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Evidence-informed recommendations on managing breast screening atypia : perspectives from an expert panel consensus meeting reviewing results from the sloane atypia project
Get PDFEvidence-based clinical guidelines are essential to maximise patient benefit and to reduce clinical uncertainty and inconsistency in clinical practice. Gaps in the evidence base can be addressed by data acquired in routine practice. At present, there is no international consensus on management of women diagnosed with atypical lesions in breast screening programmes. Here we describe how routine NHS breast screening data collected by the Sloane atypia project was used to inform a management pathway that maximises early detection of cancer and minimises over investigation of lesions with uncertain malignant potential. A half-day consensus meeting with 11 clinical experts, 1 representative from Independent Cancer Patients’ Voice, 6 representatives from NHS England (NHSE) including from Commissioning, and 2 researchers was held to facilitate discussions of findings from an analysis of the Sloane atypia project. Key considerations of the expert group in terms of the management of women with screen detected atypia were: a) frequency and purpose of follow-up; b) communication to patients; c) generalisability of study results; d) workforce challenges. The group concurred that the new evidence does not support annual surveillance mammography for women with atypia, irrespective of type of lesion, or woman’s age. Continued data collection is paramount to monitor and audit the change in recommendations
Exploring the responses of non-churchgoers to a cathedral pre-Christmas son et lumiere
No full textTwo conceptual strands of research within the field of cathedral studies have theorised the capacity of Anglican cathedrals to engage more successfully than parish churches with the wider non-churchgoing community. One strand has explored mobilising cathedral metaphors, and the other strand has explored the notion of implicit religion. Both strands illuminate the power of events and installations to soften the boundaries between common ground and sacred space. Drawing on a quantitative survey among 978 people who attended the pre-Christmas son et lumiere at Liverpool Cathedral during December 2022, the present study analyses the qualitative responses of 123 participants who never attend church services. Three categories of themes emerged from these data, concerning the Cathedral itself, the installation, and discordant experience
The effectiveness of interventions for improving chronic pain symptoms among people with mental illness : a systematic review
Get PDFChronic pain (CP) and mental illness (MI) are leading causes of years lived with disability and commonly co-occur. However, it remains unclear if available interventions are effective in improving pain outcomes in patients with co-existing CP and MI. This systematic review synthesised evidence for the effectiveness of interventions to improve pain outcomes for people with comorbid CP and clinically diagnosed MI. Ten electronic databases were searched from inception until May 2023. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) were included if they evaluated interventions for CP-related outcomes among people with comorbid CP and clinically diagnosed MI. Pain-related and mental health outcomes were reported as primary and secondary outcomes, respectively. 26 RCTs (2,311 participants) were included. Four trials evaluated the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioural therapy, 6 mindfulness-based interventions, 1 interpersonal psychotherapy, 5 body-based interventions, 5 multi-component interventions, and 5 examined pharmacological-based interventions. Overall, there was considerable heterogeneity in sample characteristics and interventions, and included studies were generally of poor quality with insufficient trial details being reported. Despite the inconsistency in results, preliminary evidence suggests interventions demonstrating a positive effect on CP may include cognitive-behavioural therapy for patients with depression (with a small to medium effect size) and multi-component intervention for people with substance use disorders (with a small effect size). Despite the high occurrence/burden of CP and MI, there is a relative paucity of RCTs investigating interventions and none in people with severe MI. More rigorously designed RCTs are needed to further support our findings
Sandwiched planet formation : restricting the mass of a middle planet
Get PDFWe conduct gas and dust hydrodynamical simulations of protoplanetary discs with one and two embedded planets to determine the impact that a second planet located further out in the disc has on the potential for subsequent planet formation in the region locally exterior to the inner planet. We show how the presence of a second planet has a strong influence on the collection of solid material near the inner planet, particularly when the outer planet is massive enough to generate a maximum in the disc’s pressure profile. This effect in general acts to reduce the amount of material that can collect in a pressure bump generated by the inner planet. When viewing the inner pressure bump as a location for potential subsequent planet formation of a third planet, we therefore expect that the mass of such a planet will be smaller than it would be in the case without the outer planet, resulting in a small planet being sandwiched between its neighbours – this is in contrast to the expected trend of increasing planet mass with radial distance from the host star. We show that several planetary systems have been observed that do not show this trend but instead have a smaller planet sandwiched in between two more massive planets. We present the idea that such an architecture could be the result of the subsequent formation of a middle planet after its two neighbours formed at some earlier stage
Stability of industrial gallium-doped Czochralski silicon PERC cells and wafers
Get PDFThe carrier lifetime stability of gallium-doped silicon wafers and performance stability of industrial PERC solar cells produced from sister wafers were investigated under four different illumination conditions and temperatures. The seven investigated materials feature a resistivity variation of 0.4–1.0 Ωcm and lifetime samples were processed to create high hydrogen content (with PECVD SiNx) or low hydrogen content (with ALD Al2O3 or HfO2). Our results confirm that the material itself is prone to light and elevated temperature induced degradation (LeTID), however experiments on PERC cells produced utilising the same silicon material indicate that the production process can successfully suppress LeTID. In contrast to earlier studies, we observe only small levels of degradation at the cell level, with some showing an improvement in cell parameters under LeTID testing conditions. Our results indicate that LeTID is not necessarily a major issue for the performance of modern passivated emitter and rear cells made from gallium-doped silicon substrates
Nibbling at long cycles : dynamic (and static) edge coloring in optimal time
Get PDFWe consider the problem of maintaining a (1 + ɛ)∆-edge coloring in a dynamic graph G with n nodes and maximum degree at most Δ. The state-of-the-art update time is Oɛ(polylog(n)), by Duan, He and Zhang [SODA’19] and by Christiansen [STOC’23], and more precisely O(log7 n/ɛ2), where Δ = Ω(log2 n/ɛ2).
The following natural question arises: What is the best possible update time of an algorithm for this task? More specifically, can we bring it all the way down to some constant (for constant ɛ)? This question coincides with the static time barrier for the problem: Even for (2Δ — 1)-coloring, there is only a naive O(m log Δ)-time algorithm.
We answer this fundamental question in the affirmative, by presenting a dynamic (1 + ɛ)Δ-edge coloring algorithm with O(log4(1/ɛ)/ɛ9) update time, provided Δ = Ωɛ (polylog(n)). As a corollary, we also get the first linear time (for constant ɛ) static algorithm for (1 + ɛ)Δ-edge coloring; in particular, we achieve a running time of O(m log(1/ɛ)/ɛ2).
We obtain our results by carefully combining a variant of the Nibble algorithm from Bhattacharya, Grandoni and Wajc [SODA’21] with the subsampling technique of Kulkarni, Liu, Sah, Sawhney and Tarnawski [STOC’22]
Unveiling the white dwarf in J191213.72−441045.1 through ultraviolet observations
Get PDFJ191213.72−441045.1 is a binary system composed of a white dwarf and an M-dwarf in a 4.03-hour orbit. It shows emission in radio, optical, and X-ray, all modulated at the white dwarf spin period of 5.3 min, as well as various orbital sideband frequencies. Like in the prototype of the class of radio-pulsing white dwarfs, AR Scorpii, the observed pulsed emission seems to be driven by the binary interaction. In this work, we present an analysis of far-ultraviolet spectra obtained with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph at the Hubble Space Telescope, in which we directly detect the white dwarf in J191213.72−441045.1. We find that the white dwarf has a temperature of Teff = 11485 ± 90 K and mass of 0.59 ± 0.05 M⊙. We place a tentative upper limit on the magnetic field of ≈50 MG. If the white dwarf is in thermal equilibrium, its physical parameters would imply that crystallisation has not started in the core of the white dwarf. Alternatively, the effective temperature could have been affected by compressional heating, indicating a past phase of accretion. The relatively low upper limit to the magnetic field and potential lack of crystallisation that could generate a strong field pose challenges to pulsar-like models for the system and give preference to propeller models with a low magnetic field. We also develop a geometric model of the binary interaction which explains many salient features of the system
MultiFeNet : multi‐scale feature scaling in deep neural network for the brain tumour classification in MRI images
No full textOne of the most fatal and prevalent diseases of the central nervous system is a brain tumour. Different subgrades exist for each type of brain tumour because of the broad variety of brain tumours and tumour pathologies. Manual diagnosis may be error-prone and time-consuming, both of which are becoming more challenging as the medical community's workload grows. There is a need for automatic diagnosis. In this study, we have proposed a deep learning model (MultiFeNet) based on a convolutional neural network for the classification of brain tumours. MultiFeNet uses multi-scale feature scaling for feature extraction in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images. Multi-scaling helps to learn the better feature representation of the MRI image for enhanced model performance. To evaluate the proposed model, 3064 MRI scans of three distinct categories of brain tumours (meningiomas, gliomas and pituitary tumours) were used. The MultiFeNet obtained 96.4% sensitivity, 96.4% F1-score, 96.4% precision and 96.4% accuracy on the benchmark Figshare dataset. In addition, an ablation study is conducted with the objective of evaluating the role of multi-scaling in model performance
Data of physical and electrochemical characteristics of calendered NMC622 electrodes and lithium-ion cells at pilot-plant battery manufacturing
Get PDFThe data reported here was prepared to study the effects of calendering process on NMC622 cathodes using a 3-3-2 full factorial design of experiments. The data set consists of 18 unique combinations of calender roll temperature (85 °C, 120 °C, or 145 °C), electrode porosity (30%, 35%, or 40%), and electrode mass loading (120 g/m² or 180 g/m²). The reported physical characteristics of the electrodes include thickness, coating weight, maximum tensile strength, and density. The electrochemical performances of the electrodes were obtained by testing coin cells. In this context, 54 half-cells were produced, 3 per each calendering experiment to ensure repeatability and reliability of the results. The responses of interest included, charge energy capacity at C/2, C/5, discharge energy capacity at C/20, C/5, C/2, C, 2C, 5C, 10C, gravimetric capacity (charge at C/2, C/5, discharge at C/20, C/5, C/2, C, 2C, 5C, 10C), volumetric capacity (charge at C/2, C/5, discharge at C/20, C/5, C/2, C, 2C, 5C, 10C), rate performance (5C:0.2C), area specific impedance (at 10% to 90% state of charge (SoC) in 10 breakpoints), long-term cycling capacity (charge at C/5 for 50 cycles, discharge at C/2 for 50 cycles), long-term cycling degradation (at C/2 during 50 cycles of charge and discharge), and cycling columbic efficiency (50 cycles of C/2 charge and discharge). The details of the experimental design that has led to this data as well as comprehensive statistical analysis, and machine learning-based models can be found in the recently published manuscripts by Hidalgo et al. and Faraji-Niri et al. [1,2]
The long-term effects of war exposure on psychological health : an experimental study with Turkish conscript veterans
Get PDFThe study of the effects of war exposure on the psychological health of combatants has so far been constrained by possible selection biases which limits the establishment of causality, the clear identification of dynamics, and the generalizability of findings. In this study, we make use of a population-level natural experiment enabled by the strict military conscription system in Turkey which uses a draft lottery to randomly allocate conscripts to bases across the country, including those south-eastern areas experiencing a long running civil conflict. We build on this setting with a representative field survey of 5024 adult males. Our results indicate that those exposed to high intensity armed conflict environments during their service are more likely to experience depressive symptoms even long after their discharge. Further detailing conflict exposure, we find war traumas to be the primary drivers of the effects we observe