Evidencing general acceptability of open-label placebo use for tackling overtreatment in primary care: a mixed methods study.

Background: Overtreatment poses a challenge to healthcare systems due to harmful consequences of avoidable side-effects and costs. This study presents the first account for examining the feasibility of placebo use for reducing overtreatment in primary care, including whether public attitudes support the use of different placebo types in place of inappropriate prescriptions of antibiotics, antidepressants, or analgesics.

Methods: We used a multi-study, mixed-methods design, including patient and public (PPI) consultations, focus groups (Study 1) and two pre-registered online experiments (Studies 2 and 3).

Responsive and resilient healthcare? 'Moments of Resilience' in post-hospitalisation services for COVID-19.

Background: COVID-19 caused disruption to healthcare services globally, resulting in high numbers of hospital admissions and with those discharged often requiring ongoing support. Within the UK, post-discharge services typically developed organically and were shaped over time by local need, funding, and government guidance. Drawing on the Moments of Resilience framework, we explore the development of follow-up services for hospitalised patients by considering the links between resilience at different system levels over time.

Perspectives of pharmacists in general practice from qualitative focus groups with patients during a pilot study.

Background: Utilising skill mix in general practice is proposed as a solution to the demand-supply issue. Pharmacists can play an important role in this context, leading to an increase in training and funding for independent prescriber roles. A role for pharmacists in general practice was funded, piloted, and evaluated by NHS England (NHSE) from 2015.

The influence of stress and coping on diabetes self-care activities among college students.

Objective: The purpose of this pilot study was to examine relationships between perceived stress, coping, and diabetes self-care activities among college students with type 1 diabetes.

Participants: College students, self-reported as diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.

Methods: Students responded to an online self-report questionnaire (Perceived Stress Scale, Brief COPE, Summary of Diabetes Self-Care Activities).

Modest sleep restriction does not influence steps, physical activity intensity or glucose tolerance in obese adults.

Sleep restriction (SR) (<6 h) and physical activity (PA) are risk factors for obesity, but little work has examined the inter-related influences of both risk factors. In a free-living environment, 13 overweight/obese adults were sleep restricted for five nights to 6 h time-in-bed each night, with and without regular exercise (45 min/65% VO max; counterbalanced design). Two days of recovery sleep followed SR.

Path-Based Dictionary Augmentation: A Framework for Improving k-Sparse Image Processing.

We have previously shown that augmenting orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) with an additional step in the identification stage of each pursuit iteration yields improved k-sparse reconstruction and denoising performance relative to baseline OMP. At each iteration a "path," or geodesic, is generated between the two dictionary atoms that are most correlated with the residual and from this path a new atom that has a greater correlation to the residual than either of the two bracketing atoms is selected. Here, we provide new computational results illustrating improvements in sparse coding and denoising on canonical datasets using both learned and structured dictionaries.

Protocol for Urgent and Emergent Cases at a Large Academic Level 1 Trauma Center.

Background Level 1 trauma centers are capable of caring for every aspect of injury and contain 24-hour in-house coverage by general surgeons, with prompt availability of nearly all other disciplines upon request. Despite the wide variety of trauma, currently reported protocols often focus on a single surgical service and studies describing their implementation are lacking. The aim of the current study was to characterize all urgent and emergent cases at a large academic Level 1 trauma center, characterize the specialty and nature of emergent operative cases, and assess the efficacy of the institutional trauma protocol on timing of surgery.

Motion Segmentation via Generalized Curvatures.

New depth sensors, like the Microsoft Kinect, produce streams of human pose data. These discrete pose streams can be viewed as noisy samples of an underlying continuous ideal curve that describes a trajectory through high-dimensional pose space. This paper introduces a technique for generalized curvature analysis (GCA) that determines features along the trajectory which can be used to characterize change and segment motion.

Transport-based model for turbulence-corrupted imagery.

A new model for turbulence-corrupted imagery is proposed based on the theory of optimal mass transport. By describing the relationship between photon density and the phase of the traveling wave, and combining it with a least action principle, the model suggests a new class of methods for approximately recovering the solution of the photon density flow created by a turbulent atmosphere. Both coherent and incoherent imagery are used to validate and compare the model to other methods typically used to describe this type of data.

Do Words Matter? Health Care Providers' Use of the Term Prediabetes.

Communication of risk is not solely the transfer of information; it is an interaction and exchange of ideas between concerned individuals. Health care provider communication about type 2 diabetes risk status may influence individual participation in behaviours that prevent or delay the disease, which is concerning from a public health perspective. The term prediabetes is used to convey risk status and little is known about how health care providers view or use the term.

Fourier-ring descriptor to characterize rare circulating cells from images generated using immunofluorescence microscopy.

We address the problem of subclassification of rare circulating cells using data driven feature selection from images of candidate circulating tumor cells from patients diagnosed with breast, prostate, or lung cancer. We determine a set of low level features which can differentiate among candidate cell types. We have implemented an image representation based on concentric Fourier rings (FRDs) which allow us to exploit size variations and morphological differences among cells while being rotationally invariant.

A tale of trade-offs: the impact of macroeconomic factors on environmental concern.

Objective: We test whether macroeconomic conditions affect individuals' willingness to pay for environmental quality improvements.

Background: Improvements in environmental quality, like everything, come at a cost. Individuals facing difficult economic times may be less willing to make trade-offs required for improvements in environmental quality.

Ritual Black Drink consumption at Cahokia.

Chemical analyses of organic residues in fragments of pottery from the large site of Cahokia and surrounding smaller sites in Illinois reveal theobromine, caffeine, and ursolic acid, biomarkers for species of Ilex (holly) used to prepare the ritually important Black Drink. As recorded during the historic period, men consumed Black Drink in portions of the American Southeast for ritual purification. This first demonstrated discovery of biomarkers for Ilex occurs in beaker vessels dating between A.

Activated calcineurin ameliorates contraction-induced injury to skeletal muscles of mdx dystrophic mice.

Utrophin expression is regulated by calcineurin and up-regulating utrophin can decrease the susceptibility of dystrophic skeletal muscle to contraction-induced injury. We overexpressed the constitutively active calcineurin-A alpha in skeletal muscle of mdx dystrophic mice (mdx CnA*) and examined the tibialis anterior muscle to determine whether the presence of activated calcineurin promotes resistance to muscle damage after lengthening contractions. Two stretches (10 s apart) of 40% strain relative to muscle fibre length were initiated from the plateau of a maximal isometric tetanic contraction.

Preparing placement supervisors for primary care: an interprofessional perspective from the UK.

All the professions working in primary care provide placements for students. How common, or how profession-specific, are the competency requirements of the different professions for their members who supervise students on placements? If there is a significant degree of commonality in these competency requirements, how feasible would it be to develop an integrated interprofessional development and support programme for placement educators? These were the main questions addressed in this research project. The requirements for placement educators of four professions in the UK - nursing, medicine, occupational therapy and social work - were analysed and classified.

Therapeutic use of antithrombin concentrate in sepsis.

Sepsis and its associated complications of disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) and multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) continue to be a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Improved detection of all forms of DIC is essential to assure earlier diagnosis. Studies already indicate that the therapeutic use of antithrombin (AT) concentrate may produce a more positive outcome for sepsis-associated DIC.

Pattern shift visual evoked potential screening for HBO2 in mild-to-moderate carbon monoxide poisoning.

Pattern shift visual evoked potential (PSVEP) N75 and P100 latencies were evaluated as an objective, widely available and rapid test of brain dysfunction in a group of 11 patients in the acute phase (first 6 h) of mild-to-moderate carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning. N75 and P100 latency results were compared to nearly simultaneously obtained standard CO Neuropsychological Screening Battery (CONSB). Patients were sought in whom treatment decisions concerning hyperbaric oxygen (HBO2) vs.

Group A streptococcal bacteremia: the role of tumor necrosis factor in shock and organ failure.

Severe group A streptococcal infections associated with early onset shock and multiorgan failure define the streptococcal toxic shock syndrome. In the United States, group A streptococcal strains most commonly isolated are M types 1 and 3, which produce pyrogenic exotoxin type A. The role of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha and the dynamics of cardiovascular and laboratory abnormalities were investigated in a baboon model of group A Streptococcal bacteremia that mimics human Streptococcal toxic shock syndrome.

Study of septic shock in the non-human primate: relationship of pathophysiological response to therapy with anti-TNF antibody.

Therapy with anti-TNF antibody is reported to be effective in preventing morbidity and mortality in baboons given lethal infusions of Escherichia coli. Treated animals survived, and organ histopathology was absent when antibody was administered early after lethal infusions of E. coli.

A resource guide to VR in medicine.

This guide provides a bibliography of many of the most noteworthy contributions to the emerging literature about virtual reality in medicine, along with listings of the most relevant conferences and resources for researchers. This is an abridged version of a continuously updated comprehensive document which is available on-line to the research community.

Retrospective description and experimental reconstitution of three different responses of the baboon to lethal E. coli.

This paper is divided into a retrospective descriptive section in which we report on three distinctly different and spontaneous responses of the baboon to LD100 Eschericia coli observed over the last 6 years. This section is followed by an experimental section in which we reproduce the immediate and delayed responses based on hypothetical mechanisms. In the descriptive section, we arbitrarily divided all the non-survivor animals on which we had sufficient data into three groups based on duration of survival (i.