Human factors for dementia: Evidence based design

Designing care environments for people living with dementia is a complex challenge as the key stakeholder may have difficulty communicating their capabilities, limitations and preferences. This paper describes the use of evidence-based design personas in a multi-disciplinary team with architects and chartered human factors specialists. Four individual personas (Alison, Barry, Christine and David) and a couple persona (Chris and Sally) were used to bring the voices of the people living with different stages of dementia to the design process. Their changing/fluctuating symptoms were communicated in two formats (wheel and matrix) within an inclusive design process to adapt a Victorian semi-detached house. The demonstrator house presents evidence based design, adaptation and support solutions to support people living with dementia to age well at home

A large age for the pulsar B1757-24 from an upper limit on its proper motion

The "characteristic age" of a pulsar usually is considered to approximate its true age, but this assumption has led to some puzzling results, including the fact that many pulsars with small characteristic ages have no associated supernova remnants. The pulsar B1757-24 is located just beyond the edge of a supernova remnant; the properties of the system indicate that the pulsar was born at the centre of the remnant, but that it has subsequently overtaken the expanding blast-wave. With a characteristic age of 16,000 yr, this implies an expected proper motion by the pulsar of 63-80 milliarcsec per year. Here we report observations of the nebula surrounding the pulsar which limit its proper motion to less than 25 mas/yr, implying a minimum age of 39,000 yr. A more detailed analysis argues for a true age as great as 170,000 yr, significantly larger than the characteristic age. From this result and other discrepancies associated with pulsars, we conclude that characteristic ages seriously underestimate the true ages of pulsars

Evaluation of left atrial systolic function in noncompaction cardiomyopathy by real-time three-dimensional echocardiography

Background Noncompaction cardiomyopathy (NCCM) is a rare disorder with persistance of the embryonic pattern of myoarchitecture. NCCM is characterized by loosened, spongy myocardium associated with a high incidence of systolic and diastolic left ventricular (LV) dysfunction and heart failure (HF). It is known that LV dysfunction contributes to elevated left atrial (LA) and pulmonary vascular pressures, however atrial function has not been examined in NCCM. The objective of the present study was to assess LA systolic function characterized by LA ejection force (LAEF) in NCCM patients using real-time three-dimensional echocardiography (RT3DE) and to compare to control subjects. Methods The study comprised 17 patients with an established diagnosis of NCCM and their results were compared to 17 healthy age-matched controls with no evidence of cardiovascular disease. Forty-one percent of NCCM patients were in NYHA functional class II / III HF. Previously proposed echocardiographic diagnostic criteria for NCCM were used. All patients underwent conventional two-dimensional echocardiography and RT3DE. LAEF was measured based on MA annulus diameter (LAEF3D-MAD) and area (LAEF3D-MAA) using RT3DE. Results The presence and severity of mitral regurgitation were more frequent in NCCM patients than in control subjects. LV diameters and mitral annulus were significantly increased in NCCM patients. Compared with control subjects, both LAEF3D-MAD (3.8 ± 2.2 vs 2.3 ± 1.0 kdyne, P < 0.05) and LAEF3D-MAA (12.7 ± 7.6 vs 4.9 ± 2.1 kdyne, P < 0.01) were significantly increased in NCCM patients. Conclusions LAEF as a characteristic of LA systolic function is increased in NCCM patients compared to normal individuals. These results can suggest compensating left atrial work against the dysfunctional LV in NCCM patients

Intermatrix synthesis: easy technique permitting preparation of polymer-stabilized nanoparticles with desired composition and structure

The synthesis of polymer-stabilized nanoparticles (PSNPs) can be successfully carried out using intermatrix synthesis (IMS) technique, which consists in sequential loading of the functional groups of a polymer with the desired metal ions followed by nanoparticles (NPs) formation stage. After each metal-loading-NPs-formation cycle, the functional groups of the polymer appear to be regenerated. This allows for repeating the cycles to increase the NPs content or to obtain NPs with different structures and compositions (e.g. core-shell or core-sandwich). This article reports the results on the further development of the IMS technique. The formation of NPs has been shown to proceed by not only the metal reduction reaction (e.g. Cu0-NPs) but also by the precipitation reaction resulting in the IMS of PSNPs of metal salts (e.g. CuS-NPs)

Transcriptome analysis of mRNA and miRNA in skeletal muscle indicates an important network for differential Residual Feed Intake in pigs

Feed efficiency (FE) can be measured by feed conversion ratio (FCR) or residual feed intake (RFI). In this study, we measured the FE related phenotypes of 236 castrated purebred Yorkshire boars, and selected 10 extreme individuals with high and low RFI for transcriptome analysis. We used RNA-seq analyses to determine the differential expression of genes and miRNAs in skeletal muscle. There were 99 differentially expressed genes identified (q ≤ 0.05). The down-regulated genes were mainly involved in mitochondrial energy metabolism, including FABP3, RCAN, PPARGC1 (PGC-1A), HK2 and PRKAG2. The up-regulated genes were mainly involved in skeletal muscle differentiation and proliferation, including IGF2, PDE7A, CEBPD, PIK3R1 and MYH6. Moreover, 15 differentially expressed miRNAs (|log2FC| ≥ 1, total reads count ≥ 20, p ≤ 0.05) were identified. Among them, miR-136, miR-30e-5p, miR-1, miR-208b, miR-199a, miR-101 and miR-29c were up-regulated, while miR-215, miR-365-5p, miR-486, miR-1271, miR-145, miR-99b, miR-191 and miR-10b were down-regulated in low RFI pigs. We conclude that decreasing mitochondrial energy metabolism, possibly through AMPK - PGC-1A pathways, and increasing muscle growth, through IGF-1/2 and TGF-β signaling pathways, are potential strategies for the improvement of FE in pigs (and possibly other livestock). This study provides new insights into the molecular mechanisms that determine RFI and FE in pigs