The impact of apathy on glycemic control in diabetes: A cross-sectional study

Objective: Diabetes mellitus is a major public health problem with a prevalence of 6–7%. Self-care behaviors play a major role in the control of diabetes. Apathy is characterized by loss of initiative and motivation. Apathy may interfere with self-care behavior and glycemic control. The primary objective was to determine the prevalence of apathy in patients with diabetes. The secondary objective was to determine if there was an association between clinically significant apathy and factors that affect glycemic control. Research design and methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study of 100 patients with diabetes who were assessed with the Apathy Evaluation Scale-Clinician version (AES-C), the Hamilton Depression Scale (HAM-D), and the Self-Care Inventory (SCI). For this study we defined clinically significant apathy as AES-C score of \u3e30. We excluded patients with a HAM-D score of \u3e14 (n = 19) to avoid confounding from depression. T-tests were used to compare clinical characteristics between subjects with and without apathy. Multiple linear regression modeling was used to investigate the association between clinically significant apathy and factors that affect glycemic control. Results: Fifty (61.7% of 81) patients had clinically significant apathy. Compared to the nonapathetic patients, those with apathy had a higher mean BMI (30.5 kg/m2 versus 34.1 kg/m2 (p = 0.03)) and were less likely to adhere to an exercise plan (p = 0.01) or insulin regimen (p = 0.003). After adjustment for age, BMI, cholesterol, mild depression and the average Self- Care Index score, the mean HbA1C level was 0.66% greater for apathetic compared to nonapathetic subjects (P = 0.08). Conclusion: Apathy is highly prevalent in patients with diabetes without depression. Apathy may have a negative impact on self-care behaviors and diabetes control

Real-Time FPGA-Based multi-beam directional sensing of 2.4 GHz ISM RF sources

A real-time directional sensing system is proposed for 2:4 GHz ISM band by exploiting the concept of spatiotemporal spectral white spaces. The proposed system consists of a 16-element patch antenna array, an FFT-based multi-beam beamformer and an energy detector. Our system operates at the baseband with quadrature sampling. Furthermore, digital architectures for two energy detectors that employ integrate-anddump circuits are presented. With the multi-beam beamformer, the first energy detector can be employed to directional sensing and the second can be employed for both directional and spectral sensing of radio frequency sources. The multi-beam beamformer having 16 beams and the energy detectors are implemented on a ROACH-2 based FPGA system with a 160 MHz clock. With an 8-point temporal FFT, the second energy detector provides approximately 20 MHz bandwidth per temporal FFTbin. Preliminary experimental measurements obtained with Wi- Fi devices and the first energy detector verify the proof-of-concept directional sensing of the proposed system

Design methodology of an analog 9-beam squint-free wideband IF multi-beamformer for mmW applications

An intermediate frequency (IF) squinting-free multi-beamforming method is proposed for multi-antenna systems. The proposed approach uses a low-complexity factorization of a true-time-delay (TTD) multi-beam matrix, which is proposed to be realized using an analog integrated circuits approach. A TTD realization of multi-beams at intermediate frequency is achieved following amplification and synchronous down-conversion via the proposed Delay Vandermonde Matrix (DVM) in which matrix elements correspond to the compound phase compensation required for squint-free steering of each radio-frequency beam. True-time-delays are proposed to be efficiently realized on-chip by applying a sparse factorization to the DVM, which leads to a low circuit complexity implementation requiring a significantly lower number of TTD blocks and phase compensations compared to an equivalent direct implementation for a given N number of beams. The proposed method, for 9- beams, leads to a 60% reduction of analog integrated circuit based TTD blocks and phase compensators. The TTD blocks can be realized on chip using active-RC based integrated analog all-pass filters. The proposed multi-beam algorithm and circuit structure is simulated within the frequency range 55-65 GHz to demonstrate squinting-free wide-band multi-beams at millimeter wave carrier frequencies for emerging 5G applications

Software-defined Radios to Accelerate mmWave Wireless Innovation

Imagine a dystopian world in which pianists did not have access to pianos. They would dream up sheet music, and have a computer simulate a recital. They would then go to their premier conference PianoCom to present a paper on their novel sheet music; and perhaps even spend the evening arguing about whose sheet music was more pleasing to the ears

Evaluation of Endogenous Allergens for the Safety Evaluation of Genetically Engineered Food Crops: Review of Potential Risks, Test Methods, Examples and Relevance

The safety of food produced from genetically engineered (GE) crops is assessed for potential risks of food allergy on the basis of an international consensus guideline outlined by the Codex Alimentarius Commission (2003). The assessment focuses on evaluation of the potential allergenicity of the newly expressed protein(s) as the primary potential risk using a process that markedly limits risks to allergic consumers. However, Codex also recommended evaluating a second concern, potential increases in endogenous allergens of commonly allergenic food crops that might occur due to insertion of the gene. Unfortunately, potential risks and natural variation of endogenous allergens in non-GE varieties are not understood, and risks from increases have not been demonstrated. Because regulatory approvals in some countries are delayed due to increasing demands for measuring endogenous allergens, we present a review of the potential risks of food allergy, risk management for food allergy, and test methods that may be used in these evaluations. We also present new data from our laboratory studies on the variation of the allergenic lipid transfer protein in non-GE maize hybrids as well as data from two studies of endogenous allergen comparisons for three GE soybean lines, their nearest genetic soy lines, and other commercial lines. We conclude that scientifically based limits of acceptable variation cannot been established without an understanding of natural variation in non-GE crops. Furthermore, the risks from increased allergen expression are minimal as the risk management strategy for food allergy is for allergic individuals to avoid consuming any food containing their allergenic source, regardless of the crop variety