International consensus (ICON) on treatment of Ménière's disease

Objective: To present the international consensus for recommendations for Ménière's disease (MD) treatment. Methods: Based on a literature review and report of 4 experts from 4 continents, the recommendations have been presented during the 21st IFOS congress in Paris, in June 2017 and are presented in this work. Results: The recommendation is to change the lifestyle, to use the vestibular rehabilitation in the intercritic period and to propose psychotherapy. As a conservative medical treatment of first line, the authors recommend to use diuretics and Betahistine or local pressure therapy. When medical treatment fails, the recommendation is to use a second line treatment, which consists in the intratympanic injection of steroids. Then as a third line treatment, depending on the hearing function, could be either the endolymphatic sac surgery (when hearing is worth being preserved) or the intratympanic injection of gentamicin (with higher risks of hearing loss). The very last option is the destructive surgical treatment labyrinthectomy, associated or not to cochlear implantation or vestibular nerve section (when hearing is worth being preserved), which is the most frequent option

Estimation of Time-Varying Pilot Model Parameters

Human control behavior is rarely completely stationary over time due to fatigue or loss of attention. In addition, there are many control tasks for which human operators need to adapt their control strategy to vehicle dynamics that vary in time. In previous studies on the identification of time-varying pilot control behavior wavelets were used to estimate the time-varying frequency response functions. However, the estimation of time-varying pilot model parameters was not considered. Estimating these parameters can be a valuable tool for the quantification of different aspects of human time-varying manual control. This paper presents two methods for the estimation of time-varying pilot model parameters, a two-step method using wavelets and a windowed maximum likelihood estimation method. The methods are evaluated using simulations of a closed-loop control task with time-varying pilot equalization and vehicle dynamics. Simulations are performed with and without remnant. Both methods give accurate results when no pilot remnant is present. The wavelet transform is very sensitive to measurement noise, resulting in inaccurate parameter estimates when considerable pilot remnant is present. Maximum likelihood estimation is less sensitive to pilot remnant, but cannot detect fast changes in pilot control behavior

Transpiration and water uptake of Senecio medley-woodii and Aloe jucunda under changing environmental conditions: measurements with a potometric water-budget-meter

Transpiration, water uptake by the roots and CO2 exchange of two leaf succulents, Senecio medleywoodii (Asteraceae) and Aloe jucunda (Asphodeliaceae), were monitored simultaneously and continuously with a gas exchange cuvette combined with an apparatus to quantify water uptake (= waterbudget- meter). Measurements, which are primarily valid for plants with a sufficient water supply, were made with the same plant for up to 29 consecutive days. Ambient air temperature varied between 17 and 35 °C with a constant dewpoint temperature of 13°C of the ambient air and a 12 h photoperiod at 400-500µmol m−2s−1 photon irradiance. The net water flux (Jw(net)=water uptake-transpiration) and the water balance (Jw(net) integrated for a timespan) were calculated. Various tests were made to determine the accuracy of the measurements made with this rather complex equipment. In most cases the errors for transpiration and uptake rates were much lower than 8% determined under the conditions of drastically (about 10 K per 30 min) increased or decreased ambient air temperatures. The experimental set-up proved to be a most valuable tool to determine and analyse interactions between transpiration and water uptake, changes in plant water status and the buffering of negative Jwnet). Increasing the temperature of ambient air resulted, for both species investigated, in a quick and considerably enhanced transpiration, but there was only a minor impact on water uptake. Water loss exceeding uptake was buffered by internal water reserves which were refilled within about 1 d after the plant was relieved of heat and drought stress caused by a period of high ambient air temperatures and high water vapour saturation deficits of the air. Repeated simulation of such stress periods showed that the absolute values of transpiration and the water uptake for 24 h can vary, but the diurnal course of the values showed the same pattern if the environmental conditions were identical. Such standardized diurnal transpiration and water uptake curves could be very useful for the validation of mathematical models used to describe plant water relation

Identification of Time-Varying Pilot Control Behavior in Multi-Axis Control Tasks

Recent developments in fly-by-wire control architectures for rotorcraft have introduced new interest in the identification of time-varying pilot control behavior in multi-axis control tasks. In this paper a maximum likelihood estimation method is used to estimate the parameters of a pilot model with time-dependent sigmoid functions to characterize time-varying human control behavior. An experiment was performed by 9 general aviation pilots who had to perform a simultaneous roll and pitch control task with time-varying aircraft dynamics. In 8 different conditions, the axis containing the time-varying dynamics and the growth factor of the dynamics were varied, allowing for an analysis of the performance of the estimation method when estimating time-dependent parameter functions. In addition, a detailed analysis of pilots adaptation to the time-varying aircraft dynamics in both the roll and pitch axes could be performed. Pilot control behavior in both axes was significantly affected by the time-varying aircraft dynamics in roll and pitch, and by the growth factor. The main effect was found in the axis that contained the time-varying dynamics. However, pilot control behavior also changed over time in the axis not containing the time-varying aircraft dynamics. This indicates that some cross coupling exists in the perception and control processes between the roll and pitch axes

The influence of critical behavior on the spin glass phase

We have argued in recent papers that Monte Carlo results for the equilibrium properties of the Edwards-Anderson spin glass in three dimensions, which had been interpreted earlier as providing evidence for replica symmetry breaking, can be explained quite simply within the droplet model once finite size effects and proximity to the critical point are taken into account. In this paper, we show that similar considerations are sufficient to explain the Monte Carlo data in four dimensions. In particular, we study the Parisi overlap and the link overlap for the four-dimensional Ising spin glass in the Migdal-Kadanoff approximation. Similar to what is seen in three dimensions, we find that temperatures well below those studied in Monte Carlo simulations have to be reached before the droplet model predictions become apparent. We also show that the double-peak structure of the link overlap distribution function is related to the difference between domain-wall excitations that cross the entire system and droplet excitations that are confined to a smaller region.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure

Evidence for multiple structural genes for the γ chain of human fetal hemoglobin

A sequence with a specific residue at each position was proposed for the γ chain of human fetal hemoglobin by Schroeder et al. (1) after a study in which hemoglobin from a number of individual infants was used. We have now examined in part the fetal hemoglobin components of 17 additional infants and have observed that position 136 of the γ chain may be occupied not only by a glycyl residue, as previously reported, but also by an alanyl residue

Identification of epidermal Pdx1 expression discloses different roles of Notch1 and Notch2 in murine KrasG12D-induced skin carcinogenesis in vivo

Background The Ras and Notch signaling pathways are frequently activated during development to control many diverse cellular processes and are often dysregulated during tumorigenesis. To study the role of Notch and oncogenic Kras signaling in a progenitor cell population, Pdx1-Cre mice were utilized to generate conditional oncogenic KrasG12D mice with ablation of Notch1 and/or Notch2. Methodology/Principal Findings Surprisingly, mice with activated KrasG12D and Notch1 but not Notch2 ablation developed skin papillomas progressing to squamous cell carcinoma providing evidence for Pdx1 expression in the skin. Immunostaining and lineage tracing experiments indicate that PDX1 is present predominantly in the suprabasal layers of the epidermis and rarely in the basal layer. Further analysis of keratinocytes in vitro revealed differentiation-dependent expression of PDX1 in terminally differentiated keratinocytes. PDX1 expression was also increased during wound healing. Further analysis revealed that loss of Notch1 but not Notch2 is critical for skin tumor development. Reasons for this include distinct Notch expression with Notch1 in all layers and Notch2 in the suprabasal layer as well as distinctive p21 and β-catenin signaling inhibition capabilities. Conclusions/Significance Our results provide strong evidence for epidermal expression of Pdx1 as of yet not identified function. In addition, this finding may be relevant for research using Pdx1-Cre transgenic strains. Additionally, our study confirms distinctive expression and functions of Notch1 and Notch2 in the skin supporting the importance of careful dissection of the contribution of individual Notch receptors

Classical simulation of noninteracting-fermion quantum circuits

We show that a class of quantum computations that was recently shown to be efficiently simulatable on a classical computer by Valiant corresponds to a physical model of noninteracting fermions in one dimension. We give an alternative proof of his result using the language of fermions and extend the result to noninteracting fermions with arbitrary pairwise interactions, where gates can be conditioned on outcomes of complete von Neumann measurements in the computational basis on other fermionic modes in the circuit. This last result is in remarkable contrast with the case of noninteracting bosons where universal quantum computation can be achieved by allowing gates to be conditioned on classical bits (quant-ph/0006088).Comment: 26 pages, 1 figure, uses wick.sty; references added to recent results by E. Knil

Discovery of an ultramassive pulsating white dwarf

We announce the discovery of the most massive pulsating hydrogen-atmosphere (DA) white dwarf (WD) ever discovered, GD 518. Model atmosphere fits to the optical spectrum of this star show it is a 12,030 +/- 210 K WD with a log(g) = 9.08 +/- 0.06, which corresponds to a mass of 1.20 +/- 0.03 Msun. Stellar evolution models indicate that the progenitor of such a high-mass WD endured a stable carbon-burning phase, producing an oxygen-neon-core WD. The discovery of pulsations in GD 518 thus offers the first opportunity to probe the interior of a WD with a possible oxygen-neon core. Such a massive WD should also be significantly crystallized at this temperature. The star exhibits multi-periodic luminosity variations at timescales ranging from roughly 425-595 s and amplitudes up to 0.7%, consistent in period and amplitude with the observed variability of typical ZZ Ceti stars, which exhibit non-radial g-mode pulsations driven by a hydrogen partial ionization zone. Successfully unraveling both the total mass and core composition of GD 518 provides a unique opportunity to investigate intermediate-mass stellar evolution, and can possibly place an upper limit to the mass of a carbon-oxygen-core WD, which in turn constrains SNe Ia progenitor systems.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, Astrophysical Journal Letters, 771, L2 (2013