Association of blood pressure and dietary patterns with family history of hypertension in Switzerland

Objective: Genetic factors are known to affect blood pressure. A positive family history of hypertension is associated with higher blood pressure levels than a negative history. To our knowledge, there are no population-based data across linguistic regions on this topic in Switzerland. Furthermore, little is known about the association of family history of hypertension with dietary patterns. We analysed the association of father's, mother's and siblings' history of hypertension with blood pressure and dietary habits in the Swiss Survey on Salt Intake. Methods: We used data from 1448 participants to the Swiss Survey on Salt intake, a population-based study conducted in 2010-2012 in the general population aged 15 years and older. Participants were asked about their family history of hypertension, their behaviour and perception in relation to dietary salt consumption, their lifestyle. Office blood pressure was measured using a validated automatic device. We estimated salt, potassium and protein intakes using 24-hour urinary sodium, potassium and urea excretions. We used multiple logistic and linear regressions to explore factors associated with family history of hypertension and the association of blood pressure with a family history of hypertension. Results: The 785 men and 863 women had mean[SD] age of 48.3[18.6] and 46.6[18.2] years and bmi of 26.1[4.3] and 24.4[4.8] , respectively. Systolic/diastolic blood pressure (mm Hg) was higher in people with a positive as compared to those with a negative family history of hypertension (133.4/79.0 vs 127.4/74.4 in men and 120.8/73.4 vs 117.2/71.2 in women, all P<0.0001). In adjusted analyses, a positive family history of hypertension was associated with 3.8/3.9 mm Hg higher SBP/DBP in men (P<0.001), whereas no association persisted in women. In adjusted analyses, we found no significant differences in urinary sodium, potassium and urea excretions by family history of hypertension. People with a positive family history of hypertension, as compared to those with a negative history, tended to report more frequently to pay attention to their salt consumption (Odds ratio[Standard error] (OR[SE])=1.49[0.29] in women, P=0.04 and 1.45[0.31] in men, P=0.09). We found no association between family history of hypertension and self-reported attempt to limit salt intake. People from the German-speaking region had higher odds of a positive family history of hypertension than people from the French-speaking region (OR[SE]=1.81[0.39] in men, P=0.01 and 1.56[0.30] in women, P=0.02), independently of hypertension status. Conclusions: We found a positive family history of hypertension to be associated with higher blood pressure in this Swiss population-based sample. People with a positive family history of hypertension reported to pay more attention to dietary salt intake, although they did not attempt to limit salt intake. This was confirmed by the fact that we found similar dietary salt intake, estimated from 24-hour urinary sodium excretion, in people with and without family history of hypertension. We found no difference in 24-hour urinary potassium and urea excretions in people with and without family history of hypertension. Finally, we found higher prevalence of positive family history of hypertension in the German speaking region of Switzerland as compared to the French-speaking region, independently of hypertension status. Family history of hypertension does not appear to greatly influence dietary patterns in Switzerland

Low-lying isovector monopole resonances

The mass difference between the even-even isobaric nuclei having the valence nucleons on the same degenerate level is attributed to a Josephson-type interaction between pairs of protons and pairs of neutrons. This interaction can be understood as an isospin symmetry-breaking mean field for a four-particle interaction separable in the two particles-two holes channel. The strength of this mean field is estimated within an o(5) algebraic model, by using the experimental value of the inertial parameter for the collective isorotation induced by the breaking of the isospin symmetry. In superfluid nuclei, the presumed interaction between the proton and neutron condensates leads to coupled oscillations of the BCS gauge angles, which should appear in the excitation spectrum as low-lying isovector monopole resonances.Comment: 16 pages/LaTex + 1 PostScript figure; related to cond-mat/9904242, math-ph/000500

Quantum Coherence Oscillations in Antiferromagnetic Chains

Macroscopic quantum coherence oscillations in mesoscopic antiferromagnets may appear when the anisotropy potential creates a barrier between the antiferromagnetic states with opposite orientations of the Neel vector. This phenomenon is studied for the physical situation of the nuclear spin system of eight Xe atoms arranged on a magnetic surface along a chain. The oscillation period is calculated as a function of the chain constant. The environmental decoherence effects at finite temperature are accounted assuming a dipole coupling between the spin chain and the fluctuating magnetic field of the surface. The numerical calculations indicate that the oscillations are damped by a rate $\sim (N-1)/ \tau$, where $N$ is the number of spins and $\tau$ is the relaxation time of a single spin.Comment: 10 pages, Latex, two postscript figures; submitted to Phys. Rev.

Local list decoding of homomorphisms

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 47-49).We investigate the local-list decodability of codes whose codewords are group homomorphisms. The study of such codes was intiated by Goldreich and Levin with the seminal work on decoding the Hadamard code. Many of the recent abstractions of their initial algorithm focus on Locally Decodable Codes (LDC's) over finite fields. We derive our algorithmic approach from the list decoding of the Reed-Muller code over finite fields proposed by Sudan, Trevisan and Vadhan. Given an abelian group G and a fixed abelian group H, we give combinatorial bounds on the number of homomorphisms that have agreement 6 with an oracle-access function f : G --> H. Our bounds are polynomial in , where the degree of the polynomial depends on H. Also, depends on the distance parameter of the code, namely we consider to be slightly greater than 1-minimum distance. Furthermore, we give a local-list decoding algorithm for the homomorphisms that agree on a 3 fraction of the domain with a function f, the running time of which is poly(1/e, log G).by Elena Grigorescu.S.M

Symmetries in algebraic Property Testing

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 94-100).Modern computational tasks often involve large amounts of data, and efficiency is a very desirable feature of such algorithms. Local algorithms are especially attractive, since they can imply global properties by only inspecting a small window into the data. In Property Testing, a local algorithm should perform the task of distinguishing objects satisfying a given property from objects that require many modifications in order to satisfy the property. A special place in Property Testing is held by algebraic properties: they are some of the first properties to be tested, and have been heavily used in the PCP and LTC literature. We focus on conditions under which algebraic properties are testable, following the general goal of providing a more unified treatment of these properties. In particular, we explore the notion of symmetry in relation to testing, a direction initiated by Kaufman and Sudan. We investigate the interplay between local testing, symmetry and dual structure in linear codes, by showing both positive and negative results. On the negative side, we exhibit a counterexample to a conjecture proposed by Alon, Kaufman, Krivelevich, Litsyn, and Ron aimed at providing general sufficient conditions for testing. We show that a single codeword of small weight in the dual family together with the property of being invariant under a 2-transitive group of permutations do not necessarily imply testing. On the positive side, we exhibit a large class of codes whose duals possess a strong structural property ('the single orbit property'). Namely, they can be specified by a single codeword of small weight and the group of invariances of the code. Hence we show that sparsity and invariance under the affine group of permutations are sufficient conditions for a notion of very structured testing. These findings also reveal a new characterization of the extensively studied BCH codes. As a by-product, we obtain a more explicit description of structured tests for the special family of BCH codes of design distance 5.by Elena Grigorescu.Ph.D

Imaginaire Musical Et Roman. Rêveries Sonores Dans Les Œuvres De Tournier, Le Clézio Et Quignard

Cette thèse a comme objet la mise en discours de l’imaginaire musical défini comme un ensemble de figures et schémas à travers lesquels se fait jour la signifiance associée à la parole venant rendre compte de l’harmonie sonore. Ainsi envisagé, l’imaginaire musical entre en jeu au moment où le sujet donne libre cours à ses rêveries afin de représenter son saisissement au contact avec les sons. Il se présente, autrement, dit, comme un lieu de négociation entre l’« indicibilité » de la musique et la tentation d’exprimer les sensations et les émotions qu’elle suscite. Quant à l’approche, elle est de nature thématico-anthropologique. Le postulat sur lequel elle se fonde consiste à considérer que les représentations nées de la rencontre entre la subjectivité et la musique ne sont jamais purement individuelles, mais qu’elles préservent bon nombre d’archétypes propres à la pensée mythique. Dans le sillage des travaux de G. Bachelard, C. G. Jung, G. Durand et F.-B. Mâche, cette approche de l’imaginaire concerne avant tout les assises transindividuelles de celui-ci. Les romans qui servent de corpus, tout en se rattachant à la littérature contemporaine (Michel Tournier, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio et Pascal Quignard), n’impliquent aucune limitation du propos ni à ces écrivains ni à cette période précise. Au fait, les observations dégagées valent pour la littérature moderne en général, bien que les inflexions particulières de l’imaginaire musical s’y manifestent bien sûr selon les auteurs et les circonstances historiques. C’est au paradigme esthétique et philosophique né avec les germes du romantisme et adopté ultérieurement par différentes tendances de la modernité qu’appartient l’aménagement discursif de l’imaginaire musical. Au point de vue historique, il a fallu que l’imagination prenne le dessus sur le logos pour que le mystère musical ait droit de cité dans le discours

Augmenting graphs to minimize the diameter

We study the problem of augmenting a weighted graph by inserting edges of bounded total cost while minimizing the diameter of the augmented graph. Our main result is an FPT 4-approximation algorithm for the problem.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figure

Recognition of Facial Expressions by Cortical Multi-scale Line and Edge Coding

Face-to-face communications between humans involve emotions, which often are unconsciously conveyed by facial expressions and body gestures. Intelligent human-machine interfaces, for example in cognitive robotics, need to recognize emotions. This paper addresses facial expressions and their neural correlates on the basis of a model of the visual cortex: the multi-scale line and edge coding. The recognition model links the cortical representation with Paul Ekman's Action Units which are related to the different facial muscles. The model applies a top-down categorization with trends and magnitudes of displacements of the mouth and eyebrows based on expected displacements relative to a neutral expression. The happy vs. not-happy categorization yielded a. correct recognition rate of 91%, whereas final recognition of the six expressions happy, anger, disgust, fear, sadness and surprise resulted in a. rate of 78%

Nanoantennas for visible and infrared radiation

Nanoantennas for visible and infrared radiation can strongly enhance the interaction of light with nanoscale matter by their ability to efficiently link propagating and spatially localized optical fields. This ability unlocks an enormous potential for applications ranging from nanoscale optical microscopy and spectroscopy over solar energy conversion, integrated optical nanocircuitry, opto-electronics and density-ofstates engineering to ultra-sensing as well as enhancement of optical nonlinearities. Here we review the current understanding of optical antennas based on the background of both well-developed radiowave antenna engineering and the emerging field of plasmonics. In particular, we address the plasmonic behavior that emerges due to the very high optical frequencies involved and the limitations in the choice of antenna materials and geometrical parameters imposed by nanofabrication. Finally, we give a brief account of the current status of the field and the major established and emerging lines of investigation in this vivid area of research.Comment: Review article with 76 pages, 21 figure