When to Preempt in a Status Update System?

We consider a time-slotted status update system with an error-free preemptive queue. The goal of the sampler-scheduler pair is to minimize the age of information at the monitor by sampling and transmitting the freshly sampled update packets to the monitor. The sampler-scheduler pair also has a choice to preempt an old update packet from the server and transmit a new update packet to the server. We formulate this problem as a Markov decision process (MDP) and find the optimal sampling policy. We find a sufficient, and also separately a necessary, condition for the always preemption policy to be an optimal policy. We show that it is optimal for the sampler-scheduler pair to sample a new packet immediately upon the reception of an update packet at the monitor. We propose a double-threshold sampling policy which we show to be an optimal policy under some assumptions on the queue statistic

Acute onset movement disorders in diabetes mellitus: A clinical series of 59 patients

Background and purpose: No previous study has assessed the frequency and clinical– radiological characteristics of patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) and acute onset non-choreic and nonballistic movements. We conducted a prospective study to investigate the spectrum of acute onset movement disorders in DM.Methods: We recruited all the patients with acute onset movement disorders and hyper-glycemia who attended the wards of three hospitals in West Bengal, India from August 2014 to July 2021.Results: Among the 59 patients (mean age = 55.4± 14.3 years, 52.5% men) who were included, 41 (69.5%) had choreic or ballistic movements, and 18 (30.5%) had nonchoreic and nonballistic movements. Ballism was the most common movement disorder (n= 18, 30.5%), followed by pure chorea (n= 15, 25.4%), choreoathetosis (n= 8, 13.6%), tremor (n= 5, 8.5%), hemifacial spasm (n= 3, 5.1%), parkinsonism (n= 3, 5.1%), myoclonus (n= 3, 5.1%), dystonia (n= 2, 3.4%), and restless leg syndrome (n= 2, 3.4%). The mean duration of DM was 9.8 ± 11.4 years (89.8% of the patients had type 2 DM). Nonketotic hypergly-cemia was frequently (76.3%) detected. The majority (55.9%) had no magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) changes; the remaining showed striatal hyperintensity. Eight patients with MRI changes exhibited discordance with sidedness of movements. Most of the patients (76.3%) recovered completely.Conclusions: This is the largest clinical series depicting the clinical–radiological spectrum of acute onset movement disorders in DM. Of note was that almost one third of patients had nonchoreic and nonballistic movements. Our findings highlight the importance of a capillary blood glucose measurement in patients with acute or subacute onset movement disorders, irrespective of their past glycemic status

The Hepatic Compensatory Response to Elevated Systemic Sulfide Promotes Diabetes

Impaired hepatic glucose and lipid metabolism are hallmarks of type 2 diabetes. Increased sulfide production or sulfide donor compounds may beneficially regulate hepatic metabolism. Disposal of sulfide through the sulfide oxidation pathway (SOP) is critical for maintaining sulfide within a safe physiological range. We show that mice lacking the liver- enriched mitochondrial SOP enzyme thiosulfate sulfurtransferase (Tst−/− mice) exhibit high circulating sulfide, increased gluconeogenesis, hypertriglyceridemia, and fatty liver. Unexpectedly, hepatic sulfide levels are normal in Tst−/− mice because of exaggerated induction of sulfide disposal, with associated suppression of global protein persulfidation and nuclear respiratory factor 2 target protein levels. Hepatic proteomic and persulfidomic profiles converge on gluconeogenesis and lipid metabolism, revealing a selective deficit in medium-chain fatty acid oxidation in Tst−/− mice. We reveal a critical role of TST in hepatic metabolism that has implications for sulfide donor strategies in the context of metabolic disease

Border Insecurity: Reading Transnational Environments in Jim Lynch’s Border Songs

This article applies an eco-critical approach to contemporary American fiction about the Canada-US border, examining Jim Lynch’s portrayal of the British Columbia-Washington borderlands in his 2009 novel Border Songs. It argues that studying transnational environmental actors in border texts—in this case, marijuana, human migrants, and migratory birds—helps illuminate the contingency of political boundaries, problems of scale, and discourses of risk and security in cross-border regions after 9/11. Further, it suggests that widening the analysis of trans-border activity to include environmental phenomena productively troubles concepts of nature and regional belonging in an era of climate change and economic globalization. Cet article propose une lecture écocritique de la fiction étatsunienne contemporaine portant sur la frontière entre le Canada et les États-Unis, en étudiant le portrait donné par Jim Lynch de la région frontalière entre la Colombie-Britannique et Washington dans son roman Border Songs, paru en 2009. L’article soutient que l’étude, dans les textes sur la frontière, des acteurs environnementaux transnationaux – dans ce cas-ci, la marijuana, les migrants humains et les oiseaux migratoires – jette un jour nouveau sur la contingence des limites territoriales politiques, des problèmes d’échelle et des discours sur le risque et la sécurité des régions transfrontalières après les évènements du 11 septembre 2001. Il suggère également qu’en élargissant l’analyse de l’activité transfrontalière pour y inclure les phénomènes environnementaux, on brouille de façon productive les concepts de nature et d’appartenance régionale d’une époque marquée par les changements climatiques et la mondialisation de l’économie