Predicting Postsurgery Nasal Physiology with Computational Modeling: Current Challenges and Limitations

High failure rates for surgical treatment of nasal airway obstruction (NAO) indicate that better diagnostic tools are needed to improve surgical planning. This study evaluates whether computer models based on a surgeon’s edits of pre-surgery scans can accurately predict results from computer models based on post-operative scans of the same patient using computational fluid dynamics

Perception of Better Nasal Patency Correlates with Increased Mucosal Cooling after Surgery for Nasal Obstruction

1. Quantify mucosal cooling (i.e., heat loss) spatially in the nasal passages of nasal airway obstruction (NAO) patients before and after surgery using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). 2. Correlate mucosal cooling with patient-reported symptoms, as measured by the Nasal Obstruction Symptom Evaluation (NOSE) and a visual analog scale (VAS) for sensation of nasal airflow

Simulating the Nasal Cycle with Computational Fluid Dynamics

(1) Develop a method to account for the confounding effect of the nasal cycle when comparing pre- and post-surgery objective measures of nasal patency. (2) Illustrate this method by reporting objective measures derived from computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models spanning the full range of mucosal engorgement associated with the nasal cycle in two subjects

Characterization of Postoperative Changes in Nasal Airflow Using a Cadaveric Computational Fluid Dynamics Model: Supporting the Internal Nasal Valve

Collapse or compromise of the internal nasal valve (INV) results in symptomatic nasal obstruction; thus, various surgical maneuvers are designed to support the INV

Rare and low-frequency coding variants alter human adult height

Height is a highly heritable, classic polygenic trait with ~700 common associated variants identified so far through genome - wide association studies . Here , we report 83 height - associated coding variants with lower minor allele frequenc ies ( range of 0.1 - 4.8% ) and effects of up to 2 16 cm /allele ( e.g. in IHH , STC2 , AR and CRISPLD2 ) , >10 times the average effect of common variants . In functional follow - up studies, rare height - increasing alleles of STC2 (+1 - 2 cm/allele) compromise d proteolytic inhibition of PAPP - A and increased cleavage of IGFBP - 4 in vitro , resulting in higher bioavailability of insulin - like growth factors . The se 83 height - associated variants overlap genes mutated in monogenic growth disorders and highlight new biological candidates ( e.g. ADAMTS3, IL11RA, NOX4 ) and pathways ( e.g . proteoglycan/ glycosaminoglycan synthesis ) involved in growth . Our results demonstrate that sufficiently large sample sizes can uncover rare and low - frequency variants of moderate to large effect associated with polygenic human phenotypes , and that these variants implicate relevant genes and pathways

Search for gravitational-lensing signatures in the full third observing run of the LIGO-Virgo network

Gravitational lensing by massive objects along the line of sight to the source causes distortions of gravitational wave-signals; such distortions may reveal information about fundamental physics, cosmology and astrophysics. In this work, we have extended the search for lensing signatures to all binary black hole events from the third observing run of the LIGO--Virgo network. We search for repeated signals from strong lensing by 1) performing targeted searches for subthreshold signals, 2) calculating the degree of overlap amongst the intrinsic parameters and sky location of pairs of signals, 3) comparing the similarities of the spectrograms amongst pairs of signals, and 4) performing dual-signal Bayesian analysis that takes into account selection effects and astrophysical knowledge. We also search for distortions to the gravitational waveform caused by 1) frequency-independent phase shifts in strongly lensed images, and 2) frequency-dependent modulation of the amplitude and phase due to point masses. None of these searches yields significant evidence for lensing. Finally, we use the non-detection of gravitational-wave lensing to constrain the lensing rate based on the latest merger-rate estimates and the fraction of dark matter composed of compact objects