Dynamic clustering:classifying people through ecological momentary assessment

Nowadays, smartphones and tablets are enabling researchers to collect time-intensive data through ecological momentary assessment. During ecological momentary assessment people are asked to report on their feelings and experiences multiple times a day, for one or several weeks. The availability of the resulting intensive longitudinal data has brought about a shift towards studying within-individual dynamics in the social sciences. Often, researchers are interested in summarizing the within-individual dynamics of several individuals into a common longitudinal model. As dynamics can be rather heterogeneous across individuals, one needs sophisticated tools to express the essential similarities and differences across individuals. A way to proceed is to identify subgroups of individuals who are characterized by distinct differences in their dynamics. The aim of this dissertation is to develop novel dynamic clustering procedures that account for between-individual differences in within-individual dynamics. This goal is achieved by proposing dynamic clustering procedures that uncover clusters of individuals who exhibit qualitatively different dynamic processes in intensive longitudinal data. Thereby unknown subgroups of individuals with similar dynamics are identified. Dynamic clustering allows the information of several individuals to be pooled, while accounting for qualitative between-individual heterogeneity in the underlying dynamics

L’incontinence urinaire en cas de BPCO

Harninkontinenz ist bei COPD-PatientInnen sehr häufig. Deshalb sollte in der Atmungs- und Trainingstherapie der Beckenboden routinemässig integriert werden.L’incontinence urinaire est très fréquente chez les patients atteints de BPCO. C’est pourquoi la rééducation du plancher pelvien devrait faire systématiquement partie du traitement et de la réadaptation respiratoire

Compliance bezüglich Inkontinenz-Therapie von stationären Patientinnen und Patienten mit COPD

Darstellung der Thematik: Die Prävalenz von Harninkontinenz wird weltweit auf ca. 200 Millionen, schweizweit auf 400‘000 Betroffene geschätzt. Erste Studien zeigen eine erhöhte Prävalenz von Harninkontinenz (HI) bei Patienten mit chronisch obstruktiven Lungenerkrankungen (COPD). Möglicherweise führt der durch chronischen Husten erhöhte intraabdominelle Druck zu einer höheren Prävalenz von HI bei COPD. Zielsetzung: Ziel dieser Bachelorarbeit ist, in Zusammenarbeit mit der Klinik Barmelweid, die Prävalenz von HI bei stationären Patientinnen und Patienten mit COPD zu evaluieren. Zusätzlich soll die Bereitschaft für ein integriertes Kontinenztraining analysiert werden. Methodik: Total wurden 30 Teilnehmer für diese Machbarkeitsstudie erfasst. Neben den anthropometrischen Daten wurden Werte zur Lungenfunktion erhoben und ein Fragebogen zur Trainingsbereitschaft abgegeben. In die Studie eingeschlossen wurden stationäre Patientinnen und Patienten der Klinik Barmelweid mit der Diagnose COPD und der Bereitschaft zum Ausfüllen eines Fragebogens. Relevante Ergebnisse: Der Altersdurchschnitt der 30 Studienteilnehmer (m=14, w=16) betrug 68.8 Jahre. Die Prävalenz von HI lag gesamthaft bei rund 30%, wobei Husten als häufigster Trigger evaluiert wurde. Lediglich drei der betroffenen Personen wären bereit, ein Kontinenztraining durchzuführen. Schlussfolgerung: Die Studie zeigt erste Hinweise für eine erhöhte Prävalenz von Harninkontinenz bei COPD. Diesbezüglich sollte weitere Forschungsarbeit betrieben und in der medizinischen Versorgung von Personen mit COPD dem Thema Harninkontinenz mehr Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt werden.Background: The prevalence of urinary incontinence is estimated to affect around 200 million worldwide and 400´000 in Switzerland. Initial studies show an increased prevalence of urinary incontinence (UI) among patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The increased intraabdominal pressure caused by chronic cough is a possibility for a higher prevalence of UI in COPD. Aim: The primary purpose of this bachelor thesis is to evaluate the prevalence of UI of hospitalized patients with COPD. This bachelor thesis was accomplished in collaboration with the Clinic Barmelweid. Additionally, this study analyses the willingness for an integrated continence training. Method: A total of 30 participants were selected for this feasibility study. Besides anthropometric data, results on lung function were collected and a survey regarding the compliance was handed out. Stationary patients of the Clinic Barmelweid with the diagnosis COPD and the willingness to complete a questionnaire were included. Results: Of the 30 participants (m = 14, w = 16), the average age was 68.8 years. The prevalence of UI was around 30%. The cough was the most frequent trigger. Only three of the affected patients were willing to perform physiotherapy due to urinary incontinence. Conclusion: The study shows first indications for an increased prevalence of urinary incontinence in COPD. Regarding these results further research should be carried out and more attention should be given to the topic of urinary incontinence in the medical care of persons with COPD

Importance of and Satisfaction with Domains of Health-Related Quality of Life in Cancer Rehabilitation

Instruments for measuring health-related quality of life (HRQoL) generally do not consider the subjective importance of the dimensions they comprise. The aims of this study were to analyze the subjectively perceived importance of the dimension of HRQoL and to investigate their relationship to the satisfaction ratings with these dimensions. A total of 1108 participants enrolled in a cancer rehabilitation program were surveyed. Patients rated eight dimensions of HRQoL (physical functioning, autonomy, emotional stability, cognitive functioning, social relationships, vitality, absence of pain, and sleep quality), as well as global health in terms of how important those dimensions are to them, and how satisfied they are with them. The dimensions with the highest importance ratings were autonomy and social relationships. There were only small sex differences in the importance ratings, but younger patients rated health as being more important than older patients did. The correlations between the importance ratings and the satisfaction ratings of the specific HRQoL dimensions ranged from 0.06 to 0.40, and the correlation between importance and satisfaction for global health was 0.01. Importance ratings provide relevant information for health care professionals in addition to the HRQoL assessments in the context of cancer rehabilitation

Properties of the DREAM scheme and its optimization for application to proteins

The DREAM scheme is an efficient adiabatic homonuclear polarization-transfer method suitable for multi-dimensional experiments in biomolecular solid-state NMR. The bandwidth and dynamics of the polarization transfer in the DREAM experiment depend on a number of experimental and spin-system parameters. In order to obtain optimal results, the dependence of the cross-peak intensity on these parameters needs to be understood and carefully controlled. We introduce a simplified model to semi-quantitatively describe the polarization-transfer patterns for the relevant spin systems. Numerical simulations for all natural amino acids (except tryptophane) show the dependence of the cross-peak intensities as a function of the radio-frequency-carrier position. This dependency can be used as a guide to select the desired conditions in protein spectroscopy. Practical guidelines are given on how to set up a DREAM experiment for optimized Cα/Cβ transfer, which is important in sequential assignment experiment

Cancer-Related Distress: How Often Does It Co-occur With a Mental Disorder? – Results of a Secondary Analysis

Objectives: The Distress Thermometer (DT) is a validated and widely used screening tool to identify clinically relevant distress in cancer patients. It is unclear, to which extend subjectively perceived distress measured by the DT is related to objective burden (mental disorder). We therefore examine the co-occurrence of a mental disorder for different DT thresholds and explore the diagnostic properties of the DT in detecting a mental disorder. Methods: In this multicenter cross-sectional study, we included 4,020 patients with mixed cancer diagnoses. After selection of relevant cases, weighting procedure and imputation of missing data we evaluated the data of N = 3,212 patients. We used the DT to assess perceived distress and the standardized Composite International Diagnostic Interview for Oncology (CIDI-O) to assess the 4-week prevalence of mental disorders. The association between distress and any mental disorder (MD) is calculated using Pearson correlations. Relative risks for MD in patients with/without distress and the co-occurrence of distress and MD were calculated with Poisson regression. To assess the operating characteristics between distress and MD, we present the area under the curve (AUC). Results: 22.9% of the participants had a cut-off DT level of 5 and were affected by MD. Each level of distress co-occurs with MD. The proportion of patients diagnosed with MD was not greater than the proportion of patients without MD until distress levels of DT = 6 were reached. The correlation between DT and MD was r = 0.27. The ROCanalysis shows the area under curve (AUC) = 0.67, which is classified as unsatisfactory. With increasing distress severity, patients are not more likely to have a mental disorder. Conclusion: Our results suggests viewing and treating cancer-related distress as a relatively distinct psychological entity. Cancer-related distress may be associated with an increased risk for a mental disorder and vice versa, but the overlap of both concepts is very moderate

PARTICLE BREAKAGE IN THE CYCLONES OF FLUIDIZED BED SYSTEMS

A breakage model is developed to predict the change in particle size distribution of brittle materials that undergo mechanical stress in gas cyclones. The breakage probability depends on the cyclone inlet gas velocity, solids load, particle size, and a material-specific constant. The model is validated with data from experiments on a laboratory gas cyclone with aluminum oxide and iron oxide. The results are applied to calculate the particle size distribution of a chemical looping combustion process with iron ore as oxygen carrier

Inter-Individual Differences in Multivariate Time-Series:Latent Class Vector-Autoregressive Modeling

Theories of emotion regulation posit the existence of individual differences in emotion dynamics. Current multi-subject time-series models account for differences in dynamics across individuals only to a very limited extent. This results in an aggregation that may poorly apply at the individual level. We present the exploratory method of latent class vector-autoregressive modeling (LCVAR), which extends the timeseries models to include clustering of individuals with similar dynamic processes. LCVAR can identify individuals with similar emotion dynamics in intensive time-series, which may be of unequal length. The method performs excellently under a range of simulated conditions. The value of identifying clusters in time-series is illustrated using affect measures of 410 individuals, assessed at over 70 time points per individual. LCVAR discerned six clusters of distinct emotion dynamics with regard to diurnal patterns and augmentation and blunting processes between eight emotions

Insight Into Individual Differences in Emotion Dynamics With Clustering

Studying emotion dynamics through time series models is becoming increasingly popular in the social sciences. Across individuals, dynamics can be rather heterogeneous. To enable comparisons and generalizations of dynamics across groups of individuals, one needs sophisticated tools that express the essential similarities and differences. A way to proceed is to identify subgroups of people who are characterized by qualitatively similar emotion dynamics through dynamic clustering. So far, these methods assume equal generating processes for individuals per cluster. To avoid this overly restrictive assumption, we outline a probabilistic clustering approach based on a mixture model that clusters on individuals’ vector autoregressive coefficients. We evaluate the performance of the method and compare it with a nonprobabilistic method in a simulation study. The usefulness of the methods is illustrated using 366 ecological momentary assessment time series with external measures of depression and anxiety