Cognitive reserve index and functional and cognitive outcomes in severe acquired brain injury: A pilot study

Background: Many variables affect outcome after brain injury. Cognitive reserve (CR) is a subjective factor that reflects a set of personal characteristics and that differentiates individuals. It may influence an individual’s capacity to react to brain injury. Objective: To study the effects of cognitive reserve on functional and cognitive outcome at the end of rehabilitation, in patients with severe acquired brain injury (sABI), by means of the Cognitive Reserve Index questionnaire (CRIq). Methods: We report a retrospective study of a continuous series of sABI patients on first admission to a rehabilitation center. Disability and cognitive outcomes were recorded. Results: In the 94 patients enrolled, the assessments after rehabilitation showed a significant gain measured with the disability Rating Scale for patients with a higher CR (CRIq≥ 85). A significant negative correlation was found: between CRIq scores and the interval elapsing before first access to neuropsychological assessment, between CRIq scores, especially level of education, and tests that measure the same domain (attention). Conclusions: Improvements in overall and cognitive disability emerged, but CR did not seem to substantially influence outcome in this sample of patients. This result may be partly due to the clinical severity of the population studied and the sample’s dimension, although quantitatively representative of the population

RF Energy Harvester-based Wake-up Receiver

Wake-up receivers (WuRxs) can improve the life- time of a wireless sensor network by reducing energy consump- tion from undesirable idle listening. The amplitude level of the incoming RF signal is used by a WuRx to generate an interrupt and wake up the radio of a sleeping sensor node. Existing passive WuRx designs are generally based on RFID tags that incur high cost and complexity. Thus, there is a need for cost-effective and low-complexity WuRxs suited for both long-range and directed wake-ups. In this work, we present a WuRx design using an RF energy harvesting circuit (RFHC). Experimental results show that our RFHC-based WuRx can provide a wake-up range sensitivity around 4 cm/mW at low transmit RF powers ( < 20 mW), which scales to a long wake-up range at high powers. Our design also obtains accurate selective wake-ups. We finally present simulation-based studies for optimizing the design of RFHCs that enhance decoding efficiency with improved rise and fall times

Distance-Based and Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

A wireless sensor network (WSN) comprises small sensor nodes with limited energy capabilities. The power constraints of WSNs necessitate efficient energy utilization to extend the overall network lifetime of these networks. We propose a distance-based and low-energy adaptive clustering (DISCPLN) protocol to streamline the green issue of efficient energy utilization in WSNs. We also enhance our proposed protocol into the multi-hop-DISCPLN protocol to increase the lifetime of the network in terms of high throughput with minimum delay time and packet loss. We also propose the mobile-DISCPLN protocol to maintain the stability of the network. The modelling and comparison of these protocols with their corresponding benchmarks exhibit promising results

Uber die Genese des Guerinischen Sinus sowie dessen Bedeutung fur die Therapie der Gonorrhoe der mannlichen Harnrohre.

&lt;P&gt;1. Die Frequenz des Guerinischen Sinus betragt nach meinen Untersuchungen 80.08%, d. h. unter 125 Fallen ist derselbe 101 mal nachgewiesen, fehlt 24 mal (19.2%). Schon aus dem prozentualen Verhaltnis la&#946;t sich schlie&#946;en, da&#946; derselbe als physiologisches Produkt anzusehen ist. 2. Der kleine Vordersinus, der dicht vor dem Guerinischen Sinus anliegt, beginnt meist in dem Stadium etwa vom 8. Embryonalmonate an aufzutreten und mit der kraftigen Entwicklung des Guerinischen Sinus wachst er gleichfalls stark. 3. Die Epithelzellen, die sich uber die Wand des Guerinischen Sinus bei Embryonen heruberziehen, bestehen hauptsachlich aus geschichteten Plattenepithelzellen, dazwischen jedoch findet man auch einige aus geschichteten Zylinderepithelzellen bestehende Ge-webe, die gewohnlich um die Morgagnische Sinus herum auffindbar sind. Sehr selten ist bei Erwachsenen die ganze Wand von geschich-teten Zylinderepithelzellen oder Ubergangszellen bekleidet. 4. Im 3. Embryonalmonate la&#946;t sich schon an der hinteren Partie der Pars glandis der Geschlechtsrinne kompakte Epithelial-knospe des Guerinischen Sinus und des Morgagnischen Sinus fest-stellen. 5. Was die Valvula Gurini anbetrifft, so ist sie als nichts anderes anzusehen als die sich verdunnende Partie der Einmun-dungsstelle des Guerinischen Sinus. 6. Gonorrhoe der mannlichen Harnrohre ist in zwei Gruppen zu scheiden, namlich Schleimhautgonorrhoe und Seitenrohrengonor-rhoe. Die erstere tritt sofort nach der Infektion als akute Form auf, die letztere hingegen beim subakuten oder chronischen Stadium. 7. Als Therapie verwende ich im allgemeinen ziemlich milde antiphlogistische Mittel bei akutem Stadium, und blutige Behandlung unter der Urethroskopie bei chronischer Seitenrohrengonorrhoe. Zum Schlu&#946; mochte ich Herrn Prof. Dr. J. Shikinami meinen herzlichsten und ergebensten Dank aussprechen.&lt;/P&gt;</p

Internet of Things for Sustainable Community Development: Introduction and Overview

The two-third of the city-dwelling world population by 2050 poses numerous global challenges in the infrastructure and natural resource management domains (e.g., water and food scarcity, increasing global temperatures, and energy issues). The IoT with integrated sensing and communication capabilities has the strong potential for the robust, sustainable, and informed resource management in the urban and rural communities. In this chapter, the vital concepts of sustainable community development are discussed. The IoT and sustainability interactions are explained with emphasis on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and communication technologies. Moreover, IoT opportunities and challenges are discussed in the context of sustainable community development

Urinary α1-Antichymotrypsin: A Biomarker of Prion Infection

The occurrence of blood-borne prion transmission incidents calls for identification of potential prion carriers. However, current methods for intravital diagnosis of prion disease rely on invasive tissue biopsies and are unsuitable for large-scale screening. Sensitive biomarkers may help meeting this need. Here we scanned the genome for transcripts elevated upon prion infection and encoding secreted proteins. We found that α1-antichymotrypsin (α1-ACT) was highly upregulated in brains of scrapie-infected mice. Furthermore, α1-ACT levels were dramatically increased in urine of patients suffering from sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and increased progressively throughout the disease. Increased α1-ACT excretion was also found in cases of natural prion disease of animals. Therefore measurement of urinary α1-ACT levels may be useful for monitoring the efficacy of therapeutic regimens for prion disease, and possibly also for deferring blood and organ donors that may be at risk of transmitting prion infections

Ventilation and outcomes following robotic-assisted abdominal surgery: an international, multicentre observational study

Background: International data on the epidemiology, ventilation practice, and outcomes in patients undergoing abdominal robotic-assisted surgery (RAS) are lacking. The aim of the study was to assess the incidence of postoperative pulmonary complications (PPCs), and to describe ventilator management after abdominal RAS. Methods: This was an international, multicentre, prospective study in 34 centres in nine countries. Patients ≥18 yr of age undergoing abdominal RAS were enrolled between April 2017 and March 2019. The Assess Respiratory Risk in Surgical Patients in Catalonia (ARISCAT) score was used to stratify for higher risk of PPCs (≥26). The primary outcome was the incidence of PPCs. Secondary endpoints included the preoperative risk for PPCs and ventilator management. Results: Of 1167 subjects screened, 905 abdominal RAS patients were included. Overall, 590 (65.2%) patients were at increased risk for PPCs. Meanwhile, 172 (19%) patients sustained PPCs, which occurred more frequently in 132 (22.4%) patients at increased risk, compared with 40 (12.7%) patients at lower risk of PPCs (absolute risk difference: 12.2% [95% confidence intervals (CI), 6.8–17.6%]; P&lt;0.001). Plateau and driving pressures were higher in patients at increased risk, compared with patients at low risk of PPCs, but no ventilatory variables were independently associated with increased occurrence of PPCs. Development of PPCs was associated with a longer hospital stay. Conclusions: One in five patients developed one or more PPCs (chiefly unplanned oxygen requirement), which was associated with a longer hospital stay. No ventilatory variables were independently associated with PPCs. Clinical trial registration: NCT02989415

Micrometre-long covalent organic fibres by photoinitiated chain-growth radical polymerization on an alkali-halide surface

On-surface polymerization is a promising technique to prepare organic functional nanomaterials that are challenging to synthesize in solution, but it is typically used on metal substrates, which play a catalytic role. Previous examples on insulating surfaces have involved intermediate self-assembled structures, which face high barriers to diffusion, or annealing to higher temperatures, which generally causes rapid dewetting and desorption of the monomers. Here we report the photoinitiated radical polymerization, initiated from a two-dimensional gas phase, of a dimaleimide monomer on an insulating KCl surface. Polymer fibres up to 1 μm long are formed through chain-like rather than step-like growth. Interactions between potassium cations and the dimaleimide’s oxygen atoms facilitate the propagation of the polymer fibres along a preferred axis of the substrate over long distances. Density functional theory calculations, non-contact atomic force microscopy imaging and manipulations at room temperature were used to explore the initiation and propagation processes, as well as the structure and stability of the resulting one-dimensional polymer fibres