Normal Form and Nekhoroshev stability for nearly-integrable Hamiltonian systems with unconditionally slow aperiodic time dependence

The aim of this paper is to extend the results of Giorgilli and Zehnder for aperiodic time dependent systems to a case of general nearly-integrable convex analytic Hamiltonians. The existence of a normal form and then a stability result are shown in the case of a slow aperiodic time dependence that, under some smallness conditions, is independent on the size of the perturbation.Comment: Corrected typo in the title and statement of Lemma 3.

Sequence matters: Combining Prolonged Exposure and EMDR therapy for PTSD

Objective Investigating the influence of the sequence in which two evidence-based trauma-focused treatments are offered to PTSD-patients. Methods PTSD-patients were treated using an intensive eight-day treatment program, combining Prolonged Exposure (PE) and EMDR therapy. Forty-four patients received a PE session in the morning and an EMDR session in the afternoon, while 62 patients received the reversed sequence (EMDR followed by PE). Outcome measures were PTSD symptom severity and subjective experiences. Results Patients who received PE first and EMDR second showed a significantly greater reduction in PTSD symptoms, patients preferred this sequence and valued the treatment sessions as significantly more helpful compared to patients in the EMDR-first condition. Conclusion Albeit explorative, PE and EMDR therapy can be successfully combined, but sequence matters. First applying PE sessions before EMDR sessions resulted in better treatment outcome, and better subjective patient's evaluations in terms of treatment helpfulness and preference

Unsupervised Analysis of Classical Biomedical Markers: Robustness and Medical Relevance of Patient Clustering Using Bioinformatics Tools

Motivation: It has been proposed that clustering clinical markers, such as blood test results, can be used to stratify patients. However, the robustness of clusters formed with this approach to data pre-processing and clustering algorithm choices has not been evaluated, nor has clustering reproducibility. Here, we made use of the NHANES survey to compare clusters generated with various combinations of pre-processing and clustering algorithms, and tested their reproducibility in two separate samples. Method: Values of 44 biomarkers and 19 health/life style traits were extracted from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). The 1999–2002 survey was used for training, while data from the 2003–2006 survey was tested as a validation set. Twelve combinations of pre-processing and clustering algorithms were applied to the training set. The quality of the resulting clusters was evaluated both by considering their properties and by comparative enrichment analysis. Cluster assignments were projected to the validation set (using an artificial neural network) and enrichment in health/life style traits in the resulting clusters was compared to the clusters generated from the original training set. Results: The clusters obtained with different pre-processing and clustering combinations differed both in terms of cluster quality measures and in terms of reproducibility of enrichment with health/life style properties. Z-score normalization, for example, dramatically improved cluster quality and enrichments, as compared to unprocessed data, regardless of the clustering algorithm used. Clustering diabetes patients revealed a group of patients enriched with retinopathies. This coul

Infrared organic photodetectors employing ultralow bandgap polymer and non-fullerene acceptors for biometric monitoring

Recent efforts in the field of organic photodetectors (OPD) have been focused on extending broadband detection into the near-infrared (NIR) region. Here, two blends of an ultralow bandgap push–pull polymer TQ-T combined with state-of-the-art non-fullerene acceptors, IEICO-4F and Y6, are compared to obtain OPDs for sensing in the NIR beyond 1100 nm, which is the cut off for benchmark Si photodiodes. It is observed that the TQ-T:IEICO-4F device has a superior IR responsivity (0.03 AW-1 at 1200 nm and −2 V bias) and can detect infrared light up to 1800 nm, while the TQ-T:Y6 blend shows a lower responsivity of 0.01 AW-1. Device physics analyses are tied with spectroscopic and morphological studies to link the superior performance of TQ-T:IEICO-4F OPD to its faster charge separation as well as more favorable donor–acceptor domains mixing. In the polymer blend with Y6, the formation of large agglomerates that exceed the exciton diffusion length, which leads to high charge recombination, is observed. An application of these devices as biometric sensors for real-time heart rate monitoring via photoplethysmography, utilizing infrared light, is demonstrated

New Hybrid Properties of TiO2 Nanoparticles Surface Modified With Catecholate Type Ligands

Surface modification of nanocrystalline TiO2 particles (45 Å) with bidentate benzene derivatives (catechol, pyrogallol, and gallic acid) was found to alter optical properties of nanoparticles. The formation of the inner-sphere charge–transfer complexes results in a red shift of the semiconductor absorption compared to unmodified nanocrystallites. The binding structures were investigated by using FTIR spectroscopy. The investigated ligands have the optimal geometry for chelating surface Ti atoms, resulting in ring coordination complexes (catecholate type of binuclear bidentate binding–bridging) thus restoring in six-coordinated octahedral geometry of surface Ti atoms. From the Benesi–Hildebrand plot, the stability constants at pH 2 of the order 103 M−1 have been determined

Do We Practice What We Preach? A Review of Actual Clinical Practice with Regards to Preconception Care Guidelines

Objectives: To review what past studies have found with regard to existing clinical practices and approaches to providing preconception care. Methods: A literature review between 1966 and September 2005 was performed using Medline. Key words included preconception care, preconception counseling, preconception surveys, practice patterns, pregnancy outcomes, prepregnancy planning, and prepregnancy surveys. Results: There are no current national recommendations that fully address preconception care; as a result, there is wide variability in what is provided clinically under the rubric of preconception care. Conclusions: In 2005, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sponsored a national summit regarding preconception care and efforts are underway to develop a uniform set of national recommendations and guidelines for preconception care. Understanding how preconception care is presently incorporated and manifested in current medical practices should help in the development of these national guidelines. Knowing where, how, and why some specific preconception recommendations have been successfully adopted and translated into clinical practice, as well as barriers to implementation of other recommendations or guidelines, is vitally important in developing an overarching set of national guidelines. Ultimately, the success of these recommendations rests on their ability to influence and shape women's health policy

A principal factor analysis to characterize agricultural exposures among Nebraska veterans

Agricultural workers are at an increased risk of developing chronic respiratory disorders. Accurate estimation of long-term agricultural exposures based on questionnaires has been used to improve the validity of epidemiologic investigations and subsequent evaluation of the association between agricultural exposures and chronic diseases. Our aim was to use principal factor analysis (PFA) to distill exposure data into essential variables characterizing long-term agricultural exposures. This is a crosssectional study of veterans between the ages of 40 and 80 years and who worked on a farm for ≥ 2 years. Participant characteristics were: 98.1% were white males with a mean age 65 ± 8 (SD) years and 39.8% had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The final model included four factors and explained 16.6% of the variance in the exposure data. Factor 1 was a heterogeneous factor; however, Factor 2 was exclusively composed of exposure to livestock such as hogs, dairy and poultry. Factor 3 included exposures from jobs on or off the farm such as wood dust, mineral dust, asbestos and spray paint. Crop exposure loaded exclusively in Factor 4 and included lifetime hours of exposure and maximum number of acres farmed in the participants’ lifetime. The factors in the final model were interpretable and consistent with farming practices

Mortality profiles in a country facing epidemiological transition: An analysis of registered data

BACKGROUND: Sub-national analyses of causes of death and time-trends help to define public health policy priorities. They are particularly important in countries undergoing epidemiological transition like Peru. There are no studies exploring Peruvian national and regional characteristics of such epidemiological transition. We aimed to describe Peru's national and regional mortality profiles between 1996 and 2000. METHODS: Registered mortality data for the study period were corrected for under-registration following standardized methods. Main causes of death by age group and by geographical region were determined. Departmental mortality profiles were constructed to evaluate mortality transition, using 1996 data as baseline. Annual cumulative slopes for the period 1996-2000 were estimated for each department and region. RESULTS: For the study period non-communicable diseases explained more than half of all causes of death, communicable diseases more than one third, and injuries 10.8% of all deaths. Lima accounted for 32% of total population and 20% of total deaths. The Andean region, with 38% of Peru's population, accounted for half of all country deaths. Departmental mortality predominance shifted from communicable diseases in 1996 towards non-communicable diseases and injuries in 2000. Maternal and perinatal conditions, and nutritional deficiencies and nutritional anaemia declined markedly in all departments and regions. Infectious diseases decreased in all regions except Lima. In all regions acute respiratory infections are a leading cause of death, but their proportion ranged from 9.3% in Lima and Callao to 15.3% in the Andean region. Tuberculosis and injuries ranked high in Lima and the Andean region. CONCLUSION: Peruvian mortality shows a double burden of communicable and non-communicable, with increasing importance of non-communicable diseases and injuries. This challenges national and sub-national health system performance and policy making

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts

Pan-cancer Alterations of the MYC Oncogene and Its Proximal Network across the Cancer Genome Atlas

Although theMYConcogene has been implicated incancer, a systematic assessment of alterations ofMYC, related transcription factors, and co-regulatoryproteins, forming the proximal MYC network (PMN),across human cancers is lacking. Using computa-tional approaches, we define genomic and proteo-mic features associated with MYC and the PMNacross the 33 cancers of The Cancer Genome Atlas.Pan-cancer, 28% of all samples had at least one ofthe MYC paralogs amplified. In contrast, the MYCantagonists MGA and MNT were the most frequentlymutated or deleted members, proposing a roleas tumor suppressors.MYCalterations were mutu-ally exclusive withPIK3CA,PTEN,APC,orBRAFalterations, suggesting that MYC is a distinct onco-genic driver. Expression analysis revealed MYC-associated pathways in tumor subtypes, such asimmune response and growth factor signaling; chro-matin, translation, and DNA replication/repair wereconserved pan-cancer. This analysis reveals insightsinto MYC biology and is a reference for biomarkersand therapeutics for cancers with alterations ofMYC or the PMN