JURNAL AGROTEKNOLOGI
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Get your guidance going: Investigating the activation of spatial priors for efficient search in virtual reality
No full textRepeated search studies are a hallmark in the investigation of the interplay between memory and attention. Due to a usually employed averaging, a substantial decrease in response times occurring between the first and second search through the same search environment is rarely discussed. This search initiation effect is often the most dramatic decrease in search times in a series of sequential searches. The nature of this initial lack of search efficiency has thus far remained unexplored. We tested the hypothesis that the activation of spatial priors leads to this search efficiency profile. Before searching repeatedly through scenes in VR, participants either (1) previewed the scene, (2) saw an interrupted preview, or (3) started searching immediately. The search initiation effect was present in the latter condition but in neither of the preview conditions. Eye movement metrics revealed that the locus of this effect lies in search guidance instead of search initiation or decision time, and was beyond effects of object learning or incidental memory. Our study suggests that upon visual processing of an environment, a process of activating spatial priors to enable orientation is initiated, which takes a toll on search time at first, but once activated it can be used to guide subsequent searches
Factors associated with persistent opioid use after an upper extremity fracture
No full textAims: The increase in prescription opioid misuse and dependence is now a public health crisis in the U.K. It is recognised as a whole-person problem that involves both the medical and the psychosocial needs of patients. Analysing aspects of pathophysiology, emotional health and social wellbeing associated with persistent opioid use after injury may inform safe and effective alleviation of pain while minimising risk of misuse or dependence. Our objectives were to investigate patient factors associated with opioid use 2-4 weeks and 6-9 months after an upper extremity fracture.
Methods: 734 patients recovering from an isolated upper limb fracture were recruited in this study. Opioid prescription was documented retrospectively for the period preceding the injury, and prospectively at the 2-4-week post-injury visit and 6-9-month post-injury visit. Bivariate and multivariable analysis sought factors associated with opioid prescription from demographics, injury-specific data, Patient Reported Outcome Measurement Instrumentation System (PROMIS) Depression computer adaptive test (CAT), PROMIS Anxiety CAT, PROMIS Instrumental Support CAT, the Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS), the Pain Self-efficacy Questionnaire (PSEQ-2), Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia (TSK-11) and measures that investigate levels of social support.
Results: A new prescription of opioids 2-4 weeks after injury was independently associated with less social support (OR 0.26, p < 0.01), less instrumental support (OR 0.91, p < 0.01), and greater symptoms of anxiety (OR 1.1, p<0.01). A new prescription of opioids 6-9 months after injury was independently associated with less instrumental support (OR 0.9, p < 0.01) and greater symptoms of anxiety (OR 1.1, p <0.01).
Conclusion: This study demonstrates that potentially modifiable psychosocial factors are associated with increased acute and chronic opioid prescriptions following upper extremity fracture. Surgeons prescribing opioids for upper limb fractures should be made aware of the screening and management of emotional and social health
Safety and PCR monitoring in 161 semi-immune Kenyan adults following controlled human malaria infection
No full textBACKGROUND. Naturally acquired immunity to malaria is incompletely understood. We used controlled human malaria infection (CHMI) to study the impact of past exposure on malaria in Kenyan adults in relation to infection with a non-Kenyan parasite strain.
METHODS. We administered 3.2 × 103 aseptic, purified, cryopreserved Plasmodium falciparum sporozoites (Sanaria PfSPZ Challenge, NF54 West African strain) by direct venous inoculation and undertook clinical monitoring and serial quantitative PCR (qPCR) of the 18S ribosomal RNA gene. The study endpoint was met when parasitemia reached 500 or more parasites per μL blood, clinically important symptoms were seen, or at 21 days after inoculation. All volunteers received antimalarial drug treatment upon meeting the endpoint.
RESULTS. One hundred and sixty-one volunteers underwent CHMI between August 4, 2016, and February 14, 2018. CHMI was well tolerated, with no severe or serious adverse events. Nineteen volunteers (11.8%) were excluded from the analysis based on detection of antimalarial drugs above the minimal inhibitory concentration or parasites genotyped as non-NF54. Of the 142 volunteers who were eligible for analysis, 26 (18.3%) had febrile symptoms and were treated; 30 (21.1%) reached 500 or more parasites per μL and were treated; 53 (37.3%) had parasitemia without meeting thresholds for treatment; and 33 (23.2%) remained qPCR negative.
CONCLUSION. We found that past exposure to malaria, as evidenced by location of residence, in some Kenyan adults can completely suppress in vivo growth of a parasite strain originating from outside Kenya.
TRIAL REGISTRATION. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02739763.
FUNDING. Wellcome Trust
Sustaining meaningful patient engagement across the lifecycle of medicines: A roadmap for action
No full textBackground
There is increased recognition that incorporating patients’ perspectives and insights into the medicines development process results in better health outcomes and benefits for all involved stakeholders. Despite the increased interest and the existence of frameworks and practical recommendations, patient engagement (PE) is not yet considered standard practice. The objective of this work was to provide a roadmap to support systematic change in all stakeholder organisations involved in medicines development across Europe, patients and patient organisations, medicines developers, academia, regulatory authorities, Health Technology Assessment bodies, payers, policy-makers and public research funders, to sustain PE practices.
Methods
A mixed-methods approach was used by the EU-funded Innovative Medicines Initiative PARADIGM Consortium to co-develop the sustainability roadmap including background work to identify success factors and scenarios for sustainable PE. The roadmap development was based on the Theory of Change concept and populated with findings from (1) interviews with national/ and international institutions with the potential to increase PE uptake by other stakeholders; (2) multi-stakeholder workshops and webinars; and (3) consultations with specific stakeholder groups, Consortium members and a consultative body formed by international PE initiatives.
Results
This roadmap sets strategic goals for the PE community to achieve meaningful and systematic PE through changes in the culture, processes and resources of stakeholder organisations. It brings in key PARADIGM outputs to work in a coordinated fashion with existing frameworks and mechanisms to achieve system-wide sustained PE.
Conclusions
The roadmap provides a framework for all stakeholders to take collective action within their organisations and across Europe to implement PE in a sustainable manner
Genetic insights into biological mechanisms governing human ovarian ageing
No full textReproductive longevity is essential for fertility and influences healthy ageing in women1,2, but insights into its underlying biological mechanisms and treatments to preserve it are limited. Here we identify 290 genetic determinants of ovarian ageing, assessed using normal variation in age at natural menopause (ANM) in about 200,000 women of European ancestry. These common alleles were associated with clinical extremes of ANM; women in the top 1% of genetic susceptibility have an equivalent risk of premature ovarian insufficiency to those carrying monogenic FMR1 premutations3. The identified loci implicate a broad range of DNA damage response (DDR) processes and include loss-of-function variants in key DDR-associated genes. Integration with experimental models demonstrates that these DDR processes act across the life-course to shape the ovarian reserve and its rate of depletion. Furthermore, we demonstrate that experimental manipulation of DDR pathways highlighted by human genetics increases fertility and extends reproductive life in mice. Causal inference analyses using the identified genetic variants indicate that extending reproductive life in women improves bone health and reduces risk of type 2 diabetes, but increases the risk of hormone-sensitive cancers. These findings provide insight into the mechanisms that govern ovarian ageing, when they act, and how they might be targeted by therapeutic approaches to extend fertility and prevent disease
Dipping into a new pool: The interface dynamics of drops impacting onto a different liquid
No full textWhen a drop impacts onto a pool of another liquid, the common interface will move down at a well-defined speed for the first few milliseconds. While simple mechanistic models and experiments with the same fluid used for the drop and pool have predicted this speed to be half the impacting drop speed, this is only one small part in a rich and intricate behavior landscape. Factors such as viscosity and density ratios greatly affect the penetration speed. By using a combination of high-speed photography, high-resolution numerical simulations, and physical modeling, we disentangle the different roles that physical fluid properties play in determining the true value of the postimpact interfacial velocity
Rectifiability of RCD(K,N) spaces via δ-splitting maps
No full textIn this note we give simplified proofs of rectifiability of RCD(K,N) spaces as metric measure spaces and lower semicontinuity of the essential dimension, via δ-splitting maps. The arguments are inspired by the Cheeger-Colding theory for Ricci limits and rely on the second order differential calculus developed by Gigli and on the convergence and stability results by Ambrosio-Honda
Plasmodium falciparum parasite prevalence in East Africa: Updating data for malaria stratification
No full textThe High Burden High Impact (HBHI) strategy for malaria encourages countries to use multiple sources of available data to define the sub-national vulnerabilities to malaria risk, including parasite prevalence. Here, a modelled estimate of Plasmodium falciparum from an updated assembly of community parasite survey data in Kenya, mainland Tanzania, and Uganda is presented and used to provide a more contemporary understanding of the sub-national malaria prevalence stratification across the sub-region for 2019. Malaria prevalence data from surveys undertaken between January 2010 and June 2020 were assembled form each of the three countries. Bayesian spatiotemporal model-based approaches were used to interpolate space-time data at fine spatial resolution adjusting for population, environmental and ecological covariates across the three countries. A total of 18,940 time-space age-standardised and microscopy-converted surveys were assembled of which 14,170 (74.8%) were identified after 2017. The estimated national population-adjusted posterior mean parasite prevalence was 4.7% (95% Bayesian Credible Interval 2.6–36.9) in Kenya, 10.6% (3.4–39.2) in mainland Tanzania, and 9.5% (4.0–48.3) in Uganda. In 2019, more than 12.7 million people resided in communities where parasite prevalence was predicted ≥ 30%, including 6.4%, 12.1% and 6.3% of Kenya, mainland Tanzania and Uganda populations, respectively. Conversely, areas that supported very low parasite prevalence (<1%) were inhabited by approximately 46.2 million people across the sub-region, or 52.2%, 26.7% and 10.4% of Kenya, mainland Tanzania and Uganda populations, respectively. In conclusion, parasite prevalence represents one of several data metrics for disease stratification at national and sub-national levels. To increase the use of this metric for decision making, there is a need to integrate other data layers on mortality related to malaria, malaria vector composition, insecticide resistance and bionomic, malaria care-seeking behaviour and current levels of unmet need of malaria interventions
The sugar content of foods in the UK by category and company: a repeated cross-sectional study, 2015-2018
No full textBackground
Consumption of free sugars in the UK greatly exceeds dietary recommendations. Public Health England (PHE) has set voluntary targets for industry to reduce the sales-weighted mean sugar content of key food categories contributing to sugar intake by 5% by 2018 and 20% by 2020. The aim of this study was to assess changes in the sales-weighted mean sugar content and total volume sales of sugar in selected food categories among UK companies between 2015 and 2018.
Methods and findings
We used sales data from Euromonitor, which estimates total annual retail sales of packaged foods, for 5 categories—biscuits and cereal bars, breakfast cereals, chocolate confectionery, sugar confectionery, and yoghurts—for 4 consecutive years (2015–2018). This analysis includes 353 brands (groups of products with the same name) sold by 99 different companies. These data were linked with nutrient composition data collected online from supermarket websites over 2015–2018 by Edge by Ascential. The main outcome measures were sales volume, sales-weighted mean sugar content, and total volume of sugar sold by category and company. Our results show that between 2015 and 2018 the sales-weighted mean sugar content of all included foods fell by 5.2% (95% CI −9.4%, −1.4%), from 28.7 g/100 g (95% CI 27.2, 30.4) to 27.2 g/100 g (95% CI 25.8, 28.4). The greatest change seen was in yoghurts (−17.0% [95% CI −26.8%, −7.1%]) and breakfast cereals (−13.3% [95% CI −19.2%, −7.4%]), with only small reductions in sugar confectionery (−2.4% [95% CI −4.2%, −0.6%]) and chocolate confectionery (−1.0% [95% CI −3.1, 1.2]). Our results show that total volume of sugars sold per capita fell from 21.4 g/d (95% CI 20.3, 22.7) to 19.7 g/d (95% CI 18.8, 20.7), a reduction of 7.5% (95% CI −13.1%, −2.8%). Of the 50 companies representing the top 10 companies in each category, 24 met the 5% reduction target set by PHE for 2018. The key limitations of this study are that it does not encompass the whole food market and is limited by its use of brand-level sales data, rather than individual product sales data.
Conclusions
Our findings show there has been a small reduction in total volume sales of sugar in the included categories, primarily due to reductions in the sugar content of yoghurts and breakfast cereals. Additional policy measures may be needed to accelerate progress in categories such as sugar confectionery and chocolate confectionery if the 2020 PHE voluntary sugar reduction targets are to be met
Self-assembly of a strapped linear porphyrin oligomer on HOPG
No full textPolymeric structures based on porphyrin units exhibit a range of complex properties, such as nanoscale charge transport and quantum interference effects, and have the potential to act as biomimetic materials for light-harvesting and catalysis. These functionalities are based upon the characteristics of the porphyrin monomers, but are also emergent properties of the extended polymer system. Incorporation of these properties within solid-state devices requires transfer of the polymers to a supporting substrate, and may require a high-degree of lateral order. Here we show that highly ordered self-assembled structures can be formed via a simple solution deposition protocol; for a strapped linear porphyrin oligomer adsorbed on a highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) substrate. Two distinct molecule–molecule interactions are observed to drive the formation of two molecular phases (‘Interdigitated’ and ‘Bridge-stabilised’) characterised by scanning tunnelling microscopy, providing information on the unit cell dimensions and self-assembled structure. The concentration dependence of these phases is investigated, and we conclude that the bridge-stabilised phase is a thermodynamically stable structure at room temperature