parameters (ie age, race, parity, occupation, educational level) and history of placenta praevia were studied in relation to level of knowledge and attitude towards placenta praevia. Twenty (6.2%) from 323 women had current or past history of placenta praevia. Three had history of placenta praevia while 17 had current placenta praevia with prevalence of 5.3%. The mean score of knowledge achieved by patients was 11.8 which indicated overall poor knowledge. Occupation, level of education and history of placenta praevia were found to have a relationship with level of knowledge regarding placenta praevia in all obstetric patients. There was a significant relationship between attitude of patients with current and history of placenta praevia to level of knowledge regarding placenta praevia. (p=0.037, <0.05). In conclusion, the knowledge and attitude towards placenta praevia among obstetric patients in Hospital Ipoh was better in those who had higher education status, white-collar occupation and currently pregnant with placenta praevi

Rheology And Dynamics Of Ph–Responsive Microgel Systems

The colloidal phenomenon of soft particles is an important field of research due to the growing interest in a variety of important systems found in biological science, such as vesicles, bi-layers, membranes, and living cells. Synthetic mono-dispersed colloida l suspensions in the nano to micron size range are increasingly becoming important model systems for the study of a variety of phenomena observed in soft condensed matter physics, such as glass transitions and crystal nucleation. In order to understand the behavior of these complex systems, we need to elucidate the relationship between the microscopic and macroscopic properties of these systems. In this presentation, we report on a study of a microgel system that offers us a platform to understand these relationships, and the physical forces that control their behavior. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Which Surrogate Works for Empirical Performance Modelling? A Case Study with Differential Evolution

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from IEEE via the DOI in this record.It is not uncommon that meta-heuristic algorithms contain some intrinsic parameters, the optimal configuration of which is crucial for achieving their peak performance. However, evaluating the effectiveness of a configuration is expensive, as it involves many costly runs of the target algorithm. Perhaps surprisingly, it is possible to build a cheap-to-evaluate surrogate that models the algorithm's empirical performance as a function of its parameters. Such surrogates constitute an important building block for understanding algorithm performance, algorithm portfolio/selection, and the automatic algorithm configuration. In principle, many off-the-shelf machine learning techniques can be used to build surrogates. In this paper, we take the differential evolution (DE) as the baseline algorithm for proof-of-concept study. Regression models are trained to model the DE's empirical performance given a parameter configuration. In particular, we evaluate and compare four popular regression algorithms both in terms of how well they predict the empirical performance with respect to a particular parameter configuration, and also how well they approximate the parameter versus the empirical performance landscapes.Royal Societ

A man with hypophosphataemia

Case report; A section on BMJ, 2011, v. 342, p. 715published_or_final_versio

Preference of food saltiness and willingness to consume low-sodium content food in a Chinese population

OBJECTIVE: To compare the preference of food saltiness and the willingness to consume low‐sodium food among hypertensive older people, non‐hypertensive older people and non‐hypertensive young people in a Chinese population. DESIGN: A cross‐sectional study based on a quota sample. Three saltiness options (low‐sodium, medium-sodium and high‐sodium) of soup and bread were offered to each participant who rated the taste of each food on a 5‐point Likert scale. Then, the participants rated their willingness to consume the low-sodium content foods on a 5‐point Likert scale, given they were informed of the benefit of the low-sodium option. Generalised linear mixed model and multiple linear regression were used to analyse the data. SETTING: Elderly centres and community centres in Hong Kong. PARTICIPANTS: Sixty hypertensive older people, 49 non‐hypertensive older people and 60 non-hypertensive young people were recruited from June to August 2014. Measurements: The tastiness score and the willingness score were the primary outcome measures. The Chinese Health Literacy Scale for Low Salt Consumption – Hong Kong population (CHLSalt‐HK) was also assessed. RESULTS: The tastiness rating of the high‐sodium option of soup was significantly lower than the medium‐sodium option (p<0.001), but there was no significant difference between the low‐sodium and the medium‐sodium options (p=0.204). For bread, tastiness rating of the low‐sodium option and the high‐sodium option were significantly lower than the medium‐sodium option (p<0.001 for both options). The tastiness score of soup did not have significant difference across the groups (p=0.181), but that of bread from the hypertensive older adults (p=0.012) and the non‐hypertensive older adults (p=0.006) was significantly higher than the non‐hypertensive young adults. Higher willingness rating to consume the low‐sodium option was significantly (p<0.001) associated with higher tastiness rating of the low-sodium option of soup and bread, and weakly associated with higher health literacy of low salt intake (soup: p=0.041; bread: p=0.024). Hypertensive older adults tended to be more willing to consume the low‐sodium option than non‐hypertensive older adults for soup (p=0.009), there was insignificant difference between non‐hypertensive older adults and non‐hypertensive young adults (p=0.156). For bread, there was insignificant difference in willingness rating to consume low‐sodium option (p=0.375). CONCLUSION: Older people are at a higher risk of hypertension, reduction of salt intake is important for them to reduce their risk of cardiovascular diseases. There is room for reducing the sodium content of soup, while the sodium in bread should be reduced progressively. Improving the taste of low‐sodium food may help to promote reduction in dietary sodium intake.postprin

Visualizing the strongly reshaped skyrmion Hall effect in multilayer wire devices.

Magnetic skyrmions are nanoscale spin textures touted as next-generation computing elements. When subjected to lateral currents, skyrmions move at considerable speeds. Their topological charge results in an additional transverse deflection known as the skyrmion Hall effect (SkHE). While promising, their dynamic phenomenology with current, skyrmion size, geometric effects and disorder remain to be established. Here we report on the ensemble dynamics of individual skyrmions forming dense arrays in Pt/Co/MgO wires by examining over 20,000 instances of motion across currents and fields. The skyrmion speed reaches 24 m/s in the plastic flow regime and is surprisingly robust to positional and size variations. Meanwhile, the SkHE saturates at ∼22∘, is substantially reshaped by the wire edge, and crucially increases weakly with skyrmion size. Particle model simulations suggest that the SkHE size dependence - contrary to analytical predictions - arises from the interplay of intrinsic and pinning-driven effects. These results establish a robust framework to harness SkHE and achieve high-throughput skyrmion motion in wire devices

Multi-objective improvement of software using co-evolution and smart seeding

Optimising non-functional properties of software is an important part of the implementation process. One such property is execution time, and compilers target a reduction in execution time using a variety of optimisation techniques. Compiler optimisation is not always able to produce semantically equivalent alternatives that improve execution times, even if such alternatives are known to exist. Often, this is due to the local nature of such optimisations. In this paper we present a novel framework for optimising existing software using a hybrid of evolutionary optimisation techniques. Given as input the implementation of a program or function, we use Genetic Programming to evolve a new semantically equivalent version, optimised to reduce execution time subject to a given probability distribution of inputs. We employ a co-evolved population of test cases to encourage the preservation of the program’s semantics, and exploit the original program through seeding of the population in order to focus the search. We carry out experiments to identify the important factors in maximising efficiency gains. Although in this work we have optimised execution time, other non-functional criteria could be optimised in a similar manner

Three Courses of Tianjiu Therapy in Sanfu Days for Chronic Asthma: A Clinic Efficacy Observation Trail

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Mycotoxin Zearalenone induced apoptosis in BEAS-2B cells through generation of ROS and activation of JNK and p38 MAPKs signalling pathways

Session: ET05P - Ecotoxicology and ecosystem services: A southern perspective: WE 304Human exposure to Zearalenone (ZEA, a non-steroidal estrogenic mycotoxin) through inhalation has raised considerable concern. However, the potential health risk and the mechanism of actions of ZEA are not well understood. In the present study, we used BEAS-2B, cultured human bronchial epithelial cells, as well as Cygb stably transfected BEAS-2B cells to study the cytotoxic effects and the toxic mechanisms of ZEA. Our results indicated that ZEA decreased cell viability, induced apoptosis and promoted ROS level in BEAS-2B cells. Oxidative stress was clearly evident, as shown by an elevated mRNA expression levels of oxidative stress markers (Hsp70 and Hsp27) and endogenous antioxidants (SOD2 and Gpx). Stable transfection of Cygb significantly increased the level of Cygb but reduced level of ROS and the percentage of apoptotic cells induced by ZEA. Cells pretreated with either p38 or JNK inhibitors showed no attenuation in ROS level, but the percentage of apoptotic cells was lower than cells treated with ZEApostprin

Attraction and diffusion in nature-inspired optimization algorithms

Nature-inspired algorithms usually use some form of attraction and diffusion as a mechanism for exploitation and exploration. In this paper, we investigate the role of attraction and diffusion in algorithms and their ways in controlling the behaviour and performance of nature-inspired algorithms. We highlight different ways of the implementations of attraction in algorithms such as the firefly algorithm, charged system search, and the gravitational search algorithm. We also analyze diffusion mechanisms such as random walks for exploration in algorithms. It is clear that attraction can be an effective way for enhancing exploitation, while diffusion is a common way for exploration. Furthermore, we also discuss the role of parameter tuning and parameter control in modern metaheuristic algorithms, and then point out some key topics for further research