Publications by authors named "Fletcher B"

Alcohol use is embedded within university culture. While the consequences of alcohol use on next-day physical health are well-known, less is known about the consequences to next-day emotional health. This study investigated the relationship between alcohol use and next-day mood and well-being using two daily diary studies with New Zealand university students.

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  • The study investigated how well self-reported cough symptoms match objective data from audio recordings in individuals with chronic nighttime cough.
  • Ten participants completed questionnaires about their cough and recorded their symptoms using an app while sleeping, revealing a strong correlation between perceived cough severity and actual cough frequency.
  • Although participants felt comfortable using the app, they expressed concerns about privacy, highlighting the need for careful handling of data and better communication with healthcare providers in future studies.
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  • Clear cell sarcoma (CCS) and its similar tumor, malignant gastrointestinal neuroectodermal tumor/sarcoma (GINET), often lead to local and distant relapses, with limited success from systemic treatments.
  • A study analyzed data from 43 patients, revealing a 5-year overall survival rate of 42%, with most tumors being EWSR1::ATF1-translocation-positive and showing a high rate of metastasis.
  • The findings highlighted that complete tumor resection significantly improves survival rates compared to incomplete resection, while systemic treatments and radiation were largely ineffective.
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Atrial fibrillation is the most common sustained arrhythmia with a variable presentation ranging from asymptomatic incidental diagnosis by physical examination or electrocardiogram screening, to severely symptomatic requiring emergent treatment. The variation in care represents an opportunity to build a comprehensive center of excellence within a hospital system. We present our experience building the Swedish Comprehensive AFib Network and a dedicated AFib clinic at a large quaternary urban medical center.

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Background: Adolescent depression has increased markedly over the last decade and often persists into adulthood with a range of adverse outcomes. Identifying the perinatal risk factors contributing to adolescent depression is crucial to advise early interventions.

Methods: The study included 4563 young people from the Growing Up in New Zealand (GUiNZ) longitudinal study who completed a questionnaire on depression symptoms at age 12 years (Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale for Children (CESD-10).

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  • - Tau is a disordered protein that binds to negatively charged microtubules in neurons, helping to stabilize them, but abnormal interactions are linked to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.
  • - Researchers studied how tau interacts with anionic liposomes (mimicking axon membranes) using microscopy, revealing different complex formations at low salt concentrations.
  • - Increasing salt concentrations disintegrated tau self-assemblies while keeping tau-liposome complexes stable, suggesting that tau's charged regions may play a key role in its interaction with neuron membranes.
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Polycythemia vera is an indolent myeloproliferative disorder that predisposes patients to venous and arterial thrombosis and can transform into myelofibrosis and acute myeloid leukemia. Consistent phlebotomy prevents life-threatening cerebrovascular and coronary artery disease and prolongs survival in low-risk polycythemia vera (patients under 60 years without thrombosis). However, despite its effectiveness in preventing serious complications, phlebotomy does not necessarily enhance the quality of life (QoL).

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For most of his illustrious career, Ken Stevens focused on examining and documenting the rich detail about vocal tract changes available to listeners underlying the acoustic signal of speech. Current approaches to speech inversion take advantage of this rich detail to recover information about articulatory movement. Our previous speech inversion work focused on movements of the tongue and lips, for which "ground truth" is readily available.

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Tau, an intrinsically disordered neuronal protein and polyampholyte with an overall positive charge, is a microtubule (MT) associated protein, which binds to anionic domains of MTs and suppresses their dynamic instability. Aberrant tau-MT interactions are implicated in Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases. Here, we studied the interactions between full length human protein tau and other negatively charged binding substrates, as revealed by differential-interference-contrast (DIC) and fluorescence microscopy.

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Scaling up a Clinical AI Fellowship.

Stud Health Technol Inform

July 2024

Insights derived from successfully scaling a Clinical AI NHS Fellowship, addressing the scarcity of professionals proficient in clinical and Artificial Intelligence (AI) domains. Approach focus on operationalising a novel educational route critical for the present and future of healthcare using AI.

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  • Early life environments, particularly maternal health during pregnancy, significantly impact future health, with maternal stress linked to anxiety disorders in children.
  • A longitudinal study of nearly 5,000 children showed that factors like maternal depression, obesity, exercise habits, and specific medication and alcohol use during pregnancy are associated with increased anxiety symptoms in children at age 8.
  • The study emphasizes the need to prioritize the mental wellbeing of expectant mothers to enhance the mental health outcomes of their children in the long run.
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  • - The axon-initial-segment (AIS) in neurons contains microtubule (MT) bundles that help retain tau protein, and disruptions in tau localization are linked to neurodegenerative diseases.
  • - Researchers used synchrotron SAXS to analyze how different concentrations of magnesium or calcium affect the structure of MT bundles, revealing multiple phases including wide-spacing and transient intermediate phases.
  • - Their findings suggest a model where tau proteins help stabilize MT bundles, challenging the idea that microtubule stability is controlled solely by microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs), and propose that these tau-tubulin complexes could be crucial in tau-related diseases.
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Purpose: Imatinib resistance in GI stromal tumors (GISTs) is primarily caused by secondary mutations, and clonal heterogeneity of these secondary mutations represents a major treatment obstacle. KIT inhibitors used after imatinib have clinical activity, albeit with limited benefit. Ripretinib is a potent inhibitor of secondary KIT mutations in the activation loop (AL).

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Peripheral nerve injuries are common injuries that often have a drastic effect on patient's activities of daily living and physical function. While techniques for the surgical repair of these injuries have improved over time, rehabilitation methods following these repairs have been non-standardized and under researched. Electronic searches were conducted in Ovid/Medline and SCOPUS to identify articles that discuss rehabilitation and exercise following peripheral nerve injury in animal models and its effects on peripheral nerve regeneration and recovery of function.

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Avapritinib is the only potent and selective inhibitor approved for the treatment of D842V-mutant gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST), the most common primary mutation of the platelet-derived growth factor receptor α (PDGFRA). The approval was based on the NAVIGATOR trial, which revealed overall response rates of more than 90%. Despite this transformational activity, patients eventually progress, mostly due to acquired resistance mutations or following discontinuation due to neuro-cognitive side effects.

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Vitamin C-rich foods can improve mood; however, the timecourse of these benefits is unknown. This study utilised intensive longitudinal smartphone surveys from a three-armed placebo-controlled trial to determine mood-related changes following supplementation with vitamin C (250 mg tablet/d), kiwifruit (2 SunGold™ kiwifruit/d) or a placebo (1 tablet/d). Secondary data were analysed from the KiwiC for Vitality trial (Trial ID: ACTRN12617001031358).

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Wrist arthroscopy has been established as a useful, minimally invasive tool for diagnosing and treating many different wrist conditions. The standard portals are located on the dorsum of the hand and wrist and are named for their relation to the extensor compartments. They include the radiocarpal and midcarpal portals.

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Starches can adsorb on and depress copper-activated pyrite desirably during flotation, an important process in ore mineral extraction. In order to develop structure/function relationships, adsorption on and depression properties of copper-activated pyrite at pH 9 by normal wheat starch (NWS) and high-amylose wheat starch (HAW), dextrin, and a range of oxidized normal wheat starches (peroxide and hypochlorite treated) were investigated. Adsorption isotherms and bench flotation performance were compared with kinematic viscosity, molar mass distribution, surface coverage, and substituted functional groups assay.

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Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) from circulating free DNA (cfDNA) in GIST is of interest for the detection of heterogeneous resistance mutations and treatment monitoring. However, methodologies for use in a local setting are not standardized and are error-prone and difficult to interpret. We established a workflow to evaluate routine tumor tissue NGS (Illumina-based next generation sequencing) panels and pipelines for ctDNA sequencing in an academic setting.

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The Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six (FOCUS) is one of a few validated outcome measures related to children's communicative participation. Additional validation of the FOCUS measure could address the paucity of validated outcomes-based measures available for assessing preschool-age children, particularly for those who are multilingual. The data collected for this study, with a representative sample of Jamaican Creole-English speaking children, extend the applicability of the FOCUS to a broader range of preschoolers and expand psychometric evidence for the FOCUS to a multilingual and understudied context.

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Background: Self-monitoring of blood pressure (BP) has been shown to be effective at improving BP control in the general population. The OPTIMUM-BP feasibility study was a prospective randomised controlled trial of self-monitoring of BP (SMBP) during hypertensive pregnancy.

Objective: To explore experiences, perceptions, and use of the OPTIMUM-BP self-monitoring intervention.

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