Diurnal variation and repeatability of arterial stiffness and cardiac output measurements in the third trimester of uncomplicated pregnancy.

AIM: To investigate same day repeated measures and diurnal variation of arterial stiffness, cardiac output (CO), stroke volume (SV) and total peripheral resistance (TPR) during the third trimester of normal pregnancy. METHODOLOGY: Pulse wave velocity (PWV) and augmentation index (AIx) were recorded using the Arteriograph, while CO, SV and TPR were recorded using noninvasive cardiac output monitoring. The measurements were obtained in the third trimester of pregnancy from 21 healthy pregnant women at four time points (morning, afternoon, evening and midnight) over a 24-h period. Triplicate measurements of 67 women were obtained at 5-min intervals to assess repeatability between measurements within a patient. RESULTS: Diurnal measurements of arterial stiffness for brachial AIx, aortic AIx and PWV were not statistically significantly different at any of the four time points. Estimated means (SD) for PWV at the four stated time points were 7.81 (2.05), 8.45 (1.68), 7.87 (1.74) and 7.64 m/s (1.15), respectively (P = 0.267). Estimates for AIx at those time points were 10.22 (15.62), 4.44 (10.07), 6.49 (10.92) and 8.40% (8.16), respectively (P = 0.295). Similarly, mean arterial pressure, SV, SV index and TPR did not show any evidence of diurnal variation. However, we observed that the mean CO, cardiac index (CI) and heart rate (HR) varied from morning to midnight; the mean CO, HR and CI increased significantly in the afternoon compared with the corresponding mean morning measurements in a similar fashion to HR. Mean (SD) CO estimates at the four stated time points were 5.90 (1.33), 6.38 (1.49), 6.18 (1.43) and 5.80 ml/min (1.19), respectively, (P < 0.001), whereas mean CI estimates were 3.65 (0.58), 3.93 (0.68), 3.81 (0.65), and 3.57 (0.48), respectively, (P < 0.001), and mean HR estimates were 95 (12), 98 (13), 95 (12) and 88 (12.98), respectively (P < 0.001). Triplicate measurements of 61 women in our repeatability study showed moderate-to-high correlation between observations on the same woman for all Arteriograph and noninvasive cardiac output monitoring variables (estimates of intraclass correlation ranged from 0.49 to 0.91). CONCLUSION: With the exception of CO, CI and HR which showed a diurnal variation, measurements of most haemodynamic parameters did not change significantly from morning to midnight, suggesting there was no evidence of systematic differences in the mean values of these variables at these time points. Multiple consecutive noninvasive measurements of vascular stiffness, CO, SV and TPR were highly correlated confirming repeatability of measurements in the third trimester of uncomplicated pregnancy, so these haemodynamic measurements do not need to be undertaken at a specific time period of the day

Quantum authentication with key recycling

We show that a family of quantum authentication protocols introduced in [Barnum et al., FOCS 2002] can be used to construct a secure quantum channel and additionally recycle all of the secret key if the message is successfully authenticated, and recycle part of the key if tampering is detected. We give a full security proof that constructs the secure channel given only insecure noisy channels and a shared secret key. We also prove that the number of recycled key bits is optimal for this family of protocols, i.e., there exists an adversarial strategy to obtain all non-recycled bits. Previous works recycled less key and only gave partial security proofs, since they did not consider all possible distinguishers (environments) that may be used to distinguish the real setting from the ideal secure quantum channel and secret key resource.Comment: 38+17 pages, 13 figures. v2: constructed ideal secure channel and secret key resource have been slightly redefined; also added a proof in the appendix for quantum authentication without key recycling that has better parameters and only requires weak purity testing code

Orientation cues for high-flying nocturnal insect migrants: do turbulence-induced temperature and velocity fluctuations indicate the mean wind flow?

Migratory insects flying at high altitude at night often show a degree of common alignment, sometimes with quite small angular dispersions around the mean. The observed orientation directions are often close to the downwind direction and this would seemingly be adaptive in that large insects could add their self-propelled speed to the wind speed, thus maximising their displacement in a given time. There are increasing indications that high-altitude orientation may be maintained by some intrinsic property of the wind rather than by visual perception of relative ground movement. Therefore, we first examined whether migrating insects could deduce the mean wind direction from the turbulent fluctuations in temperature. Within the atmospheric boundary-layer, temperature records show characteristic ramp-cliff structures, and insects flying downwind would move through these ramps whilst those flying crosswind would not. However, analysis of vertical-looking radar data on the common orientations of nocturnally migrating insects in the UK produced no evidence that the migrants actually use temperature ramps as orientation cues. This suggests that insects rely on turbulent velocity and acceleration cues, and refocuses attention on how these can be detected, especially as small-scale turbulence is usually held to be directionally invariant (isotropic). In the second part of the paper we present a theoretical analysis and simulations showing that velocity fluctuations and accelerations felt by an insect are predicted to be anisotropic even when the small-scale turbulence (measured at a fixed point or along the trajectory of a fluid-particle) is isotropic. Our results thus provide further evidence that insects do indeed use turbulent velocity and acceleration cues as indicators of the mean wind direction

Rationale and design of the ADDITION-Leicester study, a systematic screening programme and randomised controlled trial of multi-factorial cardiovascular risk intervention in people with type 2 diabetes mellitus detected by screening.

BACKGROUND: Earlier diagnosis followed by multi-factorial cardiovascular risk intervention may improve outcomes in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Latent phase identification through screening requires structured, appropriately targeted population-based approaches. Providers responsible for implementing screening policy await evidence of clinical and cost effectiveness from randomised intervention trials in screen-detected T2DM cases. UK South Asians are at particularly high risk of abnormal glucose tolerance and T2DM. To be effective national screening programmes must achieve good coverage across the population by identifying barriers to the detection of disease and adapting to the delivery of earlier care. Here we describe the rationale and methods of a systematic community screening programme and randomised controlled trial of cardiovascular risk management within a UK multiethnic setting (ADDITION-Leicester). DESIGN: A single-blind cluster randomised, parallel group trial among people with screen-detected T2DM comparing a protocol driven intensive multi-factorial treatment with conventional care. METHODS: ADDITION-Leicester consists of community-based screening and intervention phases within 20 general practices coordinated from a single academic research centre. Screening adopts a universal diagnostic approach via repeated 75g-oral glucose tolerance tests within an eligible non-diabetic population of 66,320 individuals aged 40-75 years (25-75 years South Asian). Volunteers also provide detailed medical and family histories; complete health questionnaires, undergo anthropometric measures, lipid profiling and a proteinuria assessment. Primary outcome is reduction in modelled Coronary Heart Disease (UKPDS CHD) risk at five years. Seven thousand (30% of South Asian ethnic origin) volunteers over three years will be recruited to identify a screen-detected T2DM cohort (n = 285) powered to detected a 6% relative difference (80% power, alpha 0.05) between treatment groups at one year. Randomisation will occur at practice-level with newly diagnosed T2DM cases receiving either conventional (according to current national guidelines) or intensive (algorithmic target-driven multi-factorial cardiovascular risk intervention) treatments. DISCUSSION: ADDITION-Leicester is the largest multiethnic (targeting >30% South Asian recruitment) community T2DM and vascular risk screening programme in the UK. By assessing feasibility and efficacy of T2DM screening, it will inform national disease prevention policy and contribute significantly to our understanding of the health care needs of UK South Asians. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Clinicaltrial.gov (NCT00318032).RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

The nonlinear anomalous lattice elasticity associated with the high-pressure phase transition in spodumene: A high precission static compression study

The high-pressure behavior of the lattice elasticity of spodumene, LiAlSi2O6, was studied by static compression in a diamond-anvil cell up to 9.3 GPa. Investigations by means of single-crystal XRD and Raman spectroscopy within the hydrostatic limits of the pressure medium focus on the pressure ranges around similar to 3.2 and similar to 7.7 GPa, which have been reported previously to comprise two independent structural phase transitions. While our measurements confirm the well-established first-order C2/c-P2(1)/c transformation at 3.19 GPa (with 1.2% volume discontinuity and a hysteresis between 0.02 and 0.06 GPa), both unit-cell dimensions and the spectral changes observed in high-pressure Raman spectra give no evidence for structural changes related to a second phase transition. Monoclinic lattice parameters and unit-cell volumes at in total 59 different pressure points have been used to re-calculate the lattice-related properties of spontaneous strain, volume strain, and the bulk moduli as a function of pressure across the transition. A modified Landau free energy expansion in terms of a one component order parameter has been developed and tested against these experimentally determined data. The Landau solution provides a much better reproduction of the observed anomalies than any equation-of-state fit to data sets truncated below and above P (tr), thus giving Landau parameters of K (0) = 138.3(2) GPa, K' = 7.46(5), lambda (V) = 33.6(2) GPa, a = 0.486(3), b = -29.4(6) GPa and c = 551(11) GPa

Astrobiological Complexity with Probabilistic Cellular Automata

Search for extraterrestrial life and intelligence constitutes one of the major endeavors in science, but has yet been quantitatively modeled only rarely and in a cursory and superficial fashion. We argue that probabilistic cellular automata (PCA) represent the best quantitative framework for modeling astrobiological history of the Milky Way and its Galactic Habitable Zone. The relevant astrobiological parameters are to be modeled as the elements of the input probability matrix for the PCA kernel. With the underlying simplicity of the cellular automata constructs, this approach enables a quick analysis of large and ambiguous input parameters' space. We perform a simple clustering analysis of typical astrobiological histories and discuss the relevant boundary conditions of practical importance for planning and guiding actual empirical astrobiological and SETI projects. In addition to showing how the present framework is adaptable to more complex situations and updated observational databases from current and near-future space missions, we demonstrate how numerical results could offer a cautious rationale for continuation of practical SETI searches.Comment: 37 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables; added journal reference belo

A Computational Approach for Designing Tiger Corridors in India

Wildlife corridors are components of landscapes, which facilitate the movement of organisms and processes between intact habitat areas, and thus provide connectivity between the habitats within the landscapes. Corridors are thus regions within a given landscape that connect fragmented habitat patches within the landscape. The major concern of designing corridors as a conservation strategy is primarily to counter, and to the extent possible, mitigate the effects of habitat fragmentation and loss on the biodiversity of the landscape, as well as support continuance of land use for essential local and global economic activities in the region of reference. In this paper, we use game theory, graph theory, membership functions and chain code algorithm to model and design a set of wildlife corridors with tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) as the focal species. We identify the parameters which would affect the tiger population in a landscape complex and using the presence of these identified parameters construct a graph using the habitat patches supporting tiger presence in the landscape complex as vertices and the possible paths between them as edges. The passage of tigers through the possible paths have been modelled as an Assurance game, with tigers as an individual player. The game is played recursively as the tiger passes through each grid considered for the model. The iteration causes the tiger to choose the most suitable path signifying the emergence of adaptability. As a formal explanation of the game, we model this interaction of tiger with the parameters as deterministic finite automata, whose transition function is obtained by the game payoff.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, 6 tables, NGCT conference 201

The Future of Nursing Leadership: Incorporating e-Learned Artificial Intelligence (AI) Pathways with A Precautionary Focus on Patient-Centered-Care

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a data-driven mathematical process that incorporates machine-based-logic, usually in the form of algorithms. Education, training, and competencies are now conducted through virtual reality, robotics, simulation, and technology learning-based-platforms by healthcare organizations. This represents a significant change in the future of nursing practice. The adaptability of technology-based-learning platforms can impact the quality and efficiency of learning for some of the workforce population. Nurses\u27 perception of technology and AI-driven nursing practice may vary based on generational orientation and can be a potential barrier to learning, practicing, and adaptability of this framework. The forging of well-trained resilient nurse leaders who will objectively review e-Learned AI algorithms with human assessment and overseeing will ensure quality care, and avoid underlying biases, and inequalities to prevent distorted pathways of care. Future nurse leaders can be supported by eLearned AI pathways but must safeguard and remain focused on patient-centered-car

Rapid production of large-area, transparent and stretchable electrodes using metal nanofibers as wirelessly operated wearable heaters

A rapidly growing interest in wearable electronics has led to the development of stretchable and transparent heating films that can replace the conventional brittle and opaque heaters. Herein, we describe the rapid production of large-area, stretchable and transparent electrodes using electrospun ultra-long metal nanofibers (mNFs) and demonstrate their potential use as wirelessly operated wearable heaters. These mNF networks provide excellent optoelectronic properties (sheet resistance of similar to 1.3 O per sq with an optical transmittance of similar to 90%) and mechanical reliability (90% stretchability). The optoelectronic properties can be controlled by adjusting the area fraction of the mNF networks, which also enables the modulation of the power consumption of the heater. For example, the low sheet resistance of the heater presents an outstanding power efficiency of 0.65 W cm(-2) (with the temperature reaching 250 degrees C at a low DC voltage of 4.5 V), which is similar to 10 times better than the properties of conventional indium tin oxide-based heaters. Furthermore, we demonstrate the wireless fine control of the temperature of the heating film using Bluetooth smart devices, which suggests substantial promise for the application of this heating film in next-generation wearable electronics

Pion interferometry in Au+Au collisions at sqrt[sNN]=200GeV

We present a systematic analysis of two-pion interferometry in Au+Au collisions at sqrt[sNN]=200GeV using the STAR detector at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. We extract the Hanbury-Brown and Twiss radii and study their multiplicity, transverse momentum, and azimuthal angle dependence. The Gaussianness of the correlation function is studied. Estimates of the geometrical and dynamical structure of the freeze-out source are extracted by fits with blast-wave parametrizations. The expansion of the source and its relation with the initial energy density distribution is studied