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Past, present and future epidemiology of echinococcosis in China based on nationwide surveillance data 2004–2022
Get PDFObjectivesWe evaluated the epidemiological characteristics of echinococcosis, a global public health threat, in China to inform global control efforts.MethodsDescriptive, statistical, cluster, spatial, and trend analyses were used to evaluate the epidemiology at national, provincial, and county levels based on 2004–2022 nationwide surveillance data from China.ResultsBetween 2004 and 2022, China recorded 72,676 cystic echinococcosis (CE) cases, 11,465 alveolar echinococcosis (AE) cases, and 5703 others, with an average annual cases per million (ANpM) of 3.45. Females had a higher incidence (ANpM = 3.87) than males (3.05), with most cases (41.15%) in the 30–49 age group, mainly among herders (38.76%) and farmers (37.82%). Seven provinces (Xizang, Qinghai, Xinjiang, Ningxia, Gansu, Sichuan, and Inner Mongolia) accounted for 98.12% of cases, with the Tibetan Plateau showing the highest rates (ANpMs = 155.51 for CE, 46.95 for AE). Surgery and case fatality rates were 39.45% and 5.23% in key surveillance regions (KSRs). Prevalence among residents (0.20%), livestock (1.33%), rodents (1.30%), and dogs (1.26%) declined with increased control funding in KSRs. Between 2023 and 2030, there will be an estimated 20,096 new cases and 45,323 cases requiring treatment.ConclusionThe prevalence of echinococcosis has been alleviated in China, but significant control challenges remain, requiring sustained and targeted control measures
An Exploration of the Content and Language Used in Publicly Available National Health Service Patient Information Leaflets for People Considering Shoulder Replacement Surgery: A Qualitative Study
Get PDFObjectives: The decision to undergo total shoulder replacement surgery is a major one and should be a joint one between the patient and surgeon. It is important that patients are provided with accessible, meaningful and appropriate information to enable an informed decision. The aim of this study was to explore the content and language used within publicly available information leaflets produced by UK National Health Service (NHS) Trusts for people considering shoulder replacement surgery and to consider how this may influence surgical decision making. Design: An online search of publicly available NHS shoulder replacement patient information leaflets (PIL) was undertaken. The text within the PIL was analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results: Thirty‐eight PIL were identified. The volume of information and content varied greatly. All PIL discussed the clinical problem, mainly within a biomedical framework and from a clinician's perspective in which normal shoulder anatomy was contrasted with shoulder pathology. Only a minority of the PIL discussed non‐surgical treatments and of those that did, such approaches were predominantly portrayed as a temporary management option only, whilst surgery was frequently portrayed as the optimum treatment. Conclusion: There is variation in the content of NHS shoulder replacement PIL. The content and language used may not adequately support people in making an informed decision about whether surgery is the right treatment option for them. We need to better understand the information needs of people considering shoulder replacement surgery, and provide information that is accessible, culturally sensitive, and capable of facilitating shared decision making
A hybrid fused-KNN based intelligent model to access melanoma disease risk using indoor positioning system
Get PDFThe Indoor Positioning System (IPS) based technology involves the positioning system using sensors and actuators, where the Global Positioning System (GPS) lacks. The IPS system can be used in buildings, malls, parking lots and several other application domains. This system can also be useful in the healthcare centre as an assisting medium for medical professionals in the disease of the diagnosis task. This research work includes the development and implementation of an intelligent and automated IPS based model for melanoma disease detection using image sets. A new classification approach called Fused K-nearest neighbor (KNN) is applied in this study. The IPS based Fused-KNN is a fusion of three distinct folds in KNN (3-NN, 5-NN and 7-NN) where the model is developed using input samples from various sensory units while involving image optimization processes such as the image similarity index, image overlapping and image sampling which helps in refining raw melanoma images thereby extracting a combined image from the sensors. The IPS based Fused-KNN model used in the study obtained an accuracy of 97.8%, which is considerably more than the existing classifiers. The error rate is also least with this new model which is introduced. RMSE (Root Mean Square Error) and MAE (Mean Absolute Error) value generated with the proposed IPS base Fused-KNN the model for melanoma detection was as low as 0.2476 and 0.542 respectively. An average mean value computed for accuracy, precision, recall and f-score were found to be 94.45%, 95.2%, 94.4% and 94.9% respectively when validated with 12 different cancer-based datasets. Hence the presented IPS based model can prove to be an efficient and intelligent predictive model for melanoma disease diagnosis, but also other cancer-based diseases in a faster and more reliable manner than existing models
Feather mites selectively feed on specific bacteria and fungi on feathers with potential benefits to hosts
No full textInvited Research Highlight: Matthews, A. E., Trevelline, B. K., Wijeratne, A. J., & Boves, T. J. (2024). Picky eaters: Selective microbial diet of avian ectosymbionts. Journal of Animal Ecology. Trophic interactions such as herbivory and predation are crucial regulators of ecological communities, yet few examples exist for these processes within host‐associated microbiomes. In a recent study, Matthews et al. (2024) looked for evidence of selective microbial predation of bacteria and fungi by microscopic mites on the feathers of wild Prothonotary warblers (Protonotaria citrea). The authors quantified the bacterial and fungal diet of commensal feather mites and compared this with the composition of microbial communities living directly on the feather. They found that, despite a large variety of microbes to choose from, mites strongly preferred to eat a small number of bacterial and fungal genera. Some of these selectively enriched taxa are known keratin‐degraders, suggesting that mites may protect feathers by selectively consuming harmful microbes. This study presents a rare example of a trophic interaction within the microscopic ecosystem of the feather that may act as an important force shaping microbial communities in ways that benefit the host, providing an overlooked mechanism by which symbioses between birds and mites could evolve
Nursing and the doctorate, an important partnership: a discussion paper
No full textAim This discussion paper aims to raise awareness of doctoral studies for nurses, highlighting current debates around different routes available, in the UK and across the international community, for further critique and discussion. Background Nurses are being encouraged to undertake doctoral level study and research. Yet, the profession remains disproportionately under-represented at the doctoral academic level. Recent drivers and opportunities addressing the lack of research leadership and involvement of nurses are welcomed. It is vital for improved patient outcomes, evidence-based practice and the education of the nursing workforce that a proportion of nurses are being educated to doctoral level. Design This is a discussion paper drawing on both UK and international literature to support a critical discussion. Key Points The importance, requirements and challenges of obtaining a doctorate as a nurse are discussed in relation to relevant policy and literature, highlighting debates in the field and raising awareness of the different routes available. Comparisons with doctoral provision across the international community are made providing further awareness and allowing ongoing critique. In the UK the various routes provide equivalence in terms of academic rigor, quality and level of achievement and attainment. Conclusion There is an increasing need and aspiration, for nurses to study at doctoral level. Each pathway for a postgraduate doctorate award offers highly respected academic qualifications and recognition and is governed by strict quality assurance standards despite differences and variants in operationalisation
EPAD: Ethereum phishing scam detection via graph contrastive learning
No full textEthereum has evolved into a widely-used public blockchain platform, enabling developers to build and deploy smart contracts and decentralized applications. However, a significant issue is that users can conduct trades directly through their Ethereum addresses, which allows phishing scammers can easily disguise themselves as legitimate accounts to defraud large amounts of money. Current phishing scam detection methods largely focus on enhancing detection accuracy by continuously extracting account features. A further challenge is data class imbalance. Since the publicly available URLs for labeling phishing scam data are no longer updated, it causes an incomplete understanding of the data by supervised learning methods. To address these challenges, we propose EPAD, a self-supervised phishing scam detection method based on graph contrastive learning, which effectively handles the issue of unavailable labeled data. EPAD can learn account features by constructing positive and negative samples without labeling. To further enhance the inconspicuous feature representation in contrastive learning, our approach leverages ”node versus local subgraph” as contrastive instances and learns feature information of neighboring nodes through the contrastive training between nodes and their subgraphs. Our extensive experiments on two real-world datasets demonstrate that EPAD can effectively detect phishing scams without labeled training data, achieving powerful performance with 97 % precision and 95 % F1 score, surpassing baseline methods
Intelligence, Security and the State: Reviewing the British Intelligence Community
No full textThis book uncovers the evolution of Britain's intelligence community from its modern-day origins during the Edwardian spy scares, through two world wars and the Cold War and up to the end of the twentieth century.Exploring a century of British intelligence, the book sheds light on the secret reviews of the agencies, looking at how they operated, their wider relationship with Whitehall departments and other factors such as recruitment, funding and internal Whitehall oversight
Protocol for the economic evaluation of individualised (early) patient-directed rehabilitation versus standard rehabilitation after surgical repair of the rotator cuff of the shoulder (RaCeR 2)
Get PDFIntroduction: RaCeR 2 is a pragmatic multicentre, open-label, randomised controlled trial, with full economic evaluation. The primary aim is to assess whether individualised (early) patient-directed rehabilitation (EPDR) results in less shoulder pain and disability at 12 weeks postrandomisation following surgical repair of full-thickness tears of the rotator cuff of the shoulder compared with the current standard (delayed) rehabilitation. This paper provides the protocol for the RaCeR 2 health economic evaluation. Methods and analysis: The health economic analysis of RaCeR 2 is made up of three phases: (1) development of an initial state-transition model structure, (2) within-trial cost consequence analysis and (3) long-term model-based cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) from the National Health Service and Personal Social Service perspective in England. Descriptive statistics (eg, mean, standard deviation, 95% confidence intervals and minimum and maximum values) will be reported for within-trial resource use, costs and health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Health state-specific costs and HRQoL will be estimated using regression model approaches and used to inform a state-transition simulation model designed to quantify the long-term costs and quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) experienced by patients over the model’s time horizon. Where appropriate, final CEA model results will be reported as cost per QALY gained for individualised EPDR versus standard (delayed) rehabilitation. Model assumptions and overall parameter uncertainty will be tested using probabilistic sensitivity analysis and scenario analyses. All regression analyses will be adjusted for baseline participant demographic and symptomatic characteristics. Ethics and dissemination: A favourable ethical review was granted by London-Stanmore Research Ethics Committee (23/LO/0195) on 13 April 2023. Findings will be disseminated in peer-reviewed journals, at scientific conferences, and via the study website. Trial registration number: ISRCTN1149918
Performance in Multi-Joint Force-Plate Assessments in Male and Female CrossFit® Athletes
Get PDFBackground: CrossFit® aims to be equitable between both males and female athletes, supporting equal representation and equal prize money at international events. However, to date, limited information is known on CrossFit® athletes’ performance in the countermovement jump (CMJ), countermovement rebound jump (CMR-J), and isometric mid-thigh pull (IMTP) when assessed using force plates, and if there are any differences between sexes. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to observe whether any sex-based differences and relationships exist between performance within these assessments. Methods: A total of CrossFit athletes (43 male = 32.8 ± 9.0 years; height 1.78 ± 0.06 m; mass = 92.4 ± 10.6 kg; and 31 female = 31.0 ± 7.6 years, height = 1.64 ± 0.05 m; mass = 68.8 ± 6.0 kg) completed three trials of CMJ, CMR-J and IMTP using portable dual-system force-plate sampling at 1000 Hz. Results: Moderate–large relationships were observed between CMJ, CMR-J and IMTP outcome measures (r = 0.396–0.809, p < 0.001). Males demonstrated small to moderately greater performance outcomes than females for CMJ height (males = 0.35 ± 0.08 m; females 0.30 ± 0.06 m, d = 0.73), CMR-J height (males = 0.32 ± 0.08 m; females = 0.30 ± 0.06 m, d = 0.39) and IMTP peak net force (males = 30.62 ± 10.01 N·kg−1; females = 27.49 ± 6.44 N·kg−1, d = 0.29). Conclusions: Maximal relative strength in CrossFit® athletes should be seen as imperative in both male and female athletes due to the meaningful relationship in ballistic and plyometric ability. Moreover, previous relationships with CrossFit® performance and the injury risk reduction benefits of improving strength provide further support. The descriptive data presented could be used by CrossFit® coaches to assess and compare the current performance of their own athletes in a battery of tests examining CMJ, CMR-J and IMTP, while also facilitating decisions upon prescription within training and competition
Computation of Manganese Ferrite/Nickel Ferrite Ethylene glycol hybrid ferromagnetic nanofluid stretching flow with radiative flux: Applications in solar nano-coatings
Get PDFRenewable energy has expanded significantly in the 21st century due to increasing efficiency and sustainability and reducing harmful emissions. Among various renewable sources, solar energy is the most abundant. Engineers have developed numerous solar power collector systems, focusing on optimizing coatings to enhance absorption and durability. Recently, magnetic nano-coatings with smart functional properties using different nanoparticles (hybrid designs) have been a key trend. This study aims to construct a mathematical model for the stretching coating flow of Manganese Ferrite (í µí±í µí±í µí°¹í µí±₂í µí±₄)-Nickel Ferrite (NiFe₂O₄)-ethylene glycol ferromagnetic nanofluids. The model incorporates thermal radiation flux, velocity slip condition, magnetic dipole, heat source, and viscous dissipation. Using similarity variables, the non-linear boundary layer conservation equations for momentum, energy, and mass are transformed into a dimensionless boundary value problem and solved computationally with the Keller box implicit method. Validation with prior findings is provided. Key characteristics such as pressure distribution, velocity, temperature, Nusselt number, and skin friction are graphically visualized for different parameters. Results show that skin friction increases linearly with higher nanoparticle volume percentages (1 for Manganese Ferrite and 2 for Nickel Ferrite). An increase in the ferro-hydrodynamics interaction parameter decreases pressure profile 1 while increasing 2. Higher Manganese Ferrite nanoparticle volume fraction (1) increases pressure profile 1 but slightly decreases 2. Greater Nickel nanoparticle volume fraction (2) and higher values significantly enhance temperature. The study concludes that careful selection of ferromagnetic, slip, and nanoparticle volume fractions can optimize heat transfer rates, benefiting solar nano-coating design
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