Meaning making

Cities undergoing climate change and rapid urbanization are faced with significant transformational processes that affect the environment and society, challenging them to become more sustainable and resilient. The promotion of nature-based solutions represents an efficient approach to meet sustainability targets in cities and improve the quality of life of citizens. The association of large components of green infrastructure, such as urban parks, with physical activity can counteract the sedentary lifestyle endemic to cities and improve the overall health and well-being of individuals (Carrus et al...

BACKGROUND: To analyze the association between the OHIP-14 and the different subtypes making up the clinical and psychological axis obtained using the RDC/TMD. MATERIAL AND METHODS: 407 patients treated at the TMD unit of the Andalusian Healthcare Service were administered the Spanish version of the Research Diagnostic Criteria for Temporomandibular Disorders questionnaire (RDC/TMD), together with the Oral Health Impact Profile questionnaire (OHIP-14). The degree of association between the patients' score in the OHIP-14 and the clinical and biopsychosocial variables was analyzed through bivariate and multivariate analyses, specifically through linear regression...

The aim of this study was to examine how risks and benefits of cervical spine manipulation (CSM) were framed and discussed in the context of mentorship and their impact on the perception of safe practice of CSM in clinical physiotherapy settings. A multi-method qualitative approach was employed, including a document analysis of established educational guidelines, observations of mentoring sessions, and individual face-to-face interviews with five mentees in the process of learning CSM, and four mentors with Orthopedic Manual Physical Therapy (OMPT) certification...

Parrotfish (Scaridae) feed by biting stony corals. To investigate how their teeth endure the associated contact stresses, we examine the chemical composition, nano- and micro-scale structure, and the mechanical properties of the steephead parrotfish Chlorurus microrhinos tooth. Its enameloid is a fluorapatite (Ca5(PO4)3F) biomineral with outstanding mechanical characteristics: the mean elastic modulus is 124 GPa, and the mean hardness near the biting surface is 7.3 GPa, making it among the stiffest and hardest biominerals measured; the mean indentation yield strength is above 6 GPa, and the mean fracture toughness is 2...

Synthetic biologists have attempted to solve real-world problems, such as those of bacterial biofilms, that are involved in the pathogenesis of many clinical infections and difficult to eliminate. To address this, we employed a blue light responding system and integrated it into the chromosomes of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. With making rational adaption and improvement of the light-activated system, we provided a robust and convenient means to spatiotemporally control gene expression and manipulate biological processes with minimal perturbation in P...

BACKGROUND: Generalist mental health professionals are inadequately equipped to meet the rights of people with intellectual disability. A better understanding of the attributes of effective professionals may assist in the development of workforce capacity in this area. METHODS: Twenty-eight family/support persons of people with intellectual disability participated in four focus groups. Thematic analysis was undertaken applying the Intellectual Disability Mental Health Core Competencies Framework...

The discovery of Higgs-boson decays in a background of standard-model processes was assisted by machine learning methods. The classifiers used to separate signals such as these from background are trained using highly unerring but not completely perfect simulations of the physical processes involved, often resulting in incorrect labelling of background processes or signals (label noise) and systematic errors. Here we use quantum and classical annealing (probabilistic techniques for approximating the global maximum or minimum of a given function) to solve a Higgs-signal-versus-background machine learning optimization problem, mapped to a problem of finding the ground state of a corresponding Ising spin model...

Theories of embodied cognition assume that concepts are grounded in non-linguistic, sensorimotor experience. In support of this assumption, previous studies have shown that upwards response movements are faster than downwards movements after participants have been presented with words whose referents are typically located in the upper vertical space (and vice versa for downwards responses). This is taken as evidence that processing these words reactivates sensorimotor experiential traces. This congruency effect was also found for novel words, after participants learned these words as labels for novel objects that they encountered either in their upper or lower visual field...

The P300 speller is a common brain-computer interface system that can provide a means of communication for patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Recent studies have shown that incorporating language information in signal classification can improve system performance, but they have largely been tested on healthy volunteers in a laboratory setting. The goal of this study was to demonstrate the functionality of the P300 speller system with language models when used by ALS patients in their homes. Six ALS patients with functional ratings ranging from two to 28 participated in this study...

AIM: The purpose of this study is to communicate our experience about the results and effectiveness in the use of the Ttube biliary drainage during pancreaticoduodenectomy. MATERIAL OF STUDY: In accordance whit Whipple we perform the gastric antrum resection during pancreaticoduodenectomy. We have treated 42 patients with pancreaticoduodenectomy, 25 males and 17 females with a mean age of 62 years (range: 53-79 years), and in each of them we have placed a biliary T-tube...

INTRODUCTION: Fibromyalgia is a form of non-articular rheumatic disorder of unknown origin. It is characterized by widespread, chronic musculoskeletal pain. Patients with fibromyalgia suffer more frequently eating disorders, obesity, metabolic syndrome, and other gastrointestinal symptoms. Studies have pointed out to nutrition as a relevant factor in these patients. Some of them think that diet has an influence on fibromyalgia symptoms, and tend to adopt certain dietary patterns. This, combined with access to non-scientific information about diets and supplements, makes analysis of dietary behavior, avoidance, and restrictions particularly important...

High hydrostatic pressure inactivation kinetics of Escherichia coli ATCC 25922 and Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium ATCC 14028 ( S. typhimurium) in a low acid mamey pulp at four pressure levels (300, 350, 400, and 450 MPa), different exposure times (0-8 min), and temperature of 25 ± 2℃ were obtained. Survival curves showed deviations from linearity in the form of a tail (upward concavity). The primary models tested were the Weibull model, the modified Gompertz equation, and the biphasic model...

The recent creation of enormous, cancer-related "Big Data" public depositories represents a powerful means for understanding tumorigenesis. However, a consistently accurate system for clinically evaluating single/multi-biomarkers remains lacking, and it has been asserted that oft-failed clinical advancement of biomarkers occurs within the very early stages of biomarker assessment. To address these challenges, we developed a clinically testable, web-based tool, CANcer-specific single/multi-biomarker Evaluation System (CANES), to evaluate biomarker effectiveness, across 2,134 whole transcriptome datasets, from 94,147 biological samples (from 18 tumor types)...

Objective: To discuss the clinical pathology characteristics, strategies of diagnosis and therapy, and related prognosis factors of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors(pNET). Methods: Clinical data of 103 pNET cases in Department of Pancreatic Surgery, Changhai Hospital of Second Military Medical University were collected from January 2006 to December 2015. There were 44 males and 59 females, aged from 21 to 77 years with mean age of 48 years.Of the 103 patients, there were functional type in 21 cases and no functional type in 82 cases...

High quality epidemiological data are essential for both the development of national oral health policies and cost-effective targeting of resources. Unfortunately, a high level of clinical heterogeneity between studies in this area makes it difficult, and inappropriate, to try to produce any definitive figures on the global prevalence or incidence of root caries. Published studies have reported wide ranges for the prevalence of root caries (25-100%) and the mean Root Caries Index (9.7-38.7). The reported range for annual root caries incidence is also wide, from 10...

Purpose: The photopic negative response (PhNR) is a slow negative component of a flash photopic full-field ERG that has been shown to be specific for retinal ganglion cell (RGC) activity. Direct evaluation of RGC function is desirable in patients with Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON) in which the loss of central acuity can make it difficult to monitor patients with standard metrics. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of PhNR as an objective noninvasive clinical metric in LHON...

Purpose: The aim of the study was to analyze, by using the ALFA4Hearing model (At-a-Glance Labeling for Features of Apps for Hearing Health Care), a sample of apps over a wide range of services in the hearing health care (HHC) domain in order to take a first picture of the current scenario of apps for HHC. Method: We tested 120 apps, and we characterized them by using the ALFA4Hearing model, which includes 29 features in 5 components (Promoters, Services, Implementation, Users, and Descriptive Information)...

Importance: Biomarkers do not determine conversion to Alzheimer disease (AD) perfectly, and criteria do not specify how to take patient characteristics into account. Consequently, biomarker use may be challenging for clinicians, especially in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Objective: To construct biomarker-based prognostic models that enable determination of future AD dementia in patients with MCI. Design, Setting, and Participants: This study is part of the Alzheimer's Biomarkers in Daily Practice (ABIDE) project...

Importance: Nasal airway obstruction (NAO) is a common problem that affects patient quality of life. Surgical success for NAO correction is variable. Virtual surgery planning via computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has the potential to improve the success rates of NAO surgery. Objective: To elicit surgeon feedback of a virtual surgery planning tool for NAO and to determine if this tool affects surgeon decision making. Design, Setting, and Participants: For this cross-sectional study, 60-minute face-to-face interviews with board-certified otolaryngologists were conducted at a single academic otolaryngology department from September 16, 2016, through October 7, 2016...

Because the tropical regions of America harbor the highest concentration of butterfly species, its fauna has attracted considerable attention. Much less is known about the butterflies of southern South America, particularly Argentina, where over 1,200 species occur. To advance understanding of this fauna, we assembled a DNA barcode reference library for 417 butterfly species of Argentina, focusing on the Atlantic Forest, a biodiversity hotspot. We tested the efficacy of this library for specimen identification, used it to assess the frequency of cryptic species, and examined geographic patterns of genetic variation, making this study the first large-scale genetic assessment of the butterflies of southern South America...