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The influence of hearing loss and hearing aid use on experienced emotion in everyday listening situations
Get PDFObjectiveTo address the extent to which the emotional experience of everyday listening situations is impacted by hearing loss and hearing aid use.DesignAn exploratory prospective study with an observation arm and an intervention arm utilising smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment over 10 days. A hearing loss group was asked to wear and not wear their hearing aids on alternate days. A normal hearing group completed the surveys without hearing aids.SettingRemote study gathering data during daily life.ParticipantsTwenty-six experienced hearing aid users with hearing loss and twenty participants with normal hearing thresholds.InterventionRotating hearing aid use on alternate days in the hearing loss group.Main measuresParticipants reported on experienced emotions (valence, arousal and discrete emotion) in listening activities at random points throughout the day, as well as at baseline for related socioemotional variables.ResultsParticipants with hearing loss reported similar valence and arousal to the normal hearing group when wearing their hearing aids, but significantly lower when not wearing hearing aids. Wearing (versus not wearing) hearing aids showed a significant beneficial effect on valence and arousal. Discrete emotions were more negative when not wearing hearing aids. End-of-day reports of valence were also more negative. There was no significant effect of listening situation type.ConclusionsUnaided hearing loss was associated with a negative impact on emotions in listening situations. Hearing aids can restore the emotions experienced in everyday listening situations. The results highlight the importance of socioemotional well-being as a factor and outcome in audiological rehabilitation
Safety, Feasibility, and Effectiveness of Ketogenic Diet in Pediatric Patients With Brain Tumors: A Systematic Review
Get PDFBackground: Evidence suggests the positive effects of ketogenic diet (KD) on cancers by limiting glucose availability to cancer cells. This systematic review aimed to explore the safety, feasibility, and effectiveness of KD in children with brain tumors including diet side effects, patient tolerance and compliance, tumor response, quality of life, and nutritional status. Methods: Six databases were searched for relevant publications between 1995 and 2022; non-English language publications were excluded to avoid misinterpretation. The Joanna Briggs Institute assessment scale for observational studies was used to measure study methodology quality and evaluate the extent to which the bias possibility in study design, conduct, and analysis has been stated. The study was registered in PROSPERO under registration number (CRD42021281620). Results: Ultimately, eight eligible publications involving a total of 11 children with brain tumors following KD were included. Nine patients followed classic KD with medium-chain triglyceride oil, whereas others followed a modified Atkin or low-carbohydrate diet. KD was well-tolerated, having nonsevere side effects. Six patients showed positive tumor response, five improved neurological skills, and four reported growth improvement. Six patients reported a median overall survival of 17.6 months. Lastly, statistical analyses could not be performed; hence, a meta-analysis was not possible. Conclusion: KD may be a safe and feasible dietary intervention for children with brain tumors. However, the effects on tumors remain unclear and require further study. The study limitation included the lack of high-quality and appropriately controlled trials with large samples. Moreover, heterogeneity was observed, and quality-of-life assessments were self-reported, which might have resulted in bias or inaccuracy
The Branched GDGT Isomer Ratio Refines Lacustrine Paleotemperature Estimates
Get PDFBranched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (brGDGTs) are membrane-spanning lipids synthesized by bacteria in numerous substrates. The degree of methylation of the five methyl brGDGTs in both soils and lake sediments, described by the MBT′5Me index, is empirically related to surface atmospheric temperature. This relationship in lakes is generally assumed to reflect lake surface temperatures captured by brGDGT production in the water column and exported to lake sediments, and the MBT′5Me index has been applied to brGDGTs in lake sediment successions to reconstruct changes in temperature through time. We analyzed the relationship between MBT′5Me and the isomerization of brGDGTs (IR6Me) in globally distributed surficial lake sediments and demonstrated that the relationship, and calibrations, of MBT′5Me and temperature in middle and high latitude lakes are sensitive to incompletely understood factors related to IR6Me. IR6Me does not appear to track a non-thermal influence of brGDGT methylation in tropical lakes, but this could change as the data set is expanded. We address ongoing challenges in the application of the MBT′5Me paleothermometer in middle and high latitude lakes with new MBT′5Me-temperature calibrations based on grouping lakes by IR6Me. We demonstrate how IR6Me can distinguish samples with a significant non-thermal influence on MBT′5Me by targeting anomalously warm temperatures during the Last Glacial Maximum from newly analyzed piston and gravity core samples from Lake Baikal, Russia
‘The sun was so thirsty it drank all the water!’ Co-constructing pedagogies for environmental education in UK primary schools
Get PDFChildren are often positioned as future leaders, yet given few opportunities to lead in their local communities–schools a prime example. In response to calls for more inclusive and child-led pedagogies, we carried out a study around the question: What pedagogies might we embrace that introduce environmentalism, while also supporting children in leading their own learning? Reflecting on a period of three months of participant observation in two urban primary schools in the South of England, between April and July 2023, we draw our experiences together around the concept of ‘doing-together-in-place’. This articulates a pedagogical approach to environmentalism that promotes a positive uptake of uncertainty in practice: uncertainty is both the departure point of our reflection, the end outcome of an education system that must prepare younger generations for societies and environments that we do not yet know, and the process to achieve our ambitions. Recognising the inevitable loss of comfort uncertainty in educational practice entails, we argue that a stronger focus on locality on the one hand and relationality on the other hand may offer viable opportunities for reframing uncertainty as a positive and enabling value
A probabilistic framework for water network resilience by integrating pressure indicator information and hydraulic simulations
Get PDFIn an era marked by population growth, urbanization, climate change, and aging infrastructure, water networks face increasing pressures threatening their reliability and efficiency. Timely response to incidents and prioritizing critical pipes for intervention are key aspects of ensuring network resilience. Traditionally, pipe criticality ranking has relied on population density on the network, pipe size, and replacement cost. While these factors are valuable, pressure indicators offer an additional layer of insight, which take account of fluctuation with demand, operational changes, and network conditions. Typically, network characteristics, such as robustness, redundancy, and other topological aspects, have been used to estimate network resilience, relying on deterministic methods based on graph theory. This paper proposes a probabilistic approach for modelling resilient water distribution networks and offers an alternative method to deal with real-world uncertainties. Pressure information after a failure is used for identifying critical links that are most important in enhancing network resilience. An application of the proposed methodology to an example network demonstrates that incorporating pressure indicator information can improve the system recovery time by 13%, also providing an opportunity to the infrastructure owner to allocate resources more effectively, prioritize replacement works, and proactively address disruptions. Including information from pressure indicators and probabilistic modelling of responses to disruption has a potential to enable water companies to respond swiftly to incidents, reduce service disruptions, and ensure the continuous delivery of safe and reliable water services. In addition, it also provides valuable insights into a holistic approach to enhancing network resilience, contributing to improved sustainability and reliability of water infrastructure systems
Developing IBD Outcome Effect Size Thresholds to Inform Research, Guidelines, and Clinical Decisions
Get PDFBackgroundWhen designing clinical trials, interpreting trial outcomes for guideline development or sharing decisions with patients in clinical practice, the clinical outcomes used and the implicit choices on what constitutes a clinically significant finding can vary greatly. This can lead to diversity or even inequity in care offered to patients with inflammatory bowel disease. The GRADE approach to guideline development has proposed a process to address this prospectively to solve these issues, but this has never been used inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We aimed to develop the first international consensus set of outcome thresholds to establish their use in Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.MethodsA Delphi methodology was used to develop a consensus. An online survey was conducted by inviting stakeholders from the British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG) through a two-phase process. Participants were asked to select important clinically relevant outcomes and were asked about what magnitude of the effect they consider large, moderate, small, or trivial for each clinical trial outcome in line with the GRADE guidance. The results were fedback to all participants to ensure consensus agreement. Then, further surveys were sent to Europe and North America to ensure validity and international triangulation of the data set. Data are presented as mean percentages with standard deviation (SD).Results131 clinical stakeholders participated including clinicians, IBD nurses and a small number of patients with IBD. Clinical remission and serious adverse events were considered the most critical outcomes for Crohn’s disease while clinical remission and endoscopic remission were for ulcerative colitis. The consensus results for thresholds of small, moderate and large outcome effects size were agreed with as follows: clinical remission 11 (SD 6), 20 (8) and 31 (13), endoscopic remission 9 (5), 17 (9) and 28 (14), and serious adverse events 6 (6), 11 (9) and 17 (12) respectively. No significant differences were observed for responses for each condition.ConclusionThis is the first study to develop a consensus on magnitude thresholds for outcomes in IBD. These thresholds have been used in the development of the 2024 BSG guidelines for the management of IBD but can and should also be used by study designers and mostly importantly for clinicians when discussing evidence with patients as part of shared decision making. Future work to validate these findings globally and with other groups, including patients, is neede
Prospective, multicenter validation of a platform for rapid molecular profiling of central nervous system tumors
Get PDFMolecular data integration plays a central role in central nervous system (CNS) tumor diagnostics but currently used assays pose limitations due to technical complexity, equipment and reagent costs, as well as lengthy turnaround times. We previously reported the development of Rapid-CNS2, an adaptive-sampling-based nanopore sequencing workflow. Here we comprehensively validated and further developed Rapid-CNS2 for intraoperative use. It now offers real-time methylation classification and DNA copy number information within a 30-min intraoperative window, followed by comprehensive molecular profiling within 24 h, covering the complete spectrum of diagnostically and therapeutically relevant information for the respective entity. We validated Rapid-CNS2 in a multicenter setting on 301 archival and prospective samples including 18 samples sequenced intraoperatively. To broaden the utility of methylation-based CNS tumor classification, we developed MNP-Flex, a platform-agnostic methylation classifier encompassing 184 classes. MNP-Flex achieved 99.6% accuracy for methylation families and 99.2% accuracy for methylation classes with clinically applicable thresholds across a global validation cohort of more than 78,000 frozen and formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded samples spanning five different technologies. Integration of these tools has the potential to advance CNS tumor diagnostics by providing broad access to rapid, actionable molecular insights crucial for personalized treatment strategies
Heat-moisture-mechanical bidirectional coupling multiphase porous media model for microwave vacuum drying of pitaya
Get PDFMicrowave vacuum drying (MVD) is widely adopted in the food industry helping maintain high product quality but the impact of shrinkage on heat and mass transfer is often overlooked. In the present study, the popular fruit, pitaya, was selected for a case study; a heat-moisture-mechanical (HMM) coupling multiphase porous medium model is developed to comprehensively analyse the effect of shrinkage on heat and mass transfer during the MVD. The findings indicate that the HMM model shows a faster decrease in moisture content, with the maximum deviation of 144.85%, and a larger evaporation rate peak, with a deviation of 36.76%. The average temperature predicted by the HMM model was lower than that of the HM model during the early drying stage, with a maximum temperature difference of 5.76℃. Throughout the drying process, axial shrinkage was greater than radial shrinkage. The HMM model can effectively predict the influence of material property parameters on the shrinkage process, in which the hygroscopic expansion coefficient exhibits the most significant impact on volumetric strain (reaching up to 10.1%). The model can more accurately simulate the food MVD process and provides technical support for optimizing the drying process and enhancing product quality
Assessing Water Content of the Human Colonic Chyme Using the MRI Parameter T1: A Key Biomarker of Colonic Function
Get PDFBackgroundThe human colon receives 2 L of fluid daily. Small changes in the efficacy of absorption can lead to altered stool consistency with diarrhea or constipation. Drugs and formulations can also alter colonic water, which can be assessed using the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) longitudinal relaxation time constant, T1. We explore the use of regional T1 assessment in evaluating disorders of colonic function.MethodsIndividual participant data analysis of data from 12 studies from a single center of patients with constipation, irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea (IBS-D), and healthy volunteers (HV). T1 was quantified by measuring the signal from the tissue at different times after a pulse which inverts the magnetization.Key ResultsWhen diarrhea was induced by a macrogol laxative T1 in the ascending colon, T1AC was negatively correlated with stool bacterial content, r2 = 0.78, p < 0.001. T1AC was increased by another laxative, rhubarb. Patients with IBS-D had elevated fasting T1AC (0.78 ± 0.28 s, N = 67) compared to HV (0.62 ± 0.21 s, N = 92) while those with constipation lay within the normal range (HV 10–90th centiles 0.33–0.91 s). Fasting T1AC in IBS-D was reduced by mesalazine treatment. T1 in the descending colon was consistently lower than T1AC, with a bigger reduction in patients with constipation than HV. Pre-feeding dietary fiber (bran, nopal, and psyllium) was associated with fasting T1AC at or above the normal 90th centile.Conclusions and InferencesT1 is an MRI parameter which could be used to monitor effectiveness of novel agents designed to alter colonic water content and stool consistency
A novel CALA-STL algorithm for optimizing prediction of building energy heat load
Get PDFEnergy heat load forecasting plays a crucial role in the low-energy management of buildings. With the growing demand for energy and increasing environmental pressures, accurately predicting building heat loads can provide reliable data support for energy management. This enables the optimization of energy dispatch plans, improves energy utilization efficiency, and helps achieve the goals of energy conservation and emission reduction. However, traditional forecasting methods often struggle with low accuracy when dealing with complex external factors and are susceptible to inappropriate hyperparameter selection. To address these challenges, this study proposes an innovative energy heat load forecasting algorithm that enhances the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model using an improved Artificial Rabbit Optimization (ARO) technique to boost both prediction accuracy and efficiency. First, the Seasonal and Trend decomposition using Loess (STL) algorithm is employed to decompose energy heat load data into trend, seasonal, and residual components, reducing the impact of data fluctuations on model prediction. Next, the ARO algorithm is improved with a Cauchy Mutation and Adaptive Crossover Strategy (CMACS) to optimize the hyperparameters of the LSTM model. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed model, experiments were conducted using real-world data from Byron Apartments at Nottingham Trent University, UK. Due to the unique living patterns of student apartments, energy consumption in these buildings exhibits significant fluctuations and complexity, making the data highly representative. Experimental results show that the proposed CMACS-ARO-LSTM-Attention (CALA)-STL method achieves a coefficient of determination of 98.30%, significantly outperforming traditional methods. This method provides an efficient and reliable solution for energy heat load forecasting, offering robust data support for the optimized management of building energy systems. It enables precise energy management, thereby reducing energy waste and operational costs
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