2,155 research outputs found
Influenza A H1N1 pneumonia in a patient with hairy-cell leukemia
Severe pandemic influenza A virus (H1N1) infection is associated with risk factors such as pregnancy, obesity and immunosuppression. Immunocompromised patients are at increased risk of more severe or prolonged infection. We report a case of a hairy cell leukemia patient with H1N1 pneumonia which caused severe and prolonged illness. H1N1 virus pneumonia with meticillin-resistant Staphilococcus Aerues (MRSA) coinfection causing Acute Lung Injury (ALI) was treated with a double-dose of osentamyvir, a high dose of teicoplanin and a low dose of corticosteroids. Haematological findings included leucopenia, neutropenia, lymphopenia, reduction of γ-globulins and natural killer (NK) cells. Reduction of NK and γ-globulins may explain the development of severe illness and the prolonged illness Neutropenia may explain the MRSA co-infection. Lymphopenia is directly associated with virus action and is considered to be a marker of the swine influenza in adults
Pharmacological potential of the endogenous dipeptide kyotorphin and selected derivatives
Copyright © 2017 Perazzo, Castanho and Sá Santos. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.The endogenous peptide kyotorphin (KTP) has been extensively studied since it was discovered in 1979. The dipeptide is distributed unevenly over the brain but the majority is concentrated in the cerebral cortex. The putative KTP receptor has not been identified yet. As many other neuropeptides, KTP clearance is mediated by extracellular peptidases and peptide transporters. From the wide spectrum of biological activity of KTP, analgesia was by far the most studied. The mechanism of action is still unclear, but researchers agree that KTP induces Met-enkephalins release. More recently, KTP was proposed as biomarker of Alzheimer disease. Despite all that, KTP limited pharmacological value prompted researchers to develop derivatives more lipophilic and therefore more prone to cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB), and also more resistant to enzymatic degradation. Conjugation of KTP with functional molecules, such as ibuprofen, generated a new class of compounds with additional biological properties. Moreover, the safety profile of these derivatives compared to opioids and their efficacy as neuroprotective agents greatly increases their pharmacological value.Funding was provided by the Portuguese Agency Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (SFRH/BPD/79542/2011 fellowship to SS and SFRH/BD/52225/2013 fellowship to JP), and by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE): call H2020-MSCA-RISE-2014, Grant agreement 644167, 2015-2019.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Dynamical quenching and annealing in self-organization multiagent models
We study the dynamics of a generalized Minority Game (GMG) and of the Bar
Attendance Model (BAM) in which a number of agents self-organize to match an
attendance that is fixed externally as a control parameter. We compare the
usual dynamics used for the Minority Game with one for the BAM that makes a
better use of the available information. We study the asymptotic states reached
in both frameworks. We show that states that can be assimilated to either
thermodynamic equilibrium or quenched configurations can appear in both models,
but with different settings. We discuss the relevance of the parameter that
measures the value of the prize for winning in units of the fine for losing. We
also provide an annealing protocol by which the quenched configurations of the
GMG can progressively be modified to reach an asymptotic equlibrium state that
coincides with the one obtained with the BAM.Comment: around 20 pages, 10 figure
Positive identity predicts psychological wellbeing in Chilean youth: A double-mediation model
Positive youth development (PYD) allows the youth to be comprehended from their potential, strengths and assets, in contrast to the traditional deficit view that focuses on their weaknesses. The PYD model promotes constructive behaviours in youth by highlighting the positive attributes usually found during the transition from childhood to adulthood to achieve healthy and optimal development in later life. Overall, PYD comprises five key competence (5C), the flourishing models and forty developmental assets. In the present study, a structural equation model is tested with the Chilean dataset of the PYD project on the premise that Positive Identity is the core internal developmental asset explaining Psychological wellbeing and that Confidence and Character are mediators of the relationship between Positive Identity and Psychological Wellbeing. The sample comprised 261 participants (nWomen = 189, nMen = 72), MeanAge = 22 years old, who were approached by an online survey uploaded to Qualtrics. The measures of the study included: The Developmental assets Scale, the Short-form of the Five Cs included in the PYD and the Mental Health Continuum Short-Form. The results indicated a good model fit (β = 1.74, Ztotal = 10.63, χ2 = 424.95, df = 277, χ2/df = 1.53, p < 0.001, Robust CFI = 0.945, Robust RMSEA = 0.049, 90% CI (0.040, 0.058), AIC = 17689.91, saBIC = 17719.08 and SRMR = 0.061), highlighting the relevance of studying Latin-American adolescents and young ‘s wellbeing in times of COVID-19, as the participants’ Positive Identity significantly predicted their Psychological Wellbeing, and simultaneously, this relationship was mediated by both their level of Confidence and Character.publishedVersio
The BaBar Event Building and Level-3 Trigger Farm Upgrade
The BaBar experiment is the particle detector at the PEP-II B-factory
facility at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. During the summer shutdown
2002 the BaBar Event Building and Level-3 trigger farm were upgraded from 60
Sun Ultra-5 machines and 100MBit/s Ethernet to 50 Dual-CPU 1.4GHz Pentium-III
systems with Gigabit Ethernet. Combined with an upgrade to Gigabit Ethernet on
the source side and a major feature extraction software speedup, this pushes
the performance of the BaBar event builder and L3 filter to 5.5kHz at current
background levels, almost three times the original design rate of 2kHz. For our
specific application the new farm provides 8.5 times the CPU power of the old
system.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics
(CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 4 pages, 1 eps figure, PSN MOGT00
Viscosity measurements of glycerol in a parallel-plate rheometer exposed to atmosphere
Glycerol is a hygroscopic fluid that spontaneously absorbs water vapor from
the atmosphere. For applications involving glycerol, care must be taken to
avoid exposure to humidity, since its viscosity decreases quickly as water is
absorbed. We report experimental measurements of the viscosity of glycerol in a
parallel-plate rheometer where the outer interface is exposed to atmosphere.
The measurements decrease with time as water is absorbed from the atmosphere
and transported throughout the glycerol via diffusion and advection. Measured
viscosities drop faster at higher relative humidities, confirming the role of
hygroscopicity on the transient viscosities. The rate of viscosity decrease
shows a non-monotonic relationship with the rheometer gap height. This behavior
is explained by considering the transition from diffusion-dominated transport
in the narrow gap regime to the large gap regime where transport is dominated
by inertia-driven secondary flows. Numerical simulations of the water
absorption and transport confirm this non-monotonic behavior. The experimental
viscosity measurements show unexpectedly fast decreases at very small gap
heights, violating the parallel-plate, axisymmetric model. We propose that this
drop-off may be due to misalignment in the rheometer that becomes
non-negligible for small gaps. Theoretical considerations show that secondary
flows in a misaligned rheometer dominate the typical secondary inertial flows
in parallel-plate rheometers at small gaps. Finally, simulations in a
misaligned parallel-plate system demonstrate the same sharp drop-off in
viscosity measurements at small gap heights. This modeling can be used to
estimate the gap height where misalignment effects dominate the transient
glycerol viscosity measurements.Comment: 26 pages, 17 figure
Thermal treatment of the minority game
We study a cost function for the aggregate behavior of all the agents
involved in the Minority Game (MG) or the Bar Attendance Model (BAM). The cost
function allows to define a deterministic, synchronous dynamics that yields
results that have the main relevant features than those of the probabilistic,
sequential dynamics used for the MG or the BAM. We define a temperature through
a Langevin approach in terms of the fluctuations of the average attendance. We
prove that the cost function is an extensive quantity that can play the role of
an internal energy of the many agent system while the temperature so defined is
an intensive parameter. We compare the results of the thermal perturbation to
the deterministic dynamics and prove that they agree with those obtained with
the MG or BAM in the limit of very low temperature.Comment: 9 pages in PRE format, 6 figure
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