Designing and Testing HealthTracker for Activity Recognition and Energy Expenditure Estimation within the DAPHNE Platform

This paper describes the design and evaluation of a mobile software library, HealthTracker, which aims to produce activity and energy expenditure estimations in real-time from accelerometer and gyroscope data provided by wearable sensors. Using feature extraction together with a classifier trained using machine learning, the system will automatically and periodically send all the produced estimations to a cloud-based platform that will allow later evaluation by both the user and a physician or caretaker. The system is presented within the DAPHNE platform, an ICT ecosystem designed to provide a means for remote health and lifestyle monitoring and guidance between physicians and their patients

Cardy-Verlinde formula of Kehagias-Sfetsos black hole

In this paper, we have shown that the entropy of the Kehagias-Sfetsos black hole in Ho$\check{\textbf{r}}$ava-Lifshitz (HL) gravity can be expressed by the Cardy-Verlinde formula. The later is supposed to be an entropy formula of conformal field theory in any dimension.Comment: 10 pages, accepted by IJT

Cascade Birth of Universes in Multidimensional Spaces

The formation mechanism of universes with distinctly different properties is considered within the framework of pure gravity in a space of D > 4 dimensions. The emergence of the Planck scale and its relationship to the inflaton mass are discussed.Comment: 10 p., minor correction

Nonthermal nature of incipient extremal black holes

We examine particle production from spherical bodies collapsing into extremal Reissner-Nordstr\"om black holes. Kruskal coordinates become ill-defined in the extremal case, but we are able to find a simple generalization of them that is good in this limit. The extension allows us to calculate the late-time worldline of the center of the collapsing star, thus establishing a correspondence with a uniformly accelerated mirror in Minkowski spacetime. The spectrum of created particles associated with such uniform acceleration is nonthermal, indicating that a temperature is not defined. Moreover, the spectrum contains a constant that depends on the history of the collapsing object. At first sight this points to a violation of the no-hair theorems; however, the expectation value of the stress-energy-momentum tensor is zero and its variance vanishes as a power law at late times. Hence, both the no-hair theorems and the cosmic censorship conjecture are preserved. The power-law decay of the variance is in distinction to the exponential fall-off of a nonextremal black hole. Therefore, although the vanishing of the stress tensor's expectation value is consistent with a thermal state at zero temperature, the incipient black hole does not behave as a thermal object at any time and cannot be regarded as the thermodynamic limit of a nonextremal black hole, regardless of the fact that the final product of collapse is quiescent.Comment: 13 pages, 2 epsf figures, RevTeX 3. Minor changes, version published in PR

Environmental responses of jellyfish polyps as drivers of medusa populations off the coast of Namibia

Jellyfish populations in the southeastern Atlantic off the coast of Namibia have increased subsequent to the decline of small pelagic fisheries at the end of the 1960s, although the environment there has also become warmer and the waters off Walvis Bay have become richer in zooplankton in recent years. Laboratory experiments were conducted with the scyphozoan jellyfish Chrysaora fulgida to investigate the effects of food density (0, 30, 70, 100 or 150 Artemia nauplii 200 ml–1), feeding frequency (once daily or once every third day) and water temperature (12, 16 or 20 °C) on the asexual reproduction, growth and development of polyps. The results of a generalised linear mixed-effects model reveal that all variables impacted asexual reproduction, with greater polyp production attained at higher food concentrations, increased feeding frequencies and increased temperatures. The most common mode of asexual reproduction was by lateral budding. These laboratory results suggest that polyps of C. fulgi a may have proliferated off Namibia in recent times, which would contribute to increased numbers of jellyfish there.DHE

Small Horizons

All near horizon geometries of supersymmetric black holes in a N=2, D=5 higher-derivative supergravity theory are classified. Depending on the choice of near-horizon data we find that either there are no regular horizons, or horizons exist and the spatial cross-sections of the event horizons are conformal to a squashed or round S^3, S^1 * S^2, or T^3. If the conformal factor is constant then the solutions are maximally supersymmetric. If the conformal factor is not constant, we find that it satisfies a non-linear vortex equation, and the horizon may admit scalar hair.Comment: 21 pages, latex. Typos corrected and reference adde

Consistent superiority of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors over placebo in reducing depressed mood in patients with major depression.

The recent questioning of the antidepressant effect of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) is partly based on the observation that approximately half of company-sponsored trials have failed to reveal a significant difference between active drug and placebo. Most of these have applied the Hamilton depression rating scale to assess symptom severity, the sum score for its 17 items (HDRS-17-sum) serving as effect parameter. In this study, we examined whether the negative outcomes of many SSRI trials may be partly caused by the use of this frequently questioned measure of response. We undertook patient-level post-hoc analyses of 18 industry-sponsored placebo-controlled trials regarding paroxetine, citalopram, sertraline or fluoxetine, and including in total 6669 adults with major depression, the aim being to assess what the outcome would have been if the single item depressed mood (rated 0-4) had been used as a measure of efficacy. In total, 32 drug-placebo comparisons were reassessed. While 18 out of 32 comparisons (56%) failed to separate active drug from placebo at week 6 with respect to reduction in HDRS-17-sum, only 3 out of 32 comparisons (9%) were negative when depressed mood was used as an effect parameter (

A lower bound for the mass of axisymmetric connected black hole data sets

We present a generalisation of the Brill-type proof of positivity of mass for axisymmetric initial data to initial data sets with black hole boundaries. The argument leads to a strictly positive lower bound for the mass of simply connected, connected axisymmetric black hole data sets in terms of the mass of a reference Schwarzschild metric

The factor structure of the Forms of Self-Criticising/Attacking & Self-Reassuring Scale in thirteen distinct populations

There is considerable evidence that self-criticism plays a major role in the vulnerability to and recovery from psychopathology. Methods to measure this process, and its change over time, are therefore important for research in psychopathology and well-being. This study examined the factor structure of a widely used measure, the Forms of Self-Criticising/Attacking & Self-Reassuring Scale in thirteen nonclinical samples (N = 7510) from twelve different countries: Australia (N = 319), Canada (N = 383), Switzerland (N = 230), Israel (N = 476), Italy (N = 389), Japan (N = 264), the Netherlands (N = 360), Portugal (N = 764), Slovakia (N = 1326), Taiwan (N = 417), the United Kingdom 1 (N = 1570), the United Kingdom 2 (N = 883), and USA (N = 331). This study used more advanced analyses than prior reports: a bifactor item-response theory model, a two-tier item-response theory model, and a non-parametric item-response theory (Mokken) scale analysis. Although the original three-factor solution for the FSCRS (distinguishing between Inadequate-Self, Hated-Self, and Reassured-Self) had an acceptable fit, two-tier models, with two general factors (Self-criticism and Self-reassurance) demonstrated the best fit across all samples. This study provides preliminary evidence suggesting that this two-factor structure can be used in a range of nonclinical contexts across countries and cultures. Inadequate-Self and Hated-Self might not by distinct factors in nonclinical samples. Future work may benefit from distinguishing between self-correction versus shame-based self-criticism.Peer reviewe

Implementing health research through academic and clinical partnerships : a realistic evaluation of the Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC)

Background: The English National Health Service has made a major investment in nine partnerships between higher education institutions and local health services called Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC). They have been funded to increase capacity and capability to produce and implement research through sustained interactions between academics and health services. CLAHRCs provide a natural ‘test bed’ for exploring questions about research implementation within a partnership model of delivery. This protocol describes an externally funded evaluation that focuses on implementation mechanisms and processes within three CLAHRCs. It seeks to uncover what works, for whom, how, and in what circumstances. Design and methods: This study is a longitudinal three-phase, multi-method realistic evaluation, which deliberately aims to explore the boundaries around knowledge use in context. The evaluation funder wishes to see it conducted for the process of learning, not for judging performance. The study is underpinned by a conceptual framework that combines the Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services and Knowledge to Action frameworks to reflect the complexities of implementation. Three participating CLARHCS will provide indepth comparative case studies of research implementation using multiple data collection methods including interviews, observation, documents, and publicly available data to test and refine hypotheses over four rounds of data collection. We will test the wider applicability of emerging findings with a wider community using an interpretative forum. Discussion: The idea that collaboration between academics and services might lead to more applicable health research that is actually used in practice is theoretically and intuitively appealing; however the evidence for it is limited. Our evaluation is designed to capture the processes and impacts of collaborative approaches for implementing research, and therefore should contribute to the evidence base about an increasingly popular (e.g., Mode two, integrated knowledge transfer, interactive research), but poorly understood approach to knowledge translation. Additionally we hope to develop approaches for evaluating implementation processes and impacts particularly with respect to integrated stakeholder involvement