Orientation Control Method and System for Object in Motion

An object in motion has a force applied thereto at a point of application. By moving the point of application such that the distance between the object's center-of-mass and the point of application is changed, the object's orientation can be changed/adjusted

Ontologies for the study of neurological disease

We have begun work on two separate but related ontologies for the study of neurological diseases. The first, the Neurological Disease Ontology (ND), is intended to provide a set of controlled, logically connected classes to describe the range of neurological diseases and their associated signs and symptoms, assessments, diagnoses, and interventions that are encountered in the course of clinical practice. ND is built as an extension of the Ontology for General Medical Sciences — a high-level candidate OBO Foundry ontology that provides a set of general classes that can be used to describe general aspects of medical science. ND is being built with classes utilizing both textual and axiomatized definitions that describe and formalize the relations between instances of other classes within the ontology itself as well as to external ontologies such as the Gene Ontology, Cell Ontology, Protein Ontology, and Chemical Entities of Biological Interest. In addition, references to similar or associated terms in external ontologies, vocabularies and terminologies are included when possible. Initial work on ND is focused on the areas of Alzheimer’s and other diseases associated with dementia, multiple sclerosis, and stroke and cerebrovascular disease. Extensions to additional groups of neurological diseases are planned. The second ontology, the Neuro-Psychological Testing Ontology (NPT), is intended to provide a set of classes for the annotation of neuropsychological testing data. The intention of this ontology is to allow for the integration of results from a variety of neuropsychological tests that assay similar measures of cognitive functioning. Neuro-psychological testing is an important component in developing the clinical picture used in the diagnosis of patients with a range of neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis, and following stroke or traumatic brain injury. NPT is being developed as an extension to the Ontology for Biomedical Investigations

Evasion of autophagy mediated by Rickettsia surface protein OmpB is critical for virulence.

Rickettsia are obligate intracellular bacteria that evade antimicrobial autophagy in the host cell cytosol by unknown mechanisms. Other cytosolic pathogens block different steps of autophagy targeting, including the initial step of polyubiquitin-coat formation. One mechanism of evasion is to mobilize actin to the bacterial surface. Here, we show that actin mobilization is insufficient to block autophagy recognition of the pathogen Rickettsia parkeri. Instead, R. parkeri employs outer membrane protein B (OmpB) to block ubiquitylation of the bacterial surface proteins, including OmpA, and subsequent recognition by autophagy receptors. OmpB is also required for the formation of a capsule-like layer. Although OmpB is dispensable for bacterial growth in endothelial cells, it is essential for R. parkeri to block autophagy in macrophages and to colonize mice because of its ability to promote autophagy evasion in immune cells. Our results indicate that OmpB acts as a protective shield to obstruct autophagy recognition, thereby revealing a distinctive bacterial mechanism to evade antimicrobial autophagy

A Randomized, Controlled Trial of Catheter-Related Infectious Event Rates Using Antibiotic-Impregnated Catheters Versus Conventional Catheters in Pediatric Cardiovascular Surgery Patients

We conducted a randomized, controlled clinical trial to determine whether a difference in catheter-associated blood stream infection (CABSI) incidence existed between children who underwent cardiac surgery and had a central venous catheter impregnated with minocycline and rifampin versus those who had a conventional, nonimpregnated catheter after cardiac surgery. Due to a lower number of infections than expected, the study was terminated early. Among 288 evaluable patients, the rates of CABSI and line-related complications were similar between the 2 groups

Efficacy of Limited Cefuroxime Prophylaxis in Pediatric Patients After Cardiovascular Surgery

Purpose The efficacy of limited cefuroxime prophylaxis in pediatric patients after cardiovascular surgery was evaluated. Methods All patients age 18 years or younger who underwent cardiovascular surgery and received postoperative care from the cardiovascular surgery team between February and July 2006 (preintervention group) and between August 2006 and January 2007 (postintervention group) were eligible for study inclusion. Patients were excluded if they did not receive cefuroxime as postoperative prophylaxis, had a preexisting infection, underwent cardiac transplantation or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or underwent delayed sternal closure. The preintervention group received prolonged cefuroxime prophylaxis, and the postintervention group received 24 hours of cefuroxime prophylaxis. Data collected included patient demographics and clinical and laboratory markers of infection, as well as microbiological evidence of and treatment courses for documented or presumed infections. Results A total of 210 patients were enrolled in the study. The number of patients who required additional antibiotics for suspicion of clinical infection did not significantly differ between the preintervention and postintervention groups (18.6% versus 26.9%, respectively), nor did the rate of documented infection (bacteremia, urinary tract infection, endocarditis, sepsis) (42.1% versus 48.3%, respectively). Moreover, indications for the antibiotics initiated were similar between the preintervention and postintervention groups. Clinical and laboratory signs of postoperative infection were similar between groups. There were no differences in postoperative white blood cell counts, peak serum glucose levels, and platelet nadir between groups. Conclusion Limiting postoperative cefuroxime prophylaxis to 24 hours did not increase infectious outcomes in pediatric patients

Space Station Freedom advanced photovoltaics and battery technology development planning

Space Station Freedom (SSF) usable electrical power is planned to be built up incrementally during assembly phase to a peak of 75 kW end-of-life (EOL) shortly after Permanently Manned Capability (PMC) is achieved in 1999. This power will be provided by planar silicon (Si) arrays and nickel-hydrogen (NiH2) batteries. The need for power is expected to grow from 75 kW to as much as 150 kW EOL during the evolutionary phase of SSF, with initial increases beginning as early as 2002. Providing this additional power with current technology may not be as cost effective as using advanced technology arrays and batteries expected to develop prior to this evolutionary phase. A six-month study sponsored by NASA Langley Research Center and conducted by Boeing Defense and Space Group was initiated in Aug. 1991. The purpose of the study was to prepare technology development plans for cost effective advanced photovoltaic (PV) and battery technologies with application to SSF growth, SSF upgrade after its arrays and batteries reach the end of their design lives, and other low Earth orbit (LEO) platforms. Study scope was limited to information available in the literature, informal industry contacts, and key representatives from NASA and Boeing involved in PV and battery research and development. Ten battery and 32 PV technologies were examined and their performance estimated for SSF application. Promising technologies were identified based on performance and development risk. Rough order of magnitude cost estimates were prepared for development, fabrication, launch, and operation. Roadmaps were generated describing key issues and development paths for maturing these technologies with focus on SSF application

Emergent constraints for the climate system as effective parameters of bulk differential equations

Planning for the impacts of climate change requires accurate projections by Earth system models (ESMs). ESMs, as developed by many research centres, estimate changes to weather and climate as atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs) rise, and they inform the influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. ESMs are advancing the understanding of key climate system attributes. However, there remain substantial inter-ESM differences in their estimates of future meteorological change, even for a common GHG trajectory, and such differences make adaptation planning difficult. Until recently, the primary approach to reducing projection uncertainty has been to place an emphasis on simulations that best describe the contemporary climate. Yet a model that performs well for present-day atmospheric GHG levels may not necessarily be accurate for higher GHG levels and vice versa. A relatively new approach of emergent constraints (ECs) is gaining much attention as a technique to remove uncertainty between climate models. This method involves searching for an inter-ESM link between a quantity that we can also measure now and a second quantity of major importance for describing future climate. Combining the contemporary measurement with this relationship refines the future projection. Identified ECs exist for thermal, hydrological and geochemical cycles of the climate system. As ECs grow in influence on climate policy, the method is under intense scrutiny, creating a requirement to understand them better. We hypothesise that as many Earth system components vary in both space and time, their behaviours often satisfy large-scale differential equations (DEs). Such DEs are valid at coarser scales than the equations coded in ESMs which capture finer high-resolution grid-box-scale effects. We suggest that many ECs link to such effective hidden DEs implicit in ESMs and that aggregate small-scale features. An EC may exist because its two quantities depend similarly on an ESM-specific internal bulk parameter in such a DE, with measurements constraining and revealing its (implicit) value. Alternatively, well-established process understanding coded at the ESM grid box scale, when aggregated, may generate a bulk parameter with a common “emergent” value across all ESMs. This single emerging parameter may link uncertainties in a contemporary climate driver to those of a climate-related property of interest. In these circumstances, the EC combined with a measurement of the driver that is uncertain constrains the estimate of the climate-related quantity. We offer simple illustrative examples of these concepts with generic DEs but with their solutions placed in a conceptual EC framework.</p

Hall magnetohydrodynamics of partially ionized plasmas

The Hall effect arises in a plasma when electrons are able to drift with the magnetic field but ions cannot. In a fully-ionized plasma this occurs for frequencies between the ion and electron cyclotron frequencies because of the larger ion inertia. Typically this frequency range lies well above the frequencies of interest (such as the dynamical frequency of the system under consideration) and can be ignored. In a weakly-ionized medium, however, the Hall effect arises through a different mechanism -- neutral collisions preferentially decouple ions from the magnetic field. This typically occurs at much lower frequencies and the Hall effect may play an important role in the dynamics of weakly-ionised systems such as the Earth's ionosphere and protoplanetary discs. To clarify the relationship between these mechanisms we develop an approximate single-fluid description of a partially ionized plasma that becomes exact in the fully-ionized and weakly-ionized limits. Our treatment includes the effects of ohmic, ambipolar, and Hall diffusion. We show that the Hall effect is relevant to the dynamics of a partially ionized medium when the dynamical frequency exceeds the ratio of ion to bulk mass density times the ion-cyclotron frequency, i.e. the Hall frequency. The corresponding length scale is inversely proportional to the ion to bulk mass density ratio as well as to the ion-Hall beta parameter.Comment: 11 page, 1 figure, typos removed, numbers in tables revised; accepted for publication in MNRA

Stock market investors' use of stop losses and the disposition effect

The disposition effect is an investment bias where investors hold stocks at a loss longer than stocks at a gain. This bias is associated with poorer investment performance and exhibited to a greater extent by investors with less experience and less sophistication. A method of managing susceptibility to the bias is through use of stop losses. Using the trading records of UK stock market individual investors from 2006 to 2009, this paper shows that stop losses used as part of investment decisions are an effective tool for inoculating against the disposition effect. We also show that investors who use stop losses have less experience and that, when not using stop losses, these investors are more reluctant to realise losses than other investors