Warts in general practice

Eight hundred and ninety seven patients referred by their general practitioner to Health Centre Wart Clinics were interviewed. Seventy one patients (7.9%) were found to have lesions other than cutaneous warts. Females were significantly more likely to have plantar warts on their toes (p less than 0.002) and non-plantar warts on their fingers (p less than 0.03) and less likely to have non-plantar warts on the palms of their hands (p less than 0.03) than males. Patients living in large households (5+ persons) were more likely than patients living in smaller households (2-4 persons) to report an infected co-habitant (p less than 0.001). Patients with periungual warts were significantly more likely to be nailbiters. (p less than 0.001). Patients presenting with warts greater than two years in duration were more likely to have multiple warts than those with warts less than one month in duration (p less than 0.001). Patients who frequently immersed their hands in water were more likely to present with multiple warts on the hands (p less than 0.001). Multiple plantar warts were associated with moist or macerated feet (p less than 0.001). The role of the family doctor in diagnosing and preventing the spread of this infection is discussed.

"The End" for piano and computer. Performed by Shiau-uen Ding. Composer's Voice Concert Series: 15 Minutes of Fame. Jan Hus Church, NYC. General information State: Published Organisations: School of Creative Arts, Sonic Arts, UOA35 - Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts Authors: Lyon, E.

Performed by Shiau-uen Ding. Composer's Voice Concert Series: 15 Minutes of Fame. Jan Hus Church, NYC.

The importance of validating the diagnosis of coronary heart disease when measuring secondary prevention:a cross-sectional study in general practice

To compare levels of recorded risk factors and drug treatment between patients with validated and non-validated diagnoses of coronary heart disease (CHD) in Northern Ireland.

WASP-52b, WASP-58b, WASP-59b, and WASP-60b: Four new transiting close-in giant planets

We present the discovery of four new transiting hot jupiters, detected mainly from SuperWASP-North and SOPHIE observations. These new planets, WASP-52b, WASP-58b, WASP-59b, and WASP-60b, have orbital periods ranging from 1.7 to 7.9 days, masses between 0.46 and 0.94 M_Jup, and radii between 0.73 and 1.49 R_Jup. Their G1 to K5 dwarf host stars have V magnitudes in the range 11.7-13.0. The depths of the transits are between 0.6 and 2.7%, depending on the target. With their large radii, WASP-52b and 58b are new cases of low-density, inflated planets, whereas WASP-59b is likely to have a large, dense core. WASP-60 shows shallow transits. In the case of WASP-52 we also detected the Rossiter-McLaughlin anomaly via time-resolved spectroscopy of a transit. We measured the sky-projected obliquity lambda = 24 (+17/-9) degrees, indicating that WASP-52b orbits in the same direction as its host star is rotating and that this prograde orbit is slightly misaligned with the stellar equator. These four new planetary systems increase our statistics on hot jupiters, and provide new targets for follow-up studies.

A comparative analysis of the health and wellbeing of cancer survivors to the general population

Background
The population of people surviving cancer is continually increasing and currently cancer survivors represent approximately 3.7% of the American population and 3% of the UK population. There is limited and inconclusive empirical evidence regarding the long-term health and well-being of cancer survivors.

Methods
Two hundred eighty-nine cancer survivors and 262 matched-age and sex patients from the same group of General (primary care) Practices completed postal questionnaires measuring health and well-being, health service utilisation and satisfaction and health care needs.

Main Results
Cancer survivors reported poorer health and well-being and health service utilisation than the general population. Despite this poorer health, the majority of cancer survivors reported satisfaction with services and almost two-thirds of the survivors did not report any needs.

Conclusions
The majority of cancer survivors do not appear to require additional support services. There is, however, a subgroup of survivors who warrant specialist support, particularly survivors who are older, experience late effects and have had adjuvant treatments. Future research should focus on developing methods that could be used in routine clinical practice to identify ‘at risk’ or vulnerable patients and to provide appropriate and timely support.

The influence of the new general ophthalmic services (GOS) contract in optometrist referrals for glaucoma in Scotland

Purpose: To assess the quality of referrals from community optometrists in the northeast of Scotland to the hospital glaucoma service before and after the implementation of the new General Ophthalmic Services (GOS) contract in Scotland. Methods: Retrospective study encompassing two 6-month periods, one before the implementation of the new GOS (Scotland) contract in April 2006 (from June to November 2005), and the other after (from June to November 2006). The community optometrist referral forms and hospital glaucoma service notes were reviewed. Comparisons were performed using the t-test and ?- test. Results: In all, 183 referrals were made during the first 6-month period from June to November 2005, and 120 referrals were made during the second 6-month period from June to November 2006. After the introduction of the new GOS contract, there was a statistically significant increase in true-positive referrals (from 18.0 to 31.7%; P=0.006), decrease in false-positive referrals (from 36.6 to 31.7%; P=0.006), and increase in the number of referrals with information on applanation tonometry (from 11.8 to 50.0%; P=0.000), dilated fundal examination (from 2.2 to 24.2%; P=0.000), and repeat visual fields (from 14.8 to 28.3%; P=0.004) when compared to the first 6-month period. However, only 41.7% of referrals fulfilled the new GOS contract requirements, with information on applanation tonometry the most commonly missing. Conclusions: After the implementation of the new GOS (Scotland) contract in April 2006, there has been an improvement in the quality of the glaucoma referrals from the community optometrists in the northeast of Scotland, with a corresponding reduction in false-positive referrals. Despite the relatively positive effect so far, there is still scope for further improvement. © 2009 Macmillan Publishers Limited All rights reserved.

Factors affecting collaboration between general practitioners and community pharmacists:a qualitative study

Although general practitioners (GPs) and community pharmacists (CPs) are encouraged to collaborate, a true collaborative relationship does not exist between them. Our objective was to identify and analyze factors affecting GP-CP collaboration.

Compositional divergence and convergence in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities

In spite of the controversy that they have generated, neutral models provide ecologists with powerful tools for creating dynamic predictions about beta-diversity in ecological communities. Ecologists can achieve an understanding of the assembly rules operating in nature by noting when and how these predictions are met or not met. This is particularly valuable for those groups of organisms that are challenging to study under natural conditions (e.g., bacteria and fungi). Here, we focused on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal (AMF) communities and performed an extensive literature search that allowed us to synthesize the information in 19 data sets with the minimal requisites for creating a null hypothesis in terms of community dissimilarity expected under neutral dynamics. In order to achieve this task, we calculated the first estimates of neutral parameters for several AMF communities from different ecosystems. Communities were shown either to be consistent with neutrality or to diverge or converge with respect to the levels of compositional dissimilarity expected under neutrality. These data support the hypothesis that divergence occurs in systems where the effect of limited dispersal is overwhelmed by anthropogenic disturbance or extreme biological and environmental heterogeneity, whereas communities converge when systems have the potential for niche divergence within a relatively homogeneous set of environmental conditions. Regarding the study cases that were consistent with neutrality, the sampling designs employed may have covered relatively homogeneous environments in which the effects of dispersal limitation overwhelmed minor differences among AMF taxa that would lead to environmental filtering. Using neutral models we showed for the first time for a soil microbial group the conditions under which different assembly processes may determine different patterns of beta-diversity. Our synthesis is an important step showing how the application of general ecological theories to a model microbial taxon has the potential to shed light on the assembly and ecological dynamics of communities.

The use of topical anaesthesia during repair of minor lacerations in Departments of Emergency Medicine:a literature review

There are currently a number of different methods available to obtain anaesthesia in minor dermatological procedures. Although intradermal infiltration of 1% lidocaine is the favoured method for anaesthesia induction in laceration repair, it can cause significant pain in itself. Topical anaesthesia has been investigated as an alternative to infiltration anaesthesia, with the majority of studies looking at preparations of either TAC (tetracaine, adrenaline and cocaine) or LAT (lidocaine, adrenaline and tetracaine).

A multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree-Fock method for excited electronic states. I. General formalism and application to open-shell states

The solution of the time-dependent Schrodinger equation for systems of interacting electrons is generally a prohibitive task, for which approximate methods are necessary. Popular approaches, such as the time-dependent Hartree-Fock (TDHF) approximation and time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT), are essentially single-configurational schemes. TDHF is by construction incapable of fully accounting for the excited character of the electronic states involved in many physical processes of interest; TDDFT, although exact in principle, is limited by the currently available exchange-correlation functionals. On the other hand, multiconfigurational methods, such as the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree-Fock (MCTDHF) approach, provide an accurate description of the excited states and can be systematically improved. However, the computational cost becomes prohibitive as the number of degrees of freedom increases, and thus, at present, the MCTDHF method is only practical for few-electron systems. In this work, we propose an alternative approach which effectively establishes a compromise between efficiency and accuracy, by retaining the smallest possible number of configurations that catches the essential features of the electronic wavefunction. Based on a time-dependent variational principle, we derive the MCTDHF working equation for a multiconfigurational expansion with fixed coefficients and specialise to the case of general open-shell states, which are relevant for many physical processes of interest. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3600397]

Finding exoplanets orbiting young active stars - I. Technique

Stellar activity, such as starspots, can induce radial velocity (RV) variations that can mask or even mimic the RV signature of orbiting exoplanets. For this reason RV exoplanet surveys have been unsuccessful when searching for planets around young, active stars and are therefore failing to explore an important regime which can help to reveal how planets form and migrate. This paper describes a new technique to remove spot signatures from the stellar line-profiles of moderately rotating, active stars (v sin i ranging from 10 to 50 km s(-1)). By doing so it allows planetary RV signals to be uncovered. We used simulated models of a G5V type star with differing dark spots on its surface along with archive data of the known active star HD 49933 to validate our method. The results showed that starspots could be effectively cleaned from the line-profiles so that the stellar RV jitter was reduced by more than 80 per cent. Applying this procedure to the same models and HD 49933 data, but with fake planets injected, enabled the effective removal of starspots so that Jupiter mass planets on short orbital periods were successfully recovered. These results show that this approach can be useful in the search for hot-Jupiter planets that orbit around young, active stars with a v sin i of similar to 10-50 km/s.