'A boy actually said I looked like a fire victim': Exploring the psychosocial impacts of psoriasis, eczema and acne amongst young women in the UK through thematic analysis.

Our knowledge of the psychosocial implications of skin conditions continues to broaden, as research identifies multiple psychological morbidities relating to psoriasis, eczema and acne. This includes findings of poor body image, as a result of the change in physical appearance to the skin. However, there is limited qualitative research in the UK that explores how young women with skin conditions experience unique psychosocial impacts, including body image issues.

The social experience of uncertainty: a qualitative analysis of emergency department care for suspected pneumonia for the design of decision support.

Background: This study sought to understand the process of clinical decision-making for suspected pneumonia by emergency departments (ED) providers in Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Centers. The long-term goal of this work is to create clinical decision support tools to reduce unwarranted variation in diagnosis and treatment of suspected pneumonia.

Methods: Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 16 ED clinicians from 9 VA facilities demonstrating variation in antibiotic and hospitalization decisions.

Functional Social Support Subtypes Are Associated With Executive Function in Middle-Aged and Older Adults: Findings From the Baseline Comprehensive Cohort of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging.

Objectives: We investigated whether functional social support-the degree to which one perceives support is available when needed-is associated with executive function, a key cognitive domain for everyday functioning and adaptation to change.

Methods: Analyses ( = 23,491) utilized cross-sectional data from the Comprehensive cohort of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA), a population-based study of community-dwelling adults aged 45-85 years. Executive function was assessed by neurocognitive battery.

A Linguistic Analysis Examining the Impact of COVID-19 on Pneumonia Diagnosis and Disease Models.

Written clinical language embodies and reflects the clinician's mental models of disease. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, pneumonia was shifting away from concern for healthcare-associated pneumonia and toward recognition of heterogeneity of pathogens and host response. How these models are reflected in clinical language or whether they were impacted by the pandemic has not been studied.

Comparability and Stability of Serum Creatinine Concentration in Capillary and Venous Blood.

The use of self-collected capillary blood has several advantages over phlebotomy, as such finger-prick testing is rapidly becoming accepted as a routine sample type for adults. However, there is limited evidence that venous and capillary serum is comparable for many analytes. This study aimed to determine whether capillary samples could offer an alternative sampling method to venous samples for the assessment of serum creatinine using the enzymatic method and if this analyte was stable in unspun capillary blood for 3 days.

Few-Shot Learning Enables Population-Scale Analysis of Leaf Traits in .

Plant phenotyping is typically a time-consuming and expensive endeavor, requiring large groups of researchers to meticulously measure biologically relevant plant traits, and is the main bottleneck in understanding plant adaptation and the genetic architecture underlying complex traits at population scale. In this work, we address these challenges by leveraging few-shot learning with convolutional neural networks to segment the leaf body and visible venation of 2,906 leaf images obtained in the field. In contrast to previous methods, our approach (a) does not require experimental or image preprocessing, (b) uses the raw RGB images at full resolution, and (c) requires very few samples for training (e.

Estimation of Parameter Distributions for Reaction-Diffusion Equations with Competition using Aggregate Spatiotemporal Data.

Reaction-diffusion equations have been used to model a wide range of biological phenomenon related to population spread and proliferation from ecology to cancer. It is commonly assumed that individuals in a population have homogeneous diffusion and growth rates; however, this assumption can be inaccurate when the population is intrinsically divided into many distinct subpopulations that compete with each other. In previous work, the task of inferring the degree of phenotypic heterogeneity between subpopulations from total population density has been performed within a framework that combines parameter distribution estimation with reaction-diffusion models.

Functional social support and cognitive function in middle- and older-aged adults: a systematic review of cross-sectional and cohort studies.

Background: Intact cognitive function is crucial for healthy aging. Functional social support is thought to protect against cognitive decline. We conducted a systematic review to investigate the association between functional social support and cognitive function in middle- and older-aged adults.

Experimental and theoretical study of the low-temperature kinetics of the reaction of CN with CHO and implications for interstellar environments.

Rate coefficients for the reaction of CN with CHO were measured for the first time below room temperature in the range 32-103 K using a pulsed Laval nozzle apparatus together with the Pulsed Laser Photolysis-Laser-Induced Fluorescence technique. The rate coefficients exhibited a strong negative temperature dependence, reaching (4.62 ± 0.

Coping Behaviors and Health Status during the COVID-19 Pandemic among Caregivers of Assisted Living Residents in Western Canada.

Objectives: To examine the prevalence of coping behaviors during the first 2 waves of the COVID-19 pandemic among caregivers of assisted living residents and variation in these behaviors by caregiver gender and mental health.

Design: Cross-sectional and longitudinal survey.

Setting And Participants: Family/friend caregivers of assisted living residents in Alberta and British Columbia.

Modeling and Global Sensitivity Analysis of Strategies to Mitigate Covid-19 Transmission on a Structured College Campus.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many higher educational institutions moved their courses on-line in hopes of slowing disease spread. The advent of multiple highly-effective vaccines offers the promise of a return to "normal" in-person operations, but it is not clear if-or for how long-campuses should employ non-pharmaceutical interventions such as requiring masks or capping the size of in-person courses. In this study, we develop and fine-tune a model of COVID-19 spread to UC Merced's student and faculty population.

Hospital admission decisions for older Veterans with community-onset pneumonia: An analysis of 118 U.S. Veterans Affairs Medical Centers.

Objectives: Age is important for prognosis in community-onset pneumonia, but how it influences admission decisions in the emergency department (ED) is not well characterized. Using clinical data from the electronic health record in a national cohort, we examined pneumonia hospitalization patterns, variation, and relationships with mortality among older versus younger Veterans.

Methods: In a retrospective cohort of patients ≥ 18 years presenting to EDs with a diagnosis of pneumonia at 118 VA Medical Centers January 1, 2006, to December 31, 2016, we compared observed, predicted, and residual hospitalization risk for Veterans < 70, 70-79, and ≥ 80 years of age using generalized estimating equations and machine learning models with 71 patient factors.

Development and evaluation of an interoperable natural language processing system for identifying pneumonia across clinical settings of care and institutions.

Objective: To evaluate the feasibility, accuracy, and interoperability of a natural language processing (NLP) system that extracts diagnostic assertions of pneumonia in different clinical notes and institutions.

Materials And Methods: A rule-based NLP system was designed to identify assertions of pneumonia in 3 types of clinical notes from electronic health records (EHRs): emergency department notes, radiology reports, and discharge summaries. The lexicon and classification logic were tailored for each note type.

Attitudes of women with gestational diabetes toward diet and exercise: a qualitative study.

Objective: Gestational diabetes (GDM) refers to glucose intolerance of varying severity first occurring in pregnancy. Following a diagnosis of GDM, exercise and dietary modification has a positive effect on improving glycemic control. Lifestyle changes affected in pregnancies affected by GDM have beneficial effects on long-term health if continued following birth.

Traveling wave speed and profile of a "go or grow" glioblastoma multiforme model.

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is a fast-growing and deadly brain tumor due to its ability to aggressively invade the nearby brain tissue. A host of mathematical models in the form of reaction-diffusion equations have been formulated and studied in order to assist clinical assessment of GBM growth and its treatment prediction. To better understand the speed of GBM growth and form, we propose a two population reaction-diffusion GBM model based on the 'go or grow' hypothesis.

Urban-rural variation in the association between social support availability and cognitive function in middle-aged and older adults: Results from the baseline Tracking Cohort of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging.

The purpose of this study was to investigate if and how the associations between social support availability (SSA) and cognitive function varied across urban, rural, and geographical regions in Canada. Data from a population-level sample of community-dwelling adults aged 45-85 years were obtained from the baseline Tracking Cohort of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging. The associations between SSA and two domains of cognitive function, memory and executive function, were analyzed using multilevel regression models.

Trends in Illness Severity, Hospitalization, and Mortality for Community-Onset Pneumonia at 118 US Veterans Affairs Medical Centers.

Background: Deaths from pneumonia were decreasing globally prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is unclear whether this was due to changes in patient populations, illness severity, diagnosis, hospitalization thresholds, or treatment. Using clinical data from the electronic health record among a national cohort of patients initially diagnosed with pneumonia, we examined temporal trends in severity of illness, hospitalization, and short- and long-term deaths.

Design: Retrospective cohort PARTICIPANTS: All patients >18 years presenting to emergency departments (EDs) at 118 VA Medical Centers between 1/1/2006 and 12/31/2016 with an initial clinical diagnosis of pneumonia and confirmed by chest imaging report.

Computerized Mortality Prediction for Community-acquired Pneumonia at 117 Veterans Affairs Medical Centers.

Computerized severity assessment for community-acquired pneumonia could improve consistency and reduce clinician burden. To develop and compare 30-day mortality-prediction models using electronic health record data, including a computerized score with all variables from the original Pneumonia Severity Index (PSI) except confusion and pleural effusion ("ePSI score") versus models with additional variables. Among adults with community-acquired pneumonia presenting to emergency departments at 117 Veterans Affairs Medical Centers between January 1, 2006, and December 31, 2016, we compared an ePSI score with 10 novel models employing logistic regression, spline, and machine learning methods using PSI variables, age, sex and 26 physiologic variables as well as all 69 PSI variables.

A tutorial review of mathematical techniques for quantifying tumor heterogeneity.

Intra-tumor and inter-patient heterogeneity are two challenges in developing mathematical models for precision medicine diagnostics. Here we review several techniques that can be used to aid the mathematical modeller in inferring and quantifying both sources of heterogeneity from patient data. These techniques include virtual populations, nonlinear mixed effects modeling, non-parametric estimation, Bayesian techniques, and machine learning.

Learning Equations from Biological Data with Limited Time Samples.

Equation learning methods present a promising tool to aid scientists in the modeling process for biological data. Previous equation learning studies have demonstrated that these methods can infer models from rich datasets; however, the performance of these methods in the presence of common challenges from biological data has not been thoroughly explored. We present an equation learning methodology comprised of data denoising, equation learning, model selection and post-processing steps that infers a dynamical systems model from noisy spatiotemporal data.

Association between functional social support and cognitive function in middle-aged and older adults: a protocol for a systematic review.

Introduction: Maintenance of cognitive function into old age is important for ageing populations. Researchers seek to identify modifiable risk and protective factors for cognitive function. One such modifiable factor is functional social support, that is, one's perception of whether their social network can provide resources such as material help, companionship, information and emotional contact, if needed.