Sleeping on a problem: the impact of sleep disturbance on intensive care patients - a clinical review

Sleep disturbance is commonly encountered amongst intensive care patients and has significant psychophysiological effects, which protract recovery and increases mortality. Bio-physiological monitoring of intensive care patients reveal alterations in sleep architecture, with reduced sleep quality and continuity. The etiological causes of sleep disturbance are considered to be multifactorial, although environmental stressors namely, noise, light and clinical care interactions have been frequently cited in both subjective and objective studies. As a result, interventions are targeted towards modifiable factors to ameliorate their impact. This paper reviews normal sleep physiology and the impact that sleep disturbance has on patient psychophysiological recovery, and the contribution that the clinical environment has on intensive care patients' sleep

CLIPS: An expert system tool for delivery and training

The C Language Integrated Production System (CLIPS) is a forward chaining rule-based language. The requirements necessary for an expert system tool which is used for development, delivery, and training are examined. Because of its high portability, low cost, and ease of integration with external systems, CLIPS has great potential as an expert system tool for delivery and training. In addition, its representation flexibility, debugging aids, and performance, along with its other strengths, make it a viable alternative for expert system development

The Effect of Aerobic and Resistance Training on Glycemic Control in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: Meta-Analytic Study

Diabetes is a widely-spread disease among the whole population and can cause other complications in many organs if not treated correctly. Medications along with exercise and an appropriate diet are a key point in the management of type 2 diabetes. PURPOSE: to analyze the effects of aerobic, resistance, and combined training carefully on glycemic control in type 2 diabetes mellitus. METHODS: A meta-analysis review was conducted to investigate differences in glucose and HbA1c levels with aerobic and resistance training in type 2 diabetes patients. Data over training, HbA1c and daily glucose levels was collected from different studies for the investigation. The data collected was carefully analyzed to see whether aerobic or resistance training was the best option of training to have a better outcome on the control of glucose levels. All studies included adults from the ages 18-65 and of both genders. 905 inactive subjects were used for the study. The subjects met three times per week and exercised for an average of 49 minutes of moderate to high intensity training. RESULTS: All three types of training decreased the HbA1c levels but had a higher decrease in the combined training group. The Effect Size (ES) for all three groups were: aerobic (-0.47), resistance (-0.38), and combined (-0.77) which was a large ES. BMI (kg/m2), MVO2 (ml/min/kg), and FFA (%) had a Small-Moderate ES with combined training, while MVO2 showed a Large ES in the aerobic group. CONCLUSION: Even though the results showed positive effects in all three groups, the present study suggest type 2 diabetes patients to engage in combined training to see better results in their HbA1c levels

The Physiological Interaction of Sleep Deprivation and Zoledronate on Distal Femur Trabecular Thickness of Ovariectomized Rats

Osteoporosis, a disease resulting in an increased risk of fracture due to compromised bone, affects 1 in 3 postmenopausal women. Discontinuities in the microarchitecture of bone, such as trabeculae, are seen in postmenopausal osteoporosis. This study aimed to evaluate how sleep deprivation affects the distal femur trabecular thickness of estrogen-deficient rats treated with Zoledronate. 29 ovariectomized Wistar female rats were separated into 4 groups. The control group (C) was housed in standard housing with a 12-hour light/dark cycle and was given an intravenous injection of 0.45 mL of 0.9% saline. The Zoledronate group (Z) were also housed in standard conditions but given an intravenous injection of 50 ug/kg of 10% Zoledronate. The Sleep Deprived group (SD) were given an intravenous saline injection, but were housed in chambers that did not permit sleep for 18 hours, then moved to standard chambers that permitted 6 hours of sleep daily. The Sleep-Deprived Zoledronate group (SDZ) was housed the same as the SD group, but was given an intravenous injection of Zoledronate. After 5 weeks, tibiae and femora were harvested and stored at -80°C until high-resolution micro-CT was done. SDZ had improved distal femur trabecular thickness compared to C (75.5 microns and 67 microns, respectively; p=0.0001). Multi-factor ANOVA revealed a significant interaction between Zoledronate and sleep deprivation (p=0.0078). More research is needed to determine how this interaction impacts executive women who often suffer from sleep deprivation and demanding professions

Physiological Adaptations to Moderate Intensity Training in an Elite Cyclist

Efforts to improve cycling performance have to be multifactorial and respect both the intensity and duration of the sport. Elite cyclists utilize moderate intensity, long duration efforts in training to improve physiological parameters associated with performance. PURPOSE: to compare two 6-week Moderate Intensity Training (MIT), pyramidal intensity distribution (PYR) protocols and their effects on key performance variables in an elite level cyclist. METHODS: Prior to testing, this study obtained Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval and the subject signed an IRB approved informed consent. A cyclist underwent two 6-week MIT protocols following the Training Intensity Duration (TID) seen in professional cyclists’ pre competition phase. Physiological testing was conducted pre and post 6-week intervention to record maximal oxygen consumption (VO2max), maximal fat oxidation (FatMax), peak blood lactate (BLapeak) using the Australian Institute for Sport (AIS) protocol for a graded exercise test (GXT) on a cycle ergometer. A submaximal GXT was administered every two weeks to determine power output (W) at 2.0 mmol BLa as a marker for aerobic power. The first 6-wk intervention consisted of increasing duration MIT at 80-85% maximal heart rate (b*min.-1) (HRmax) from 2h to 5h/wk. The second 6-wk intervention utilized specific cadence ranges during MIT at lower volumes of 1h to 3h/wk. RESULTS: VO2max increased from 80 to 83.5 mL*kg-1*min-1 (4.4%); FatMax increased from 400W to 425W (6.25%); and BLApeak increased from 12.0 to 14.2 mmol (18.3%). Power output at 2.0 mmol BLa did not change over the 12-week intervention. CONCLUSION: MIT can be effectively used in the pre competition phase of an elite cyclist’s training to increase VO2max and FatMax power output, both important performance parameters for the long duration events for which these athletes participate

Effects of Flexibility in Coarse-Grained Models for Bovine Serum Albumin and Immunoglobulin G

We construct a coarse-grained, structure-based, low-resolution, 6-bead flexible model of bovine serum albumin (BSA, PDB: 4F5S), which is a popular example of a globular protein in biophysical research. The model is obtained via direct Boltzmann inversion using all-atom simulations of a single molecule, and its particular form is selected from a large pool of 6-bead coarse-grained models using two suitable metrics that quantify the agreement in the distribution of collective coordinates between all-atom and coarse-grained Brownian dynamics simulations of solutions in the dilute limit. For immunoglobulin G (IgG), a similar structure-based 12-bead model has been introduced in the literature [Chaudhri et al., J. Phys. Chem. B 116, 8045 (2012)] and is employed here to compare findings for the compact BSA molecule and the more anisotropic IgG molecule. We define several modified coarse-grained models of BSA and IgG, which differ in their internal constraints and thus account for a variation of flexibility. We study denser solutions of the coarse-grained models with purely repulsive molecules (achievable by suitable salt conditions) and address the effect of packing and flexibility on dynamic and static behavior. Translational and rotational self-diffusivity is enhanced for more elastic models. Finally, we discuss a number of effective sphere sizes for the BSA molecule, which can be defined from its static and dynamic properties. Here, it is found that the effective sphere diameters lie between 4.9 and 6.1 nm, corresponding to a relative spread of about ±10% around a mean of 5.5 nm

Matrix Completion With Variational Graph Autoencoders: Application in Hyperlocal Air Quality Inference

Inferring air quality from a limited number of observations is an essential task for monitoring and controlling air pollution. Existing inference methods typically use low spatial resolution data collected by fixed monitoring stations and infer the concentration of air pollutants using additional types of data, e.g., meteorological and traffic information. In this work, we focus on street-level air quality inference by utilizing data collected by mobile stations. We formulate air quality inference in this setting as a graph-based matrix completion problem and propose a novel variational model based on graph convolutional autoencoders. Our model captures effectively the spatio-temporal correlation of the measurements and does not depend on the availability of additional information apart from the street-network topology. Experiments on a real air quality dataset, collected with mobile stations, shows that the proposed model outperforms state-of-the-art approaches

Symmetry energy and the Pauli exclusion principle

In this article we present a classical potential that respects the Pauli exclusion principle and can be used to describe nucleon-nucleon interactions at intermediate energies. The potential depends on the relative momentum of the colliding nucleons and reduces interactions at low momentum transfer mimicking the Pauli exclusion principle. We use the potential with Metropolis Monte Carlo methods and study the formation of finite nuclei and infinite systems. We find good agreement in terms of the binding energies, radii, and internal nucleon distribution of finite nuclei, and the binding energy in nuclear matter and neutron star matter, as well as the formation of nuclear pastas, and the symmetry energy of neutron star matter.Fil: Dorso, Claudio Oscar. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Frank, Guillermo Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional. Facultad Regional Buenos Aires. Unidad de Investigación y Desarrollo de las Ingenierías; ArgentinaFil: Lopez, Jorge A.. University of Texas at El Paso; Estados Unido

Analysis of a G-Protein Coupled Receptor, CB2

The CB2 G-protein coupled receptors (GPCR) is found in the brainstem & hippocampus and is devoid of psychotropic effects but is less studied than the CB1 receptor. CB2 is inducible in CNS microglia following inflammation or injury, indicating a role in pain response. Here we sought to analyze CB2 using ChimeraX structures and overcome GPCR protein insolubility in extraction. The pET28a-CNR2, plasmid created and transformed into E.coli pLysS, was confirmed by restriction digest. Purification of CB2 micelles was achieved by affinity chromatography with detergent (43 kD). We aim to utilize nanodiscs to stabilize CB2, allowing studies of the molecular underpinnings informing treatment options