Influence of low and high pressure baroreceptors on plasma renin activity in humans

The effects of low and high pressure baroreceptors on plasma renin activity (immunoassay) were evaluated using graded lower body suction (LBS) in six healthy men. LBS at -10 and -20 mmHg for 10 min decreased central venous pressure without changing arterial pressure and thereby presumably reduced low but not high pressure baroreceptor inhibition of renin release. LBS at these levels produced forearm vasoconstriction, but did not increase renin. LBS at -40 mmHG decreased central venous and arterial pulse pressure and thus reduced both low and high pressure baroreceptor inhibition. LBS at this level produced forearm vasoconstriction and tachycardia and increased renin. In summary, reduction in low pressure baroreceptor inhibition in humans did not increase renin in the presence of physiological tonic inhibition from high pressure baroreceptors. Increases in renin did not occur until there was combined reduction of high and low pressure baroreceptor inhibition on plasma renin activity

Annual cycle of the microzooplankton communities in the waters surrounding the Palm Island Nature Reserve (north Lebanon), with special attention to tintinnids

The distribution, abundance and annual cycle of microzooplankton communities have been studied monthly at five sampling stations in the north Lebanon, covering both neritic and oceanic waters in the vicinity of small islands situated 5 km offshore.In general, the density of microprotozoans, except for ciliates, increased from the coastal towards the offshore area, with stations situated near the islands being similar to the offshore rather than to the coastal ones. The microprotozoan species showed their highest numbers in late autumn and early winter. Foraminifera abundance ranged from 20 to 3390 inds.m -3 (mean= 549) whereas Acantharia abundance was highest in spring and ranged from 0 to 2608 inds.m -3 (mean 259). The Polycistina had their highest numbers in late winter, which ranged from 0 to 6024 inds.m -3 (mean= 740). The Heliozoa were abundant in late autumn with numbers ranging from 0 to 5165 inds.m -3 (mean= 555). The annual cycle of Tintinnids at all the stations was bimodal with a principal peak in October-November and another one in May, while minimum numbers were recorded in August-September. A succession of populations was observed all year round with a density ranging between 344 and 38986 inds.m -3 (mean = 10878). Ninety different species of Tintinnids were recorded. The diversity index varied between 0.19 and 4.15. It was concluded that there was a large-scale gradient in seasonal diversity which could be related to the annual average sea surface temperature and to the development of the vertical thermic structure

Influence of central venous pressure upon sinus node responses to arterial baroreflex stimulation in man

Measurements were made of sinus node responses to arterial baroreceptor stimulation with phenylephrine injection or neck suction, before and during changes of central venous pressure provoked by lower body negative pressure or leg and lower truck elevation. Variations of central venous pressure between 1.1 and 9.0 mm Hg did not influence arterial baroreflex mediated bradycardia. Baroreflex sinus node responses were augmented by intravenous propranolol, but the level of responses after propranolol was comparable during the control state, lower body negative pressure, and leg and trunk elevation. Sinus node responses to very brief baroreceptor stimuli applied during the transitions of central venous pressure also were comparable in the three states. The authors conclude that physiological variations of central venous pressure do not influence sinus node responses to arterial baroreceptor stimulation in man

Conditional Lower Bounds for Space/Time Tradeoffs

In recent years much effort has been concentrated towards achieving polynomial time lower bounds on algorithms for solving various well-known problems. A useful technique for showing such lower bounds is to prove them conditionally based on well-studied hardness assumptions such as 3SUM, APSP, SETH, etc. This line of research helps to obtain a better understanding of the complexity inside P. A related question asks to prove conditional space lower bounds on data structures that are constructed to solve certain algorithmic tasks after an initial preprocessing stage. This question received little attention in previous research even though it has potential strong impact. In this paper we address this question and show that surprisingly many of the well-studied hard problems that are known to have conditional polynomial time lower bounds are also hard when concerning space. This hardness is shown as a tradeoff between the space consumed by the data structure and the time needed to answer queries. The tradeoff may be either smooth or admit one or more singularity points. We reveal interesting connections between different space hardness conjectures and present matching upper bounds. We also apply these hardness conjectures to both static and dynamic problems and prove their conditional space hardness. We believe that this novel framework of polynomial space conjectures can play an important role in expressing polynomial space lower bounds of many important algorithmic problems. Moreover, it seems that it can also help in achieving a better understanding of the hardness of their corresponding problems in terms of time

A novel delay dictionary design for compressive sensing-based time varying channel estimation in OFDM systems

Compressive sensing (CS) is a new attractive technique adopted for Linear Time Varying channel estimation. orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) was proposed to be used in 4G and 5G which supports high data rate requirements. Different pilot aided channel estimation techniques were proposed to better track the channel conditions, which consumes bandwidth, thus, considerable data rate reduced. In order to estimate the channel with minimum number of pilots, compressive sensing CS was proposed to efficiently estimate the channel variations. In this paper, a novel delay dictionary-based CS was designed and simulated to estimate the linear time varying (LTV) channel. The proposed dictionary shows the suitability of estimating the channel impulse response (CIR) with low to moderate Doppler frequency shifts with acceptable bit error rate (BER) performance

Performance evaluation of high mobility OFDM channel estimation techniques

In wireless communication, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) has been adopted due to its robustness to multipath fading and high data rate transmissions. At the other hand, the performance of OFDM systems severely degraded due to multi-path fading and Doppler frequency shifts in mobile systems, which causes inter-carrier-interference (ICI). Thus, Estimation of channel parameters is required at the receiver using a pre designed estimator where pilot tones are inserted in each OFDM symbol. In this paper, a random pilot data are generated and inserted in each OFDM symbol at equally spaced locations. The performance test of Least Square (LS) and Linear Minimum Mean Square (LMMSE) estimation methods are proposed with Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) based on both LS and LMMSE, where different ITU channel models are considered in order to compare their performance for data transmission in high mobile systems with different Doppler frequencies exceeds 200 Hz and minimal number of pilots

Fine-Grained Complexity of Analyzing Compressed Data: Quantifying Improvements over Decompress-And-Solve

Can we analyze data without decompressing it? As our data keeps growing, understanding the time complexity of problems on compressed inputs, rather than in convenient uncompressed forms, becomes more and more relevant. Suppose we are given a compression of size $n$ of data that originally has size $N$, and we want to solve a problem with time complexity $T(\cdot)$. The naive strategy of "decompress-and-solve" gives time $T(N)$, whereas "the gold standard" is time $T(n)$: to analyze the compression as efficiently as if the original data was small. We restrict our attention to data in the form of a string (text, files, genomes, etc.) and study the most ubiquitous tasks. While the challenge might seem to depend heavily on the specific compression scheme, most methods of practical relevance (Lempel-Ziv-family, dictionary methods, and others) can be unified under the elegant notion of Grammar Compressions. A vast literature, across many disciplines, established this as an influential notion for Algorithm design. We introduce a framework for proving (conditional) lower bounds in this field, allowing us to assess whether decompress-and-solve can be improved, and by how much. Our main results are: - The $O(nN\sqrt{\log{N/n}})$ bound for LCS and the $O(\min\{N \log N, nM\})$ bound for Pattern Matching with Wildcards are optimal up to $N^{o(1)}$ factors, under the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis. (Here, $M$ denotes the uncompressed length of the compressed pattern.) - Decompress-and-solve is essentially optimal for Context-Free Grammar Parsing and RNA Folding, under the $k$-Clique conjecture. - We give an algorithm showing that decompress-and-solve is not optimal for Disjointness

Antibiotic Spacers in Shoulder Arthroplasty: Comparison of Stemmed and Stemless Implants.

Background: Antibiotic spacers in shoulder periprosthetic joint infection deliver antibiotics locally and provide temporary stability. The purpose of this study was to evaluate differences between stemmed and stemless spacers. Methods: All spacers placed from 2011 to 2013 were identified. Stemless spacers were made by creating a spherical ball of cement placed in the joint space. Stemmed spacers had some portion in the humeral canal. Operative time, complications, reimplantation, reinfection, and range of motion were analyzed. Results: There were 37 spacers placed: 22 were stemless and 15 were stemmed. The stemless spacer population was older (70.9 ± 7.8 years vs. 62.8 ± 8.4 years, p = 0.006). The groups had a similar percentage of each gender (stemless group, 45% male vs. stemmed group, 40% male; p = 0.742), body mass index (stemless group, 29.1 ± 6.4 kg/m2 vs. stemmed group, 31.5 ± 8.3 kg/m2; p = 0.354) and Charlson Comorbidity Index (stemless group, 4.2 ± 1.2 vs. stemmed group, 4.2 ± 1.7; p = 0.958). Operative time was similar (stemless group, 127.5 ± 37.1 minutes vs. stemmed group, 130.5 ± 39.4 minutes). Two stemless group patients had self-resolving radial nerve palsies. Within the stemless group, 15 of 22 (68.2%) underwent reimplantation with 14 of 15 having forward elevation of 109° ± 23°. Within the stemmed group, 12 of 15 (80.0%, p = 0.427) underwent reimplantation with 8 of 12 having forward elevation of 94° ± 43° (range, 30° to 150°; p = 0.300). Two stemmed group patients had axillary nerve palsies, one of which self-resolved but the other did not. One patient sustained dislocation of reverse shoulder arthroplasty after reimplantation. One stemless group patient required an open reduction and glenosphere exchange of dislocated reverse shoulder arthroplasty at 6 weeks after reimplantation. Conclusions: Stemmed and stemless spacers had similar clinical outcomes. When analyzing all antibiotic spacers, over 70% were converted to revision arthroplasties. The results of this study do not suggest superiority of either stemmed or stemless antibiotic spacers

A retrospective study of antibiotic resistance patterns of bacterial pathogens isolated from patients in two Lebanese hospitals for two consecutive years (2018 and 2019)

Background: Misuse of antibiotics is the leading factor promoting emergence of bacterial resistance, a situation that has become a serious public health challenge. Among the leading bacteria that have developed resistance to antibiotics are Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus faecalis, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which have caused infections in patients, resulting in considerable mortality. The objective of this retrospective study was to assess antibiotic resistance rates of bacterial pathogens isolated from clinical specimens in two Lebanese hospitals between the years 2018 and 2019. Methodology: Bacteria isolated from routine clinical specimens collected from hospitalized patients in two hospitals, Haroun and Bekaa, in Lebanon for 2018 and 2019, were analyzed. Bacteria isolation and identification were carried out at the laboratory of each hospital using conventional microbiological methods. Antimicrobial susceptibility testings (AST) of each bacterial isolate to antibiotics were performed by the disc diffusion test and interpreted using EUCAST, CLSI or WHO/AST guidelines. Comparisons of the mean resistance rates of each isolate to individual antibiotics by year of isolation were done using the Z-test and p< 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: There were a total of 1698 bacteria isolates recovered from hospitalized patients in the two hospitals for 2018 and 2019, of which 87.5% were Gram-negative and 12.5% were Gram-positive bacteria. The most frequent among the Gram-negative isolates was E. coli (66.1%) followed by P. aeruginosa (13.3%), K. pneumoniae (7.7%), Proteus mirabilis (6.7%) and Enterobacter spp (6.3%), while coagulase positive staphylococci CoPS (68.4%) and E. faecalis (31.6%) were the two Gram positive isolates. Of the Gram-negative isolates over the two-year period, 72.2% of E. coli and 76.3% of K. pneumoniae were resistant to ceftazidime, 93% of P. mirabilis to colistin, and 98% of Enterobacter to cefoxitin, but low resistance rates were demonstrated by E. coli to imipenem (1%), K. pneumoniae to tigecycline and amikacin (0.9%), P. mirabilis to imipinem (2%), and Enterobacter to amikacin, ertapenem and tigecycline (3%). Resistance of P. aeruginosa varied between 2% to colistin and 24% to levofloxacin. For the Gram-positive bacteria, 79.1% of E. faecalis were resistant to erythromycin while 70% of CoPS were resistant to cefoxitin, but no isolate was resistant (0%) to linezolid, and only 1% to teicoplanin. Except for Enterobacter spp that showed significant increase in resistance rates (by 250%) to piperacillin/tazobactam in 2019 over 2018, resistance rates of other Gram-negative isolates significantly decreased in 2019 compared to 2018 (p<0.05). For the Gram-positive isolates, resistance rates to many antibiotics tested significantly increased (by a factor of 36.5 - 2569%) in 2019 compared to 2018 among E. faecalis isolates in contrast to the rates for CoPS which significantly decreased by 16.7 - 65.7%, except for penicillin G which increased by a factor of 123%. Conclusion: Overuse and misuse of antibiotics, which is possible because of the easy access of the populace to these drugs, is a leading factor contributing to the high antibiotic resistance rates in this study. There is need to promote awareness of antimicrobial resistance in Lebanon among students especially in non-health related majors and enactment of govermental policy that will limit access to antibiotics. Keywords: antibiotic resistance; changing pattern; hospitalized patients; retrospective   French title: Une étude rétrospective des profils de résistance aux antibiotiques de pathogènes bactériens isolés de patients dans deux hôpitaux libanais pendant deux années consécutives (2018 et 2019) Contexte: La mauvaise utilisation des antibiotiques est le principal facteur favorisant l'émergence de la résistance bactérienne, une situation qui est devenue un sérieux défi de santé publique. Parmi les principales bactéries qui ont développé une résistance aux antibiotiques figurent Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus faecalis, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae et Pseudomonas aeruginosa, qui ont provoqué des infections chez les patients, entraînant une mortalité considérable. L'objectif de cette étude rétrospective est d'évaluer les taux de résistance aux antibiotiques des pathogènes bactériens isolés à partir d'échantillons cliniques dans deux hôpitaux Libanais entre les années 2018 et 2019. Méthodologie: Les isolats bactériens prélevés sur des patients hospitalisés dans deux hôpitaux, Haroun et Bekaa, au Liban pour 2018 et 2019, ont été analysés. L'isolement et l'identification des bactéries ont été réalisés au laboratoire de chaque hôpital en utilisant des méthodes microbiologiques conventionnelles. Les tests de sensibilité aux antimicrobiens (AST) de chaque isolat bactérien aux antibiotiques ont été réalisés par le test de diffusion sur disque et interprétés selon les directives EUCAST, CLSI ou WHO/AST. Des comparaisons des taux moyens de résistance de chaque isolat à des antibiotiques individuels par année d'isolement ont été effectuées à l'aide du test Z et p<0,05 a été considéré comme statistiquement significatif. Résultats: Il y a eu un total de 1698 isolats de bactéries récupérés de patients hospitalisés dans les deux hôpitaux durant 2018 et 2019, dont 87,5% étaient à Gram négatif et 12,5% étaient des bactéries à Gram positif. Les isolats à Gram négatif les plus fréquents étaient E. coli (66,1%), suivis de P. aeruginosa (13,3%), K. pneumoniae (7,7%), Proteus mirabilis (6,7%) et Enterobacter spp (6,3%), tandis que les staphylocoques à coagulase positive CoPS (68,4%) et E. faecalis (31,6%) étaient les deux isolats Gram positifs. Parmi les isolats à Gram négatif sur la période de deux ans, 72,2% d'E. coli et 76,3% de K. pneumoniae étaient résistants à la ceftazidime, 93% de P. mirabilis à la colistine et 98% d'Enterobacter à la céfoxitine, mais faible les taux de résistance ont été démontrés par E. coli à l'imipénem (1%), K. pneumoniae à la tigécycline et à l'amikacine (0,9%), P. mirabilis à l'imipinem (2%) et Enterobacter à l'amikacine, à l'ertapénem et à la tigécycline (3%). La résistance de P. aeruginosa variait entre 2% à la colistine et 24% à la lévofloxacine. Pour les bactéries Gram positif, 79,1% des E. faecalis étaient résistantes à l'érythromycine tandis que 70% des CoPS étaient résistantes au céfoxitin, mais aucun isolat n'était résistant (0%) au linézolide et seulement 1% à la teicoplanine. À l'exception d'Enterobacter spp qui ont montré une augmentation significative des taux de résistance (de 250%) à la  pipéracilline/tazobactam en 2019 par rapport à 2018, les taux de résistance des autres isolats à Gram négatif ont considérablement  diminué en 2019 par rapport à 2018 (p<0,05). Pour les isolats Gram-positifs, les taux de résistance à de nombreux antibiotiques testés ont augmenté de manière significative (d'un facteur de 36,5 à 2569%) en 2019 par rapport à 2018 parmi les isolats d'E. faecalis contrairement aux taux de CoPS qui ont significativement diminué de 16,7 à 65,7%, à l'exception de la pénicilline G qui a augmenté d'un facteur de 123%. Conclusion: la surutilisation et la mauvaise utilisation des antibiotiques, ce qui est possible en raison de l'accès facile de la population à ces médicaments, est l'un des principaux facteurs contribuant aux taux élevés de résistance aux antibiotiques dans cette étude. Il est nécessaire de promouvoir la sensibilisation à la résistance aux antimicrobiens au Liban parmi les étudiants, en particulier dans les spécialisations non liées à la santé, et la promulgation d'une politique gouvernementale qui limitera l'accès non contrôlé aux antibiotiques. Mots clés: résistance aux antibiotiques; changement de modèle; patients hospitalisés; rétrospectiv

Immediate effect of kinesiology tape on ankle stability

BackgroundLateral ankle sprain is one of the most common musculoskeletal injuries, particularly among the sporting population. Due to such prevalence, many interventions have been tried to prevent initial, or further, ankle sprains. Current research shows that the use of traditional athletic tape can reduce the incidence of sprain recurrence, but this may be at a cost to athletic performance through restriction of motion. Kinesiology tape, which has become increasingly popular, is elastic in nature, and it is proposed by the manufacturers that it can correct ligament damage. Kinesiology tape, therefore, may be able to improve stability and reduce ankle sprain occurrence while overcoming the problems of traditional tape.AimTo assess the effect of kinesiology tape on ankle stability.Methods27 healthy individuals were recruited, and electromyography (EMG) measurements were recorded from the peroneus longus and tibialis anterior muscles. Recordings were taken from the muscles of the dominant leg during induced sudden ankle inversion perturbations using a custom-made tilting platform system. This was performed with and without using kinesiology tape and shoes, creating four different test conditions: barefoot(without tape), shoe(without tape), barefoot(with tape) and shoe(with tape). For each test condition, the peak muscle activity, average muscle activity and the muscle latency were calculated.ResultsNo significant difference (p>0.05) was found by using the kinesiology tape on any of the measured variables while the wearing of shoes significantly increased all the variables.ConclusionKinesiology tape has no effect on ankle stability and is unable to nullify the detrimental effects that shoes appear to have