Raising awareness for water polution based on game activities using internet of things

Awareness among young people regarding the environment and its resources and comprehension of the various factors that interplay, is key to changing human behaviour towards achieving a sustainable planet. In this paper IoT equipment, utilizing sensors for measuring various parameters of water quality, is used in an educational context targeting at a deeper understanding of the use of natural resources towards the adoption of environmentally friendly behaviours. We here note that the use of water sensors in STEM gameful learning is an area which has not received a lot of attention in the previous years. The IoT water sensing and related scenaria and practices, addressing children via discovery, gamification, and educational activities, are discussed in detail

Crise suicidaire et maladie d’Alzheimer débutante : intérêt d’une analyse neuropsychologique détaillée

RésuméIntroduction Le risque de développer une maladie d’Alzheimer augmente avec l’âge. Le rôle de celle-ci comme un facteur de risque indépendant de suicide n’est pas bien compris et demeure complexe et mal élucidé. L’objectif de cet article est d’envisager une compréhension neuropsychologique de la crise suicidaire dans le cas d’une maladie d’Alzheimer débutante. Méthode Une évaluation cognitive globale (Mini-Mental State Examination, Batterie Rapide d’Évaluation Frontale) complétée de l’exploration de l’inhibition cognitive selon ses fonctions d’accès (tâche de lecture en présence de distracteurs), de suppression (Trail Making Test), et de freinage (Stroop, Hayling, Go/No-Go) a été réalisée chez une femme souffrant d’une maladie d’Alzheimer (MMSE à 21/30) avant et après réalisation d’une tentative de suicide dans un contexte de dépression. Résultats L’échelle d’Hamilton était cotée à 24/52, l’échelle de dépression de Cornell à 21/38. L’intentionnalité suicidaire était modérée avec un score à 15/25 à l’échelle d’intentionnalité suicidaire de Beck. Initialement préservées, le déclin des fonctions exécutives a coïncidé avec l’émergence d’une crise suicidaire dans un contexte de dépression chez une patiente souffrant de maladie d’Alzheimer. Les fonctions de l’inhibition cognitive étaient altérées dans ses trois composantes, après ajustement des facteurs de confusion. Conclusion Une évaluation détaillée des fonctions exécutives et singulièrement de l’inhibition cognitive dans la population des patients atteints d’une maladie d’Alzheimer permettrait de détecter les personnes les plus à risque de passage à l’acte et de proposer une surveillance plus étroite dans le cadre des soins généraux de leur maladie. AbstractIntroduction The role of Alzheimer\u27s disease as a risk factor for suicide is unclear. The aim of this study was to understand neuropsychological component of the suicidal crisis in Alzheimer\u27s disease. Method Using an extensive neuropsychological battery, different aspects of cognitive inhibition were particularly examined: Access to relevant information (using the Reading with distraction task), suppression of no longer relevant information (Trail Making Test, Rule Shift Cards), and restraint of cognitive resources to relevant information (Stroop test, Hayling Sentence Completion test, Go/No-Go). One female Alzheimer depressed case was assessed before and after a suicide attempt. Results Ten days after the patient\u27s suicide attempt, dementia was still moderate with a MMSE score at 21/30 but with a worsening of executive functions (FAB at 8/18) in the context of depression and suicide. The Hamilton-Depression Rating Scale was at 24 (maximal score at 52), and the Cornell Scale for Depression was at 21 (maximal score at 38). Suicidal intent was moderate with a score of 9 on the Beck Suicide Intent Scale (maximal score at 25). The patient did not present a delirium, psychotic symptoms, or anosognosia. Her episodic memory was altered as shown by her semantic performance on verbal fluency (naming 12 animals in 120 seconds) and on lexical fluency (naming 8 words beginning with the letter P). Initially preserved, executive function declined during a suicidal crisis in a context of depression in Alzheimer\u27s disease case. Neuropsychological testing confirmed a dysexecutive syndrome (FAS at 8/18), with an impairment in her conceptualization capacity (MCST) and a deficit in cognitive inhibition and its access (reading task in the presence of distractors), deletion (TMT) and restraint (Stroop, Go/No-Go, Hayling) functions. Computed tomography has shown no signs of intracranial expansive process. Conclusion Assessing predictors of suicide and means of completion in patients with dementia may help the development of interventions to reduce risk of suicide among the growing population of individuals with dementia. Because of Alzheimer\u27s-related cognitive inhibition impairment, identification and intervention addressing the complex issues of depression, executive dysfunction and dementia may help clinicians to mitigate the risk of suicide in patients with Alzheimer\u27s disease

Skew-Product Decomposition of Planar Brownian Motion and Complementability

International audienceLet $Z$ be a complex Brownian motion starting at 0 and $W$ the complex Brownian motion defined by $W_ t = \int_0^\cdot \frac{Z_s}{|Z_s|} dZ_s$. The natural filtration $\mathcal{F}_W$ of $W$ is the filtration generated by $Z$ up to an arbitrary rotation. We show that given any two different matrices $Q_1$ and $Q_2$ in $O_2(\mathbb{R})$, there exists an $\mathcal{F}_Z$-previsible process $H$ taking values in $\{Q_1,Q_2\}$ such that the Brownian motion $\int_0^\cdot H \cdot dW$ generates the whole filtration $\mathcal{F}_Z$. As a consequence, for all $a$ and $b$ in $\mathbb{R}$ such that $a^2 + b^2 = 1$, the Brownian motion $a \mathrm{Re}(W) + b \mathrm{Im}(W)$ is complementable in $\mathcal{F}_Z$

Integrated crop-livestock management system: C and N stocks in a Brazilian clayey oxisol using NIRS.

Integrated crop-livestock management systems (ICLS) have been increasingly recommended in Brazil. However, knowledge on the indicators used to evaluate their impact on soil carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) concentrations and stocks is still limited. The study was undertaken to evaluate the effects of ICLS systems under two tillage and fertilization regimes on C and N stocks and concentrations at a 0-30 cm depth. The following soil management systems were studied: continuous pasture; continuous crop; crop/pasture rotation; and pasture/crop rotation. The native Cerrado was used as a control. The rotation systems were on a four year cycle. Under the rotation and continuous crop systems there were two levels of soil tillage (conventional and no-tillage) and fertility (maintenance and corrective fertility). The soil tillage and land use systems had a significant impact on the concentrations of C and N in the soil; however, no effect was observed for the fertilizer treatment. ICLS systems did not differ from continuous systems with regard to the C and N stocks; however, these elements tended to accumulate under ICLS systems associated with no-tillage. NIR spectroscopy proved to be a useful tool in quantifying the concentrations of C and N in the soil

Superconducting pairing and density-wave instabilities in quasi-one-dimensional conductors

Using a renormalization group approach, we determine the phase diagram of an extended quasi-one-dimensional electron gas model that includes interchain hopping, nesting deviations and both intrachain and interchain repulsive interactions. d-wave superconductivity, which dominates over the spin-density-wave (SDW) phase at large nesting deviations, becomes unstable to the benefit of a triplet $f$-wave phase for a weak repulsive interchain backscattering term $g_1^\perp>0$, despite the persistence of dominant SDW correlations in the normal state. Antiferromagnetism becomes unstable against the formation of a charge-density-wave state when $g_1^\perp$ exceeds some critical value. While these features persist when both Umklapp processes and interchain forward scattering ($g_2^\perp$) are taken into account, the effect of $g_2^\perp$ alone is found to frustrate nearest-neighbor interchain $d$- and $f$-wave pairing and instead favor next-nearest-neighbor interchain singlet or triplet pairing. We argue that the close proximity of SDW and charge-density-wave phases, singlet d-wave and triplet $f$-wave superconducting phases in the theoretical phase diagram provides a possible explanation for recent puzzling experimental findings in the Bechgaard salts, including the coexistence of SDW and charge-density-wave phases and the possibility of a triplet pairing in the superconducting phase.Comment: 19 pages, 13 figure

Horizontal partial laryngectomy for supraglottic squamous cell carcinoma

Between 1981-1999, 75 patients treated for supraglottic SCC with horizontal supraglottic laryngectomy (HSL) at the Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery Department of Lausanne University Hospital were retrospectively studied. There were 16 patients with T1, 46 with T2 and 13 with T3 tumors. Among these, 16 patients (21%) had clinical neck disease corresponding to stage I, II, III and IV in 12, 39, 18 and 6 patients, respectively. All patients had HSL. Most patients had either elective or therapeutic bilateral level II-IV selective neck dissection. Six patients (8%) with advanced neck disease had ipsilateral radical and controlateral elective II-IV selective neck dissections. Adjuvant radiotherapy was given to 25 patients (30%) for either positive surgical margins (n=8), pathological nodal status (n=14) or both (n=3). Median follow-up was 48months (range, 24-199). Five-year disease-specific survival and locoregional and local control were 92, 90 and 92.5%, respectively. Among five patients who were diagnosed with local recurrence, one had a total laryngectomy (1.4%); the others were treated by endoscopic laser surgery. Two patients had both a local and regional recurrence. They were salvaged with combined surgery and radiotherapy, but eventually died of their disease. Cartilage infiltration seems to influence both local control (P=0.03) and disease-specific survival (P=0.06). There was a trend for worse survival with pathological node involvement (P=0.15) and extralaryngeal extension of the cancer (P=0.1). All patients except one recovered a close to normal function after the treatment. Aspiration was present in 16 patients (26%) in the early postoperative period. A median of 16days (7-9) was necessary to recover a close to normal diet. Decannulation took a median of 17days (8-93). Seven patients kept a tracheotomy tube for up to 3months because of persistent aspiration. There was no permanent tracheostomy or total laryngectomy for functional purposes. Horizontal supraglottic laryngectomy remains an adequate therapeutic alternative for supraglottic squamous cell carcinoma, offering an excellent oncological outcome. The postoperative functional morbidity is substantial, indicating the need for careful patient selection, but good laryngeal function recovery is the rule. The surgical alternative is endoscopic laser surgery, which may offer comparable oncological results with less functional morbidity. Nevertheless, these two different techniques need to be compared prospectivel