418 research outputs found
Systematic literature review: quality of life associated with insulin pump use in type 1 diabetes
WSTĘP. W niniejszej pracy przedstawiono systematyczny
przegląd opublikowanej literatury w celu
odpowiedzi na pytanie, czy ciągły podskórny wlew
insuliny (CSII) poprawia jakość życia chorych na cukrzycę
typu 1.
MATERIAŁ I METODY. Przeszukano elektroniczne bazy
danych oraz opublikowane wyniki badań, a po konsultacji
z dwiema grupami ekspertów wybrano istotne
prace, które opublikowano do lipca 2005 roku. Aby zidentyfikować
doniesienia spełniające wybrane kryteria
selekcji, zastosowano wieloetapowy proces wyboru,
a następnie poddawano prace krytycznej ocenie.
WYNIKI. Po analizie tytułów i streszczeń do dalszego
etapu wybrano 84 potencjalnie odpowiednie prace
opublikowane w wymienionym przedziale czasowym.
Z tych doniesień wyodrębniono 28 pełnych
artykułów, z których 17 spełniało kryteria włączenia
do analizy. Z istniejących danych piśmiennictwa
wynikają rozbieżne wnioski. Spośród 5 randomizowanych,
kontrolowanych badań poddanych analizie
z 3 wynikały niejednoznaczne wnioski, w 1 wskazywano
na poprawę jakości życia, a w 1 nie dowiedziono
korzyści dotyczących jakości życia.
WNIOSKI. Wyniki badań przedstawiają sprzeczne
wnioski dotyczące poprawy jakości życia chorych na
cukrzycę typu 1 stosujących terapię CSII. Istniejące
prace mają wady powodujące, że wnioskowanie co
do jakości życia pacjentów stosujących terapię
pompą insulinową jest trudne. Brakuje przekonujących
dowodów, że korzyści ze stosowania CSII nie
istnieją lub inaczej - niewłaściwa metodologia
i niespójna analiza dotycząca jakości życia utrudniają
ocenę tego zagadnienia. Brak udowodnionego korzystnego
wpływu na jakość życia prawdopodobnie
wiąże się z przedstawionymi uchybieniami w badaniach,
a nie z faktem, że terapia polegająca na zastosowaniu
pomp insulinowych nie koreluje z poprawą
jakości życia chorych.AIM. To review systematically the published literature
addressing whether continuous subcutaneous
insulin infusion (CSII) provides any quality of life
benefits to people with type 1 diabetes.
METHODS. Electronic databases and published references
were searched and a consultation with two
professional groups was undertaken to identify re levant studies published up to July 2005. A multistep
selection process was then undertaken to identify
those articles which met the specific selection
criteria, which were then critically reviewed.
RESULTS. Eighty-four potential relevant articles were
identified from examination of titles and abstracts
published during the specified time frame. Of these,
28 articles were retrieved in full text, of which
17 fulfilled the specific criteria for inclusion. Mixed
results emerged from existing literature. Of the five
randomized controlled trials, three reported mixed
results, with one study reporting quality of life benefits
and one reporting no evidence of quality of
life benefits.
CONCLUSIONS. There is conflicting evidence reported
in the various studies on the quality of life benefits
of CSII in type 1 diabetes. Existing research is
flawed, making a judgement about the quality of
life benefits of insulin pump use difficult. There is
no strong evidence against quality of life benefits
associated with CSII or otherwise, with poor methodology
and inconsistent assessment of quality of life
clouding the issue. The lack of reported benefit is
probably a function of this rather than pump therapy
not offering any quality of life benefits
Non-invasive measurement of a metabolic marker of infant brain function
While near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) haemodynamic measures have proven to be vastly useful in investigating human brain development, the haemodynamic response function (HRF) in infants is not yet fully understood. NIRS measurements of the oxidation state of mitochondrial enzyme cytochrome-c-oxidase (oxCCO) have the potential to yield key information about cellular oxygen utilisation and therefore energy metabolism. We used a broadband NIRS system to measure changes in oxCCO, in addition to haemodynamic changes, during functional activation in a group of 33 typically developing infants aged between 4 and 6 months. The responses were recorded over the right temporal lobe while the infants were presented with engaging videos containing social content. A significant increase in oxCCO was found in response to the social stimuli, with maximum increase of 0.238 ± 0.13 μM. These results are the first reported significant change in oxCCO in response to stimulus-evoked activation in human infants and open new vistas for investigating human infant brain function and its energy metabolism
Continuous variable quantum cryptography
We propose a quantum cryptographic scheme in which small phase and amplitude
modulations of CW light beams carry the key information. The presence of EPR
type correlations provides the quantum protection.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure
Universal quantum computation and simulation using any entangling Hamiltonian and local unitaries
What interactions are sufficient to simulate arbitrary quantum dynamics in a
composite quantum system? We provide an efficient algorithm to simulate any
desired two-body Hamiltonian evolution using any fixed two-body entangling
n-qubit Hamiltonian and local unitaries. It follows that universal quantum
computation can be performed using any entangling interaction and local unitary
operations.Comment: Added references to NMR refocusing and to earlier work by Leung et al
and Jones and Knil
Universal Continuous Variable Quantum Computation in the Micromaser
We present universal continuous variable quantum computation (CVQC) in the
micromaser. With a brief history as motivation we present the background theory
and define universal CVQC. We then show how to generate a set of operations in
the micromaser which can be used to achieve universal CVQC. It then follows
that the micromaser is a potential architecture for CVQC but our proof is
easily adaptable to other potential physical systems.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, accepted for a presentation at the 9th
International Conference on Unconventional Computation (UC10) and LNCS
proceedings
Ontology-based data access with databases: a short course
Ontology-based data access (OBDA) is regarded as a key ingredient of the new generation of information systems. In the OBDA paradigm, an ontology defines a high-level global schema of (already existing) data sources and provides a vocabulary for user queries. An OBDA system rewrites such queries and ontologies into the vocabulary of the data sources and then delegates the actual query evaluation to a suitable query answering system such as a relational database management system or a datalog engine. In this chapter, we mainly focus on OBDA with the ontology language OWL 2QL, one of the three profiles of the W3C standard Web Ontology Language OWL 2, and relational databases, although other possible languages will also be discussed. We consider different types of conjunctive query rewriting and their succinctness, different architectures of OBDA systems, and give an overview of the OBDA system Ontop
A high-flux source of polarization-entangled photons from a periodically-poled KTP parametric downconverter
We have demonstrated a high-flux source of polarization-entangled photons
using a type-II phase-matched periodically-poled KTP parametric downconverter
in a collinearly propagating configuration. We have observed quantum
interference between the single-beam downconverted photons with a visibility of
99% and a measured coincidence flux of 300/s/mW of pump. The
Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt version of Bell's inequality was violated with a
value of 2.711 +/- 0.017.Comment: 7 pages submitted to Physical Review
Quantum state merging and negative information
We consider a quantum state shared between many distant locations, and define
a quantum information processing primitive, state merging, that optimally
merges the state into one location. As announced in [Horodecki, Oppenheim,
Winter, Nature 436, 673 (2005)], the optimal entanglement cost of this task is
the conditional entropy if classical communication is free. Since this quantity
can be negative, and the state merging rate measures partial quantum
information, we find that quantum information can be negative. The classical
communication rate also has a minimum rate: a certain quantum mutual
information. State merging enabled one to solve a number of open problems:
distributed quantum data compression, quantum coding with side information at
the decoder and sender, multi-party entanglement of assistance, and the
capacity of the quantum multiple access channel. It also provides an
operational proof of strong subadditivity. Here, we give precise definitions
and prove these results rigorously.Comment: 23 pages, 3 figure
Peripheral NF-κB dysregulation in people with schizophrenia drives inflammation: putative anti-inflammatory functions of NF-κB kinases
Elevations in plasma levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines and C-reactive protein (CRP) in patient blood have been associated with impairments in cognitive abilities and more severe psychiatric symptoms in people with schizophrenia. The transcription factor nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) regulates the gene expression of pro-inflammatory factors whose protein products trigger CRP release. NF-κB activation pathway mRNAs are increased in the brain in schizophrenia and are strongly related to neuroinflammation. Thus, it is likely that this central immune regulator is also dysregulated in the blood and associated with cytokine and CRP levels. We measured levels of six pro-inflammatory cytokine mRNAs and 18 mRNAs encoding NF-κB pathway members in peripheral blood leukocytes from 87 people with schizophrenia and 83 healthy control subjects. We then assessed the relationships between the alterations in NF-κB pathway genes, pro-inflammatory cytokine and CRP levels, psychiatric symptoms and cognition in people with schizophrenia. IL-1β and IFN-γ mRNAs were increased in patients compared to controls (both p < 0.001), while IL-6, IL-8, IL-18, and TNF-α mRNAs did not differ. Recursive two-step cluster analysis revealed that high levels of IL-1β mRNA and high levels of plasma CRP defined 'high inflammation' individuals in our cohort, and a higher proportion of people with schizophrenia were identified as displaying 'high inflammation' compared to controls using this method (p = 0.03). Overall, leukocyte expression of the NF-κB-activating receptors, TLR4 and TNFR2, and the NF-κB subunit, RelB, was increased in people with schizophrenia compared to healthy control subjects (all p < 0.01), while NF-κB-inducing kinase mRNAs IKKβ and NIK were downregulated in patients (all p < 0.05). We found that elevations in TLR4 and RelB appear more related to inflammatory status than to a diagnosis of schizophrenia, but changes in TNFR2 occur in both the high and low inflammation patients (but were exaggerated in high inflammation patients). Further, decreased leukocyte expression of IKKβ and NIK mRNAs was unique to high inflammation patients, which may represent schizophrenia-specific dysregulation of NF-κB that gives rise to peripheral inflammation in a subset of patients.Caitlin E. Murphy, Adam K. Walker, Maryanne O, Donnell, Cherrie Galletly, Andrew R. Lloyd, Dennis Liu, Cynthia Shannon Weickert, and Thomas W. Weicker
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