Category: Nevin Manimala

Int J Emerg Med. 2024 Mar 4;17(1):34. doi: 10.1186/s12245-024-00610-8.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Type C pelvic fractures (AO/OTA) are severe injuries that frequently lead to bleeding and hemodynamic instability. Pelvic binders play a crucial role in their initial management. Placement at the correct level in the prehospital setting is challenging. The aim of this study was to compare two pelvic binders regarding their effectiveness in reducing intrapelvic volume and increasing intrapelvic pressure in patients with type C pelvic fractures (AO/OTA) when applied at three different levels.

METHODS: Rotationally and vertically unstable pelvic injuries (AO/OTA classification 61-C1.1) were produced in five fresh-frozen human cadaveric specimens. Intrapelvic volume, vesical pressure and compression pressure within the pubic symphysis and the sacroiliac joint were measured when applying a SAM Pelvic Sling II and a T-POD at the level of the greater trochanter as well as levels higher and lower than recommended.

RESULTS: Comparison of the two pelvic binders positioned at the recommended level (greater trochanter) showed no significant difference in volume reduction (13.85 ± 31.37 cm³, p = 0.442), however, increase in vesical pressure was significantly higher when using the T-POD (5.80 ± 3.27 cmH₂O, p = 0.017). When positioned at the level of the iliac crest, vesical pressure increase and intrapelvic volume reduction were significantly greater with the T-POD (14.00 ± 8.57 cmH₂O, p = 0.022 and 10.45 ± 5.45 cm³, p = 0.031 respectively). Application of the SAM Pelvic Sling II below the greater trochanter led to a significantly greater decrease in volume (-32.26 ± 7.52 cm³, p = 0.003) than the T-POD. Comparison of the recommended attachment level with incorrect positioning led to no significant differences for the T-POD, while the SAM Pelvic Sling II achieved a significantly lower volume reduction when placed at the iliac crest (40.15 ± 14.57 cm³, p = 0.012) and a significantly lower increase in vesical pressure when applied below the greater trochanter (3.40 ± 1.52 cmH₂O, p = 0.007).

CONCLUSION: Direct comparison of the two pelvic binders showed that the T-POD achieved significantly greater results when applied at the recommended level and was less susceptible to incorrect positioning. These outcomes support the preferred use of the T-POD for prehospital emergency pelvic stabilisation.

PMID:38438968 | DOI:10.1186/s12245-024-00610-8

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2024 Mar 12;121(11):e2321595121. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2321595121. Epub 2024 Mar 4.

ABSTRACT

Polynyas, areas of open water embedded within sea ice, are a key component of ocean-atmosphere interactions that act as hotspots of sea-ice production, bottom-water formation, and primary productivity. The specific drivers of polynya dynamics remain, however, elusive and coupled climate models struggle to replicate Antarctic polynya activity. Here, we leverage a 44-y time series of Antarctic sea ice to elucidate long-term trends. We identify Antarctic-wide linear increases and a hitherto undescribed cyclical pattern of polynya activity across the Ross Sea region that potentially arises from interactions between the Amundsen Sea Low and Southern Annular Mode. While their specific drivers remain unknown, identifying these emerging patterns augments our capacity to understand the processes that influence sea ice. As we enter a potentially new age of Antarctic sea ice, this advance in understanding will, in turn, lead to more accurate predictions of environmental change, and its implications for Antarctic ecosystems.

PMID:38437551 | DOI:10.1073/pnas.2321595121

Ann Work Expo Health. 2024 Mar 4:wxae010. doi: 10.1093/annweh/wxae010. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Determining the vapor pressure of a substance at the relevant process temperature is a key component in conducting an exposure assessment to ascertain worker exposure. However, vapor pressure data at various temperatures relevant to the work environment is not readily available for many chemicals. The Antoine equation is a mathematical expression that relates temperature and vapor pressure. The objective of this analysis was to compare Antoine parameter data from 3 independent data sources; Hansen, Yaws, and Custom data and identify the source that generates the most accurate vapor pressure values with the least bias, relative to the referent data set from the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. Temperatures predicted from 3 different Antoine sources across a range of vapor pressures for 59 chemicals are compared to the reference source. The results show that temperatures predicted using Antoine parameters from the 3 sources are not statistically significantly different, indicating that all 3 sources could be useful. However, the Yaws dataset will be used in the SDM 2.0 because the data is readily available and robust.

PMID:38437526 | DOI:10.1093/annweh/wxae010

Am J Hosp Palliat Care. 2024 Mar 4:10499091241236921. doi: 10.1177/10499091241236921. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Sufficient knowledge of end-of-life care, positive attitudes, and emotions regarding death and dying are essential criteria for showcasing favorable palliative care educational results to undergraduate nursing students. However, nursing students have negative attitudes toward end-of-life care and know little about it.

AIM: This study aimed to examine the effect of a repeated standardized patient-based training program (intervention) on nursing students’ knowledge, attitudes, and emotions about end-of-life patients.

METHOD: This study adopted a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental research design. The sample consisted of 50 fourth-year nursing students divided into intervention (n = 25) and control (n = 25) groups. All participants attended the intervention. The intervention group attended the intervention twice, while the control group attended it only once. Data were collected using a personal information form, the Frommelt Attitudes Toward Care of the Dying Scale, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, and the End-of-Life Care Nursing Questionnaire. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson’s Chi-square test, dependent groups t test, Pearson-Spearman, Mann-Whitney test, Wilcoxon test, and Friedman test.

RESULTS: The intervention helped participants learn more about end-of-life care (χ2 = 27.167, P = .000; F = 42.725, P = .000) and develop more positive attitudes toward end-of-life patients (F = 13.279, P = .000; F = 6.934, P = .000). The intervention also helped participants develop communication skills.

CONCLUSION: Universities should integrate repeated standardized patient-based into nursing curricula.

PMID:38437522 | DOI:10.1177/10499091241236921

Mol Biol Evol. 2024 Mar 4:msae051. doi: 10.1093/molbev/msae051. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Poor fit between models of sequence or trait evolution and empirical data is known to cause biases and lead to spurious conclusions about evolutionary patterns and processes. Bayesian posterior prediction is a flexible and intuitive approach for detecting such cases of poor fit. However, the expected behavior of posterior predictive tests has never been characterized for evolutionary models, which is critical for their proper interpretation. Here, we show that the expected distribution of posterior predictive p-values is generally not uniform, in contrast to frequentist p-values used for hypothesis testing, and extreme posterior predictive p-values often provide more evidence of poor fit than typically appreciated. Posterior prediction assesses model adequacy under highly favorable circumstances, because the model is fitted to the data, which leads to expected distributions that are often concentrated around intermediate values. Non-uniform expected distributions of p-values do not pose a problem for the application of these tests, however, and posterior predictive p-values can be interpreted as the posterior probability that the fitted model would predict a dataset with a test statistic value as extreme as the value calculated from the observed data.

PMID:38437512 | DOI:10.1093/molbev/msae051

J Health Organ Manag. 2024 Mar 5;ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print). doi: 10.1108/JHOM-11-2022-0335.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: This study examined the determinants of mobile health (M-Health) application, adoption, usage and discontinuation among corporate workers diagnosed with hypertension and diabetes in Ghana.

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The diffusion innovation and reasoned action theories were employed using an exploratory design. Three hundred corporate workers diagnosed with diabetes and hypertension from three health facilities for the past six months were sampled for the study using a multi-stage sampling technique and administered questionnaires. Descriptive statistics and logistic regression tools were employed in the analysis of data.

FINDINGS: The study found a significant number of factors influencing m-health applications adoption, usage and discontinuity. These factors include nature and demand of job, perceived advantage, compatibility, complexity, triability, aesthetics and trust. Aesthetics emerged as the strongest predictive factor for the adoption, usage and discontinuity of use among diabetic and hypertensive corporate workers. With the adoption of M-Health applications, compatibility, as well as nature and demand of job, were significant predictors. With the usage of M-Health applications, complexity, triability, aesthetics and trust were significant predictors. Moreover, perceived advantage, compatibility, complexity and triability influenced significantly the choice to discontinue using M-Health applications. The study concluded that M-Health application functionalities play a valuable role in patients’ intention to adopt, use and discontinue the use of an M-Health application in Ghana.

ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This exploratory study offers in-depth insight into how major M-Health application features affect its adoption, usage and discontinuity, providing crucial information for future research and the improvement of chronic condition healthcare delivery.

PMID:38437500 | DOI:10.1108/JHOM-11-2022-0335

Pol J Microbiol. 2024 Mar 4;73(1):49-57. doi: 10.33073/pjm-2024-006. eCollection 2024 Mar 1.

ABSTRACT

Gut microbiota (GM) is a crucial underlying player during sepsis pathogenesis. However, the causal relationship is unclear and remains to be determined. A two-sample Mendelian randomization study was implemented. The statistical data about sepsis together with GM summarized from genome-wide association studies were evaluated. Instrumental variables were defined as single-nucleotide polymorphisms with prominent correlations with exposure. The inverse-variance-weighted test was employed as a major approach of Mendelian randomization analysis to estimate of causal relationships. The inverse-variance-weighted analysis results demonstrated that at different taxa levels, Actinobacteria and Bifidobacteriaceae influence sepsis. Actinobacteria had negative relationships to sepsis risk at the phylum (β = -0.34, SE = 0.10, p = 0.0008) and class (β = -0.23, SE = 0.07, p = 0.0011) levels in outcome coded ieu-b-69. Actinobacteria at the phylum level (β = -0.22, SE = 0.10, p = 0.027) was also negatively associated with sepsis in outcome coded ieu-b-4980. Bifidobacteriaceae at the order (β = -0.20, SE = 0.06, p = 0.0021), family (β = -0.20, SE = 0.06, p = 0.0021), and genus (β = -0.20, SE = 0.06, p = 0.0007) levels were all negatively correlated with the risk of sepsis in outcome coded ieu-b-69. The results of the Wald ratio model showed that Tyzzerella genus (OR (95%CI) = 0.6902[0.4907,0.9708], p = 0.0331) and Gastranaerophilales order (OR (95%CI) = 0.5907[0.3516,0.9926], p = 0.0468) were negatively connected with sepsis. This study implied at different taxa levels Actinobacteria and Bifidobacteriaceae, Tyzzerella genus, and Gastranaerophilales order have a causal relationship with sepsis, indicating that they are protective factors for the incidence of sepsis.

PMID:38437468 | DOI:10.33073/pjm-2024-006

J Opt Soc Am A Opt Image Sci Vis. 2024 Mar 1;41(3):476-488. doi: 10.1364/JOSAA.506999.

ABSTRACT

Color constancy is a basic step for achieving stable color perception in both biological visual systems and the image signal processing (ISP) pipeline of cameras. So far, there have been numerous computational models of color constancy that focus on scenes under normal light conditions but are less concerned with nighttime scenes. Compared with daytime scenes, nighttime scenes usually suffer from relatively higher-level noise and insufficient lighting, which usually degrade the performance of color constancy methods designed for scenes under normal light. In addition, there is a lack of nighttime color constancy datasets, limiting the development of relevant methods. In this paper, based on the gray-pixel-based color constancy methods, we propose a robust gray pixel (RGP) detection method by carefully designing the computation of illuminant-invariant measures (IIMs) from a given color-biased nighttime image. In addition, to evaluate the proposed method, a new dataset that contains 513 nighttime images and corresponding ground-truth illuminants was collected. We believe this dataset is a useful supplement to the field of color constancy. Finally, experimental results show that the proposed method achieves superior performance to statistics-based methods. In addition, the proposed method was also compared with recent deep-learning methods for nighttime color constancy, and the results show the method’s advantages in cross-validation among different datasets.

PMID:38437439 | DOI:10.1364/JOSAA.506999

J Opt Soc Am A Opt Image Sci Vis. 2024 Mar 1;41(3):A63-A72. doi: 10.1364/JOSAA.507308.

ABSTRACT

In this paper, a multiuser medical image encryption algorithm is proposed. The proposed algorithm utilizes polar decomposition, which enables multiuser features in the proposed algorithm. A computer-generated hologram (CGH) improves the security of the proposed algorithm in the gyrator domain. The phase-only CGH-based multiuser algorithm offers advantages such as storing a large amount of information in a compact space, resistance to counterfeiting, and enhanced security. The proposed method is validated with various statistical metrics, such as information entropy, mean squared error, correlation coefficient, histogram, and mesh plots. Results confirm that the proposed algorithm is secure and robust against potential attacks, such as plaintext attacks, iterative attacks, and contamination attacks. The proposed method has a large keyspace, which makes it very difficult to be breached in real-time with existing computational power.

PMID:38437431 | DOI:10.1364/JOSAA.507308

J Opt Soc Am A Opt Image Sci Vis. 2024 Feb 1;41(2):261-271. doi: 10.1364/JOSAA.513833.

ABSTRACT

As a continuation of a previous investigation on the temporal integration of partially polarized thermal light and/or the spatial integration of polarization speckle, we calculate more accurate probability density functions for integrated Stokes parameters. With the aid of the unitary linear transformation and the Karhunen-Loève expansion of the stochastic electric field, the light of interest has been decomposed into an infinite number of statistically independent modes and the integrated Stokes parameters have been expressed as the sums of infinite numbers of random variables known as the polarization-related mode shape. A mathematical formalism of the exact solutions for the distributions of the integrated Stokes parameters has been derived. Through some approximations to the exact solutions, we also make a comparison of the “exact” and approximate solutions to understand the entire statistics of the integrated stochastic phenomena in optics.

PMID:38437338 | DOI:10.1364/JOSAA.513833