Comparing the MSIS-29 and the Health Utilities Index Mark III in Multiple Sclerosis

Objective: Since the properties of health-related quality of life measures vary across samples, studies directly comparing the properties of different measures can be useful in understanding their relative strengths and limitations. We aimed to compare the psychometric properties of the Health Utilities Index Mark III (HUI3) and the Multiple Sclerosis Impact Scale-29 (MSIS-29).Methods: In Spring 2020, North American Research Committee on Multiple Sclerosis (NARCOMS) Registry participants completed the HUI3, MSIS-29, Patient Determined Disease Steps (PDDS) and SymptoMScreen. For the HUI3 and MSIS-29 we assessed floor and ceiling effects, construct validity, and internal consistency reliability. We used relative efficiency to compare the discriminating ability of the two measures with respect to disability.Results: We included 5,664 participants in the analysis, with mean (SD) age 63 (10.1) years; 4,579 (80.8%) were women. For the HUI3 the mean (SD) score was 0.44 (0.32), for the MSIS-29 physical it was 34.0 (24.2) and for the MSIS-29 psychological it was 25.9 (20.4). Neither of the measures had floor or ceiling effects, and internal consistency reliability was > 0.70 for both. The HUI3 and MSIS-29 physical were strongly correlated (r = −0.78; 95%CI:−0.79,−0.77). The correlation between the HUI3 and MSIS-29 psychological was weaker but remained moderately strong (r = −0.64; 95%CI:−0.66,−0.63). After adjusting for sociodemographic and clinical factors, relative efficiency to discriminate between disability (PDDS) groups was highest for the MSIS-29 physical scale, followed by the HUI3.Conclusion: Both measures had adequate validity and reliability. The MSIS-29 physical discriminated between disability groups better than the HUI3.

AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON THE RELATIVE MOTIONS BETWEEN A FLOATING HARBOUR TRANSHIPPER AND A FEEDER VESSEL IN REGULAR WAVES

The Floating Harbour Transhipper (FHT) is a pioneering logistics solution that was designed to meet the growing demands for coastal transhipment in the mining sector as well as commercial port operations. The primary advantage of the FHT system is that it can reduce transhipment delays caused by inclement weather, by reducing relative motions between the FHT and feeder vessel. The feeder is sheltered when inside the FHT well dock when compared to the more exposed location when a feeder is in a traditional side-by-side mooring arrangement. This paper discusses previously published studies into the relative motions of vessels engaged in side-by-side mooring arrangements and also presents details and results from a series of physical scale model experiments. In these experiments, both side-by-side and aft well dock mooring arrangements are investigated. The results provide strong evidence that the FHT well dock concept can significantly reduce the heave, pitch and roll motions of feeder vessels when transhipping in open seas – this being the cornerstone of any successful open water transhipment operation.

The Effects of Workplace Interventions on Low Back Pain in Workers: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to analyze the effects of workplace interventions (WI) on clinical outcomes related to low back pain (LBP) in a worker population, and to assess socio-economic parameters as participants on sick leave, days of sick leave, and return to work following WI. A systematic literature search was performed to select randomized clinical trials that investigated the effectiveness of WI on return to work, sick leave, and working capacity of workers affected by nonspecific LBP. Fourteen articles were included in the review and meta-analysis. The meta-analysis showed improvements in pain (p = 0.004), disability (p = 0.0008), fear-avoidance for psychical activity (p = 0.004), and quality of life (p = 0.001 for physical scale and p = 0.03 for mental scale) for patients who underwent WI compared to controls. Moreover, the pain reduction following WI was statistically significant in the healthcare workers’ group (p = 0.005), but not in the other workers’ group. The participants on sick leave and the number of days of sick leave decreased in the WI group without statistical significance (p = 0.85 and p = 0.10, respectively). Finally, LBP recurrence was significantly reduced in the WI group (p = 0.006). WI led to a significant improvement of clinical outcomes in a workers’ population affected by LBP.

Prefabricated Futures: Adaptable and productive construction methods for New Zealand dwellings

<p>The traditional construction method of the New Zealand home has remained largely unchanged over the last century. These housing solutions that have supported our nation no longer suffice and the ‘young home owner’ is becoming a distant dream. New Zealand needs homes, and fast. Specialised trades create fragmentation in construction. This results in inefficient processes that divide the stages of constructing a home. What lacks in these instances is accessibility to design. Architects tend to focus on one-off, bespoke builds, whilst transportable home companies create generic, minimum spec designs. It can be argued that current prefabricated solutions are not complete, requiring sub-trades and work onsite that causes delays and construction related setbacks. Investigation into a key historic precedent has driven this research. This demonstrates that attempts have been made to change the housing model in New Zealand with some success. The precedent aligns with past notions in considering core parts of the home as products. This can create efficiencies in construction. The current demand for housing provides the perfect opportunity to reboot the method in which we build. This thesis questions how offsite panel assemblies can create a complete prefabricated housing product and improve construction efficiencies. This will still offer architectural choice. BIM (Building Information Modelling) and parameter driven design are used as a vehicle to demonstrate how more efficient, more collaborative and more controlled design approaches can be developed in order to create a complete construction package. Design-led research involving constant scale model testing and development led to my prefabricated wall panel design. Named the LapLock panel, I have developed a complete wall, floor and roof panel product system. Designed to be fully fabricated from structure to claddings and services in factory. This produces ruthless efficiencies onsite. The work utilises BIM in the form of Revit and takes advantage of parameter driven families to allow for fast manipulation and output of drawings for panels. A constant conversation between analogue and digital tools (in the form of physical scale models and Revit) strengthened the understandings of the limitations throughout the research. This thesis offers a new way of considering how New Zealand builds homes. By introducing adaptable and efficient panels that are complete on arrival to site, the Laplock solution provides accessible architectural choice to clients. This future-proofs the construction of the New Zealand home.</p>

Prefabricated Futures: Adaptable and productive construction methods for New Zealand dwellings

<p>The traditional construction method of the New Zealand home has remained largely unchanged over the last century. These housing solutions that have supported our nation no longer suffice and the ‘young home owner’ is becoming a distant dream. New Zealand needs homes, and fast. Specialised trades create fragmentation in construction. This results in inefficient processes that divide the stages of constructing a home. What lacks in these instances is accessibility to design. Architects tend to focus on one-off, bespoke builds, whilst transportable home companies create generic, minimum spec designs. It can be argued that current prefabricated solutions are not complete, requiring sub-trades and work onsite that causes delays and construction related setbacks. Investigation into a key historic precedent has driven this research. This demonstrates that attempts have been made to change the housing model in New Zealand with some success. The precedent aligns with past notions in considering core parts of the home as products. This can create efficiencies in construction. The current demand for housing provides the perfect opportunity to reboot the method in which we build. This thesis questions how offsite panel assemblies can create a complete prefabricated housing product and improve construction efficiencies. This will still offer architectural choice. BIM (Building Information Modelling) and parameter driven design are used as a vehicle to demonstrate how more efficient, more collaborative and more controlled design approaches can be developed in order to create a complete construction package. Design-led research involving constant scale model testing and development led to my prefabricated wall panel design. Named the LapLock panel, I have developed a complete wall, floor and roof panel product system. Designed to be fully fabricated from structure to claddings and services in factory. This produces ruthless efficiencies onsite. The work utilises BIM in the form of Revit and takes advantage of parameter driven families to allow for fast manipulation and output of drawings for panels. A constant conversation between analogue and digital tools (in the form of physical scale models and Revit) strengthened the understandings of the limitations throughout the research. This thesis offers a new way of considering how New Zealand builds homes. By introducing adaptable and efficient panels that are complete on arrival to site, the Laplock solution provides accessible architectural choice to clients. This future-proofs the construction of the New Zealand home.</p>

Investigation of the FCNC Processes in the 3-4-1-1 Model

We study the FCNC problems in 3-4-1-1 model in a way different from the previous work. The sources of FCNC at the tree-level in the 3-4-1-1 model come from both the gauge and scalar sectors. We show that the most stringently bound on the tree-level FCNC interactions comes from the meson oscillations. The lower bound on the new physics scale is imposed more tightly than in the previous work, \(M_{new} > 22\) TeV. On the allowed value domain of the new physical scale, we show that the contribution of the tree-level FCNC interactions to the BrB\(_s \rightarrow \mu^+ \mu^-)\) is negligible.

Machine Learning for Causal Inference in Biological Networks: Perspectives of This Challenge

Most machine learning-based methods predict outcomes rather than understanding causality. Machine learning methods have been proved to be efficient in finding correlations in data, but unskilful to determine causation. This issue severely limits the applicability of machine learning methods to infer the causal relationships between the entities of a biological network, and more in general of any dynamical system, such as medical intervention strategies and clinical outcomes system, that is representable as a network. From the perspective of those who want to use the results of network inference not only to understand the mechanisms underlying the dynamics, but also to understand how the network reacts to external stimuli (e. g. environmental factors, therapeutic treatments), tools that can understand the causal relationships between data are highly demanded. Given the increasing popularity of machine learning techniques in computational biology and the recent literature proposing the use of machine learning techniques for the inference of biological networks, we would like to present the challenges that mathematics and computer science research faces in generalising machine learning to an approach capable of understanding causal relationships, and the prospects that achieving this will open up for the medical application domains of systems biology, the main paradigm of which is precisely network biology at any physical scale.

Retrofitting of Pressurized Sand Traps in Hydropower Plants

Unlined pressure tunnels in sound rock, combined with pressurized sand traps at the downstream end, allow for low-cost construction of hydropower tunnel systems. This design concept is utilized in hydropower plants across the world. Currently, many such power plants are being upgraded with higher installed capacity, which may result in challenges with the sand trap efficiency. A physical scale model test, accompanied by 3D CFD simulations of a case study pressurized sand trap, has been studied for economic retrofitting. The geometric model scale is 1:36.67 while the velocity scale and sediment scale are 1:1 (same average flow velocity and sediment size in model and prototype). This is currently an uncommon scaling approach but with several advantages, as presented in this paper. Various options for retrofitting were investigated. A combined structure of ramp and ribs was found to significantly improve the sediment trap efficiency. The main novelties from this work are the proposed design of the combined ramp and rib structure. Secondary results include an efficient setup for physical scale models of pressurized sand traps and a methodology that combines the benefits of 3D CFD simulations with physical scale models testing for sand trap engineering and design.

A geostatistical analysis of multiscale metallicity variations in galaxies [I]: Introduction and comparison of high-resolution metallicity maps to an analytic metal transport model

Thanks to recent advances in integral field spectroscopy (IFS), modern surveys of nearby galaxies are capable of resolving metallicity maps of H ii regions down to scales of ∼50pc. However, statistical analysis of these metallicity maps has seldom gone beyond fitting basic linear regressions and comparing parameters to global galaxy properties. In this paper (the first of a series), we introduce techniques from spatial statistics that are well suited for detailed analysis of both small- and large-scale metallicity variations within the interstellar media (ISMs) of local galaxies. As a first application, we compare the observed structure of small-scale metallicity fluctuations within 7 local galaxies observed by the PHANGS collaboration to predictions from a stochastic, physically motivated, analytical model developed by Krumholz & Ting. We show that while the theoretical model underestimates the amount of correlated scatter in the galactic metallicity distributions by 3 − 4 orders of magnitude, it provides good estimates of the physical scale of metallicity correlations. We conclude that the ISM of local spiral galaxies is far from homogeneous, with regions of size ∼1 kpc showing significant departures from the mean metallicity at each galactocentric radius.

4D-printed parametric façade in architecture: prototyping a self-shaping skin using programmable two-way shape memory composite (TWSMC)

PurposeThis study aims to present an architectural application of 4D-printed climate-adaptive kinetic architecture and parametric façade design.Design/methodology/approachThis work investigates experimental prototyping of a reversibly self-shaping façade, by integrating the parametric design approach, smart material and 4D-printing techniques. Thermo-responsive building skin modules of two-way shape memory composite (TWSMC) was designed and fabricated, combining the shape memory alloy fibers (SMFs) and 3D-printed shape memory polymer matrices (SMPMs). For geometry design, deformation of the TWSMC was simulated with a dimension-reduced mathematical model, and an optimal arrangement of three different types of TWSMC modules were designed and fabricated into a physical scale model.FindingsModel-based experiments show robust workability and formal reversibility of the developed façade. Potential utility of this module for adaptive building design and construction is discussed based on the results. Findings help better understand the shape memory phenomena and presented design-inclusive technology will benefit architectural communities of smart climate-adaptive building.Originality/valueTwo-way reversibility of 4D-printed composites is a topic of active research in material science but has not been clearly addressed in the practical context of architectural design, due to technical barriers. This research is the first architectural presentation of the whole design procedure, simulation and fabrication of the 4D-printed and parametrically movable façade.