Social prescribing is a collaborative approach to improve inter-sectoral working between primary health care and community organisations. The Links Worker Programme (LWP) is a social prescribing ...initiative in areas of high deprivation in Glasgow, Scotland, that is designed to mitigate the negative impacts of the social determinants of health.
To investigate issues relevant to implementing a social prescribing programme to improve inter-sectoral working to achieve public health goals.
Qualitative interview study with community organisation representatives and community links practitioners (CLPs) in LWP areas.
Audiorecordings of semi-structured interviews with 30 community organisation representatives and six CLPs were transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically.
Participants identified some benefits of collaborative working, particularly the CLPs' ability to act as a case manager for patients, and their position in GP practices, which operated as a bridge between organisations. However, benefits were seen to flow from new relationships between individuals in community organisations and CLPs, rather than more generally with the practice as a whole. Challenges to the LWP were related to capacity and funding for community organisations in the context of austerity. The capacity of CLPs was also an issue given that their role involved time-consuming, intensive case management.
Although the LWP appears to be a fruitful approach to collaborative case management, integration initiatives such as social prescribing cannot be seen as 'magic bullets'. In the context of economic austerity, such approaches may not achieve their potential unless funding is available for community organisations to continue to provide services and make and maintain their links with primary care.
Acute mesenteric ischemia resulting in bowel necrosis is a surgical emergency. First identification of acute mesenteric ischemia with FDG PET/CT is uncommon, because patients with bowel ischemia are ...usually diagnosed by other imaging methods such as CT. Nevertheless, prompt imager recognition of the PET/CT findings of mesenteric ischemia and necrosis is critical for proper triage of the patient to potentially lifesaving interventions. We present a 39-year-old woman with portal vein thrombosis who was sent for 18F-FDG PET/CT evaluation of a suspected pancreatic head neoplasm but was unexpectedly found to have ischemic and necrotic small bowel secondary to mesenteric venous infarction.
ABSTRACT Host galaxy identification is a crucial step for modern supernova (SN) surveys such as the Dark Energy Survey and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, which will discover SNe by the ...thousands. Spectroscopic resources are limited, and so in the absence of real-time SN spectra these surveys must rely on host galaxy spectra to obtain accurate redshifts for the Hubble diagram and to improve photometric classification of SNe. In addition, SN luminosities are known to correlate with host-galaxy properties. Therefore, reliable identification of host galaxies is essential for cosmology and SN science. We simulate SN events and their locations within their host galaxies to develop and test methods for matching SNe to their hosts. We use both real and simulated galaxy catalog data from the Advanced Camera for Surveys General Catalog and MICECATv2.0, respectively. We also incorporate "hostless" SNe residing in undetected faint hosts into our analysis, with an assumed hostless rate of 5%. Our fully automated algorithm is run on catalog data and matches SNe to their hosts with 91% accuracy. We find that including a machine learning component, run after the initial matching algorithm, improves the accuracy (purity) of the matching to 97% with a 2% cost in efficiency (true positive rate). Although the exact results are dependent on the details of the survey and the galaxy catalogs used, the method of identifying host galaxies we outline here can be applied to any transient survey.
The size of the dust torus in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and their high-luminosity counterparts, quasars, can be inferred from the time delay between UV/optical accretion disk continuum ...variability and the response in the mid-infrared (MIR) torus emission. This dust reverberation mapping (RM) technique has been successfully applied to ∼70 z 0.3 AGNs and quasars. Here we present first results of our dust RM program for distant quasars covered in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Stripe 82 region combining ∼20 yr ground-based optical light curves with 10 yr MIR light curves from the WISE satellite. We measure a high-fidelity lag between W1 band (3.4 m) and g band for 587 quasars over 0.3 z 2 ( ) and two orders of magnitude in quasar luminosity. They tightly follow (intrinsic scatter ∼0.17 dex in lag) the IR lag-luminosity relation observed for z < 0.3 AGNs, revealing a remarkable size-luminosity relation for the dust torus over more than four decades in AGN luminosity, with little dependence on additional quasar properties such as Eddington ratio and variability amplitude. This study motivates further investigations in the utility of dust RM for cosmology and strongly endorses a compelling science case for the combined 10 yr Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (optical) and 5 yr Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope 2 m light curves in a deep survey for low-redshift AGN dust RM with much lower luminosities and shorter, measurable IR lags. The compiled optical and MIR light curves for 7384 quasars in our parent sample are made public with this work.
We present measurements of the Hubble diagram for 103 Type Ia supernovae (SNe) with redshifts 0.04 < z < 0.42, discovered during the first season (Fall 2005) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II ...(SDSS-II) Supernova Survey. These data fill in the redshift 'desert' between low- and high-redshift SN Ia surveys. Within the framework of the MLCS2K2 light-curve fitting method, we use the SDSS-II SN sample to infer the mean reddening parameter for host galaxies, RV = 2.18 +/- 0.14stat +/- 0.48syst, and find that the intrinsic distribution of host-galaxy extinction is well fitted by an exponential function, P(AV ) = exp(-AV / Delta *tV), with Delta *tV = 0.334 +/- 0.088 mag. We combine the SDSS-II measurements with new distance estimates for published SN data from the ESSENCE survey, the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS), the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), and a compilation of Nearby SN Ia measurements. A new feature in our analysis is the use of detailed Monte Carlo simulations of all surveys to account for selection biases, including those from spectroscopic targeting. Combining the SN Hubble diagram with measurements of baryon acoustic oscillations from the SDSS Luminous Red Galaxy sample and with cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropy measurements from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, we estimate the cosmological parameters w and Delta *WM, assuming a spatially flat cosmological model (FwCDM) with constant dark energy equation of state parameter, w. We also consider constraints upon Delta *WM and Delta *W Delta *L for a cosmological constant model ( Delta *LCDM) with w = -1 and non-zero spatial curvature. For the FwCDM model and the combined sample of 288 SNe Ia, we find w = -0.76 +/- 0.07(stat) +/- 0.11(syst), Delta *WM = 0.307 +/- 0.019(stat) +/- 0.023(syst) using MLCS2K2 and w = -0.96 +/- 0.06(stat) +/- 0.12(syst), Delta *WM = 0.265 +/- 0.016(stat) +/- 0.025(syst) using the SALT-II fitter. We trace the discrepancy between these results to a difference in the rest-frame UV model combined with a different luminosity correction from color variations; these differences mostly affect the distance estimates for the SNLS and HST SNe. We present detailed discussions of systematic errors for both light-curve methods and find that they both show data-model discrepancies in rest-frame U band. For the SALT-II approach, we also see strong evidence for redshift-dependence of the color-luminosity parameter ( Delta *b). Restricting the analysis to the 136 SNe Ia in the Nearby+SDSS-II samples, we find much better agreement between the two analysis methods but with larger uncertainties: w = -0.92 +/- 0.13(stat)+0.10 -0.33(syst) for MLCS2K2 and w = -0.92 +/- 0.11(stat)+0.07 -0.15 (syst) for SALT-II.
The primary aim of this study was to report outcomes after fingertip terminalization in 90 patients over a 19-year period. We report excellent functional outcomes and satisfaction, but a 33% ...incidence of neuropathic pain.
Bovine fescue toxicosis (FT) is caused by grazing ergot alkaloid-producing endophyte (Epichloë coenophiala)-infected tall fescue. Endophyte's effects on the animal's microbiota and metabolism were ...investigated recently, but its effects in planta or on the plant-animal interactions have not been considered. We examined multi-compartment microbiota-metabolome perturbations using multi-'omics (16S and ITS2 sequencing, plus untargeted metabolomics) in Angus steers grazing non-toxic (Max-Q) or toxic (E+) tall fescue for 28 days and in E+ plants. E+ altered the plant/animal microbiota, decreasing most ruminal fungi, with mixed effects on rumen bacteria and fecal microbiota. Metabolic perturbations occurred in all matrices, with some plant-animal overlap (e.g., Vitamin B6 metabolism). Integrative interactomics revealed unique E+ network constituents. Only E+ had ruminal solids OTUs within the network and fecal fungal OTUs in E+ had unique taxa (e.g., Anaeromyces). Three E+-unique urinary metabolites that could be potential biomarkers of FT and targeted therapeutically were identified.
We present an analysis of the host galaxy dependences of Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) from the full three year sample of the SDSS-II Supernova Survey. We re-discover, to high significance, the strong ...correlation between host galaxy type and the width of the observed SN light curve, i.e., fainter, quickly declining SNe Ia favor passive host galaxies, while brighter, slowly declining Ia's favor star-forming galaxies. We also find evidence (at between 2{sigma} and 3{sigma}) that SNe Ia are {approx_equal}0.1 {+-} 0.04 mag brighter in passive host galaxies than in star-forming hosts, after the SN Ia light curves have been standardized using the light-curve shape and color variations. This difference in brightness is present in both the SALT2 and MCLS2k2 light-curve fitting methodologies. We see evidence for differences in the SN Ia color relationship between passive and star-forming host galaxies, e.g., for the MLCS2k2 technique, we see that SNe Ia in passive hosts favor a dust law of R{sub V} = 1.0 {+-} 0.2, while SNe Ia in star-forming hosts require R{sub V} = 1.8{sup +0.2}{sub -0.4}. The significance of these trends depends on the range of SN colors considered. We demonstrate that these effects can be parameterized using the stellar mass of the host galaxy (with a confidence of >4{sigma}) and including this extra parameter provides a better statistical fit to our data. Our results suggest that future cosmological analyses of SN Ia samples should include host galaxy information.
Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Supernova Survey-II (SDSS-II SN Survey), we measure the rate of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) as a function of galaxy properties at intermediate redshift. A sample ...of 342 SNe Ia with 0.05 < z < 0.25 is constructed. Using broadband photometry and redshifts, we use the PEGASE.2 spectral energy distributions to estimate host galaxy stellar masses and recent star formation rates (SFRs). We find that the rate of SNe Ia per unit stellar mass is significantly higher (by a factor of ~30) in highly star-forming galaxies compared to passive galaxies. When parameterizing the SN Ia rate (SNR sub(Ia)) based on host galaxy properties, we find that the rate of SNe Ia in passive galaxies is not linearly proportional to the stellar mass; instead an SNR sub(Ia) M super(0.68) is favored. However, such a parameterization does not describe the observed SNR sub(Ia) in star-forming galaxies. The SNR sub(Ia) in star-forming galaxies is well fitted by SNR sub(Ia) = (0.41 + or - 0.15) x 10 super(-10)M super(0.72 + or - 0.15) + (0.65 + or - 0.25) x 10 super(-3)SFR super(1.01 + or - 0.22) (statistical errors only), where M is the host galaxy stellar mass (in M sub(middot in circle)) and SFR is the SFR (in M sub(middot in circle) yr super(-1)). We show that our results, for SNe Ia in passive galaxies, are consistent with those at higher redshifts (favoring SNR sub(Ia)is proportional toM) when accounting for the difference in the ages of our galaxies. This suggests that the rate of SNe Ia is correlated with the age of the stellar population. The MLCS extinction parameter, A sub(V), is similar in passive and moderately star-forming galaxies, but we find indications that it is smaller, on average, in highly star-forming galaxies. This result appears to be driven by a deficit of the reddest (A sub(V) > 0.15) SNe Ia in highly star-forming galaxies. We consider that the high levels of dust in these systems may be obscuring the reddest and faintest SNe Ia.
Total ankle replacement is an established treatment for end-stage arthritis. However, there is little data examining outcomes in sequential bilateral replacements. This study aimed to compare ...outcomes between first and second ankles in sequential replacement.
Patients were retrospectively contacted to complete a follow-up questionnaire including the Manchester-Oxford Foot Questionnaire (MOXFQ), EQ-5D-3 L, and a question assessing satisfaction. Electronic records identified demographics, procedural details, and complications.
Twenty patients underwent sequential bilateral ankle replacement over the study period. At a mean follow-up of four years, 18 patients completed the follow-up questionnaire. There was no statistically significant difference between first and second ankles in terms of MOXFQ score, EQ-5D-3 L or satisfaction. Eleven complications were noted.
We report excellent outcomes after sequential bilateral ankle replacement with no difference in outcomes between first and second ankles. These results can be used to counsel patients in the future and manage expectations.
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