Publications by authors named "Birch M"

Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) have the potential for novel treatments of several musculoskeletal conditions due to their ability to differentiate into several cell lineages including chondrocytes, adipocytes and osteocytes. Researchers are exploring whether this could be utilized for novel therapies for joint afflictions. The role of gender in the ability of MSCs to differentiate and proliferate into different cells has not been clearly defined.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates CP symmetry violation in the decay of D^{+} particles into K^{-}K^{+}π^{+} using data from proton-proton collisions at a high energy of 13 TeV.
  • A unique model-independent method was employed to analyze the phase-space distributions of D^{+} and D^{-} particles, correcting for any instrumental biases using D_{s}^{+} decays.
  • The findings indicate no significant evidence of CP violation, with a p value of 8.1%, and measure specific CP asymmetry observables, marking this study as the most sensitive search of its kind in multibody decays.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Delirium is a complex neuropsychiatric syndrome characterised by an acute state of confusion, with a substantial impact on medical inpatients. Despite its growing recognition as a global healthcare concern, delirium remains underdiagnosed, partly due to a lack of awareness among healthcare professionals. The aim of this study was to explore how healthcare professional students experience caring for individuals experiencing delirium, the influence of their current pre-registration healthcare education, and importance of interprofessional teamwork in their role.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A wide variety of systemic pathologies, including infectious and autoimmune diseases, are accompanied by joint pain or inflammation, often mediated by circulating immune complexes (ICs). How such stimuli access joints and trigger inflammation is unclear. Whole-mount synovial imaging revealed PV1 fenestrated capillaries at the periphery of the synovium in the lining-sublining interface.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Objectives: Morally horrific events can evoke moral pain and may result in a type of psychological distress known as moral injury (MI). Previous research has hypothesized intolerance of uncertainty (IU; ) may predict MI symptomatology due to its influence on perceived responsibility (PR). As such, we examined the influence of IU and PR on moral emotions associated with vignettes depicting morally stressful events.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Machine learning (ML) offers a promising route for developing personalized treatments for osteoarthritis (OA), especially in its early stages, where current therapies are limited.
  • A systematic review analyzed 1,160 studies, culminating in 39 relevant ones that utilized ML to predict OA progression, revealing most were published recently and relied on publicly available datasets.
  • There is notable variability in defining OA progression across studies, with a predominance of supervised ML techniques, but challenges such as inconsistent evaluation metrics and limited model interpretability were also observed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • A study was conducted on B^{+} decays to explore resonant structures using data from the LHCb experiment at various energy levels, totaling an integrated luminosity of 9 fb^{-1}.
  • The researchers performed a simultaneous amplitude fit on two decay channels, determining the C parities of resonances in the D^{*±}D^{∓} mass spectra.
  • Four new charmonium or charmoniumlike states were discovered, including η_{c}(3945) and h_{c}(4000), and the presence of T_{c[over ¯]s[over ¯]0}^{*}(2870)^{0} and T_{c[over ¯]s
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Interprofessional education is essential for healthcare students to learn teamwork and improve patient care, but it's often underrepresented in curricula, leading to the study that engaged students from various health professions in creating a resource on delirium management.* -
  • Two workshops were held with students from medical, nursing, pharmacy, and occupational therapy programs, involving activities like resource creation and discussions, with follow-up focus groups to assess experiences during the co-design process.* -
  • Key outcomes included enhanced relationships among students, a deeper understanding of interprofessional collaboration, and boosted professional confidence, resulting in valuable peer learning and skill development in managing delirium.*
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In 2015, U.K. newborn screening (NBS) laboratory guidelines were introduced to standardize dried blood spot (DBS) specimen quality acceptance and specify a minimum acceptable DBS diameter of ≥7 mm.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A measurement of time-dependent CP violation in D^{0}→π^{+}π^{-}π^{0} decays using a pp collision data sample collected by the LHCb experiment in 2012 and from 2015 to 2018, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 7.7  fb^{-1}, is presented. The initial flavor of each D^{0} candidate is determined from the charge of the pion produced in the D^{*}(2010)^{+}→D^{0}π^{+} decay.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The coupling of conduction electrons and magnetic textures leads to quantum transport phenomena described by the language of emergent electromagnetic fields. For magnetic skyrmions, spin-swirling particle-like objects, an emergent magnetic field is produced by their topological winding, resulting in the conduction electrons exhibiting the topological Hall effect (THE). When the skyrmion lattice (SkL) acquires a drift velocity under conduction electron flow, an emergent electric field is also generated.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: To facilitate the stratification of patients with osteoarthritis (OA) for new treatment development and clinical trial recruitment, we created an automated machine learning (autoML) tool predicting the rapid progression of knee OA over a 2-year period.

Methods: We developed autoML models integrating clinical, biochemical, X-ray and MRI data. Using two data sets within the OA Initiative-the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health OA Biomarker Consortium for training and hold-out validation, and the Pivotal Osteoarthritis Initiative MRI Analyses study for external validation-we employed two distinct definitions of clinical outcomes: Multiclass (categorising OA progression into pain and/or radiographic) and binary.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: New antifungal agents are required to mitigate against azole-resistant Aspergillus and drug-resistant non-Aspergillus moulds. The novel orotomide, olorofim (F2G, Manchester, UK), has potent fungicidal activity against Aspergillus including azole-resistant Aspergillus fumigatus, Lomentospora prolificans and Scedosporium spp. Development of olorofim-specific clinical breakpoints/epidemiological cut-off values requires reliable MIC data.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Competence in delirium care begins with pre-registration education for health care professionals. Although a common complication for hospitalised patients, delirium is avoidable and reversible. Delirium requires early recognition in person-centred care.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The realization of above room-temperature ferromagnetism in the two-dimensional (2D) magnet FeGeTe represents a major advance for the use of van der Waals (vdW) materials in practical spintronic applications. In particular, observations of magnetic skyrmions and related states within exfoliated flakes of this material provide a pathway to the fine-tuning of topological spin textures via 2D material heterostructure engineering. However, there are conflicting reports as to the nature of the magnetic structures in FeGeTe.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The LHCb Collaboration measures production of the exotic hadron χ_{c1}(3872) in proton-nucleus collisions for the first time. Comparison with the charmonium state ψ(2S) suggests that the exotic χ_{c1}(3872) experiences different dynamics in the nuclear medium than conventional hadrons, and comparison with data from proton-proton collisions indicates that the presence of the nucleus may modify χ_{c1}(3872) production rates. This is the first measurement of the nuclear modification factor of an exotic hadron.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We report the first measurement of the atmospheric optical turbulence profile using the transmitted beam from a satellite laser communication terminal. A ring image next generation scintillation sensor (RINGSS) instrument for turbulence profiling, as described in Tokovinin [MNRAS502, 747 (2021)10.1093/mnras/staa4049], was deployed at the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Table Mountain Facility (TMF) in California.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

As armed conflict grows increasingly complex, the involvement of children in armed violence across diverse roles is rising. Consequently, military personnel are more likely to encounter children during deployment. However, little is known about deployment-related encounters with children and their impact on the mental health of military personnel and Veterans.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Intermittently closed and open coastal lakes and lagoons (ICOLLs) are ecologically important and hydrologically sensitive estuarine systems. We explore how extreme drought and ICOLL entrance management intersect to influence the geochemical cycling of iron. Opening the ICOLL entrance just prior to an extreme drought in 2019 led to prolonged extremely low water levels, thereby exposing intertidal/subtidal sulfidic sediments and causing oxidation of sedimentary pyrite.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Delirium is a common symptom of acute illness which is potentially avoidable with early recognition and intervention. Despite being a growing concern globally, delirium remains underdiagnosed and poorly reported, with limited understanding of effective delirium education for undergraduate health profession students. Digital resources could be an effective approach to improving professional knowledge of delirium, but studies utilising these with more than one profession are limited, and no evidence-based, interdisciplinary, digital delirium education resources are reported.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

An amplitude analysis of the B^{0}→K^{*0}μ^{+}μ^{-} decay is presented using a dataset corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.7  fb^{-1} of pp collision data collected with the LHCb experiment. For the first time, the coefficients associated to short-distance physics effects, sensitive to processes beyond the standard model, are extracted directly from the data through a q^{2}-unbinned amplitude analysis, where q^{2} is the μ^{+}μ^{-} invariant mass squared.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF