High-Fidelity Aeroelastic Computations of a Flapping Wing with Spanwise Flexibility

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90712/1/AIAA-2011-570-494.pd

Discrete wavelet transform based freezing of gait detection in Parkinson's disease

Wearable on body sensors have been employed in many applications including ambulatory monitoring and pervasive computing systems. In this work, a wearable assistant has been created for people suffering from Parkinson’s disease (PD), specifically with the Freezing of Gait (FoG) symptom. Wearable accelerometers were placed on the person’s body and used for movement measure. When FoG is detected, a rhythmic audio signal was given from the wearable assistant to motivate the wearer to continue walking. Long term monitoring results in collecting huge amounts of complex raw data; therefore, data analysis becomes impractical or infeasible resulting in the need for data reduction. In the present study, Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) has been used to extract the main features inherent in the key movement indicators for FoG detection. The discrimination capacities of these features were assessed using, i) Support Vector Machine (SVM) using a linear kernel function, and ii) Artificial Neural Network (ANN) with a two-layer feed-forward with hidden layer of 20 neurons that trained with conjugate gradient back- propagation. Using these two different machine learning techniques, we were capable of detecting FoG with an accuracy of 87.50% and 93.8%, respectively. Additionally, the comparison between the extracted features from DWT coefficients with those using Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) established accuracies of 93.8% and 81.3%, respectively. Finally, the discriminative features extracted from DWT yield to a robust multidimensional classification model compared to models in the literature based on a single feature. The work presented paves the way for reliable, real-time wearable sensors to aid people with PD

Procalcitonin Identifies Cell Injury, Not Bacterial Infection, in Acute Liver Failure

Background Because acute liver failure (ALF) patients share many clinical features with severe sepsis and septic shock, identifying bacterial infection clinically in ALF patients is challenging. Procalcitonin (PCT) has proven to be a useful marker in detecting bacterial infection. We sought to determine whether PCT discriminated between presence and absence of infection in patients with ALF. Method Retrospective analysis of data and samples of 115 ALF patients from the United States Acute Liver Failure Study Group randomly selected from 1863 patients were classified for disease severity and ALF etiology. Twenty uninfected chronic liver disease (CLD) subjects served as controls. Results Procalcitonin concentrations in most samples were elevated, with median values for all ALF groups near or above a 2.0 ng/mL cut-off that generally indicates severe sepsis. While PCT concentrations increased somewhat with apparent liver injury severity, there were no differences in PCT levels between the pre-defined severity groups–non-SIRS and SIRS groups with no documented infections and Severe Sepsis and Septic Shock groups with documented infections, (p = 0.169). PCT values from CLD patients differed from all ALF groups (median CLD PCT value 0.104 ng/mL, (p ≤0.001)). Subjects with acetaminophen (APAP) toxicity, many without evidence of infection, demonstrated median PCT \u3e2.0 ng/mL, regardless of SIRS features, while some culture positive subjects had PCT values Summary/Conclusions While PCT appears to be a robust assay for detecting bacterial infection in the general population, there was poor discrimination between ALF patients with or without bacterial infection presumably because of the massive inflammation observed. Severe hepatocyte necrosis with inflammation results in elevated PCT levels, rendering this biomarker unreliable in the ALF setting

Sila-Pharmaca, 26th Communication [1] Preparation and Properties of Silicon Compounds with Potential Curare-Like Activity, III

The potentially curare-like silicon compounds 8a- 8f were synthesized and investigated with respect to their structure-activity relationships. The conformations of the compounds in the solid state and in solution were studied by X-ray diffraction analysis (8a- 8e) and IR NMR spectroscopy (8a- 8f), respectively. The muscle relaxing properties of 8a- 8f were investigated on the mouse. The observed structure-activity relationships are not in accordance with the classical "14 Å model" for neuromuscular blocking agents

How the other half lives: CRISPR-Cas's influence on bacteriophages

CRISPR-Cas is a genetic adaptive immune system unique to prokaryotic cells used to combat phage and plasmid threats. The host cell adapts by incorporating DNA sequences from invading phages or plasmids into its CRISPR locus as spacers. These spacers are expressed as mobile surveillance RNAs that direct CRISPR-associated (Cas) proteins to protect against subsequent attack by the same phages or plasmids. The threat from mobile genetic elements inevitably shapes the CRISPR loci of archaea and bacteria, and simultaneously the CRISPR-Cas immune system drives evolution of these invaders. Here we highlight our recent work, as well as that of others, that seeks to understand phage mechanisms of CRISPR-Cas evasion and conditions for population coexistence of phages with CRISPR-protected prokaryotes.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figure

Suppressing molecular motions for enhanced room-temperature phosphorescence of metal-free organic materials

Metal-free organic phosphorescent materials are attractive alternatives to the predominantly used organometallic phosphors but are generally dimmer and are relatively rare, as, without heavy-metal atoms, spin-orbit coupling is less efficient and phosphorescence usually cannot compete with radiationless relaxation processes. Here we present a general design rule and a method to effectively reduce radiationless transitions and hence greatly enhance phosphorescence efficiency of metal-free organic materials in a variety of amorphous polymer matrices, based on the restriction of molecular motions in the proximity of embedded phosphors. Covalent cross-linking between phosphors and polymer matrices via Diels-Alder click chemistry is devised as a method. A sharp increase in phosphorescence quantum efficiency is observed in a variety of polymer matrices with this method, which is ca. two to five times higher than that of phosphor-doped polymer systems having no such covalent linkage.ope

DIAGNOSIS AND RECOMMENDATION INTEGRATED SYSTEM (DRIS) NORMS FOR APPLE CV. STARKING DELICIOUS

The Diagnosis and Recommendation Integrated System (DRIS) is an important tool for diagnosing the nutrient balance of the fruit trees and recommending fertilizer schedule for increasing fruit yield and fruit quality. The objectives of this study were to establish DRIS norms for apple (Malus x Domestica Borkh.) and to compare them with norms derived from average of published sufficiency ranges. The study covered the major apple growing belts viz.Jubbal-Kotkhai, Karsog, Kalpa, Kotgarh and Naggar areas of Himachal Pradesh and the orchards were selected for their high productivity and employment of excellent management techniques. The concentrations of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, manganese, copper and zinc were determined in leaf samples. The data were divided into high-yielding (>150kg/tree) and low-yielding (<150kg/tree) subpopulations and norms were computed using standard DRIS procedures. The results elucidate that the DRIS model for apple, developed in this study, is a diagnostic tool that may be used to predict if insufficiencies or imbalances in N, P, K, Ca, Mg, Fe, Mn, Cu and Zn supplies are occurring in apple production areas in the Western Himalayas and indeed elsewhere with similar c1imatic and soil conditions

A Systematic Mapping Approach of 16q12.2/FTO and BMI in More Than 20,000 African Americans Narrows in on the Underlying Functional Variation: Results from the Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology (PAGE) Study

Genetic variants in intron 1 of the fat mass- and obesity-associated (FTO) gene have been consistently associated with body mass index (BMI) in Europeans. However, follow-up studies in African Americans (AA) have shown no support for some of the most consistently BMI-associated FTO index single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). This is most likely explained by different race-specific linkage disequilibrium (LD) patterns and lower correlation overall in AA, which provides the opportunity to fine-map this region and narrow in on the functional variant. To comprehensively explore the 16q12.2/FTO locus and to search for second independent signals in the broader region, we fine-mapped a 646-kb region, encompassing the large FTO gene and the flanking gene RPGRIP1L by investigating a total of 3,756 variants (1,529 genotyped and 2,227 imputed variants) in 20,488 AAs across five studies. We observed associations between BMI and variants in the known FTO intron 1 locus: the SNP with the most significant p-value, rs56137030 (8.3×10-6) had not been highlighted in previous studies. While rs56137030was correlated at r2>0.5 with 103 SNPs in Europeans (including the GWAS index SNPs), this number was reduced to 28 SNPs in AA. Among rs56137030 and the 28 correlated SNPs, six were located within candidate intronic regulatory elements, including rs1421085, for which we predicted allele-specific binding affinity for the transcription factor CUX1, which has recently been implicated in the regulation of FTO. We did not find strong evidence for a second independent signal in the broader region. In summary, this large fine-mapping study in AA has substantially reduced the number of common alleles that are likely to be functional candidates of the known FTO locus. Importantly our study demonstrated that comprehensive fine-mapping in AA provides a powerful approach to narrow in on the functional candidate(s) underlying the initial GWAS findings in European populations

Room temperature triplet state spectroscopy of organic semiconductors

Organic light-emitting devices and solar cells are devices that create, manipulate, and convert excited states in organic semiconductors. It is crucial to characterize these excited states, or excitons, to optimize device performance in applications like displays and solar energy harvesting. This is complicated if the excited state is a triplet because the electronic transition is ‘dark’ with a vanishing oscillator strength. As a consequence, triplet state spectroscopy must usually be performed at cryogenic temperatures to reduce competition from non-radiative rates. Here, we control non-radiative rates by engineering a solid-state host matrix containing the target molecule, allowing the observation of phosphorescence at room temperature and alleviating constraints of cryogenic experiments. We test these techniques on a wide range of materials with functionalities spanning multi-exciton generation (singlet exciton fission), organic light emitting device host materials, and thermally activated delayed fluorescence type emitters. Control of non-radiative modes in the matrix surrounding a target molecule may also have broader applications in light-emitting and photovoltaic devices.United States. Dept. of Energy. Center for Excitonics (Award DE-SC0001088