Melt-extruded polyethylene oxide (PEO) rods as drug delivery vehicles: Formulation, performance as controlled release devices and the influence of co-extruded excipients on drug release profiles

The utility of controlled release medication formulations lies in their ability to keep drugs at steady levels in the blood plasma of recipients and within the termini of the maximum and minimum effective therapeutic levels. This avoids the “ups” and “downs” of medication levels within the body which would have been the result had conventional immediate release tablets been administered instead. In the veterinary field, controlled release medications are essential¹ because of the logistical difficulties of administering drugs on a regular (e.g., daily) basis to animals. The chief advantages of controlled release veterinary medications lie in the ease with which they can be administered; decrease in stress for animals, owing to less need for rounding up and frequent dosing; and, most importantly for farmers, the reduced cost of treatment relative to that for a multiple dosage regime

Dottie’s Story: Teaching Complex Instruction

Analyzing the structures that frame classroom interactions and learning, and designing, implementing, and analyzing a Complex Instruction (CI) rotation were two requirements for completion of the senior seminar I taught to elementary education majors from 2002-2009. Dottie’s Story relates how the seminar was organized and how one student, Dottie, implemented and reflected upon her learning and the learning of her students. Upon reading this paper, the reader will have a good understanding of how undergraduates were taught CI. We see the various steps of Dottie’s progress through her reflective journal and note the academic and social effects of her work on several students in the kindergarten classroom in which she was a student teacher. Small sample T-tests showed significant academic gains for students in this classroom and qualitative analyses point out the value of status interventions for four students in this classroom. This paper is one chapter in an unpublished book manuscript written during my final sabbatical leave at the University of Vermont

Reflections on the Practicality of Good Theory

Jennifer Kennison noticed something different about the way her high school chemistry students were working together during Complex Instruction rotation. Her attention to the change in her students’ learning caused me to think about how Elizabeth Cohen’s often referenced Kurt Lewin’s comment “There is nothing so practical as a good theory.” As a result, I decided to ask two students who were teaching CI rotations if they would be interested in working together on a conference presentation that looked at their work through the eyes of Lewin’s dictum. They would take on responsibility for documenting and writing about their CI units and I, their advisor, would take on Lewin. Both Jennifer, an experienced teacher and MEd. candidate, and Bethany Brodeur, a senior elementary education major, agreed to this task. The resulting papers formed the core of our presentation at the 2004 conference of the New England Educational Research Organization. Together, they form a short volume that integrates learning about CI with the practical implications of implementation of CI at the elementary and secondary levels. This paper reports my observations of their work confirming Lewin’s dictum and Cohen’s wisdom. C

Compression shorts reduce prenatal pelvic and low back pain: a prospective quasi-experimental controlled study

Background Common prenatal ailments negatively impact performance of activities of daily living and it has been proposed that the use of dynamic elastomeric fabric orthoses, more commonly referred to as compression garments, during pregnancy might aid in the reduction of pain from these ailments, allowing for improved functional capacity. However, the effectiveness of such garments in this context has not been established. This study aims to determine whether compression shorts are effective and thermally safe in the prevention and management of prenatal pelvic and low back pain (LBP). Method A prospective quasi-experimental controlled study using parallel groups without random allocation was conducted, involving 55 childbearing women (gestational weeks 16–31) recruited from hospital and community-based maternity care providers. The compression shorts group (SG) wore SRC Pregnancy Shorts in addition to receiving usual care. The comparison group (CG) received usual care alone. Primary outcome measures—Numeric Pain Rating Scale (NPRS) and Roland Morris Disability Questionnaire (RMDQ) and secondary measures Pelvic Floor Impact Questionnaire - 7 (PFIQ-7) and SF-36 Short Form Health Survey—were assessed fortnightly over 6-weeks for both groups. The compression SG self-assessed daily their body temperatures to monitor thermal impact. Data analysis involved descriptive analyses of the primary and secondary outcome measures scores by group and time-point, and multivariable linear regressions to assess between-group differences in change scores at 6-weeks from baseline while controlling for baseline factors. Results After controlling for baseline scores, gestational weeks and parity, statistically significant differences in NPRS and RMDQ change scores between groups were in favour of the compression SG. At 6-weeks, mean (SD) NPRS change scores in the compression SG and CG were significantly different, at −0.38 (2.21) and 2.82 (2.68), respectively, p = 0.003. Mean (SD) RMDQ change scores in the compression SG and CG were also significantly different, at 0.46 (3.05) and 3.64 (3.32), respectively, p = 0.009. A total of 883 (99.7%) of the reported daily self-assessed body temperatures ranged between 35.4 and 38.0 °C when wearing the compression shorts. At 6-weeks, mean (SD) PFIQ-7 and SF-36 change scores in the compression SG and CG were not significantly different. Conclusion Compression shorts are effective and thermally safe for prenatal management of pelvic and LBP. Registration Trial registration was not required (Australian Government Department of Health Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), 2018)

Staging achilles tendinopathy using ultrasound imaging: The development and investigation of a new ultrasound imaging criteria based on the continuum model of tendon pathology

AimTo develop a standardised ultrasound imaging (USI)-based criteria for the diagnosis of tendinopathy that aligns with the continuum model of tendon pathology. Secondary aims were to assess both the intra-rater and inter-rater reliability of the criteria.MethodsA criteria was developed following a face validity assessment and a total of 31 Achilles tendon ultrasound images were analysed. Intra-rater and inter-rater reliability were assessed for overall tendinopathy stage (normal, reactive/early dysrepair or late dysrepair/degenerative) as well as for individual parameters (thickness, echogenicity and vascularity). Quadratic weighted kappa (kw) was used to report on reliability.ResultsIntra-rater reliability was ‘substantial’ for overall tendinopathy staging (kw rater A; 0.77, 95% CI 0.59 to 0.94, rater B; 0.70, 95% CI 0.52 to 0.89) and ranged from ‘substantial’ to ‘almost perfect’ for thickness (kw rater A; 0.75, 95% CI 0.59 to 0.90, rater B; 0.84, 95% CI 0.71 to 0.98), echogenicity (kw rater A; 0.78, 95% CI 0.62 to 0.95, rater B; 0.73, 95% CI 0.58 to 0.89) and vascularity (kw rater A; 0.86, 95% CI 0.74 to 0.98, rater B; 0.89, 95% CI 0.79 to 0.99). Inter-rater reliability ranged from ‘substantial’ to ‘almost perfect’ for overall tendinopathy staging (kw round 1; 0.75, 95% CI 0.58 to 0.91, round 2; 0.81, 95% CI 0.63 to 0.99), thickness (kw round 1; 0.65, 95% CI 0.48 to 0.83, round 2; 0.77, 95% CI 0.60 to 0.93), echogenicity (kw round 1; 0.70, 95% CI 0.54 to 0.85, round 2; 0.76, 95% CI 0.58 to 0.94) and vascularity (kw round 1; 0.89, 95% CI 0.79 to 0.99, round 2; 0.86, 95% CI 0.74 to 0.98). Inter-rater reliability increased from ‘substantial’ in round 1 (kw 0.75, 95% CI 0.58 to 0.91) to ‘almost perfect’ in round 2 (0.81, 95% CI 0.63 to 0.99).ConclusionIntra-rater and inter-rater reliability were ‘substantial’ to ‘almost perfect’ when utilising an USI-based criteria to diagnose Achilles tendinopathy. This is the first study to use the continuum model of tendon pathology to develop an USI-based criteria to diagnose tendinopathy

Faster title and abstract screening? Evaluating Abstrackr, a semi-automated online screening program for systematic reviewers

BACKGROUND: Citation screening is time consuming and inefficient. We sought to evaluate the performance of Abstrackr, a semi-automated online tool for predictive title and abstract screening. METHODS: Four systematic reviews (aHUS, dietary fibre, ECHO, rituximab) were used to evaluate Abstrackr. Citations from electronic searches of biomedical databases were imported into Abstrackr, and titles and abstracts were screened and included or excluded according to the entry criteria. This process was continued until Abstrackr predicted and classified the remaining unscreened citations as relevant or irrelevant. These classification predictions were checked for accuracy against the original review decisions. Sensitivity analyses were performed to assess the effects of including case reports in the aHUS dataset whilst screening and the effects of using larger imbalanced datasets with the ECHO dataset. The performance of Abstrackr was calculated according to the number of relevant studies missed, the workload saving, the false negative rate, and the precision of the algorithm to correctly predict relevant studies for inclusion, i.e. further full text inspection. RESULTS: Of the unscreened citations, Abstrackr’s prediction algorithm correctly identified all relevant citations for the rituximab and dietary fibre reviews. However, one relevant citation in both the aHUS and ECHO reviews was incorrectly predicted as not relevant. The workload saving achieved with Abstrackr varied depending on the complexity and size of the reviews (9 % rituximab, 40 % dietary fibre, 67 % aHUS, and 57 % ECHO). The proportion of citations predicted as relevant, and therefore, warranting further full text inspection (i.e. the precision of the prediction) ranged from 16 % (aHUS) to 45 % (rituximab) and was affected by the complexity of the reviews. The false negative rate ranged from 2.4 to 21.7 %. Sensitivity analysis performed on the aHUS dataset increased the precision from 16 to 25 % and increased the workload saving by 10 % but increased the number of relevant studies missed. Sensitivity analysis performed with the larger ECHO dataset increased the workload saving (80 %) but reduced the precision (6.8 %) and increased the number of missed citations. CONCLUSIONS: Semi-automated title and abstract screening with Abstrackr has the potential to save time and reduce research waste

A smear slide analysis of sediments from the Terra Nova Bay Polynya, Antarctica /by Robert F. Rathbone.

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Better duplicate detection for systematic reviewers: Evaluation of Systematic Review Assistant-Deduplication Module

BACKGROUND: A major problem arising from searching across bibliographic databases is the retrieval of duplicate citations. Removing such duplicates is an essential task to ensure systematic reviewers do not waste time screening the same citation multiple times. Although reference management software use algorithms to remove duplicate records, this is only partially successful and necessitates removing the remaining duplicates manually. This time-consuming task leads to wasted resources. We sought to evaluate the effectiveness of a newly developed deduplication program against EndNote. METHODS: A literature search of 1,988 citations was manually inspected and duplicate citations identified and coded to create a benchmark dataset. The Systematic Review Assistant-Deduplication Module (SRA-DM) was iteratively developed and tested using the benchmark dataset and compared with EndNote’s default one step auto-deduplication process matching on (‘author’, ‘year’, ‘title’). The accuracy of deduplication was reported by calculating the sensitivity and specificity. Further validation tests, with three additional benchmarked literature searches comprising a total of 4,563 citations were performed to determine the reliability of the SRA-DM algorithm. RESULTS: The sensitivity (84%) and specificity (100%) of the SRA-DM was superior to EndNote (sensitivity 51%, specificity 99.83%). Validation testing on three additional biomedical literature searches demonstrated that SRA-DM consistently achieved higher sensitivity than EndNote (90% vs 63%), (84% vs 73%) and (84% vs 64%). Furthermore, the specificity of SRA-DM was 100%, whereas the specificity of EndNote was imperfect (average 99.75%) with some unique records wrongly assigned as duplicates. Overall, there was a 42.86% increase in the number of duplicates records detected with SRA-DM compared with EndNote auto-deduplication. CONCLUSIONS: The Systematic Review Assistant-Deduplication Module offers users a reliable program to remove duplicate records with greater sensitivity and specificity than EndNote. This application will save researchers and information specialists time and avoid research waste. The deduplication program is freely available online