Publications by authors named "Leshawn Richards"

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  • Patients' beliefs about their kidney stone (KS) condition play a crucial role in their adjustment and adherence to self-management, with this study being the first to quantitatively analyze these beliefs.
  • A survey of 112 KS patients revealed that a significant portion (31.2%) didn't know the cause of their condition, while those who did attributed it mainly to dietary choices, fluid intake, and medical risk factors.
  • Findings also indicated that while patients felt fairly knowledgeable about KS, they expressed low personal control over their condition and high confidence in treatment effectiveness, emphasizing the need to enhance their sense of control in managing KS.
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  • Spine pain affects up to 85% of people in their lifetime, with spinal stenosis being a severe form that often leads to surgical intervention instead of conservative treatments.
  • A study involving 1,806 individuals found that an exercise-based physical therapy program significantly improved pain, disability, strength, and medication use across all severity levels of spinal stenosis, with no differences in outcomes between mild, moderate, and severe cases.
  • The research suggests that exercise rehabilitation is effective for short-term treatment even in severe stenosis, but further studies are needed to assess its long-term effectiveness and cost efficiency.
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  • Reproductive-aged women are at a higher risk of iron deficiency (ID), prompting the development of a non-invasive screening tool to identify this condition and assess its acceptability among women.
  • A study in Western Australia screened 640 women aged 18-49, revealing important statistics such as 28% had heavy menstrual bleeding (HMB) and 12% were anaemic, with significant correlations found between hand grip strength and hemoglobin levels.
  • The screening was well received, showing high recruitment rates, and suggests future tools could benefit from factors like hand grip strength and the prevalence of HMB in the assessment process.
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The frequencies of marine heatwaves and thermal coral bleaching events (CBEs) over the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) continue to increase with five mass CBEs reported since 2016. While changes in the local meteorology, such as reduced wind speeds and decreased cloud cover, are known to heat the shallow reef waters, little consideration has been given to the overriding synoptic meteorology. The 2022 CBE, occurring under La Niña conditions, saw ocean temperatures at Davies Reef increase 1.

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Purpose: Developmental language disorder (DLD) is a multifaceted disorder. Recently, interest has grown in prosodic aspects of DLD, but most investigations of possible prosodic causes focus on speech perception tasks. Here, we focus on speech production from a speech amplitude envelope (AE) perspective.

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Study Design: Analysis of data from two cohorts of Spinal Cord Injury Model Systems Database (SCIMS) participants, pre-pandemic (2017-2019,  = 6368) and during pandemic (2020,  = 1889).

Objectives: To examine differences in substance use during the pandemic compared to the years prior to the pandemic.

Setting: 19 SCIMS Centers.

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  • Mitochondrial and nuclear genes work together in mitochondria, but arthropods show varied evolution rates, particularly in haplodiploid species, which have faster-evolving mitochondrial genes.
  • The study used 76 arthropod genomes to find that haplodiploid species, especially among bees and ants, exhibit rapid evolutionary rates in mitochondrial and related nuclear genes, while unrelated nuclear genes evolve more slowly.
  • Results suggest that the small population size hypothesis for haplodiploidy is unlikely, with positive selection and compensatory changes explaining the rapid evolution in mitochondrial function-related genes in these species.
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Telling Our Stories.

J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry

January 2025

A common theme for many of the reviews published in the Media Forum is a book, movie, TV show, or other media source that allows someone with a mental health diagnosis to tell their story. This can be an opportunity to better understand the day-to-day life and what that can feel like. It is a way to see the pain, struggles, and joy that come with mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

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Objective: Dental caries is associated with immunologic response, yet its association with hematologic parameters and inflammatory markers is unclear. This study aimed to examine the relationship between some surrogate markers of inflammation and dental caries in the context of perinatal exposure to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Methods: This cross-sectional study involved 2 groups of children aged 4 to 11 y who were (1) HIV exposed but uninfected (HEU) and (2) HIV unexposed/uninfected (HUU) and recruited from HIV pediatric and child outpatient clinics, respectively, at a tertiary health facility in Nigeria.

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  • The study examines government efforts to promote physical activity (PA) both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting its impact on PA policies worldwide.
  • Surveys from 2023 included responses from 105 participants across 61 countries, revealing that while 82% had national PA policies, COVID-19 significantly disrupted their implementation, with less than 40% integrating PA into their pandemic responses.
  • The findings emphasize the need to prioritize PA in public health agendas post-pandemic, focusing on resource allocation, partnerships, and addressing participation inequities, which are vital for effective policy moving forward.
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People make sense of osteoarthritis (OA) by drawing on information, beliefs, and knowledge. This narrative review summarises diverse qualitative and quantitative research investigating beliefs and knowledge about OA and the impact these have on behaviour and outcomes. It synthesises evidence and highlights key actions clinicians can take to support people to make sense of OA in helpful ways.

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This paper describes a technology program aimed at developing technical skills and confidence, reducing social isolation and loneliness, and increasing healthcare self-management and self-efficacy among older adults. We conducted a mixed-methods study using surveys collected at baseline and 12 months from 90 older adults. Focus group data ( = 7) collected at 12 months were examined for convergence with key quantitative outcomes, emergent value-related themes, and evaluation of program structure and staff.

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There is a growing interest in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) aquaculture to extend the time fish are reared in freshwater (FW) recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS), producing larger FW salmon that can then be induced to undergo smoltification before transfer into marine net pens for grow-out and harvest. Smolts can be produced by photoperiod (PT) manipulation in RASs, but little is known about how delaying smoltification to larger body sizes affects susceptibility to elevated CO levels (hypercapnia), which can occur at high stocking densities in FW RAS or during transport from FW RAS rearing facilities to marine net pens. To address this, Atlantic salmon were reared from hatch to one of three different sizes (~230, ~580, or ~1300 g) in FW (3 ppt) under continuous light (24:0, light:dark).

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Introduction: Receptor activity-modifying proteins (RAMPs) are known to modulate the pharmacology and function of several G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), including the parathyroid hormone 1 receptor (PTH1R). However, the precise effects of different RAMPs on PTH1R signalling and trafficking remain poorly understood. This study investigated the impact of RAMP2 and RAMP3 on PTH1R function using a range of PTH and PTH-related protein (PTHrP)-derived ligands.

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Background: Secondary schools are important settings for promoting varied physical activity (PA) opportunities for adolescents to promote PA throughout life. However, research on the effect of secondary school-based interventions on future PA is limited. This study examined the potential impact of secondary school-based interventions on the determinants of future PA participation of Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) adolescents using simulated modelling.

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Witnessing community violence can predict negative mental health outcomes for youth such as post-traumatic stress symptoms and delinquent behavior. Such outcomes differ by gender. Variables that predict witnessing community violence in youth are less understood.

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Article Synopsis
  • A study was done to help rural women veterans manage chronic pain using a special telehealth program.
  • Out of 44 women who agreed to join, most were older and identified as White, with many reporting severe pain before the program.
  • After the program, 70% finished it, and 87% of those felt they improved, saying it helped them connect with others like them and feel better about their pain.
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This covers discovery and mechanistic aspects as well as initial applications of novel ionization processes for use in mass spectrometry that guided us in a series of subsequent discoveries, instrument developments, and commercialization. matrix-assisted ionization on an intermediate pressure matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization source the use of a laser, high voltages, or any other added energy was simply unbelievable, at first. Individually and as a whole, the various discoveries and inventions started to paint, , an exciting new picture and outlook in mass spectrometry from which key developments grew that were at the time unimaginable, and continue to surprise us in its simplistic preeminence.

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Laser-plasma interactions have been demonstrated to produce bright sources of energetic radiation including ions, electrons, photons across the electro-magnetic spectrum, and neutrons. Combinations of species can significantly increase information from non-destructive imaging. Here we demonstrate single-shot co-axial radiography with both x-ray and fast-neutron radiation from a laser-driven source using a pair of gated microchannel plate photomultiplier tube channels and a fast scintillator medium.

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A range of bacteria biofilm models exist for the testing of antibiotics. However, many of these are limited to a single experimental output, such as colony-forming units or metabolic activity. Furthermore, many biofilm models do not reflect the biological and physiochemical properties of the human host environment.

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Objectives: Evidence-based guidelines (EBGs) are widely recognized as valuable tools to aggregate and translate scientific knowledge into clinical care. High-quality EBGs can also serve as important components of dissemination and implementation efforts focused on educating emergency medical services (EMS) clinicians about current evidence-based prehospital clinical care practices and operations. We aimed to perform the third biennial systematic review of prehospital EBGs to identify and assess the quality of prehospital EBGs published since 2021.

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Article Synopsis
  • ModelHamiltonian is a free Python library that helps scientists create and work with different math models related to quantum chemistry, like the Heisenberg and Ising models.
  • It was designed to make testing new methods easier but is also useful for education and research.
  • Users can build models without coding thanks to a user-friendly interface, and there's even a feature to communicate with ChatGPT in plain language.
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Purpose: To inform better asthma management in China, this study aimed to comprehensively investigate clinical characteristics, treatment patterns, asthma control status, exacerbations, and humanistic burden among adult patients seeking hospital-based asthma care by analyzing data from Adelphi Asthma Disease Specific Program conducted in China.

Patients And Methods: All information was collected on survey date (August-December 2018) from medical records, physicians, or patients, without follow-up being conducted. Results are summarized descriptively for the overall population as well as subgroups defined by GINA 2018 treatment step.

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