7,218 research outputs found
Osteoarthritis and falls among older adults / Sumaiyah Mat
No full textFalls are major public health problem in older adults. Fall-related injuries have been reported as the leading causes of years lived with disability globally. While osteoarthritis, a common degenerative joint disorder, has been considered an established risk factor for falls. Our literature review has found limited evidence and conflicting results to support this assumption. This study was performed and analysed in a two-staged design: 1) a case-control comparison of characteristics related to OA among fallers and non-faller controls, 2) a pre-planned subgroup analysis of individuals with OA within a randomized controlled trial of multifaceted interventions in the secondary prevention of falls in older people. Cases consisted of 229 fallers; individuals aged 65 years and above with a history of two falls or one injurious fall in the past 12 months. 160 control participants were non-fallers, aged 65 and above without no history of falls. Regardless of the definition used, OA was not associated with falls. However, different degrees of severity of OA symptoms in varying OA definitions showed an interesting relationship with falls. In individuals with radiological OA, mild symptoms appear protective of falls which was probably due to increase of anxiety while those with clinical OA and severe symptoms are at increased risk of falls compared to those with mild symptoms mediated by fear of falling. Thus, OA was not directly associated with falls, however, psychological problems secondary to OA might have a different impact on the risk of falls. In a separate study of postural control (n=102), impaired postural balance found among fallers was not influenced by presence of OA. The poorer EPE observed in individuals with symptomatic OA appeared to have a protective effect against falls. An evaluation of the features of OA detected on MRI revealed that that presence of sub-chondral cysts and menisceal tears mediates in increase in postural sway among fallers.
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Among our older participants with OA, fallers had higher serum TIMP2 level, indicating that falls among older adults with OA was associated with a higher degree of degeneration. In the subgroup analysis of individuals with OA from the RCT on multifactorial intervention for falls, the modified Otago exercise improved postural control and reduced fear of falling in those with pre-existing impairments in gait and balance. In essence, this study has contributed to existing knowledge on falls by contradicting previously unsubstantiated assumptions of the association between OA and falls. Instead, a sinusoidal relationship appears to exist between OA and falls, with mild OA being protective of falls and severe OA predisposing to falls. Falls risk appears to be influenced by psychological status, while impaired dynamic postural control associated with increased falls risk is not influenced by the presence of OA. However, the presence of sub-chondral cyst and menisceal tear detected by MRI did mediate the impaired postural control observed in our fallers. In our serological analysis, falls among older adults with OA were associated with a more active degenerative state. The improvement in postural control and falls efficacy observed among our OA fallers, suggest that the modified Otago is potentially benefical, and will serve as a pilot study for a larger randomized-controlled study for secondary falls prevention for individuals with OA
Meditation Awareness Training (MAT) for work-related wellbeing and job performance: a randomised controlled trial
No full textDue to its potential to concurrently improve work-related wellbeing (WRW) and job performance, occupational stakeholders are becoming increasingly interested in the applications of meditation. The present study conducted the first randomized controlled trial to assess the effects of meditation on outcomes relating to both WRW and job performance. Office-based middle-hierarchy managers (n = 152) received an eight-week meditation intervention (Meditation Awareness Training; MAT) or an active control intervention. MAT participants demonstrated significant and sustainable improvements (with strong effect sizes) over control-group participants in levels of work-related stress, job satisfaction, psychological distress, and employer-rated job performance. There are a number of novel implications: (i) meditation can effectuate a perceptual shift in how employees experience their work and psychological environment and may thus constitute a cost-effective WRW intervention, (ii) meditation-based (i.e., present-moment-focussed) working styles may be more effective than goal-based (i.e., future-orientated) working styles, and (iii) meditation may reduce the separation made by employees between their own interests and those of the organizations they work for
Voorlopige resultaten proeven Zinkcon mat
No full textResultaten proeven met de Zinkcon mat in de stroomgoot in Lith op ware grootte.KWP-collectio
Applying the method of fundamental solutions to harmonic problems with singular boundary conditions
No full textThe method of fundamental solutions (MFS) is known to produce highly accurate numerical results for elliptic boundary value problems (BVP) with smooth boundary conditions, posed in analytic domains. However, due to the analyticity of the shape
functions in its approximation basis, theMFS is usually disregarded when the boundary functions possess singularities. In this work we present a modification of the classical MFS which can be applied for the numerical solution of the Laplace BVP with Dirichlet boundary conditions exhibiting jump discontinuities. In particular, a set of harmonic functions with discontinuous boundary traces is added to the MFS basis. The accuracy of the proposed method is compared with the results form the classical MFS.The financial support from Center for Computational and Stochastic Mathematics (CEMAT–IST) through Fundac¸ ˜ao para a Ciˆencia e a Tecnologia (FCT) projects PEst-OE/MAT/UI0822/2014 and EXCL/MAT-NAN/0114/2012 is gratefully acknowledged
Fotoreportage Samenstellen van de mat voor de grote legproef II
No full textFoto’s van het maken van een proefmat (gaasmat verschillende lagen met filtermateriaal), het oprollen van de mat; bij de fabriek in Kats
The proposed goodyear modular mat type scrap tire floating breakwater
No full textScrap tires are proposed as a construction material for building large floating mat type breakwater devices. The Goodyear scrap tire floating breakwater assemblies are formed by securing together modular bundles of tightly interlocked scrap tires with high strength rope/cable, or special corrosion resistant steel rods. This construction procedure yields an easily installed, readily adaptable breakwater structure which has high energy absorbing capacity for normal loading conditions but which deforms and yields when subjected to overloads. The proposed designs rely on a modular bundle concept where a relatively few tires are secured together to form a small easily assemble de portable building unit which,serves as a basic building block from which giant breakwater devices can be constructed. Flotation is provided by placing a small amount of buoyant material in the crown of each tire or by filling approximately 10%) of the tires with buoyant foam. The design possibilities using scrap tire building modules are virtually limiless. Tires may be laced together to form large flat single or multiple thickness shallow mats. They may be stacked vertically in single or multiple thickness bundles like bricks in a wall to form curtain type barriers. Variutions in breakwater draft are made possible by adding modules above or below to vary the thickness and by combining constructions such as hanging a curtain on a mat structure. Also, mats with varying buoyancy may be moored on an incline for more efficient energy absorption
Application of MAT device to characterize the adhesive bonding strength of membrane in orthotropic steel deck bridges
No full textIn order to characterize adequately the adhesive bonding strength of the various membranes with surrounding materials on orthotropic steel decks and collect the necessary parameters for FE modeling, details of the Membrane Adhesion Test (MAT) have been introduced. Analytical constitutive relations of MAT device have been derived on the basis of Williams (1997). Furthermore, on the basis of experimental data obtained from MAT, ranking of the bonding characteristics of various membrane products is demonstrated as well as the role of other influencing factors, such as the types of substrate and test temperatures.Structural EngineeringCivil Engineering and Geoscience
Tail dependence under sample failures
No full textWhen collecting samples, sometimes failures of observations occur and consequently missing data. This can have an impact on the analysis and subsequent inference, especially if the study focuses on the extreme values where the data is more scarce. In this work, we analyze the effect of different types of failures on the dependence within the tail of a stationary series. We will also present some examples.The first author was supported by Portuguese Funds through FCT — Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia within the Projects UID/MAT/00013/2013 of Centre of Mathematics of the University of Minho, UID/Multi/04621/2019 of Center for Computational and Stochastic Mathematics, UID/MAT/00006/2019 of Centre of Statistics and Its Applications, and PTDC/MAT-STA/28243/2017. The second author was partially supported by the research unit UID/MAT/00212/2019 — FCT (Funda¸c˜ao para a Ciˆencia e a Tecnologia)
Neural Networks to Predict Financial Time Series in a Minority Game Context
No full textIn this paper we consider financial time series from U.S. Fixed Income Market, S&P500, Exchange Market and Oil Market. It is well known that financial time series reveal some anomalies as regards the Efficient Market Hypotesis and some scaling behavior is evident such as fat tails and clustered volatility. This suggests to consider financial time serie as "pseudo"-random time series. For this kind of time series the power of prediction of neural networks has been shown to be appreciable. We first consider the financial time serie from the Minority Game point of view and than we apply a neural network with learning algorithm in order to analyze its prediction power. We show that Fixed Income Market presents many differences from other markets in terms of predictability as a measure of market efficiency.Minority Game, Learning Algorithms, Neural Networks, Financial Time Series, Efficient Market Hypotesis
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