The feasibility of posture and movement detection by accelerometry

The discrimination of postures and movements using a minimal set of uniaxial accelerometers was investigated. Postures and movements were distinguished on the bitsis of the high-pm filtered, rectified and low pass filtered signal of one accelerometer. Postures were discriminated by combining the constant valued signals of the accelerometers, mounted on different segments of the body. One sensor mounted ndiully on the trunc and one mounted radially or tangentially on the upper leg appeared to be suficient to discriminate shnding, sitting and lying. Methods are proposed for the discrimination of different cyclical movements

Subject-controlled, on demand, dorsal genital nerve stimulation to treat urgency urinary incontinence:a pilot

Contains fulltext : 171558.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the effect of subject-controlled, on-demand, dorsal genital nerve (DGN) stimulation on non-neurogenic urgency urinary incontinence (UUI) in a domestic setting. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Non-neurogenic patients >18 years with overactive bladder symptoms and UUI were included. Exclusion criteria were mainly stress urinary incontinence. Patients underwent 1 week of subject-controlled, on-demand, DGN stimulation, delivered by a percutaneously placed electrode near the DGN connected to an external stimulator (pulse-rate 20 Hz, pulse-width 300 mus). Patients activated the stimulator when feeling the urge to void and stimulated for 30 s. The amplitude was set at the highest tolerable level. A bladder diary including a severity score of the UUI episodes/void (scores: 0 = none, 1 = drops, 2 = dashes, 3 = soaks) and a padtest was kept 3 days prior to, during, and 3 days after the test period. The subjective improvement was also scored. RESULTS: Seven patients (4 males/3 females) were enrolled, the mean age was 55 years (range 23-73). Six completed the test week. In the remaining patient the electrode migrated and was removed. 5/6 finalized the complete bladder diary, 1/6 recorded only the heavy incontinence episodes (score = 3). 4/6 completed the padtest. In all patients who finalized the bladder diary the number of UUI episodes decreased, in 3/5 with >/=60%. The heavy incontinence episodes (score = 3) were resolved in 2/6 patients, and improved >/=80% in the other 4. The severity score of the UUI episodes/void was improved with >/= 60% in 3/5 patients. The mean subjective improvement was 73%. CONCLUSION: This feasibility study indicates that subject-controlled, on-demand DGN stimulation using a percutaneously placed electrode is possible over a longer time period, in a home setting, with a positive effect on non-neurogenic overactive bladder symptoms with UUI. Although the placement is an easy procedure, it is difficult to fixate the electrode to keep it in the correct position. Improvements in hardware, like a better fixated electrode and an easy to control stimulator, are necessary to make SODGNS a treatment possibility in the future

An Improved Upper Bound for the Ring Loading Problem

The Ring Loading Problem emerged in the 1990s to model an important special case of telecommunication networks (SONET rings) which gained attention from practitioners and theorists alike. Given an undirected cycle on $n$ nodes together with non-negative demands between any pair of nodes, the Ring Loading Problem asks for an unsplittable routing of the demands such that the maximum cumulated demand on any edge is minimized. Let $L$ be the value of such a solution. In the relaxed version of the problem, each demand can be split into two parts where the first part is routed clockwise while the second part is routed counter-clockwise. Denote with $L^*$ the maximum load of a minimum split routing solution. In a landmark paper, Schrijver, Seymour and Winkler [SSW98] showed that $L \leq L^* + 1.5D$, where $D$ is the maximum demand value. They also found (implicitly) an instance of the Ring Loading Problem with $L = L^* + 1.01D$. Recently, Skutella [Sku16] improved these bounds by showing that $L \leq L^* + \frac{19}{14}D$, and there exists an instance with $L = L^* + 1.1D$. We contribute to this line of research by showing that $L \leq L^* + 1.3D$. We also take a first step towards lower and upper bounds for small instances

Do conceptualisations of health differ across social strata? A concept mapping study among lay people.

The legitimacy of policies that aim at tackling socioeconomic inequalities in health can be challenged if they do not reflect the conceptualisations of health that are valued in all strata. Therefore, this study analyses how different socioeconomic groups formulate their own answers regarding: what does health mean to you

Human factor guidelines for the design of safe in-car traffic information services

The first version of the “Human factor guidelines for the design of safe in-car traffic information services” was compiled in 2014. In 2016 the guidelines were updated by Connecting Mobility/ DITCM, and the present version is a further update of that version. New systems have been introduced into the marked, and the role of apps on smartphones has increased. This report was updated to include recent developments such as gesture control. The guidelines are aimed at in-car traffic information services

Spatial structure increases the waiting time for cancer

Cancer results from a sequence of genetic and epigenetic changes which lead to a variety of abnormal phenotypes including increased proliferation and survival of somatic cells, and thus, to a selective advantage of pre-cancerous cells. The notion of cancer progression as an evolutionary process has been experiencing increasing interest in recent years. Many efforts have been made to better understand and predict the progression to cancer using mathematical models; these mostly consider the evolution of a well-mixed cell population, even though pre-cancerous cells often evolve in highly structured epithelial tissues. We propose a novel model of cancer progression that considers a spatially structured cell population where clones expand via adaptive waves. This model is used to asses two different paradigms of asexual evolution that have been suggested to delineate the process of cancer progression. The standard scenario of periodic selection assumes that driver mutations are accumulated strictly sequentially over time. However, when the mutation supply is sufficiently high, clones may arise simultaneously on distinct genetic backgrounds, and clonal adaptation waves interfere with each other. We find that in the presence of clonal interference, spatial structure increases the waiting time for cancer, leads to a patchwork structure of non-uniformly sized clones, decreases the survival probability of virtually neutral (passenger) mutations, and that genetic distance begins to increase over a characteristic length scale, determined here. These characteristic features of clonal interference may help to predict the onset of cancers with pronounced spatial structure and to interpret spatially-sampled genetic data obtained from biopsies. Our estimates suggest that clonal interference likely occurs in the progressing colon cancer, and possibly other cancers where spatial structure matters.Comment: 21 page

Sodium and potassium changes during decongestion with acetazolamide:A pre-specified analysis from the ADVOR trial

AIMS: Acetazolamide, an inhibitor of proximal tubular sodium reabsorption, leads to more effective decongestion in acute heart failure (AHF). It is unknown whether acetazolamide alters serum sodium and potassium levels on top of loop diuretics and if baseline values modify the treatment effect of acetazolamide.METHODS AND RESULTS: This is a pre-specified sub-analysis of the ADVOR trial that randomized 519 patients with AHF and volume overload in a 1:1 ratio to intravenous acetazolamide or matching placebo on top of standardized intravenous loop diuretics. Mean potassium and sodium levels at randomization were 4.2 ± 0.6 and 139 ± 4 mmol/L in the acetazolamide arm versus 4.2 ± 0.6 and 140 ± 4 mmol/L in the placebo arm. Hypokalaemia (&lt;3.5 mmol/L) on admission was present in 44 (9%) patients and hyponatraemia (≤135 mmol/L) in 82 (16%) patients. After 3 days of treatment, 44 (17%) patients in the acetazolamide arm and 35 (14%) patients in the placebo arm developed hyponatraemia (p = 0.255). Patients randomized to acetazolamide demonstrated a slight decrease in mean potassium levels during decongestion, which was non-significant over time (p = 0.053) and had no significant impact on hypokalaemia incidence (p = 0.061). Severe hypokalaemia (&lt;3.0 mmol/L) occurred in only 7 (1%) patients, similarly distributed between the two treatment arms (p = 0.676). Randomization towards acetazolamide improved decongestive response irrespective of baseline serum sodium and potassium levels.CONCLUSIONS: Acetazolamide on top of standardized loop diuretic therapy does not lead to clinically important hypokalaemia or hyponatraemia and improves decongestion over the entire range of baseline serum potassium and sodium levels.</p

Spasmodic dysphonia, perceptual and acoustic analysis: presenting new diagnostic tools

In this article, we investigate whether (1) the IINFVo (Impression, Intelligibility, Noise, Fluency and Voicing) perceptual rating scale and (2) the AMPEX (Auditory Model Based Pitch Extractor) acoustical analysis are suitable for evaluating adductor spasmodic dysphonia (AdSD). Voice recordings of 12 patients were analysed. The inter-rater and intra-rater consistency showed highly significant correlations for the IINFVo rating scale, with the exception of the parameter Noise. AMPEX reliably analyses vowels (correlation between PUVF (percentage of frames with unreliable F0/voicing 0.748), running speech (correlation between PVF (percentage of voiced frames)/voicing 0.699) and syllables. Correlations between IINFVo and AMPEX range from 0.608 to 0.818, except for noise. This study indicates that IINFVo and AMPEX could be robust and complementary assessment tools for the evaluation of AdSD. Both the tools provide us with the valuable information about voice quality, stability of F0 (fundamental frequency) and specific dimensions controlling the transitions between voiced and unvoiced segments