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Translation and initial psychometric evaluation of the Chinese version of the partners in health scale.
Get PDFAll Published work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International LicenseThis study aimed to translate the Partner in Health (PIH) scale (12 items) into the mandarin Chinese language and investigate the psychometric properties of the Chinese version PIH scale in patients with chronic diseases in primary care settings in Changsha, China. The instrument was translated according to the Sousa guideline including the following steps: Forward translation, back translation, expert panel evaluation and pilot study, with achievement of consensus at each step. Psychometric properties of the Chinese version PIH were assessed in a random sample of 300 community-dwelling patients with chronic diseases in Changsha, China. These properties included content validity, internal consistency, test-retest reliability and structural validity. Survey response rate was 93.7%. The results showed that the Chinese PIH scale had satisfactory reliability and validity. The test-retest reliability was 0.832 and the Cronbach’s coefficient was 0.865. The content validity rate (S-CVI/Ave) was 0.965. The correlation between the Patient Activation Measure (PAM) and the PIH was 0.505 (p<0.001). Results of the confirmatory factor analysis suggest that the PIH scale consisted of four factors: knowledge, partnership, management and coping. The Chinese PIH scale yields high reliability and validity. It can be used as a generic self-rated tool to assess self-management of patients with chronic diseases in China
Feasibility of detecting myocardial infarction in the sheep fetus using late gadolinium enhancement CMR imaging
Get PDFThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background
Late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging has enabled the accurate assessment of myocardial infarction (MI). However, LGE CMR has not been performed successfully in the fetus, where it could be useful for animal studies of interventions to promote cardiac regeneration. We believe that LGE imaging could allow us to document the presence, extent and effect of MI in utero and would thereby expand our capacity for conducting fetal sheep MI research. We therefore aimed to investigate the feasibility of using LGE to detect MI in sheep fetuses.
Methods
Six sheep fetuses underwent a thoracotomy and ligation of a left anterior descending (LAD) coronary artery branch; while two fetuses underwent a sham surgery. LGE CMR was performed in a subset of fetuses immediately after the surgery and three days later. Early gadolinium enhancement (EGE) CMR was also performed in a subset of fetuses on both days. Cine imaging of the heart was performed to measure ventricular function.
Results
The imaging performed immediately after LAD ligation revealed no evidence of infarct on LGE (n=3). Two of four infarcted fetuses (50%) showed hypoenhancement at the infarct site on the EGE images. Three days after the ligation, LGE images revealed a clear, hyper-enhanced infarct zone in four of the five infarcted fetuses (80%). No hyper-enhanced infarct zone was seen on the one sham fetus that underwent LGE CMR. No hypoenhancement could be seen in the EGE images in either the sham (n=1) or the infarcted fetus (n=1). No regional wall motion abnormalities were apparent in two of the five infarcted fetuses.
Conclusion
LGE CMR detected the MI three days after LAD ligation, but not immediately after. Using available methods, EGE imaging was less useful for detecting deficits in perfusion. Our study provides evidence for the ability of a non-invasive tool to monitor the progression of cardiac repair and damage in fetuses with MI. However, further investigation into the optimal timing of LGE and EGE scans and improvement of the sequences should be pursued with the aim of expanding our capacity to monitor cardiac regeneration after MI in fetal sheep
An internationally standardized species identification test for use on suspected seized rhinoceros horn in the illegal wildlife trade
Get PDFPublished by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/).Rhinoceros (rhino) numbers have dwindled substantially over the past century. As a result, three of the five species are now considered to be critically endangered, one species is vulnerable and one species is near-threatened. Poaching has increased dramatically over the past decade due to a growing demand for rhino horn products, primarily in Asia. Improved wildlife forensic techniques, such as validated tests for species identification of seized horns, are critical to aid current enforcement and prosecution efforts and provide a deterrent to future rhino horn trafficking. Here, we present an internationally standardized species identification test based on a 230 base pair cytochrome-b region. This test improves on previous nested PCR protocols and can be used for the discrimination of samples with <20 pg of template DNA, thus suitable for DNA extracted from horn products. The assay was designed to amplify water buffalo samples, a common ‘rhino horn’ substitute, but to exclude human DNA, a common contaminant. Phylogenetic analyses using this partial cytochrome-b region resolved the five extant rhino species. Testing successfully returned a sequence and correct identification for all of the known rhino horn samples and vouchered rhino samples from museum and zoo collections, and provided species level identification for 47 out of 52 unknown samples from seizures. Validation and standardization was carried out across five different laboratories, in four different countries, demonstrating it to be an effective and reproducible test, robust to inter laboratory variation in equipment and consumables (such as PCR reagents). This is one of the first species identification tests to be internationally standardized to produce data for evidential proceedings and the first published validated test for rhinos, one of the flagship species groups of the illegal wildlife trade and for which forensic tools are urgently required. This study serves as a model for how species identification tests should be standardized and disseminated for wildlife forensic testing
Effects of pleasant olfactory mental imagery on the arterial oxygenation in patients with open heart surgery: A randomized controlled trial
Get PDFThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
This author accepted manuscript is made available following 12 month embargo from date of publication (Oct 2017) in accordance with the publisher’s archiving policyBackground and purpose
Arterial hypoxemia is one of the most common respiratory complications following cardiac surgery. This study was intended to examine the effects of pleasant olfactory mental imagery on postoperative hypoxemia in patients undergoing open heart surgery.
Materials and methods
This is a randomized controlled clinical trial. The sample consisted of 80 patients who were randomly assigned to either practice olfactory mental imagery (experimental group) or receive routine care (control group). A card with the image of roses was given to patients and they were asked to look at the image, visualize the scent of roses in the mind, and then sniff as much as possible, hold their breath for 2 s and eventually exhale slowly through the nose. This procedure was consecutively repeated five times. After a fifteen-minute break, patients proceeded to practice olfactory mental imagery with other fruit images. The experimental group executed the olfactory mental imagery for two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon on postoperative days 1 and 2.
Results
No statistically significant differences were observed between the experimental and control groups regarding sociodemographic characteristics, medical and surgical information. This study also demonstrated that the mean Spao2 was significantly higher in the experimental group (97.400 ± 1.70) than the control group (96.465 ± 1.70) (p = 0.015).
Conclusion
The results of this study suggest that olfactory mental imagery can improve arterial oxygenation in patients with cardiac surgery
Review of Alternative Modernities in French Travel Writing: Engaging Urban Space in London and New York, 1851–1986 by Gillian Jein.
Get PDFReview of Alternative Modernities in French Travel Writing: Engaging Urban Space in London and New York, 1851–1986 by Gillian Jein
Review of The Schooldays of Jesusby J.M. Coetzee
No full textReview of The Schooldays of Jesus by J.M. Coetze
Home, Factory, World: Domestic and Global Fictions in the work of Lavanya Sankaran
Get PDFLavanya Sankaran’s The Hope Factory (2013) weaves together two narratives. One is the story of a Bangalore factory owner struggling to enter into the world of transnational capitalism. The second is the story of the everyday struggles of one of his household’s servants, a struggling single mother. On the surface, such a division tacitly reinforces the gendered language of globalization theory, in which markets are “penetrated” and “dominated.” I argue, however, that the use of domestic fiction – generically associated with women characters and readers – to explore globalization, necessarily challenges more conventional, masculinist approaches. As J.K. Gibson-Graham point out, much globalization discourse fails to take into account the reality that there is no tidy division between life and work, nor between economic and affective relationships. Yet as Sankaran’s fiction illustrates, experiences and perceptions of globalization impact the most intimate moments of our lives, and intimate decisions, such as whom to marry, ripple out into the world. I contend that domestic fiction such as Sankaran’s therefore challenges ideas of world literature by insisting on gendered intimacy and specificity, but also risks becoming global literature, with “a problem-based monocultural aesthetic agenda that elicits transnational engagement” (Emily Apter, The Translation Zone, 99)
Pataphysical Discourse and Georgian Reflections in Comparative Analysis of Georgian and French Avant-Garde
Get PDFThis paper studies Alfred Jarry’s Pataphysics and searches for Pataphysical reflections in Georgian modernist literature, including works by Georgian modernist writers Konstantine Gamsakhurdia (1893-1975) and Demna Shengelaia (1896-1980), and contemporary Georgian writer Tamaz Chiladze (born 1931), in a comparative analysis of the Georgian and French avant-garde movements. The former was ‘born’ in an isolated environment, in a country with a rich cultural background and literary tradition, first under the rule of Russian Tsarism (1801-1918) and then under the oppression of the Soviet Union (1921-1989). The Georgian avant-garde was never totally European but Asian too, and came to a ‘bloody’, tragic end as a victim of the Soviet totalitarian regime, whereas the French avant-garde was rather free, bold, limitless, and uncontrolled. Examining these two absolutely different avant-gardes and studying Pataphysical themes and reflections in Georgian literature in hindsight will provide a valuable picture of the movement and the period itself
Of Surface and Depth: Agnes Smedley’s Sketches of Chinese Everyday Life
Get PDFThis article focuses on American author Agnes Smedley’s creative non-fiction writings on China, seeking to recover her as an important transnational figure in light of an uneven reputation. For while Smedley is known and read in China – even the subject of a major biopic – she is virtually forgotten in the United States. To reassert her relevance, and to balance her reputation, I employ the 1933 work Chinese Destinies as a case study to discuss Smedley’s interest in everyday life as a site of socio-political analysis, a mode of inquiry that anticipates later methodologies in the social sciences. I begin by establishing how Chinese Destinies maintains a surprising focus on everyday life, despite the wartime setting. Emphasizing her background as a novelist, I then explore how Smedley is able to thematize everyday life in two different ways: first as a site of trauma, and then as a space of resistance. In this way, I argue, her work has historiographic implications, and I go on to situate her engagement with everyday life within a broader debate about historical agency and causality. As part of my conclusion, I speculate as to why Smedley’s creative brand of literary non-fiction is not as recognized as similar work by her contemporaries