Why do team sports athletes drink fluid in excess when exercising in cool conditions?

This study assessed the potential physiological and perceptual drivers of fluid intake (FI) and thirst sensation (TS) during intermittent exercise. 10 male rugby players (17 ± 1 years, stature: 179.1 ± 4.2 cm, body mass (BM): 81.9 ± 8.1 kg) participated in 6x6 min small-sided games, interspersed with 2 min rest, where FI was ad libitum during rest periods. Pre and post measurements of BM, subjective ratings (thirst, thermal comfort, thermal sensation, mouth dryness), plasma osmolality (POsm), serum sodium concentration (S[Na+]), haematocrit and haemoglobin (to calculate plasma volume change; PV) were taken. FI was measured during rest periods. BM change was -0.17 ± 0.59% and FI was 0.88 ± 0.38L. Pre to post POsm decreased (-3.1 ± 2.3 mOsm·kg−1; p = 0.002) and S[Na+] remained similar (-0.3 ± 0.7mmol·L-1, p = 0.193). ∆PV was 5.84 ± 3.65%. FI displayed a relationship with pre POsm (r = -0.640, p = 0.046), pre thermal comfort (r = 0.651; p = -0.041), ∆S[Na+] (r = 0.816, p = 0.004), and ∆PV (r = 0.740; p = 0.014). ∆TS displayed a relationship with pre mouth dryness (r = 0.861, p = 0.006) and ∆mouth dryness (r = 0.878, p = 0.004). Yet a weak positive relationship between ∆TS and FI was observed (r = 0.085, p = 0.841). These data observed in an ambient temperature of 13.6 ± 0.9̊C, suggest team sport athletes drink in excess of fluid homeostasis requirements and TS in cool conditions, however this was not influence by thermal discomfort

Understanding and optimising an identification/brief advice (IBA) service about alcohol in the community pharmacy setting

This is the final report of an evaluation into the identification/brief advice (IBA) service about alcohol in community pharmacy settings in the North West of England. Since 2007, almost 100 pharmacies in the North West have - at some point - been commissioned to provide an identification and brief advice (IBA) service for alcohol. This evaluation sought to understand how the service had been adapted for and implemented in the community pharmacy setting, and how its potential might be maximised. Its aims were: 1. To characterise, consolidate and optimise both the constant and variable elements of the pharmacy alcohol identification/brief advice (IBA) service in NHS Northwest, and 2. To inform planning for current and future pharmacy based services promoting safe consumption of alcohol. The evaluation was split into three main workstreams, supported by a preliminary scoping phase, and combined quantitative and qualitative methods: • Descriptive and comparative statistical analysis of pharmacy alcohol IBA data; • In-pharmacy work, including observation of staff engagement with customers, recording consultations between staff and customers, follow-up telephone interviews with customers, and group feedback interviews with pharmacy staff; • Stakeholder engagement through self-completion surveys, semi-structured interviews and a workshop. This report gives the background to the project, and details the methods, results and implications

Alemtuzumab pre-conditioning with tacrolimus monotherapy in pediatric renal transplantation

We employed antibody pre-conditioning with alemtuzumab and posttransplant immunosuppression with low-dose tacrolimus monotherapy in 26 consecutive pediatric kidney transplant recipients between January 2004 and December 2005. Mean recipient age was 10.7 ± 5.8 years, 7.7% were undergoing retransplantation, and 3.8% were sensitized, with a PRA >20%. Mean donor age was 32.8 ± 9.2 years. Living donors were utilized in 65% of the transplants. Mean cold ischemia time was 27.6 ± 6.4 h. The mean number of HLA mismatches was 3.3 ± 1.3. Mean follow-up was 25 ± 8 months. One and 2 year patient survival was 100% and 96%. One and 2 year graft survival was 96% and 88%. Mean serum creatinine was 1.1 ± 0.6 mg/dL, and calculated creatinine clearance was 82.3 ± 29.4 mL/min/1.73 m 2. The incidence of pre-weaning acute rejection was 11.5%; the incidence of delayed graft function was 7.7%. Eighteen (69%) of the children were tapered to spaced tacrolimus monotherapy, 10.5 ± 2.2 months after transplantation. The incidence of CMV, PTLD and BK virus was 0%; the incidence of posttransplant diabetes was 7.7%. Although more follow-up is clearly needed, antibody pre-conditioning with alemtuzumab and tacrolimus monotherapy may be a safe and effective regimen in pediatric renal transplantation. © 2007 The Authors

Novel Characteristics of Valveless Pumping

This study investigates the occurrence of valveless pumping in a fluidfilled system consisting of two open tanks connected by an elastic tube. We show that directional flow can be achieved by introducing a periodic pinching applied at an asymmetrical location along the tube, and that the flow direction depends on the pumping frequency. We propose a relation between wave propagation velocity, tube length, and resonance frequencies associated with shifts in the pumping direction using numerical simulations. The eigenfrequencies of the system are estimated from the linearized system, and we show that these eigenfrequencies constitute the resonance frequencies and the horizontal slope frequencies of the system; 'horizontal slope frequency' being a new concept. A simple model is suggested, explaining the effect of the gravity driven part of the oscillation observed in response to the tank and tube diameter changes. Results are partly compared with experimental findings.Art. no. 22450

On the accuracy of language trees

Historical linguistics aims at inferring the most likely language phylogenetic tree starting from information concerning the evolutionary relatedness of languages. The available information are typically lists of homologous (lexical, phonological, syntactic) features or characters for many different languages. From this perspective the reconstruction of language trees is an example of inverse problems: starting from present, incomplete and often noisy, information, one aims at inferring the most likely past evolutionary history. A fundamental issue in inverse problems is the evaluation of the inference made. A standard way of dealing with this question is to generate data with artificial models in order to have full access to the evolutionary process one is going to infer. This procedure presents an intrinsic limitation: when dealing with real data sets, one typically does not know which model of evolution is the most suitable for them. A possible way out is to compare algorithmic inference with expert classifications. This is the point of view we take here by conducting a thorough survey of the accuracy of reconstruction methods as compared with the Ethnologue expert classifications. We focus in particular on state-of-the-art distance-based methods for phylogeny reconstruction using worldwide linguistic databases. In order to assess the accuracy of the inferred trees we introduce and characterize two generalizations of standard definitions of distances between trees. Based on these scores we quantify the relative performances of the distance-based algorithms considered. Further we quantify how the completeness and the coverage of the available databases affect the accuracy of the reconstruction. Finally we draw some conclusions about where the accuracy of the reconstructions in historical linguistics stands and about the leading directions to improve it.Comment: 36 pages, 14 figure

Equitable modelling of brain imaging by counterfactual augmentation with morphologically constrained 3D deep generative models

We describe CounterSynth, a conditional generative model of diffeomorphic deformations that induce label-driven, biologically plausible changes in volumetric brain images. The model is intended to synthesise counterfactual training data augmentations for downstream discriminative modelling tasks where fidelity is limited by data imbalance, distributional instability, confounding, or underspecification, and exhibits inequitable performance across distinct subpopulations. Focusing on demographic attributes, we evaluate the quality of synthesised counterfactuals with voxel-based morphometry, classification and regression of the conditioning attributes, and the Fréchet inception distance. Examining downstream discriminative performance in the context of engineered demographic imbalance and confounding, we use UK Biobank and OASIS magnetic resonance imaging data to benchmark CounterSynth augmentation against current solutions to these problems. We achieve state-of-the-art improvements, both in overall fidelity and equity. The source code for CounterSynth is available at https://github.com/guilherme-pombo/CounterSynth

Factors systematically associated with errors in subjective estimates of software development effort: the stability of expert judgment

Estimation of project development effort is most often performed by expert judgment rather than by using an empirically derived model (although such may be used by the expert to assist their decision). One question that can be asked about these estimates is how stable are they with respect to characteristics of the development process and product? This stability can be assessed in relation to the degree to which the project has advanced over time, the type of module for which the estimate is being made, and the characteristics of that module. In this paper we examine a set of expert-derived estimates for the effort required to develop a collection of modules from a large health-care system. Statistical tests are used to identify relationships between the type (screen or report) and characteristics of modules and the likelihood of the associated development effort being underestimated, approximately correct, or over-estimated. Distinct relationships are found that suggest that the estimation process being examined was not unbiased to such characteristics. This is a potentially useful finding in that it provides an opportunity for estimators to improve their prediction performanc