Global and regional cardiac function in lifelong endurance athletes with and without myocardial fibrosis

The aim of the present study was to compare cardiac structure as well as global and regional cardiac function in athletes with and without myocardial fibrosis (MF). Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging with late gadolinium enhancement was used to detect MF and global cardiac structure in nine lifelong veteran endurance athletes (58 ± 5 years, 43 ± 5 years of training). Transthoracic echocardiography using tissue-Doppler and myocardial strain imaging assessed global and regional (18 segments) longitudinal left ventricular function. MF was present in four athletes (range 1–8 g) and not present in five athletes. MF was located near the insertion points of the right ventricular free wall on the left ventricle in three athletes and in the epicardial lateral wall in one athlete. Athletes with MF demonstrated a larger end diastolic volume (205 ± 24 vs 173 ± 18 ml) and posterior wall thickness (11 ± 1 vs 9 ± 1 mm) compared to those without MF. The presence of MF did not mediate global tissue velocities or global longitudinal strain and strain rate; however, regional analysis of longitudinal strain demonstrated reduced function in some fibrotic regions. Furthermore, base to apex gradient was affected in three out of four athletes with MF. Lifelong veteran endurance athletes with MF demonstrate larger cardiac dimensions and normal global cardiac function. Fibrotic areas may demonstrate some co-localised regional cardiac dysfunction, evidenced by an affected cardiac strain and base to apex gradient. These data emphasize the heterogeneous phenotype of MF in athletes

Pliable Index Coding via Conflict-Free Colorings of Hypergraphs

In the pliable index coding (PICOD) problem, a server is to serve multiple clients, each of which possesses a unique subset of the complete message set as side information and requests a new message which it does not have. The goal of the server is to do this using as few transmissions as possible. This work presents a hypergraph coloring approach to the PICOD problem. A \textit{conflict-free coloring} of a hypergraph is known from literature as an assignment of colors to its vertices so that each edge of the graph contains one uniquely colored vertex. For a given PICOD problem represented by a hypergraph consisting of messages as vertices and request-sets as edges, we present achievable PICOD schemes using conflict-free colorings of the PICOD hypergraph. Various graph theoretic parameters arising out of such colorings (and some new variants) then give a number of upper bounds on the optimal PICOD length, which we study in this work. Our achievable schemes based on hypergraph coloring include scalar as well as vector linear PICOD schemes. For the scalar case, using the correspondence with conflict-free coloring, we show the existence of an achievable scheme which has length $O(\log^2\Gamma),$ where $\Gamma$ refers to a parameter of the hypergraph that captures the maximum `incidence' number of other edges on any edge. This result improves upon known achievability results in PICOD literature, in some parameter regimes.Comment: 21 page

Current difficulties and recent advances in bypass therapy for the management of hemophilia with inhibitors: a new and practical formulation of recombinant factor VIIa

Bypassing agents are the mainstay of treatment for patients with hemophilia with high-titer inhibitors. Whereas the availability of these agents has greatly advanced the management of bleeding episodes in this population, timely administration of bypassing agents continues to be hampered by a number of practical limitations, including the need for refrigerated storage of the agent and its reconstitution at room temperature prior to administration, among others. In this review, the importance of early treatment of bleeds and factors that influence this more timely therapeutic approach are highlighted, together with the advantages offered by the use of a new formulation of recombinant activated factor VII that permits improved storage and portability, potentially optimizing timely bypassing agent administration

Introduction to Complex Systems, Sustainability and Innovation

The technological innovations have always proved the impossible possible. Humans have all the time obliterated barriers and set records with astounding regularity. However, there are issues springing up in terms of complexity and sustainability in this context, which we were ignoring for long. Today, in every walk of life, we encounter complex systems, whether it is the Internet, communication systems, electrical power grids, or the financial markets. Due to its unpredictable behavior, any creative change in a complex system poses a threat of systemic risks. This is because an innovation is always introducing something new, introducing a change, possibly to solve an existing problem, the effect of which is nonlinear. Failure to predict the future states of the system due to the nonlinear nature makes any system unsustainable. This necessitates the need for any development to be sustainable by meeting the needs of people today without destroying the potential of future generations to meet their needs. This chapter, which studies systems that are complex due to intricateness in their connectivity, gives insights into their ways of emergence and the nonlinear cause and effects pattern the complex systems use to follow, effectively paving way for sustainable innovation

Unsupervised Voice Activity Detection by Modeling Source and System Information using Zero Frequency Filtering

Voice activity detection (VAD) is an important pre-processing step for speech technology applications. The task consists of deriving segment boundaries of audio signals which contain voicing information. In recent years, it has been shown that voice source and vocal tract system information can be extracted using zero-frequency filtering (ZFF) without making any explicit model assumptions about the speech signal. This paper investigates the potential of zero-frequency filtering for jointly modeling voice source and vocal tract system information, and proposes two approaches for VAD. The first approach demarcates voiced regions using a composite signal composed of different zero-frequency filtered signals. The second approach feeds the composite signal as input to the rVAD algorithm. These approaches are compared with other supervised and unsupervised VAD methods in the literature, and are evaluated on the Aurora-2 database, across a range of SNRs (20 to -5 dB). Our studies show that the proposed ZFF-based methods perform comparable to state-of-art VAD methods and are more invariant to added degradation and different channel characteristics.Comment: Accepted at Interspeech 202

Crystallinity depends on choice of iron salt precursor in the continuous hydrothermal synthesis of Fe–Co oxide nanoparticles

A series of Fe–Co oxide nanoparticles (NPs) were prepared by a continuous hydrothermal method using iron nitrate and ammonium iron citrate as alternative iron precursors. The crystallinity, Fe/Co composition and element spatial distribution in the synthesised NPs were investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD), aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (ac-STEM) imaging, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS). Strong dependence on the choice of iron salt was observed. We demonstrate that the presence of ammonium citrate markedly improves the crystallinity of the NPs; an ordered cobalt ferrite alloy is formed. We suggest this is due to the formation of a homogenous reaction environment during the thermal decomposition of ammonium citrate, and the formation of complexes among citrate, Fe and Co ions

Mps1 regulates kinetochore-microtubule attachment stability via the ska complex to ensure error-free chromosome segregation

The spindle assembly checkpoint kinase Mps1 not only inhibits anaphase but also corrects erroneous attachments that could lead to missegregation and aneuploidy. However, Mps1’s error correction-relevant substrates are unknown. Using a chemically tuned kinetochore-targeting assay, we show that Mps1 destabilizes microtubule attachments (K fibers) epistatically to Aurora B, the other major error-correcting kinase. Through quantitative proteomics, we identify multiple sites of Mps1-regulated phosphorylation at the outer kinetochore. Substrate modification was microtubule sensitive and opposed by PP2A-B56 phosphatases that stabilize chromosome-spindle attachment. Consistently, Mps1 inhibition rescued K-fiber stability after depleting PP2A-B56. We also identify the Ska complex as a key effector of Mps1 at the kinetochore-microtubule interface, as mutations that mimic constitutive phosphorylation destabilized K fibers in vivo and reduced the efficiency of the Ska complex’s conversion from lattice diffusion to end-coupled microtubule binding in vitro. Our results reveal how Mps1 dynamically modifies kinetochores to correct improper attachments and ensure faithful chromosome segregation

Global impact of nitrate photolysis in sea-salt aerosol on NOx, OH, and O3 in the marine boundary layer

Recent field studies have suggested that sea-salt particulate nitrate (NITs) photolysis may act as a significant local source of nitrogen oxides (NOx) over oceans. We present a study of the global impact of this process on oxidant concentrations in the marine boundary layer (MBL) using the GEOS-Chem model, after first updating the model to better simulate observed gas-particle phase partitioning of nitrate in the marine boundary layer. Model comparisons with long-term measurements of NOx from the Cape Verde Atmospheric Observatory (CVAO) in the eastern tropical North Atlantic provide support for an in situ source of NOx from NITs photolysis, with NITs photolysis coefficients about 25-50 times larger than corresponding HNO3 photolysis coefficients. Short-term measurements of nitrous acid (HONO) at this location show a clear daytime peak, with average peak mixing ratios ranging from 3 to 6 pptv. The model reproduces the general shape of the diurnal HONO profile only when NITs photolysis is included, but the magnitude of the daytime peak mixing ratio is under-predicted. This under-prediction is somewhat reduced if HONO yields from NITs photolysis are assumed to be close to unity. The combined NOx and HONO analysis suggests that the upper limit of the ratio of NITs : HNO3 photolysis coefficients is about 100. The largest simulated relative impact of NITs photolysis is in the tropical and subtropical marine boundary layer, with peak local enhancements ranging from factors of 5 to 20 for NOx, 1.2 to 1.6 for OH, and 1.1 to 1.3 for ozone. Since the spatial extent of the sea-salt aerosol (SSA) impact is limited, global impacts on NOx, ozone, and OH mass burdens are small ( ∼ 1-3 %). We also present preliminary analysis showing that particulate nitrate photolysis in accumulation-mode aerosols (predominantly over continental regions) could lead to ppbv-level increases in ozone in the continental boundary layer. Our results highlight the need for more comprehensive long-term measurements of NOx, and related species like HONO and sea-salt particulate nitrate, to better constrain the impact of particulate nitrate photolysis on marine boundary layer oxidant chemistry. Further field and laboratory studies on particulate nitrate photolysis in other aerosol types are also needed to better understand the impact of this process on continental boundary layer oxidant chemistry

Truncated Microstrip Patch Antenna with DGS Based on Double Looped CSRR Arrays for Enhancement of Bandwidth

This paper presents a novel method for the design of truncated microstrip patch antenna with DGS based on Double Looped CSRR arrays for enhancement of bandwidth. The proposed antenna is suitable for WLAN/Wi-Fi, RFID applications. A truncated microstrip patch antenna without DGS was initially designed for a resonant frequency of 2.86GHz having a bandwidth of 95.6MHz. By integrating a new Double Looped CSRR array (DLCSRR) structure on the ground plane, resonant frequency of the antenna is shifted to 2.47GHz and also the bandwidth is enhanced to 202.5MHz. By implementing DLCSRR array structure on the ground plane size reduction and bandwidth enhancement of 52.79% is achieved. The performance of truncated microstrip patch antenna with DGS based on Double Looped CSRR array structure was also compared by replacing conventional proximity fed microstrip patch antenna with the same physical size. The conventional proximity coupled microstrip patch antenna is designed for a resonant frequency of 2.26GHz with a lower bandwidth of 23.3MHz.The antennas were designed using CST simulation software. The measurement  result shows a good agreement with simulated results