Rationale: The Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA) is a validated instrument to assess malnutrition and its risk factors in clinical populations. Its patient component, PG-SGA Short Form (SF), can be used as screening instrument. In this cross-sectional study we aimed to assess agreement between the PG-SGA SF, Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST), and Short Nutritional Assessment Questionnaire (SNAQ) in patients at the University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands.Methods: Malnutrition risk was assessed by PG-SGA SF, MUST, and SNAQ in 81 patients from the Departments Ear Nose Throat (ENT), Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (OMS) and Orthopedics. Point scores of PG-SGA SF=4-8, MUST=1, and SNAQ=2 were classified as ‘medium malnutrition risk’, and PG-SGA SF≥9, MUST ≥2, and SNAQ ≥3 as ‘high malnutrition risk’. Agreement in classification for malnutrition risk was assessed by weighted kappa (κ) and intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC). A p-value of <0.05 was considered statistically significant.Results: According to the PG-SGA SF, MUST and SNAQ, respectively 65%, 81%, and 80% of all patients were classified as ‘low malnutrition risk’; 24%, 8% and 6% as ‘medium malnutrition risk’; 11%, 10% and 14% as ‘high malnutrition risk’.Agreement between PG-SGA SF and MUST (κ=0.452, ICC=0.448; p<0.001), and between PG-SGA SF and SNAQ (κ=0.395, ICC=0.395; p<0.001) were both fair. In patients from the Departments ENT and OMS, PG-SGA SF classified more patients at medium/high malnutrition risk (n=26) as compared to the MUST (n=12) or SNAQ (n=14).Conclusion: We found only fair agreement between the PG-SGA SF and MUST and SNAQ, respectively. The PG-SGA SF classified three and four times more patients at medium malnutrition risk, compared to MUST and SNAQ respectively, due to its scoring on symptoms and activities/functioning. Hence, the PG-SGA SF may help facilitate proactive prevention of malnutrition.
Slim laden biedt – naar verwachting – de mogelijkheid om grote aantallen elektrische auto’s te laden op zoveel mogelijk duurzame energie uit zon en wind. Daarnaast biedt het de mogelijkheid om de energievraag te accommoderen binnen de kaders van het elektriciteitssysteem. In deze studie doen CE Delft en APPM in opdracht van Enpuls, en in samenwerking met Hogeschool van Amsterdam en ElaadNL, onderzoek naar de maatschappelijke kosten en baten van slim laden.
LINK
Many lithographically created optical components, such as photonic crystals, require the creation of periodically repeated structures [1]. The optical properties depend critically on the consistency of the shape and periodicity of the repeated structure. At the same time, the structure and its period may be similar to, or substantially below that of the optical diffraction limit, making inspection with optical microscopy difficult. Inspection tools must be able to scan an entire wafer (300 mm diameter), and identify wafers that fail to meet specifications rapidly. However, high resolution, and high throughput are often difficult to achieve simultaneously, and a compromise must be made. TeraNova is developing an optical inspection tool that can rapidly image features on wafers. Their product relies on (a) knowledge of what the features should be, and (b) a detailed and accurate model of light diffraction from the wafer surface. This combination allows deviations from features to be identified by modifying the model of the surface features until the calculated diffraction pattern matches the observed pattern. This form of microscopy—known as Fourier microscopy—has the potential to be very rapid and highly accurate. However, the solver, which calculates the wafer features from the diffraction pattern, must be very rapid and precise. To achieve this, a hardware solver will be implemented. The hardware solver must be combined with mechatronic tracking of the absolute wafer position, requiring the automatic identification of fiduciary markers. Finally, the problem of computer obsolescence in instrumentation (resulting in security weaknesses) will also be addressed by combining the digital hardware and software into a system-on-a-chip (SoC) to provide a powerful, yet secure operating environment for the microscope software.
The seaweed aquaculture sector, aimed at cultivation of macroalgal biomass to be converted into commercial applications, can be placed within a sustainable and circular economy framework. This bio-based sector has the potential to aid the European Union meet multiple EU Bioeconomy Strategy, EU Green Deal and Blue Growth Strategy objectives. Seaweeds play a crucial ecological role within the marine environment and provide several ecosystem services, from the take up of excess nutrients from surrounding seawater to oxygen production and potentially carbon sequestration. Sea lettuce, Ulva spp., is a green seaweed, growing wild in the Atlantic Ocean and North Sea. Sea lettuce has a high nutritional value and is a promising source for food, animal feed, cosmetics and more. Sea lettuce, when produced in controlled conditions like aquaculture, can supplement our diet with healthy and safe proteins, fibres and vitamins. However, at this moment, Sea lettuce is hardly exploited as resource because of its unfamiliarity but also lack of knowledge about its growth cycle, its interaction with microbiota and eventually, possible applications. Even, it is unknown which Ulva species are available for aquaculture (algaculture) and how these species can contribute to a sustainable aquaculture biomass production. The AQULVA project aims to investigate which Ulva species are available in the North Sea and Wadden Sea which can be utilised in onshore aquaculture production. Modern genomic, microbiomic and metabolomic profiling techniques alongside ecophysiological production research must reveal suitable Ulva selections with high nutritional value for sustainable onshore biomass production. Selected Ulva spp lines will be used for production of healthy and safe foods, anti-aging cosmetics and added value animal feed supplements for dairy farming. This applied research is in cooperation with a network of SME’s, Research Institutes and Universities of Applied Science and is liaised with EU initiatives like the EU-COST action “SeaWheat”.
Everyone has the right to participate in society to the best of their ability. This right also applies to people with a visual impairment, in combination with a severe or profound intellectual and possibly motor disability (VISPIMD). However, due to their limitations, for their participation these people are often highly dependent on those around them, such as family members andhealthcare professionals. They determine how people with VISPIMD participate and to what extent. To optimize this support, they must have a good understanding of what people with disabilities can still do with their remaining vision.It is currently difficult to gain insight into the visual abilities of people with disabilities, especially those with VISPIMD. As a professional said, "Everything we can think of or develop to assess the functional vision of this vulnerable group will help improve our understanding and thus our ability to support them. Now, we are more or less guessing about what they can see.Moreover, what little we know about their vision is hard to communicate to other professionals”. Therefore, there is a need for methods that can provide insight into the functional vision of people with VISPIMD, in order to predict their options in daily life situations. This is crucial knowledge to ensure that these people can participate in society to their fullest extent.What makes it so difficult to get this insight at the moment? Visual impairments can be caused by a range of eye or brain disorders and can manifest in various ways. While we understand fairly well how low vision affects a person's abilities on relatively simple visual tasks, it is much more difficult to predict this in more complex dynamic everyday situations such asfinding your way or moving around during daily activities. This is because, among other things, conventional ophthalmic tests provide little information about what people can do with their remaining vision in everyday life (i.e., their functional vision).An additional problem in assessing vision in people with intellectual disabilities is that many conventional tests are difficult to perform or are too fatiguing, resulting in either no or the wrong information. In addition to their visual impairment, there is also a very serious intellectual disability (possibly combined with a motor impairment), which makes it even more complex to assesstheir functional vision. Due to the interplay between their visual, intellectual, and motor disabilities, it is almost impossible to determine whether persons are unable to perform an activity because they do not see it, do not notice it, do not understand it, cannot communicate about it, or are not able to move their head towards the stimulus due to motor disabilities.Although an expert professional can make a reasonable estimate of the functional possibilities through long-term and careful observation, the time and correct measurement data are usually lacking to find out the required information. So far, it is insufficiently clear what people with VZEVMB provoke to see and what they see exactly.Our goal with this project is to improve the understanding of the visual capabilities of people with VISPIMD. This then makes it possible to also improve the support for participation of the target group. We want to achieve this goal by developing and, in pilot form, testing a new combination of measurement and analysis methods - primarily based on eye movement registration -to determine the functional vision of people with VISPIMD. Our goal is to systematically determine what someone is responding to (“what”), where it may be (“where”), and how much time that response will take (“when”). When developing methods, we take the possibilities and preferences of the person in question as a starting point in relation to the technological possibilities.Because existing technological methods were originally developed for a different purpose, this partly requires adaptation to the possibilities of the target group.The concrete end product of our pilot will be a manual with an overview of available technological methods (as well as the methods themselves) for assessing functional vision, linked to the specific characteristics of the target group in the cognitive, motor area: 'Given that a client has this (estimated) combination of limitations (cognitive, motor and attention, time in whichsomeone can concentrate), the order of assessments is as follows:' followed by a description of the methods. We will also report on our findings in a workshop for professionals, a Dutch-language article and at least two scientific articles. This project is executed in the line: “I am seen; with all my strengths and limitations”. During the project, we closely collaborate with relevant stakeholders, i.e. the professionals with specific expertise working with the target group, family members of the persons with VISPIMD, and persons experiencing a visual impairment (‘experience experts’).
