This study reports chronic pain prevalence in a randomly selected sample of the adult Australian population. Data were collected by Computer-Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) using randomly generated telephone numbers and a two-stage stratified sample design. Chronic pain was defined as pain experienced every day for three months in the six months prior to interview. There were 17,543 completed interviews (response rate=70.8%). Chronic pain was reported by 17.1% of males and 20.0% of females. For males, prevalence peaked at 27.0% in the 65--69 year age group and for females, prevalence peaked at 31.0% in the oldest age group (80--84 years). Having chronic pain was significantly associated with older age, female gender, lower levels of completed education, and not having private health insurance; it was also strongly associated with receiving a disability benefit (adjusted OR=3.89, P<0.001) or unemployment benefit (adjusted OR=1.99, P<0.001); being unemployed for health reasons (adjusted OR=6.41, P<0.001); having poor self-rated health (adjusted OR=7.24, P<0.001); and high levels of psychological distress (adjusted OR=3.16, P<0.001). Eleven per cent of males and 13.5% of females in the survey reported some degree of interference with daily activities caused by their pain. Prevalence of interference was highest in the 55--59 year age group in both males (17.2%) and females (19.7%). Younger respondents with chronic pain were proportionately most likely to report interference due to pain, affecting 84.3% of females and 75.9% of males aged 20--24 years with chronic pain. Within the subgroup of respondents reporting chronic pain, the presence of interference with daily activities caused by pain was significantly associated with younger age; female gender; and not having private health insurance. There were strong associations between having interfering chronic pain and receiving disability benefits (adjusted OR=3.31, P<0.001) or being unemployed due to health reasons (adjusted OR=7.94, P<0.001, respectively). The results show that chronic pain impacts upon a large proportion of the adult Australian population, including the working age population, and is strongly associated with markers of social disadvantage.

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In this manuscript, the authors have sought to gain a better understanding of the interactions between Escherichia coli and lactic acid bacteria (LAB) isolated from Rogossa MRS agar along the digestive tract of grain-and forage-fed cattle. E. coli from cattle receiving a high-grain diet were more numerous (P , 0?05) than from the high-forage diet and the highest numbers were in the faeces. Isolates on Rogossa MRS agar were always greater in the high-grain diet (P , 0?05) and contained a significant number of LAB. A random set of Rogossa MRS agar colonies was selected and artificial neural networks were used to develop a relationship between colony description and species which was validated using sequence analysis (16S rDNA). The neural networks correctly predicted species in more than 80 % of cases and was composed, primarily, of Lactobacillus vitulinus, Lactobacillus ruminis, Selenomonas ruminantium, Streptococcus bovis, Acidaminococcus fermentans and Megasphaera elsdenii. In conjunction with statistical diversity indices, it was demonstrated that diversity in the high-fibre diet was always lower and was a consequence of the dominance of Str. bovis. In contrast, the diversity in the high-grain diet was greater (P , 0?05) and was a consequence of the decline in Str. bovis. These data demonstrate that there is a positive relationship between coliform and LAB isolates throughout the digestive tract of cattle, and diet is the major factor regulating bacterial composition.

Tel: +44 (0) 1 17 954 5 169, Fax: +44 (0)117 954 5206 ABSTRACT This paper investigates the nature of the indoor radio channel at 60GHz, with regard to its use for future high bitrate broadband wireless networks. It is proposed that, for operation in the millimetre-wave indoor channel, directional antennas can be used to mitigate multi-path effects, thus reducing the need for complex equalisation or multi-carrier techniques. An image based, ray-tracing prediction model is used to study the channel Characteristics and to analyse the variation in received power, RMS delay spread and k-factor within a typical operating environment. The performances of different antenna combinations are investigated and narrowbeam, suitably aligned antennas are shown to reduce received delay spread for both LOS and non-LOS locations.The effects of non-optimal antenna alignment are observed, and system outage is determined for certain system design criteria. The results suggest that it will feasible to combat multi-path effects using switched-beam directional antennas.