Null States Research Articles

أثر التدريس بالتعلم المستند للدماغ في التحصيل لدى طالبات الصف الخامس الادبي في مادة التاريخ

The current research aims to identify (the effect of teaching with brain-based learning on the achievement of raw-grade female studentsliterary history) Accordingly, the researcher formulated the following hypothesis: The first null hypothesis states that (there is no statistically significant difference at the level (0.05) between the average scores of the experimental group students who studied according to brain-based learning and the average scores of the control group students who studied according to the usual method of achievement The researcher chose the experimental research method and experimental design with partial control, as well as caving between the experimental group and the control group with a number of variables, including (chronological age, mental abilities test).And the researcher chose the General Directorate of Education of Al-Qadisiyah Governorate in an intentional way to implement the research, as the researcher choseIn an intentional way, preparatory school (Sana'a) for girls, where the number of its students reached (62) students to conduct the experiment distributed amongTwo groups, experimental and control, and the researcher prepared the (achievement) test on her own, consisting of (37) paragraphs, and extractedIt has sincerity and stability until it became in its final form, consisting of(34) paragraphs Key words: Brain-based learning, achievement

Project Cost Control and Performance of Bugarama Rice Project in Rwanda

The purpose of this research was to examine the effect of project cost control on the performance of rice project in Rwanda by taking Bugarama Rice Project. The descriptive case study research based on qualitative and quantitative approaches were used in order to get a better insight of the study. The population of the study was 74 and sample of 57 respondents, sampling technique used pick all the 57 respondents as the sample size of the population. The researcher used SPSS software application in order to process the data. Mean standard deviation and percentages were used for data analysis. The relationship between the variables was established by use of Pearson correlations. The results showed that that majority of the respondents agreed that a project develop accurate cost estimates and realistic project budget that leads to project to minimum cost while minority disagree with the statement. For instance, from the ANOVA results showed that p-value is 0.000 which is less than the 0.05, set as standard significance levels. This means that null hypothesis stated that there is no relationship between keeping a track of project costs and project performance in Bugarama Rice Project, was rejected and goes by the alternative hypothesis, which states that the independent variable influences project performance in Bugarama Rice Project. The results also showed that that majority of the respondents agreed that labor cost of the project is a challenge to project cost control hence poor performance and majority of respondents disagree with statement. This implied that there was a challenge for labor cost in the project. The ANOVA results showed a p-value is 0.000, which is less than the 0.05, set as standard significance levels. This signified that reject null hypothesis and accept the alternative hypothesis. Therefore, there was statistical significant relationship between planning the project budget for project and project performance thus planning the project budget in Bugarama Rice Project was done by top management has an influence on project performance. The research results showed that majority of the respondents agreed that project manager ensure compliance with the budget for continually compare the actual expenses incurred with the predicted ones throughout the project’s life cycle and minority of the respondents disagreed with statement. The ANOVA results show p-value is 0.000 which is less than the 0.05, set as standard significance levels with fit level of 444.340. This meant that null hypothesis states that there was no relationship between managing project expenses and project performance in Bugarama Rice Project was rejected and goes by the alternative hypothesis, which stated that the independent variable influences project performance in Bugarama Rice Project. Basing on the results the management should emphasize on cost of the project office results in relation to efficiency of project budget cost in the managing project in order to prevent future challenges. Management should have a provision of project financial reports during of project process that minimizes challenges of the project cost control during project completion. Keywords: Project Cost Control, Performance of Rice Project, Rwanda

Integrality, duality and finiteness in combinatoric topological strings

A remarkable result at the intersection of number theory and group theory states that the order of a finite group G (denoted |G|) is divisible by the dimension dR of any irreducible complex representation of G. We show that the integer ratios {left|Gright|}^2/{d}_R^2 are combinatorially constructible using finite algorithms which take as input the amplitudes of combinatoric topological strings (G-CTST) of finite groups based on 2D Dijkgraaf-Witten topological field theories (G-TQFT2). The ratios are also shown to be eigenvalues of handle creation operators in G-TQFT2/G-CTST. These strings have recently been discussed as toy models of wormholes and baby universes by Marolf and Maxfield, and Gardiner and Megas. Boundary amplitudes of the G-TQFT2/G-CTST provide algorithms for combinatoric constructions of normalized characters. Stringy S-duality for closed G-CTST gives a dual expansion generated by disconnected entangled surfaces. There are universal relations between G-TQFT2 amplitudes due to the finiteness of the number K of conjugacy classes. These relations can be labelled by Young diagrams and are captured by null states in an inner product constructed by coupling the G-TQFT2 to a universal TQFT2 based on symmetric group algebras. We discuss the scenario of a 3D holographic dual for this coupled theory and the implications of the scenario for the factorization puzzle of 2D/3D holography raised by wormholes in 3D.

Discussion on a null hypothesis for a bibliometric study

In a bibliometric study [1] we located around 100 high-potency studies, each of which scrutinized an earlier study. An expert round was set to discuss whether it was justified to use the null hypothesis that no difference would be found between the respective test and control groups.
 
 The following two viewpoints were juxtaposed: 
 
 1) The classical null hypothesis states that the results from a test group and its respective control will not differ. If difference is found, the null hypothesis must be rejected. In this case, whether the values found in the test group were higher or lower than the ones of the control group is irrelevant. However, in some instances lack of difference between the test and the control groups is not helpful to make an informed decision. In the case of the analyzed bibliometric study, the research question is as follows: is the number of replication studies which produced a result of the same kind as the original study greater than the number of replication studies which produced a result of the opposite kind?
 
 2) Often there is a pragmatic interest in a one-sided difference or in a deviation in one specific direction. A null hypothesis to this end will state, for example, that the result of the test group will not be better than that of the control group. If difference in favor of the test group is found, the null hypothesis must then be rejected. If, conversely, no difference is found or the result of the control group is better, the null hypothesis can be maintained. For the analyzed bibliometric study the question is: is the number of replication studies which yielded a result of the same kind as the original study greater than the number of all other replication studies?
 
 From viewpoint (1) the outcome was that 70% of replication studies yielded the same result as the original study, 10% per cent the opposite result, and in 20% no difference was found between test and control. From this view point the standing is 70 positive, 10 negative and 20 undecided results. Broken down further, the outcome for laboratory-internal replication was 83 and 5 (12 undecided results) while the outcome for multicenter replication was 75 and 11 (14) and that for external replication was 48 and 14 (38).
 
 From viewpoint (2) the outcome was that 70% of replication studies yielded the same result as the original study, and that 30% (= 10% + 20%) either resulted in no difference between the test and the control group or a result opposite to the one of the original study. From this viewpoint the standing is 70 ‘for reproducibility’ versus 30 ‘not for reproducibility.’ Broken down further, the outcome for laboratory-internal replication was 83 and 17 (= 5 + 12), while that for multicenter replication 75 and 25 (= 11 + 14) and the one for external replication 48 and 52 (= 14 + 38).
 
 We conclude that the 2 two viewpoints should be treated as equally valid when discussing the outcome of the analyzed bibliometric study
 
 Keywords: high dilution, experiment repetition, null hypothesis 
 
 
 References 
 [1] Endler PC, Bellavite P, Bonamin L, Jäger T. Mazon S. Replications of fundamental research models in ultra high dilutions, 1994 and 2015: an update on a bibliometric study. Homeopathy 2015;104:235-245

Postoperative Changes in Tongue Area and Pharyngeal Airway Space following Mandibular Setback Surgery through Intraoral Vertical Ramus Osteotomy.

Purpose The aim of this study was to determine changes in the tongue area and pharyngeal airway space (PAS) after intraoral vertical ramus osteotomy (IVRO). Materials and Methods Serial lateral cephalograms of 40 patients with mandibular prognathism who underwent IVRO were evaluated before (T1), immediately after (T2), and more than 1 year after (T3) surgery. Paired t-tests and Pearson's correlation analysis were used to evaluate the postoperative changes in the mandible, nasopharyngeal airway (NOP), retropalatal pharyngeal airway (RPP), retroglossal pharyngeal airway (RGP), hypopharyngeal airway (HOP), PAS, and tongue area (TA). The null hypothesis states that there are no significant correlations among the extent of mandibular setback and the changes in the TA and PAS after IVRO. Results Immediately after the operation (T12), the mandible was set back by 12.6 mm. The NOP, HOP, and PAS were significantly reduced by 35.7 mm2, 116 mm2, and 185 mm2, respectively. The TA was increased by 69.6 mm2. The changes in PAS and TA revealed no significant difference between female and male patients at T12, T23, and T13. Moreover, no significant correlations were found among the extent of mandibular setback, TA changes, and PAS changes after IVRO. Thus, the null hypothesis was accepted. Conclusions At the final follow-up (T13), no significant change was found in the PAS (including NOP, RPP, RGP, and HOP) and TA. The changes in PAS and TA revealed no significant difference between female and male patients at T12, T23, and T13.

Affect-salient event sequence modelling for continuous speech emotion recognition

Continuous speech emotion recognition, which faces the problems of delay caused by annotators’ reaction time and noise caused by non-emotional segments, is a challenging subject in the field of affective computing. To solve these problems, we propose a new affect-salient event sequence modelling (ASESM) method based on connectionist temporal classification (CTC). This method treats a sentence’s label as a chain of affect-salient event (ASE) and non-affect-salient event Null states rather than continuous emotional value. With this representation, a CTC-based convolutional neural network (CNN) is built to automatically label the sentence’s emotional segments with ASE and non-emotional segments with Null, so as to reduce the impact of noise caused by non-emotional segments. Furthermore, we propose an event probability vector decoding (EPVD) algorithm to search the optimal ASE sequence from the CTC loss matrix and mark the occurrence time of each event within this sequence. Then, the arousal and valence ground-truth annotations of each ASE are used to represent the continuous emotional value of a segment which is predicted as the ASE. Since the ground-truth annotations of each ASE have contained different time-delays, taking events as the target can avoid the additional reaction delay compensation. We test our method on the RECOLA and AVEC 2014 benchmark databases. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed event-based method can improve the performance of continuous emotion recognition and the improvement is more obvious when the selected ASE has high annotation consistency.

MHV graviton scattering amplitudes and current algebra on the celestial sphere

The Cachazo-Strominger subleading soft graviton theorem for a positive helicity soft graviton is equivalent to the Ward identities for overline{mathrm{SL}left(2,mathrm{mathbb{C}}right)} currents. This naturally gives rise to a overline{mathrm{SL}left(2,mathrm{mathbb{C}}right)} current algebra living on the celestial sphere. The generators of the overline{mathrm{SL}left(2,mathrm{mathbb{C}}right)} current algebra and the supertranslations, coming from a positive helicity leading soft graviton, form a closed algebra. We find that the OPE of two graviton primaries in the Celestial CFT, extracted from MHV amplitudes, is completely determined in terms of this algebra. To be more precise, 1) The subleading terms in the OPE are determined in terms of the leading OPE coefficient if we demand that both sides of the OPE transform in the same way under this local symmetry algebra. 2) Positive helicity gravitons have null states under this local algebra whose decoupling leads to differential equations for MHV amplitudes. An n point MHV amplitude satisfies two systems of (n − 2) linear first order PDEs corresponding to (n − 2) positive helicity gravitons. We have checked, using Hodges’ formula, that one system of differential equations is satisfied by any MHV amplitude, whereas the other system has been checked up to six graviton MHV amplitude. 3) One can determine the leading OPE coefficients from these differential equations.This points to the existence of an autonomous sector of the Celestial CFT which holographically computes the MHV graviton scattering amplitudes and is completely defined by this local symmetry algebra. The MHV-sector of the Celestial CFT is like a minimal model of 2-D CFT.

Inductor Current Ripple Analysis and Reduction for Quasi-Z-Source Inverters With an Improved ZSVM6 Strategy

The quasi-Z-source inverter (qZSI) has been widely explored for renewable energy applications due to its superiority, e.g., higher boosting ratio and operational reliability, which is attained by inserting shoot-through (ST) states. As a conventional space vector modulation (SVM) method for the three-phase qZSI, the ZSVM6 method is easy to implement by dividing the ST time into six identical intervals. However, the instantaneous inductor current ripples of the qZSI with the ZSVM6 strategy are affected by the operating conditions, e.g., modulation index m and ST duty ratio dsh. In this article, the instantaneous inductor current ripples and the maximum current ripple in the qZSI with the ZSVM6 strategy under all operational conditions are explored in detail. The operational conditions are categorized into several cases according to the relationship among the duty ratios of the active states, null states, and ST states. More importantly, an improved ZSVM6 strategy is proposed to reduce the inductor current ripple for the qZSI, in which the maximum inductor current ripple is limited by making full use of the operational states. The proposed ZSVM6 strategy keeps the total ST time in a switching cycle while maintaining the axis-symmetry feature of the inductor current, but reduces the current ripple. Simulations and experimental results confirm effectiveness of the proposal when compared with the conventional ZSVM6 strategy for ripple current reduction.

Jiamusi pulsar observations

Aims. Most pulsar nulling observations have been conducted at frequencies lower than 1400 MHz. We aim to understand the nulling behaviors of pulsars at relatively high frequencies, and to decipher whether or not nulling is caused by a global change in the pulsar magnetosphere. Methods. We used the Jiamusi 66 m telescope to observe 20 bright pulsars at 2250 MHz with unprecedented lengths of time. We estimated the nulling fractions of these pulsars, and identified the null and emission states of the pulses. We also calculated the nulling degrees and scales of the emission-null pairs to describe the distributions of emission and null lengths. Results. Three pulsars, PSRs J0248+6021, J0543+2329, and J1844+00, are found to null for the first time. The details of null-to-emission and emission-to-null transitions within the pulse window are observed for the first time for PSR J1509+5531, which is a low-probability event. A complete cycle of long nulls with timescales of hours is observed for PSR J1709−1640. For most of these pulsars, the K-S tests of nulling degrees and nulling scales reject the hypothesis that null and emission are caused by random processes at high significance levels. Emission-null sequences of some pulsars exhibit quasi-periodic, low-frequency or featureless modulations, which might be related to different origins. During transitions between emission and null states, pulse intensities have diverse tendencies for variation. Significant correlations are found between respectively nulling fraction, nulling cadence, and nulling scale and the energy loss rate of the pulsars. Combined with the nulling fractions reported in the literature for 146 nulling pulsars, we find that statistically large nulling fractions are more tightly related to pulsar period than to characteristic age or energy-loss rate.

Transcending the ensemble: baby universes, spacetime wormholes, and the order and disorder of black hole information

In the 1980’s, work by Coleman and by Giddings and Strominger linked the physics of spacetime wormholes to ‘baby universes’ and an ensemble of theories. We revisit such ideas, using features associated with a negative cosmological constant and asymptotically AdS boundaries to strengthen the results, introduce a change in perspective, and connect with recent replica wormhole discussions of the Page curve. A key new feature is an emphasis on the role of null states. We explore this structure in detail in simple topological models of the bulk that allow us to compute the full spectrum of associated boundary theories. The dimension of the asymptotically AdS Hilbert space turns out to become a random variable Z , whose value can be less than the naive number k of independent states in the theory. For k > Z , consistency arises from an exact degeneracy in the inner product defined by the gravitational path integral, so that many a priori independent states differ only by a null state. We argue that a similar property must hold in any consistent gravitational path integral. We also comment on other aspects of extrapolations to more complicated models, and on possible implications for the black hole information problem in the individual members of the above ensemble.

ANALYSIS OF THE CHANGING ROLE OF POUND STERLING WITHIN THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY SYSTEM

The paper investigates how the role of the British currency has been changing within the international monetary system. This article is focused on sorting out why the world financial dominance of the United Kingdom was undermined and when exactly the dollar took over as the leading international currency. This question arises, because some authors, using evidence from the bond markets, state that the US dollar overtook sterling much earlier than in 1945, namely in 1929, while others adhere to another common opinion. Our study uses the quantitative research approach to examine the hypothesis questions. The null hypothesis states that the sterling lost its financial dominance before the World War II, while our alternative hypothesis claims that the dominance was lost after the same war.

N-th parafermion {mathcal{W}}_N characters from U(N) instanton counting on \u21022/\u2124n

We propose, following the AGT correspondence, how the {mathcal{W}}_{N,n}^{mathrm{para}} (n-th parafermion {mathcal{W}}_N ) minimal model characters are obtained from the U(N ) instanton counting on ℂ2/ℤn with Ω-deformation by imposing specific conditions which remove the minimal model null states.

MiST1: A phase IIa trial of rucaparib in patients harbouring BAP1/BRCA1 deficient relapsed malignant mesothelioma.

9057 Background: Malignant Mesothelioma (MM) remains an incurable cancer lacking effective treatments in the relapsed setting. Personalised therapy is still in its infancy. Homologous recombination (HR) deficiency associated with BRCA1 mutation has been shown to predict sensitivity to inhibition of poly-ADP ribose. In MM, BRCA1 associated protein 1 carboxy-terminal hydrolase (BAP1) is frequently mutated. It regulates both HR, and BRCA1 expression which is lost in 38% of mesotheliomas. Mesothelioma Stratified Therapy 1 (MiST1) was designed to test the hypothesis that BAP1/BRCA1 negative mesotheliomas would exhibit defective HR and exhibit sensitivity to PARP inhibition. Methods: MiST1 was a single centre, open label single arm phase IIa design with prospective molecular stratification; cytoplasmic/negative BAP1 or BRCA1 deficient MM was deemed eligible. Treatment was 600mg BD rucaparib (R) PO daily every 28 days for 6 cycles or until disease progression, unacceptable toxicity, withdrawal or death. Primary outcome was disease control rate at 12 weeks (DCR12w); secondary outcomes safety and toxicity profile, objective response rate (ORR) and DCR at 24 weeks (DCR24w). The null hypothesis states the true DCR12w is less than or equal to 25% and was tested against a one-sided alternative hypothesis that the DCR12w will be equal to or greater than 50%. Results: Between February 2019 and June 2019, 26 patients (pts) were eligible and consented to MiST1, median age 65.5 years, 85% are male and 15% female. Of these pts 15% had an ECOG performance status (PS) of 0 and 85% had an ECOG PS of 1. Molecular eligibility was 89% for BAP1 alone, 50% BRCA1 alone, and 39% BAP1+BRCA1. Primary tumour site was thoracic (96%) and subtype epithelioid (81%). DCR12w was 57.7% (95% CI, 36.9 - 76.7), DCR24w was 23.1% (95% CI, 9.0 – 43.7) and ORR was 11.5% (95%CI, 2.5 – 30.2). R was well tolerated with 9% (15/166) grade (G) 3/4 toxicities seen in 10 pts (38%), with no G5 toxicities. The most common adverse events were nausea occurring in 18 pts (69%), fatigue in 14 pts (54%), and decreased appetite in 10 pts (38%). Six cycles of R was received by 8 pts (30.8%). Dose reductions occurred in 9 pts (n = 8; 1 dose and n = 1; 2 doses). Dose delays occurred in 14 pts. Conclusions: MiST1 using the PARP inhibitor R met its primary endpoint of disease control rate at 12 weeks, showing promising efficacy with manageable toxicity. HR deficiency mutation signature enrichment is being investigated to refine the identification of responders to PARP inhibition. PARP inhibition warrants further investigation in MM. Clinical trial information: NCT03654833.

Conformal properties of soft operators: Use of null states

Soft-operators, loosely speaking, are operators which create or annihilate zero energy massless particles on the celestial sphere in Minkowski space. The Lorentz group acts on the celestial sphere by conformal transformation and the soft-operators transform as conformal primary operators of various dimension and spin. Working in space-time dimensions $D=4$ and $6$, we study some properties of the conformal representations with the (leading) soft photon and graviton as the highest weight vectors. Typically these representations contain null-vectors. We argue, from the $S$-matrix point of view, that infinite dimensional asymptotic symmetries and conformal invariance require us to set some of these null-vectors to zero. As a result, the corresponding soft-operator satisfies linear PDE on the celestial sphere. Curiously, these PDEs are equations of motion of Euclidean gauge theories on the celestial sphere with scalar gauge-invariance, i.e, the gauge parameter is a scalar field on the sphere. These are probably related to large $U(1)$ and supertranslation transformations at infinity. Now, the PDE satisfied by the soft-operator can be converted into PDE for the $S$-matrix elements with the insertion of the soft-operator. These equations can then be solved subject to appropriate boundary conditions on the celestial sphere, provided by conformal invariance. The solutions determine the soft $S$-matrix elements, for different helicities of the soft-particle, in terms of a single scalar function. This makes the Ward-identity for the asymptotic symmetry almost integrable. The result of the integration, which we are not able to perform completely, should of course be Weinberg's soft-theorem. Finally, we comment on the similarity between the roles played by null-states in the context of asymptotic symmetry and in string theory in relation to space-time gauge symmetry.

A Paradox in Bland-Altman Analysis and a Binary Approach

A reliable method of measurement is important in various scientific areas. When a new method of measurement is developed, it should be tested against a standard method that is currently in use. Bland and Altman proposed limits of agreement (LOA) to compare two methods of measurement under the normality assumption. Recently, a sample size formula has been proposed for hypothesis testing to compare two methods of measurement. In the hypothesis testing, the null hypothesis states that the two methods do not satisfy a pre-specified acceptable degree of agreement. Carefully considering the interpretation of the LOA, we argue that there are cases of an acceptable degree of agreement inside the null parameter space. We refer to this subset as the paradoxical parameter space in this article. To address this paradox, we apply a Bernoulli approach to modify the null parameter space and to relax the normality assumption on the data. Using simulations, we demonstrate that the change in statistical power is not negligible when the true parameter values are inside or near the paradoxical parameter space. In addition, we demonstrate an application of the sequential probability ratio test to allow researchers to draw a conclusion with a smaller sample size and to reduce the study time.

Recursion relation for general 3d blocks

We derive closed-form expressions for all ingredients of the Zamolodchikov-like recursion relation for general spinning conformal blocks in 3-dimensional conformal field theory. This result opens a path to efficient automatic generation of conformal block tables, which has immediate applications in numerical conformal bootstrap program. Our derivation is based on an understanding of null states and conformally-invariant differential operators in momentum space, combined with a careful choice of the relevant tensor structures bases. This derivation generalizes straightforwardly to higher spacetime dimensions d, provided the relevant Clebsch-Gordan coefficients of Spin (d) are known.

An Improved Direct Torque Control of Three-Level Dual Inverter Fed Open-Ended Winding Induction Motor Drive Based on Modified Look-Up Table

The induction motor (IM) drive with direct torque control scheme (DTC) turns prominent for industrial applications. However, it retains disadvantage of high torque ripples. The conventional look-up table for DTC scheme is structured with selection of reverse voltage vectors (VVs) when flux and torque errors crosses lower hysteresis boundary condition. This results in higher torque ripples and increase in switching frequency. In this article, modified look-up table for DTC of three-level dual voltage source inverter fed open-ended winding IM drive is proposed, where the VVs selection for lower hysteresis boundary conditions of torque and flux are restructured with null voltage states. The selection of suitable null voltage switching states from the various possible combinations of dual inverter switchings is based on minimization of switching state transitions. To nullify flux instability at zero speed, proper active VVs are placed at hysteresis flux +1 and torque 0 condition in the modified look-up table. These overall effective modifications in the proposed DTC scheme enjoys the benefits of reduction in torque ripple, switching frequency, and stable flux maintenance. The MATLAB simulations and practical investigations are conducted for existing and proposed DTC schemes. From these results, the benefits of the proposed DTC over existing DTC schemes are verified.

Subcutaneous sumatriptan for the treatment of postcraniotomy pain (SUPS trial): protocol for a randomised double-blinded placebo controlled trial

IntroductionPostcraniotomy pain protocols use opioids, which are considered suboptimal analgesia following this procedure. Multimodal analgesia components are sparse. Our null hypothesis states that sumatriptan is not different to placebo in...

Is there a correlation between cognition and the ability to remember how to use assistive devices?

Purpose This study aims to establish a correlation between a patient’s mini mental state examination (MMSE) score and their ability to remember how to use common assistive dressing devices. Design/methodology/approach The study was a prospective, cross-sectional and correlational study. A final sample of 63 patients formed the study. Patients’ cognition was measured using the MMSE, and a new assessment tool was developed to assess patients’ ability to use three assistive devices and piloted on 15 patients to address normality, reliability, validity and clinical usefulness. Pearson’s rank correlation coefficient was used to establish direct correlations between the MMSE score and the assessment tool score. Eta squared was used to calculate the effect size to achieve an indication of the difference between the groups. Ethical approval had been granted by the regional ethics committee. The null hypothesis states that patients with an MMSE score of 22 or less show no difference in their ability to safely and appropriately use assistive devices provided and demonstrated by an occupational therapist than patients with an MMSE score of 23 or higher. Findings The null hypothesis was rejected and patients with an MMSE score of 22 or less showed a significant difficulty in their ability to use the three devices. Correlation coefficients showed significant positive correlations between MMSE scores and assistive devices scoring tool results for all three devices: Helping hand (r = 6.677, n = 60, p = 0.01), shoe horn (r = 0.649, n = 54, p = 0.01) and sock aid (r = 0.877, n = 54, p = 0.01). Originality/value The study is in an Irish context and demonstrated primary, objective evidence of the impact of impaired cognition on functional ability. Patients with cognitive deficits pose a larger safety challenge but still should be afforded an opportunity to use and benefit from assistive devices. The assessment tool is a new and unique instrument and although requires further development, may conceivably act not just as an assessment instrument but also an effective treatment tool.

Multiplets of superconformal symmetry in diverse dimensions

We systematically analyze the operator content of unitary superconformal multiplets in d ≥ 3 spacetime dimensions. We present a simple, general, and efficient algorithm that generates all of these multiplets by correctly eliminating possible null states. The algorithm is conjectural, but passes a vast web of consistency checks. We apply it to tabulate a large variety of superconformal multiplets. In particular, we classify and construct all multiplets that contain conserved currents or free fields, which play an important role in superconformal field theories (SCFTs). Some currents that are allowed in conformal field theories cannot be embedded in superconformal multiplets, and hence they are absent in SCFTs. We use the structure of superconformal stress tensor multiplets to show that SCFTs with more than 16 Poincaré supercharges cannot arise in d ≥ 4, even when the corresponding superconformal algebras exist. We also show that such theories do arise in d = 3, but are necessarily free.