Survey finds most Americans are unaware of many signs that someone is having a seizure

Seizures don’t always look how they’re portrayed in movies, and knowing the more subtle signs like laughing or lip-smacking behavior may lead to diagnosis and effective treatment for epilepsy

Reports and Proceedings

ORLANDO HEALTH

 

VIDEO: 

A NEW NATIONAL SURVEY BY ORLANDO HEALTH FINDS A MAJORITY OF PEOPLE ARE UNAWARE OF LESSER-KNOWN SEIZURE SYMPTOMS.

view more 

CREDIT: ORLANDO HEALTH

Orlando, Fla - If you’ve ever seen a movie or TV show in which a character has a seizure, you probably have a fairly standard mental picture of someone falling to the ground in full body convulsions while foaming at the mouth. But that doesn’t necessarily reflect reality. A new national survey by Orlando Health finds that while most Americans recognize those classic symptoms of what’s called a generalized tonic-clonic seizure, the majority fail to recognize the subtle signs, all of which can be dangerous and have a profound impact on the lives of those suffering from them.

“Anything that interrupts your brain’s circuit can cause seizures, from tumors, infections and strokes to high or low blood sugar or glucose levels to inherited genetic features. And different types of seizures can present with dozens of different symptoms,” said Dipali Nemade, MD, MPH, an epileptologist and neurologist at the Orlando Health Neuroscience Institute. “But because they often look different than those ‘cinematic seizures’ we see in movies and television, they can go undiagnosed for a long time.”

The survey, conducted by Ipsos, found less than half of Americans believe numbness or tingling (32%), blinking rapidly (35%), crying out or screaming (13%) and laughing (6%) are signs of a seizure, but Dr. Nemade says it’s important to pay attention to any odd or out-of-place behaviors and address them with your doctor.

“Even seizures with these less dramatic symptoms can make everyday activities like driving and cooking dangerous. For some people, their seizures present outwardly with very subtle signs like smacking their lips, picking at their clothes or just staring into space, and it’s important to recognize when you or someone around you is experiencing them so they can be accurately diagnosed and treated,” Dr. Nemade said. “By looking at their brainwaves (EEG), we can see if those behaviors are being caused by seizures.”

For Mike Sail, seizures start with a flushed feeling that travels from his abdomen to his throat, followed by raised arm hair causing his condition to initially be misdiagnosed as acid reflux. It wasn’t until he lost his memory of an entire week that he was finally referred to Dr. Nemade, who diagnosed his condition as epilepsy. 

“I kept saying that it can’t be acid reflux because that doesn't cause the hair on your arms to stick up,” Sail said. “For the most part, these episodes were not very disruptive. They only lasted a minute or two and usually only happened once every few weeks. Sometimes I’d have them while I was doing things like playing golf, and afterwards I would just go about my business. So, I was shocked to find out they were seizures because it wasn’t what most people think a seizure looks like.” 

Like most cases, Sail’s epilepsy is well-controlled with anti-seizure medication, lifestyle changes and adequate sleep, and he no longer fears that uneasy feeling he gets before having what he now knows were seizures. Dr. Nemade says education is needed to help others like Sail raise a red flag when they’re having unexplained symptoms on a regular basis.

“If people don’t know that these symptoms can be caused by epileptic seizures, their condition will be misdiagnosed or ignored and it will continue to affect their quality of life. That can be very isolating and frustrating, which is why many people with uncontrolled epilepsy experience anxiety and depression,” Dr. Nemade said. “Too many people never go to the doctor because they don’t feel like it is profoundly affecting their lives, or they don’t know how to explain what they’re feeling.”

For rare cases of epilepsy that are resistant to anti-seizure medication, there are some advanced treatments that Dr. Nemade and her team offer at the Orlando Health Neuroscience Institute’s epilepsy center, such as intracranial monitoring (sEEG/subdural) and mapping the brain to find the exact spot where seizures are originating and removing a small piece of tissue. If they are not able to remove the tissues safely, then neuromodulation options like responsive neurostimulation, deep brain stimulation and vagus nerve stimulation are effective palliative options. It’s effective treatments like these that are not only improving lives, but also saving them by preventing sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, or SUDEP, which claims about 3,000 lives in the U.S. each year. But Dr. Nemade says they can only help if symptoms are recognized and action is taken.

If you suspect someone is experiencing a seizure, sit them down in a safe place without any sharp or heavy objects in their surroundings and ensure they can breathe freely until symptoms subside. If a seizure lasts more than five minutes, call 911. Those who have never received an epilepsy diagnosis or another explanation for their seizure should follow up with their doctor or a neurologist.

Survey method 
Editor’s note:
This survey was conducted online within the United States by Ipsos on the KnowledgePanel® from October 5 to October 8, 2023, and surveyed 1,024 U.S. adults ages 18 and older.  This poll is based on a nationally representative probability sample and has margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level, for results based on the entire sample of adults. For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables and subgroup sample sizes, please contact: christopher.moessner@ipsos.com

Mike Sail plays a board game with his wife, Ann, while hooked to an IV treatment as part of his seizure care plan. Hair standing up on his arms and a flushed feeling that starts in his abdomen were misdiagnosed as acid reflux until he underwent testing at the Orlando Health Neuroscience Institute to determine that, for him, these were symptoms of seizures.

Dipali Nemade, MD, conducts a neurological examination on a patient at her clinical office at the Orlando Health Neuroscience Institute. The exam tests behavior, movements and mental function to assist in diagnosing seizures. A national survey by Orlando Health found that most people are unaware of many of the subtle signs of a seizure.

CREDIT

Orlando Health

About Orlando Health
Orlando Health, headquartered in Orlando, Florida, is a not-for-profit healthcare organization with $9.2 billion of assets under management that serves the southeastern United States and Puerto Rico. 

Founded more than 100 years ago, the healthcare system is recognized around the world for Central Florida’s only pediatric and adult Level I Trauma program as well as the only state-accredited Level II Adult Trauma Center in Pinellas County. It is the home of the nation’s largest neonatal intensive care unit under one roof, the only system in the southeast to offer open fetal surgery to repair the most severe forms of spina bifida, the site of an Olympic athlete training facility and operator of one of the largest and highest performing clinically integrated networks in the region. Orlando Health has pioneered life-changing medical research and its Graduate Medical Education program hosts more than 350 residents and fellows. 

The 3,888-bed system includes 29 hospitals and emergency departments – 24 of which are currently operational with five coming soon. The system also includes nine specialty institutes, more than 100 adult and pediatric primary care practices, skilled nursing facilities, an in-patient behavioral health facility under the management of Acadia Healthcare, and more than 60 outpatient facilities that include imaging and laboratory services, wound care centers, home healthcare services in partnership with LHC Group, and urgent care centers in partnership with FastMed Urgent Care. More than 4,750 physicians, representing more than 100 medical specialties and subspecialties have privileges across the Orlando Health system, which employs more than 27,000 team members and more than 1,200 physicians. 

In FY22, Orlando Health served nearly 142,000 inpatients and 3.9 million outpatients. The healthcare system provided more than $782 million in total value to the communities it serves in the form of charity care, community benefit programs and services, community building activities and more in FY 21, the most recent period for which this information is available. Additional information can be found at http://www.orlandohealth.com, or follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @orlandohealth.

 

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METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

 

Strongly intriguing details of collisions at extreme energies

Peer-Reviewed Publication

THE HENRYK NIEWODNICZANSKI INSTITUTE OF NUCLEAR PHYSICS POLISH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

 

IMAGE: CHILDREN'S INTELLIGENCE MAY APPEAR TO BE STATISTICALLY RELATED TO THEIR WEIGHT BECAUSE THE RELATIONSHIP IS SENSITIVE TO AGE FLUCTUATIONS WITHIN THE STUDY GROUP. A SIMILAR PHENOMENON OCCURS IN THE CASE OF THE CORRELATION VARIABLE SIGMA AND THE CENTRALITY OF HEAVY ION COLLISIONS IN THE LHC ACCELERATOR. view more 

CREDIT: SOURCE: IFJ PAN

Cracow, 14 September 2023

 

 

Strongly intriguing details of collisions at extreme energies

 

 

The initial phases of the heavy-ion collisions occurring at the maximum energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider continue to remain an enigma of modern nuclear physics. New theoretical tools improved by physicists from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow will help to unlock this mystery.

 

 

The phenomena occurring during nuclear collisions are so fast and involve particles so small that they cannot be observed directly. Guessing the course of these sorts of processes resembles the work of a detective. Just as he is unable to observe the crime being committed and has to reconstruct an image of it based on witness statements, physicists try to reconstruct the course of nuclear phenomena on the basis of “accounts” given by the secondary particles born in collisions and recorded by detectors. Sherlock Holmes’s task, however, was much easier – he could talk freely to his witnesses, whereas physicists can only observe the particles’ behaviour. In order to reconstruct the actual course of the “crime” (the collisions of atomic nuclei), they have to create a suitable language for describing events (mathematical tools) and use it to recount what took place (with the help of a theoretical model of the phenomenon), and then compare whether the “testimony” thus obtained agrees with what the recorded particles appear to “say”.

 

Particularly difficult processes to study include phenomena occurring in the early stages of heavy-ion collisions in the LHC accelerator, when a quark-gluon plasma may be formed. This is a state of matter in which quarks and gluons behave like free particles (in the world around us, quarks and gluons are always bound by the strong interactions and remain inside hadrons, i.e. protons or neutrons). The quark-gluon plasma ends extremely quickly because it cools as it expands. Quarks and gluons are then trapped again in hadrons, creating secondary particles that are registered in detectors. It can be concluded whether a quark-gluon plasma was created by analyzing the so-called forward-backward correlations between particles produced in collisions.

 

“Forward-backward correlations measure the relationship between the number of particles produced forward and backward when beams of heavy ions collide. Although these correlations concern particles very far apart, they carry information about the early stage of the collision. This is because the correlations between the particles emitted forward and backward could only have formed before the particles moved away from each other, i.e. at the beginning of the collision!” says Dr. Iwona Sputowska of the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN) in Cracow, a physicist who is a member of the ALICE scientific collaboration at the LHC.

 

The problem with correlations, however, is that, used incompetently, they can lead to false conclusions. Suppose, for example, we conduct a study of children's intelligence in all the forms of a primary school. A correlation might then be found whereby the more intelligent a child is, the more they... weigh. However, we know that in reality intelligence and weight are correlated to another variable: the age of the child. So if we narrow down our study to children of the same age, the correlation between their intelligence and weight drops dramatically. The correlation between intelligence and weight is therefore sensitive to age fluctuations in the group of children – there are a lot of children of different ages in the whole school, but within the same form the age differences are small.

 

We encounter an analogous challenge when examining correlations in heavy ion collisions. The relationship between the number of particles produced forward and backward is sensitive to fluctuations in the way the two atomic nuclei collided with each other, such as whether they collided centrally or just brushed against each other. To deal with this problem, the concept of strongly intensive variables was introduced. These quantities are defined so that they depend neither on how the two ions collided with each other nor on how much the geometry of the collision fluctuated in the group of studied events.

 

A strongly intensive correlation variable is sigma. It was intended to provide information about the way in which the average source produces secondary particles. However, while analyzing data collected in the collisions of lead-lead and xenon-xenon nuclei as part of the ALICE experiment, Dr. Sputowska noticed that none of the most popular models used to describe these phenomena corresponds to the behavior of the sigma variable.

 

“There could only be one conclusion. Since our models do not correctly describe the experimental data for the highest-energy collisions available at the LHC, it means that we are incorrectly modelling how the average source produces secondary particles,” says Dr. Sputowska.

 

Unexpectedly, collision models proposed over 45 years ago by theoreticians from Cracow turned out to be helpful in understanding the behavior of sigma. They treated collisions of heavy atomic nuclei as multiple collisions of single nucleons of one nucleus with single nucleons of the other nucleus (in the wounded nucleon model) or as collisions not of protons and neutrons, but of quarks (in the wounded quark model). In these models, it is assumed that single, independent sources are responsible for the production of secondary particles, which are either nucleons or quarks, respectively.

 

Previous models have assumed that the average source generates secondary particles with the same forward and backward probabilities. Sigma, by definition, should then be equal to one. It turns out that its actual dependance on the geometry of collision can be reproduced if one allows for the possibility that the average source emits particles forward with a slightly different probability than backward. In the wounded nucleon model, an extra term then appears in the sigma formula, depending on the collision geometry, and sigma ceases to be a strongly intensive variable.

 

However, this situation gives rise to an intriguing contradiction, for sigma loses its status as a strongly intensive variable and yet correctly describes experimental data that do not depend on changes in collision geometry. Why? The solution to the problem turned out to be in the fact that in the wounded source model sigma always gives the values of the forward-backward correlation for the average number of wounded nucleons/quarks, i.e. for the average collision geometry in a given collision group. This situation can be compared to measuring the correlation between intelligence and weight of children in a group where the average age of the child is fixed.

 

“A detailed understanding of the nature of sigma allowed us to determine the fragmentation function, linking the number of particles produced by nucleons in the model with the number of particles measured in the detectors. For the first time, for the highest collision energies at the LHC, we have been able to construct tools that allow us to reliably falsify this highly intriguing sigma behaviour,” Dr. Sputowska concludes.

 

Dr Sputowska's achievement is presented in a paper published in the journal Physical Review C. The research was funded by the National Science Centre.

 

 

The Henryk Niewodniczański Institute of Nuclear Physics (IFJ PAN) is currently one of the largest research institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences. A wide range of research carried out at IFJ PAN covers basic and applied studies, from particle physics and astrophysics, through hadron physics, high-, medium-, and low-energy nuclear physics, condensed matter physics (including materials engineering), to various applications of nuclear physics in interdisciplinary research, covering medical physics, dosimetry, radiation and environmental biology, environmental protection, and other related disciplines. The average yearly publication output of IFJ PAN includes over 600 scientific papers in high-impact international journals. Each year the Institute hosts about 20 international and national scientific conferences. One of the most important facilities of the Institute is the Cyclotron Centre Bronowice (CCB), which is an infrastructure unique in Central Europe, serving as a clinical and research centre in the field of medical and nuclear physics. In addition, IFJ PAN runs four accredited research and measurement laboratories. IFJ PAN is a member of the Marian Smoluchowski Kraków Research Consortium: "Matter-Energy-Future", which in the years 2012-2017 enjoyed the status of the Leading National Research Centre (KNOW) in physics. In 2017, the European Commission granted the Institute the HR Excellence in Research award. As a result of the categorization of the Ministry of Education and Science, the Institute has been classified into the A+ category (the highest scientific category in Poland) in the field of physical sciences.

SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS:

 “Forward-backward correlations with the Σ quantity in the wounded-constituent framework at energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider”

I. A. Sputowska

Physical Review C 108, 1, 014903,  2023

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevC.108.014903

 

 

LINKS:

 

http://www.ifj.edu.pl/

The website of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences.

 

http://press.ifj.edu.pl/

Press releases of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences.

 

IMAGES:

 

IFJ230914b_fot01s.jpg

HR: http://press.ifj.edu.pl/news/2023/09/14/IFJ230914b_fot01.jpg

Children's intelligence may appear to be statistically related to their weight because the relationship is sensitive to age fluctuations within the study group. A similar phenomenon occurs in the case of the correlation variable sigma and the centrality of heavy ion collisions in the LHC accelerator. (Source: IFJ PAN)

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JOURNAL

Physical Review C

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevC.108.014903 

ARTICLE TITLE

Forward-backward correlations with the Σ quantity in the wounded-constituent framework at energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

 

Bielefeld researchers using European supercomputers

Researchers at Bielefeld University have landed computing time on European supercomputers LUMI-G and Leonardo.

Grant and Award Announcement

BIELEFELD UNIVERSITY

Supercomputers are often indispensable in modern scientific research: they are an essential tool for processing the ever-increasing volumes of data needed for statistics, forecasts, and other calculations across a wide range of disciplines.
The collaborative ‘European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking’ (https://eurohpc-ju.europa.eu) project has invested a great deal of funding into the construction of new European flagship supercomputers over the past years. Since June 2023, the supercomputers ‘LUMI’ in Finland and ‘Leonardo’ in Italy came in third and fourth place in the global ranking of the 500 most powerful supercomputers around the globe. First place is currently held by the ‘Frontier’ supercomputer in the United States, and second by ‘Fugaku’ in Japan.

As responsible project leads for an international team of scientists, Bielefeld researchers Dr. Olaf Kaczmarek and Dr. Christian Schimdt-Sonntag were successful in the first round of a call for applications for computing time on these systems. The won out over myriad competitors from around the world in a rigorous application review process and have now been allocated 60 mil-lion core hours on LUMI-G and 22 million core hours on Leonardo – corresponding to the annual computing power of 20,000 and 6,000 laptops, respectively. This computing time will facilitate their research, which investigates the properties of matter under extreme conditions.

This research into extreme conditions of matter deals with temperatures and particle densities that are, for instance, believed to have been present in our universe shortly after the Big Bang, but also with temperatures and particle densities similar to those produced and measured in heavy ion experiments in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the ‘CERN’ European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland, and in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Accelerator (RHIC) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Long Island, New York. These research projects are part of the Collaborative Research Centre TransRegio 211, ‘Strong-Interaction Matter under Extreme Conditions’ (https://crc-tr211.org/), which brings together researchers from the Goethe University Frankfurt, Bielefeld University, and the Technical University of Darmstadt.
As members of the North Rhine-Westphalian Competence Network for High-Performance Computing (HPC.NRW), a consortium that was recently extended through the end of 2025, Olaf Kaczmarek and Christian Schmidt-Sonntag provide support to Bielefeld researchers and their projects at the Bielefeld GPU Cluster, and also offer advice on how to apply for computing time at other supercomputers in the region, namely in Germany and Europe.  

For more information, please see:

•    SIMULATEeQCD: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7994982
•    BNL News zum Projekt über schwere Quarks: https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=121223
•    PUNCH4NFDI: https://www.punch2nfdi.de
•    HPC.NRW: https://hpc.dh.nrw/de/
 

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METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

Disclaimer: AAAS and Eure

ATLAS searches for new phenomena using unsupervised machine learning for anomaly detection

24 August 2023 |

ATLAS Collaboration

Since starting up in 2009, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been at the forefront of scientific exploration – with researchers driven to uncover new particles and phenomena that go beyond the Standard Model. Over the years, thousands of scientists have channelled their expertise into refining analysis techniques and developing new ways to find these new-physics phenomena.

Figure 1: A schematic representation of the autoencoder architecture used for training and selection of the three anomaly regions. (Image: ATLAS Collaboration)

Traditionally, searches for new physics use complex computer simulations to reproduce what Standard Model processes should look like in collisions recorded by the ATLAS Experiment. These are then compared to simulations of new-physics models (e.g. dark matter, supersymmetry, etc.). Such models also help physicists determine the types of collisions where new-physics processes would be very prominent or where the collisions cannot be described by Standard-Model simulations – thus focusing their searches for new phenomena. Another style of searches involves looking at small deviations to a Standard-Model background caused by possible new phenomena.

Unsupervised machine learning can offer a new style of analyses which is completely agnostic to types of new-physics models and to any expectations of scientists. Researchers can design a complex neural network with millions of interconnections between “neurons”, and train this network on real data (see Figure 1). After training, the neural network can recognise “typical” LHC collisions and filter them out, leaving behind only the unrecognised or “atypical” collision events. On a technical side, such an unsupervised deep neural network (called an autoencoder) compresses input information, and then decompresses it while comparing inputs with outputs. Events with large reconstruction differences are called an “anomaly” since the algorithm finds itself in “trouble” in identifying such events. The chances that the anomalous events belong to new-physics phenomena are high. When using such neural networks, the idea is to look at the anomalous events, reconstruct the invariant masses of the particles in the collision, and then decide if they can be described by a Standard-Model process.

The new ATLAS result pioneers the use of unsupervised machine learning to search for anomalous collision events which could be from new-physics phenomena.

Figure 2: Example of the invariant mass (jet+muon) in the anomalous region defined by the unsupervised machine learning algorithm trained on a fraction of real data. The fit is represented by the red line, while the associated statistical uncertainties are indicated by the shaded band.The lower panel shows the bin-by-bin significances of deviations from the fit. (Image: ATLAS Collaboration)

In a new paper submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett., the ATLAS Collaboration pioneers the use of this style of physics analysis using LHC Run-2 data (collected 2015-2018). This analysis is the first of its kind, and marks the inaugural application of this type of unsupervised machine learning at a collider experiment, whether at the LHC or elsewhere.

ATLAS physicists observed no significant deviations from the Standard Model in the anomaly regions. The largest deviation was found for a mass at around 4.8 TeV with a significance of about 2.9 sigma for one decay channel (Figure 2). This level of statistical confidence typically means that the experimental observation could be a promising hint, but not sufficient for claiming the observation. The event display in the header of this briefing illustrates a typical collision event in the anomaly region with the jet+muon mass where the largest deviation is observed.

This analysis technique offers a new paradigm for searching for new-physics phenomena. One that relies less on wondering how the “new” phenomena may look, and instead focusing on new and unexpected model-agnostic signatures. In short, continuing the decade-long tradition of LHC physicists to discover a path into the unexplored realms of physics.About the event display: A display of an event with the reconstructed invariant mass of 4.72 TeV in the anomaly region as reported by the autoencoder trained using ATLAS data. The grey cones represent jets and the red lines represent muons. The green arrow indicates a missing transverse energy (MET). The red line closest to MET represents a high-energy muon. (Image: ATLAS Collaboration)

Learn more

Search for new phenomena in two-body invariant mass distributions using unsupervised machine learning for anomaly detection at 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector (arXiv:2307.01612, see figures)
EPS-HEP 2023 poster by Alkaid Cheng: 

Search for new physics using unsupervised machine learning for anomaly detection in 13 TeV collisions recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC
LHCP 2023 parallel talk by Rui Zhang:

  Search for new physics using unsupervised machine learning for anomaly detection with ATLAS
BOOST 2023 parallel talk by Wasikul Islam:

  Search for new phenomena in two-body invariant mass distributions using unsupervised machine learning for anomaly detection with the ATLAS detector

As the pickleball craze grows, doctors urge players not to ignore injuries

As pickleball-related sprains, strains and overuse injuries rise, survey finds many forgo care for nagging sports injuries

Reports and Proceedings

ORLANDO HEALTH

 

VIDEO: PICKLEBALL: ALL FUN AND GAMES UNTIL SOMEONE GETS HURT view more 

CREDIT: ORLANDO HEALTH

Orlando, Fla - Pickleball is the fastest growing sport in the country and has proven to be a great way to help millions stay active. And while it may seem like a fun game with a silly name, like any sport, it is not without risk. As doctors see more patients with pickleball-related injuries, a new national survey by The Harris Poll on behalf of Orlando Health finds many Americans are likely to forgo medical care for a nagging sports injury.

“Because pickleball is a relatively low impact activity, a lot of people think they won’t get hurt, but we’re seeing more and more people coming in with everything from broken bones and sprains to overuse injuries to the knees, shoulders and elbows,” said Luis Gandara, MD, a sports medicine physician at the Orlando Health Jewett Orthopedic Institute. “Any injury that doesn't seem to be getting better in a matter of a few days needs to be checked out by an orthopedic specialist to get a correct diagnosis and effective treatment.”

The survey found that while a third (33%) of Americans report avoiding participation in a sport or hobby because of a nagging injury, about half (49%) agree it’s not worth seeing a doctor for a sports injury they believe will heal on its own, something Gandara warns can exacerbate injuries and lead to more serious problems that are more difficult to treat.

“Playing through an injury that doesn’t resolve with rest, ice and elevation causes that injury to become increasingly unstable,” he said. “If a patient comes to us right away, there is a good chance we can treat them with less-invasive options to help common injuries like a strained ligament, torn muscle or a hairline fracture heal. But if an injury is left to worsen over time without intervention, a patient is more likely to require surgery and a longer and more difficult recovery.”

The survey also found 44% believe making a doctor’s appointment for an injury that is not too painful is too much work. That’s why the Jewett Orthopedic Institute opened several walk-in clinics, where patients can see an orthopedic specialist without an appointment or a referral, to ensure patients can get the care they need quickly and conveniently.

“Unlike going to the ER or an urgent care center, an orthopedic walk-in clinic is staffed with specialists who can assess sports injuries and immediately initiate effective treatment, whether that involves physical therapy and non-invasive treatments like injections or a same day referral to a specific type of surgeon,” Gandara said.

Robbin Murray fell in love with pickleball a decade ago. But as she played more frequently and competitively, she began to have issues with her knee that were painful enough to keep her off the court.

“I was hooked right from the start and would play as much as I could, all day long, eventually traveling to compete in senior tournaments,” Murray said. “It all added up and I started experiencing sharp pains that would take me down to the ground in the middle of a game.”

Robbin worried she would need knee replacement surgery, but after consulting with Dr. Gandara, has been able to safely participate in the sport she loves and manage her injury with a specialized brace, anti-inflammatory injections and physical therapy to strengthen and stretch the area.

Gandara encourages people to get out and enjoy pickleball or any healthy activity they enjoy, but emphasizes the importance of easing into any new activity, taking precautions like stretching and wearing supportive shoes and listening to your body when something doesn’t feel right.

B-ROLL, SOUND BITES, WEB ELEMENTS & HI-RES STILL PHOTOS - Including HD video available for free/unrestricted use by the news media: https://bit.ly/44yMLLB 
Courtesy: Orlando Health

For assistance in downloading, or if you have any questions, contact: allison@mediasourcetv.com or call: 423.742.5091.

Survey Method

This survey was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of Orlando Health from June 15 - 20, 2023 among 2,076 U.S. adults ages 18 and older. The sampling precision of Harris online polls is measured by using a Bayesian credible interval. For this study, the sample data is accurate to within +/- 2.7 percentage points using a 95% confidence level. For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables and subgroup sample sizes, please contact allison@mediasourcetv.com. 

Luis Gandara, MD, examines a patient at The Orlando Health Jewett Orthopedic Institute who suffered an injury while playing the increasingly popular sport of pickleball. While he encourages patients to participate in active hobbies they enjoy, he stresses the importance of seeking care for nagging aches and pains to prevent injuries from worsening.

Pickleball is a great way to stay active, but like any sport, it comes with risks. A new national survey by Orlando Health finds many Americans are likely to forgo treatment for nagging sports injuries, something doctors warn can lead to more serious conditions and complicated treatments.

CREDIT

Orlando Health

About Orlando Health
Orlando Health, headquartered in Orlando, Florida, is a not-for-profit healthcare organization with $9.2 billion of assets under management that serves the southeastern United States and Puerto Rico. 

Founded more than 100 years ago, the healthcare system is recognized around the world for Central Florida’s only pediatric and adult Level I Trauma program as well as the only state-accredited Level II Adult Trauma Center in Pinellas County. It is the home of the nation’s largest neonatal intensive care unit under one roof, the only system in the southeast to offer open fetal surgery to repair the most severe forms of spina bifida, the site of an Olympic athlete training facility and operator of one of the largest and highest performing clinically integrated networks in the region. Orlando Health has pioneered life-changing medical research and its Graduate Medical Education program hosts more than 350 residents and fellows. 

The 3,888-bed system includes 29 hospitals and emergency departments – 24 of which are currently operational with five coming soon. The system also includes nine specialty institutes, more than 100 adult and pediatric primary care practices, skilled nursing facilities, an in-patient behavioral health facility under the management of Acadia Healthcare, and more than 60 outpatient facilities that include imaging and laboratory services, wound care centers, home healthcare services in partnership with LHC Group, and urgent care centers in partnership with FastMed Urgent Care. More than 4,750 physicians, representing more than 100 medical specialties and subspecialties have privileges across the Orlando Health system, which employs more than 27,000 team members and more than 1,200 physicians. 

In FY22, Orlando Health served nearly 142,000 inpatients and 3.9 million outpatients. The healthcare system provided more than $782 million in total value to the communities it serves in the form of charity care, community benefit programs and services, community building activities and more in FY 21, the most recent period for which this information is available. Additional information can be found at http://www.orlandohealth.com, or follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @orlandohealth.

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METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

THAT GOD(DAMN) PARTICLE

ATLAS and CMS Collaborations Find First Evidence of Rare Higgs Boson Decay

ATLAS and CMS combined their datasets from the second run of the LHC

ByAditya Saikrishna
May 27, 2023

Photo Credit: Twitter/CMSExperiment

SWITZERLAND: Scientists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have achieved another breakthrough in particle physics as the ATLAS and CMS collaborations joined forces to provide the first evidence of the Higgs boson decaying into a Z boson and a photon.

This rare decay process could shed light on particles beyond the Standard Model and deepen our understanding of the nature of the Higgs boson.

The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 opened new avenues for research in particle physics. Since then, scientists have meticulously explored its properties and investigated its various decay processes.

At the recent Large Hadron Collider Physics conference, ATLAS and CMS presented their joint efforts to uncover the elusive decay of the Higgs boson into a Z boson and a photon.- Advertisement -

The decay of the Higgs boson into a Z boson and a photon resembles a degeneration into two photons. However, these decays do not occur directly but involve an intermediate “loop” of “virtual” particles that researchers cannot observe directly.

These virtual particles could include yet undiscovered particles that interact with the Higgs boson, potentially challenging the predictions of the Standard Model.

According to the Standard Model, around 0.15% of Higgs bosons with a mass of approximately 125 billion electronvolts should decay into a Z boson and a photon

However, theories extending beyond the Standard Model propose different decay rates. Scientists gain valuable insights into physics beyond the Standard Model and the characteristics of the Higgs boson itself by measuring the decay rate.

Previously, both ATLAS and CMS independently conducted extensive searches for the Higgs boson decay using data from proton-proton collisions at the LHC.

Employing similar strategies, they identified the Z boson through its decay into pairs of electrons or muons, heavier counterparts of electrons. The team found these Z boson decays in approximately 6.6% of the cases.

In their searches, ATLAS and CMS looked for collision events associated with the Higgs boson decay, represented by a narrow peak in the combined mass distribution of the decay products against a smooth background.

The collaborations categorized events based on the characteristics of the Higgs boson’s production processes and implemented advanced machine-learning techniques to distinguish between signal and background events.

In a new study, ATLAS and CMS combined their datasets from the second run of the LHC (2015-2018) to maximize the statistical precision of their search.

The collaboration resulted in the first evidence of the Higgs boson decaying into a Z boson and a photon, with a statistical significance of 3.4 standard deviations.

While the standard deviation falls short of the conventional requirement of 5 standard deviations for claiming an observation, the measured signal rate is 1.9 standard deviations above the Standard Model prediction.

Pamela Ferrari, an ATLAS physics coordinator, emphasized the significance of rare Higgs decays, stating that each particle has a unique relationship with the Higgs boson and searching for it is a high priority.

Florencia Canelli, a CMS physics coordinator, highlighted the potential implications of new particles on rare Higgs decay modes and expressed optimism about future advancements using the ongoing third run of the LHC and the forthcoming High-Luminosity LHC.

This collaborative effort by ATLAS and CMS brings us one step closer to unravelling the mysteries surrounding the Higgs boson and provides an insightful test of the Standard Model.

With further advancements and precision expected in future experiments, scientists anticipate probing even rarer Higgs decays, potentially uncovering new particles and revolutionizing our understanding of the universe’s fundamental building blocks.

PAKISTAN

ISI and MI say Imran Riaz not in their custody, senior cop tells LHC

Rana Bilal 

DAWN

Published May 25, 2023 

Lahore police Deputy Inspector General (Investigation) Kamran Adil told the high court on Thursday that both the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Military Intelligence (MI) had said that anchorperson Imran Riaz Khan — whose whereabouts remain unknown since his arrest on May 11 — was not in their custody.

The police official made the remarks as the Lahore High Court (LHC) resumed hearing a plea seeking the recovery of the anchorperson, who was among the individuals apprehended in the wake of protests that erupted in the country after the arrest of PTI chairman Imran Khan.

Later, his lawyer told Dawn.com that a writ petition was filed on May 12 over the anchorperson’s arrest and the LHC directed the attorney general to present him before the court the same day. But, after its orders were not followed, Sialkot police were given a 48-hour deadline to recover Imran.

A first information report (FIR) pertaining to the matter was registered with Civil Lines police on May 16 on the complaint of the anchorperson’s father, Muhammad Riaz.


The FIR was registered against “unidentified persons” and police officials for allegedly kidnapping Imran, invoking Section 365 (kidnapping or abducting with intent secretly and wrongfully to confine person) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

At the previous hearing, Punjab Inspector General Dr Usman Anwar had told the court that there was no trace of the journalist at any police department across the country.

The LHC had subsequently directed the ministries of interior and defence to “discharge their constitutional duties to effect the recovery” of the missing anchorperson.
The hearing

LHC Chief Justice Muhammad Ameer Bhatti presided over today’s hearing during which the Lahore police DIG (Investigation) appeared before the court instead of the Punjab IG.

The lawyer representing the Punjab government requested the court to exempt the provincial police chief from appearing as he was attending a ceremony in connection with Martyrs Respect Day in Gujranwala.

The LHC CJ inquired about the IG’s schedule and asked for the record to be submitted. The DIG assured the court that the record would be submitted to the court.

During the hearing, the DIG stated, “The ISI and MI have said that Imran Riaz is not in their custody”.

Meanwhile, the anchorperson’s counsel, Advocate Azhar Siddique, told the court that Imran’s father, Muhammad Riaz, wished to speak.

Justice Bhatti emphasised the court’s commitment to upholding fundamental rights while Riaz said his son was “being punished for making a vlog”.

The court directed the journalist’s lawyers to meet with the police team later today and told them to provide the police with any evidence that was in their possession.

The hearing was later adjourned.
Info minister called out for remarks on Imran’s disappearance

Earlier this week, journalists and human rights activists had strongly criticised Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb’s comments regarding Imran’s case.

Journalist Secunder Kermani, a Channel4 News foreign correspondent, had shared a video of an exchange with the information minister about the missing anchorperson.



He questioned Aurangzeb about journalists going missing and being detained, adding that these were the same issues that the PML-N had raised as matters of concern when in opposition during the previous PTI government.

In response, Aurangzeb asked Kermani to name even a single journalist who was missing. When Kermani mentioned Imran, the minister responded, “Imran Riaz is a political party spokesperson now. You really have to draw [a] distinction.”

She further said, “You have to differentiate between journalists and the journalists who have joined political parties. Once they have joined political parties, they are inciting violence, they are spokespersons of that political parties.”

Aurangzeb’s response elicited severe criticism from several journalists and rights activists, who reminded the minister that a person’s disappearance was an issue of basic human rights irrespective of what political party they favoured.

Lawyer and social activist Jibran Nasir said that Aurangzeb believed Imran “should be seen as a supporter of PTI and hence considered a sub-human who deserves the treatment being meted out to them.

“Now just imagine the plight of ordinary citizens suffering military trials,” he added.

Pakistan Initiative at Atlantic Council’s South Asia Centre Director Uzair Younus said Imran’s status as a journalist or not should not matter.

He said that Imran had fundamental constitutional rights granted to him on account of his Pakistani citizenship.

“Stop violating his rights and those of countless others. These disappearances are heinous!” he tweeted.