An Activity-Based Nanosensor for Traumatic Brain Injury.

Currently, traumatic brain injury (TBI) is detected by medical imaging; however, medical imaging requires expensive capital equipment, is time- and resource-intensive, and is poor at predicting patient prognosis. To date, direct measurement of elevated protease activity has yet to be utilized to detect TBI. In this work, we engineered an activity-based nanosensor for TBI (TBI-ABN) that responds to increased protease activity initiated after brain injury. We establish that a calcium-sensitive protease, calpain-1, is active in the injured brain hours within injury. We then optimize the molecular weight of a nanoscale polymeric carrier to infiltrate into the injured brain tissue with minimal renal filtration. A calpain-1 substrate that generates a fluorescent signal upon cleavage was attached to this nanoscale polymeric carrier to generate an engineered TBI-ABN. When applied intravenously to a mouse model of TBI, our engineered sensor is observed to locally activate in the injured brain tissue. This TBI-ABN is the first demonstration of a sensor that responds to protease activity to detect TBI

Optimal Design of Hybrid Renewable Energy for Tanzania Rural Communities

Abstract Rural communities in developing countries lack access to electricity due to high costs of grid extension. This paper proposes a hybrid system of renewable energy (HRES) as solution. The HRES consists of solar, wind, and battery energy storage (BES). The village called Ngw’amkanga in Shinyanga region of Tanzania, East Africa is selected as a case study. An iterative method to determine the size of wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) generation required assuming a project life of 25 years at minimum annualised cost of the system ( ) is proposed. The project life time is fixed on the life span of the main component, solar PV at 25 years. The iteration is undertaken to meet the energy demand ensuring the BES is charged throughout the year. The required BES has three days of autonomy, and a maximum battery depth of discharge 50%. At minimum ACS, the HRES comprises only solar PV and BES, due to insufficient wind at this site. The levelised cost of energy ( ) of the HRES is 27.18 p/kWh, paid by the users. This is cheaper than the grid connected small power producers of Tanzania as discussed in the paper. Keywords: Renewable energy; wind energy generation; solar photovoltaic; annualised cost of the system; levelised cost of energ

A homeostatic-driven turnover remodelling constitutive model for healing in soft tissues

All rights reserved. Remodelling of soft biological tissue is characterized by interacting biochemical and biomechanical events, which change the tissue's microstructure, and, consequently, its macroscopic mechanical properties. Remodelling is a well-defined stage of the healing process, and aims at recovering or repairing the injured extracellular matrix. Like other physiological processes, remodelling is thought to be driven by homeostasis, i.e. it tends to re-establish the properties of the uninjured tissue. However, homeostasis may never be reached, such that remodelling may also appear as a continuous pathological transformation of diseased tissues during aneurysm expansion, for example. A simple constitutive model for soft biological tissues that regards remodelling as homeostatic-driven turnover is developed. Specifically, the recoverable effective tissue damage, whose rate is the sum of a mechanical damage rate and a healing rate, serves as a scalar internal thermodynamic variable. In order to integrate the biochemical and biomechanical aspects of remodelling, the healing rate is, on the one hand, driven by mechanical stimuli, but, on the other hand, subjected to simple metabolic constraints. The proposed model is formulated in accordance with continuum damage mechanics within an open-system thermodynamics framework. The numerical implementation in an in-house finite-element code is described, particularized for Ogden hyperelasticity. Numerical examples illustrate the basic constitutive characteristics of the model and demonstrate its potential in representing aspects of remodelling of soft tissues. Simulation results are verified for their plausibility, but also validated against reported experimental data. Remodelling of soft biological tissue is characterized by interacting biochemical and biomechanical events, which change the tissue's microstructure, and, consequently, its macroscopic mechanical properties. Remodelling is a well-defined stage of the healing process, and aims at recovering or repairing the injured extracellular matrix. Like other physiological processes, remodelling is thought to be driven by homeostasis, i.e. it tends to re-establish the properties of the uninjured tissue. However, homeostasis may never be reached, such that remodelling may also appear as a continuous pathological transformation of diseased tissues during aneurysm expansion, for example. A simple constitutive model for soft biological tissues that regards remodelling as homeostatic-driven turnover is developed. Specifically, the recoverable effective tissue damage, whose rate is the sum of a mechanical damage rate and a healing rate, serves as a scalar internal thermodynamic variable. In order to integrate the biochemical and biomechanical aspects of remodelling, the healing rate is, on the one hand, driven by mechanical stimuli, but, on the other hand, subjected to simple metabolic constraints. The proposed model is formulated in accordance with continuum damage mechanics within an open-system thermodynamics framework. The numerical implementation in an in-house finite-element code is described, particularized for Ogden hyperelasticity. Numerical examples illustrate the basic constitutive characteristics of the model and demonstrate its potential in representing aspects of remodelling of soft tissues. Simulation results are verified for their plausibility, but also validated against reported experimental data

Entropy/IP: Uncovering Structure in IPv6 Addresses

In this paper, we introduce Entropy/IP: a system that discovers Internet address structure based on analyses of a subset of IPv6 addresses known to be active, i.e., training data, gleaned by readily available passive and active means. The system is completely automated and employs a combination of information-theoretic and machine learning techniques to probabilistically model IPv6 addresses. We present results showing that our system is effective in exposing structural characteristics of portions of the IPv6 Internet address space populated by active client, service, and router addresses. In addition to visualizing the address structure for exploration, the system uses its models to generate candidate target addresses for scanning. For each of 15 evaluated datasets, we train on 1K addresses and generate 1M candidates for scanning. We achieve some success in 14 datasets, finding up to 40% of the generated addresses to be active. In 11 of these datasets, we find active network identifiers (e.g., /64 prefixes or `subnets') not seen in training. Thus, we provide the first evidence that it is practical to discover subnets and hosts by scanning probabilistically selected areas of the IPv6 address space not known to contain active hosts a priori.Comment: Paper presented at the ACM IMC 2016 in Santa Monica, USA (https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2987445). Live Demo site available at http://www.entropy-ip.com

Viability of an Economic Housing for the Elderly: Input for a Residential Care Facility in Mandaluyong

This interdisciplinary, mixed-method research using the explanatory sequential design was undertaken to study one sector of the elderly community’s living condition in Mandaluyong City to determine the viability of putting up a privately-funded residential and care facility for them. Sixty-nine senior citizens were surveyed by a group of 4th year business students in 2013 for their feasibility study about an economic housing for the elderly, using a government-published questionnaire. Raw data from these instruments were, by mutual agreement used for this study. Analysis showed that the demographics from the instruments matched with the local government statistics. It was also found out that some respondents who have some source of modest income but feel neglected and lonely signified desire to live in a more quiet, modest but decent living facility away from their noisy and chaotic home environment. Literature search also showed numerous laws, bills, plans, and other government initiatives that provide assistance for the welfare of the elderly. These could be used in addressing or providing ideas to solve the problem at hand. A privately-funded facility proposed under the undergraduate feasibility study was therefore found economically viable after review in the areas of marketing, technical and financial aspects and that government interference was proposed to be solicited. Initially, the findings of this study was formally presented before the officials of Barangay Hulo, Mandaluyong City last May 7, 2015 as an extension project for the concerned elderly of the community. More than 50 senior citizens attended the presentation. Feedback from stakeholders was promising

FAKTOR-FAKTOR RISIKO KEJADIAN HIPERTENSI NELAYAN DI DESA MALA DAN MALA TIMUR KECAMATAN MELONGUANE KABUPATEN KEPULAUAN TALAUD

Penyakit tidak menular merupakan penyakit dengan urutan pertama memiliki penyebab kematian terbesar. Salah satu penyakit tidak menular yang menjadi masalah yang paling besar yaitu penyakit hipertensi. Hipertensi adalah penyakit yang menjadi perhatian di banyak negara di dunia, baik di negara maju ataupun di negara berkembang, Secara rerata prevalensi hipertensi di Sulawesi Utara cukup tinggi melebihi prevalensi nasional. Tujuan dari hasil penelitian yang dilakukan yaitu untuk menganalisis faktor-faktor risiko kejadian hipertensi pada nelayan di Desa Mala dan Mala Timur Kecamatan Melonguane Kabupaten Kepulauan Talaud. Desain penelitian yang digunakan yaitu observasional analitik dengan rancagan cros sectional study. Dengan jumlah populasi 170 orang, sampel menggunakan perhitungan dengan rumus lemeshow yang didapat 62 sampel namun peneliti mengambil jumlah sampel sebanyak100 orang. Untuk teknik pengambilan sampel menggunakan sample random sampling.Alat ukur yang digunakan yaitu tensimeter dan kuesioner.Adapun uji Chi Square digunakan sebagai uji statistik dan dalam penelitian ini analisis data menggunakan analisis bivariat. Dari hasil uji yang dilakukan pada penelitian ini menunjukan bahwa variabel umur dengan kejadian hipertensi pada nelayan memiliki hubungan (p=0,005), variabel riwayat keluarga dengan hipertensi (p=0,000) dan tidak ada hubungan antara kebiasaan merokok dengan kejadian hipertensi pada nelayan dengan nilai p-value (p=0,539). Kesimpulan yang dapat diambil dari hasil penelitian ini bahwa variabel umur dan riwayat keluarga berhubungan dengan kejadian hipertensi sedangkan untuk variabel kebiasaan merokok tidak berhubungan dengan kejadian hipertensi.Adapun saran yang dapat diajukan yakni Melakukan kerja sama lintas sektor antara PKK, kader-kader kesehatan yang ada di Desa Mala dan Mala Timur dan organisasi yang ada di Desa Mala dan Mala Timur dalam upaya deteksi dini yaitu dengan cara pengukuran tekanan darah secara rutin dan melakukan penyuluhan tentang hipertensi dan diperlukan penelitian lebih lanjut.Kata Kunci :Hipertensi,Umur, Riwayat Keluarga dan Kebiasaan Merokok.ABSTRACTNon-communicable diseases are major cause of deaths globally. One of those diseases that become a serious problem nowadays is hypertension. Hypertension is a disease of concern in many countries in the world, whether developed countries or developing countries,in the average prevalence of hypertension in North Sulawesi is quite highexceeding the national prevalence. The purpose of this research was to analyze the risk factors of hypertension in the fishing village of Mala and mala Eastern of subdistric melonguane of Talaud Islands Regency. The research method that has been used analytic observational research with cross sectional study. The population in this study was 170 people, the sample taken in this study as many as 100 people with Sampling techniques using sample random sampling. Measuring instrumens, used ware tensimeter and questionnaire. As for the Chi Square test was used as a statistical tests and in this study data analysis used bivariate analysis.The results of this study showed that has relationship between age with incidence of hypertension on the fisherman (p = 0.005), there is a relationship between a family history with hypertension (p = 0.000) and there is no relationship between the smoking habit with incident hypertension in Fisherman (p = 0,539). From this research it can be concluded that the variables of age and family history are associated with the incidence of hypertension while for thevariable habit of smoking is not related to the incidence of hypertension. As for the suggestion that can be filed by doing a cross-sector cooperation between PKK cadres, cadres of health in the village of Mala and Mala East and the organization that is in the village of Mala and Mala East in the early detection efforts, which is by means of measurement of blood pressure on a regular basis and doing outreach about hypertension and in needed further research..Keywords: hypertension, Age, Family History and smoking habits

Assisted housing for the elderly in mandaluyong city: a social enterprise

This interdisciplinary, mixed-method research using the explanatory sequential design studied one sector of the elderly community's living condition in Mandaluyong City to determine the viability of putting up a privately-funded residential and care facility for them. Sixty-nine senior citizens were surveyed by a group of 4th year business students in 2013 for their feasibility study about an economic housing for the elderly, using a government-published questionnaire. Raw data from these instruments were, with the consent of the said students, used for this study. Analysis showed that the profile of the elderly under study matched with the local government statistics. The qualitative variables reflected the elderly’s feeling of neglect and loneliness and the desire to live in a more quiet and modest but decent living facility away from their noisy and chaotic home environment. Numerous laws, bills, plans, and other government initiatives that provide assistance for the welfare of the elderly were identified and determined to be useful in providing ideas to solve the problem at hand. It was therefore concluded that a privately-funded facility earlier proposed under an undergraduate feasibility study was economically viable after review in the areas of marketing, technical and financial aspects and that government interference was proposed to be solicited

HUBUNGAN ANTARA TIPE KEPRIBADIAN DENGAN KEJADIAN HIPERTENSI PADA PASIEN RAWAT JALAN DI PUSKESMAS KAKASKASEN DI KOTA TOMOHON

Latar Belakang: Hipertensi merupakan salah satu penyakit yang paling banyak terjadi di Kota Tomohon. Tipe Kepribadian dibagi menjadi kepribadian tipe A dan tipe B. Ciri Kepribadian tipe A yaitu kompetetif, sangat ingin bersaing, agresif, cepat atau tangkas. Sedangkan kepribadian tipe B yaitu rileks, tidak menyukai persaingan dan jarang marah serta menggunakan banyak waktu untuk kegiatan-kegiatan yang disenangi. Metode Penelitian: Penelitian ini menggunakan survey analitik dengan desain potong lintang yang dilaksanakan pada bulan Oktober 2018. Populasi dalam penelitian ini adalah pasien rawat jalan yang datang berobat di Puskesmas Kakaskasen Kota Tomohon, Sampel diambil secara Consecutive Sampling dengan jumlah 220 responden. Pengumpulan data dalam penelitian ini menggunakan kuesioner dari Nababan (2008) dan alat pengukur tekanan darah tensi meter. Uji statistik yang digunakan adalah uji chi square untuk menganalisis hubungan antar variabel dengan α = 0,05. Hasil: Uji statistik yang dilakukan memperoleh hasil bahwa terdapat hubungan antara tipe kepribadian dengan hipertensi (p=0,000). Kesimpulan: Terdapat hubungan antara tipe kepribadian dengan kejadian hipertensi pada pasien rawat jalan di Puskesmas Kakaskasen Kota Tomohon.  Kata Kunci: Hipertensi, Tipe Kepribadian  ABSTRACT Background: Hypertension is one of the most common diseases in Tomohon City.Personality types are divided into personality type A and type B. The typical characteristics of type A personality include being kompetetif, really want to compete, aggressive, fast or agile.While the type B personality is relaxed, not like competition and rarely angry and using a lot of time to the activities favored. Method: This research used analytical survey method with cross-sectional study, which was conducted in Oktober 2018. The population in this research was outpatients who came to the Kakaskasen Health Center Tomohon city. Samples were obtained by the consecutive sampling with 220 respondents. Data collection in this research used the questionnaire from Nababan (2008) and blood pressure gauge, tensimeter. The statistical test used was Chi square test to analyze the relationship between the variables with α = 0,05. Results: The statistical tests conducted indicated that there was a relationship between personality types with hypertension (P=0,000). Conclusion: There was a relationship between personality type and hypertension of the outpatient in Kakaskasen Health Center, Tomohon City.  Keywords: Hypertension, Personality Type, Chi Square, Tomohon Cit

Phylogenetic Approach to the Study of Triatomines (Triatominae, Heteroptera) = Abordagem filogenética em Triatomíneos (Triatominae, Heteroptera)

Abstracts Triatomines are insects belonging to the Hemiptera order, Heteroptera suborder, Reduviidae family and Triatominae subfamily. All members of this subfamily are hematophagous. Triatomines evolved from Reduviidae predators and they are probably polyphyletic in origin. The combination of anatomical, physiological and ethological factors observed in this group, as well as the plesiomorphic and apomorphic characters that differentiate the five tribes and fourteen triatomine genera reinforce the polyphiletic hypotesis. However if we consider the five groups of triatomines, the Rhodniini, Cavernicolini, Bolboderini, Linshcosteini and Alberproseniini tribes constitute monophyletic groups, while the Triatomini tribe is considered polyphyletic. The New World is the center of triatomine diversity and seems to be the point of group origin. Of approximately 137 triatomine species, 105 are only found in the Americas. It is now considered that triatomines represent a polyphyletic group defined according to their convergent apomorphic hematophagous characters, which have appeared several times in Reduviidae. This study revises the phylogeny of these vectors of Chagas\u27 disease, covering such topics as the origin of hematophagy in triatomines and ancestral proposal for the group. Os triatomíneos são insetos pertencentes à ordem Hemiptera, subordem Heteroptera, família Reduviidae e subfamília Triatominae. Todos os membros desta subfamília são hematófagos. Os triatomíneos surgiram a partir de reduvídeos predadores e provavelmente têm origem polifilética. A combinação dos fatores anatômicos, fisiológicos e etológicos presentes no grupo, bem como os caracteres plésio e apomórficos que diferenciam as cinco tribos e os quatorze gêneros de triatomíneos reforçam a hipótese polifilética. As tribos Rhodniini, Cavernicolini, Bolboderini, Linshcosteini e Alberproseniini constituem grupos monofiléticos, per si, enquanto a tribo Triatomini é considerada polifilética. O Novo Mundo é claramente o centro de diversidade dos triatomíneos e possivelmente é a região de sua origem. Entre as aproximadamente 129 espécies desses insetos, 105 ocorrem somente nas Américas. Atualmente, os triatomíneos são considerados um grupo polifilético, definido com base em seus caracteres apomórficos convergentes relacionados à hematofagia. Acredita-se que este hábito alimentar tenha surgido várias vezes nos Reduviidae durante sua evolução. O presente trabalho faz uma revisão sobre a filogenia destes vetores da Doença de Chagas, aborda tópicos como a origem da hematofagia nos triatomíneos e ancestralidade proposta para o grupo