The longitudinal interplay between negative and positive symptom trajectories in patients under antipsychotic treatment: a post hoc analysis of data from a randomized, 1-year pragmatic trial

BACKGROUND: Schizophrenia is a highly heterogeneous disorder with positive and negative symptoms being characteristic manifestations of the disease. While these two symptom domains are usually construed as distinct and orthogonal, little is known about the longitudinal pattern of negative symptoms and their linkage with the positive symptoms. This study assessed the temporal interplay between these two symptom domains and evaluated whether the improvements in these symptoms were inversely correlated or independent with each other. METHODS: This post hoc analysis used data from a multicenter, randomized, open-label, 1-year pragmatic trial of patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorder who were treated with first- and second-generation antipsychotics in the usual clinical settings. Data from all treatment groups were pooled resulting in 399 patients with complete data on both the negative and positive subscale scores from the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). Individual-based growth mixture modeling combined with interplay matrix was used to identify the latent trajectory patterns in terms of both the negative and positive symptoms. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated to examine the relationship between the changes of these two symptom domains within each combined trajectory pattern. RESULTS: We identified four distinct negative symptom trajectories and three positive symptom trajectories. The trajectory matrix formed 11 combined trajectory patterns, which evidenced that negative and positive symptom trajectories moved generally in parallel. Correlation coefficients for changes in negative and positive symptom subscale scores were positive and statistically significant (P < 0.05). Overall, the combined trajectories indicated three major distinct patterns: (1) dramatic and sustained early improvement in both negative and positive symptoms (n = 70, 18%), (2) mild and sustained improvement in negative and positive symptoms (n = 237, 59%), and (3) no improvement in either negative or positive symptoms (n = 82, 21%). CONCLUSIONS: This study of symptom trajectories over 1 year shows that changes in negative and positive symptoms were neither inversely nor independently related with each other. The positive association between these two symptom domains supports the notion that different symptom domains in schizophrenia may depend on each other through a unified upstream pathological disease process

IMPLEMENTATION AND TESTING OF A POWER MATRIX-BASED WAVE ENERGY CONVERSION MODEL AND THE EFFECT SIMULATED ON THE WAVE FIELD — CASE STUDY OF LAGUNA, SC, BRAZIL

Electrical energy has become an essential resource for mankind and, as the population and technological dependency grow, also does the electricity demand. This necessity boosted numerous studies which focus on clean and renewable energy sources. Ocean wave energy is one of the most environmentally friendly sources of energy since it does not emit pollutants to the atmosphere and does not produce harmful waste. Another positive point about ocean waves is that they are inexhaustible, therefore a power plant could, potentially, provide energy indefinitely. Hence the object of this study is to estimate the wave energy reduction caused by the presence of wave energy conversion (WEC) devices near the coastline of Laguna, Brazil. In order to study the coastal impact of a WEC farm, the third generation sea state model TOMAWAC was used to simulate the waves on the Southern Brazilian Shelf under two different conditions, with and without the presence of an array of WECs. The results show that the mean significant wave height in the blockaded area undergoes a slight drop, caused by the presence of the WECs, which do not appear in the other scenario. But this reduction of the significant wave height is negligible compared to the order of magnitude of the wave height itself

Reforço de edifícios existentes de betão armado com contraventamentos metálicos

Foi calibrado um modelo numérico refinado para a reprodução do comportamento de estruturas existentes de betão armado, e do seu reforço por contraventamento, face a solicitações sísmicas. Estes modelos foram calibrados com base numa série de ensaios

Ecologic correlations of selected food groups with disease incidence and mortality in Switzerland.

Background: There is little information regarding the impact of diet on disease incidence and mortality in Switzerland. We assessed ecologic correlations between food availability and disease.Methods: In this ecologic study for the period 1970-2009, food availability was measured using the food balance sheets of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Standardized mortality rates (SMRs) were obtained from the Swiss Federal Office of Statistics. Cancer incidence data were obtained from the World Health Organization Health For All database and the Vaud Cancer Registry. Associations between food availability and mortality/incidence were assessed at lags 0, 5, 10, and 15 years by multivariate regression adjusted for total caloric intake.Results: Alcoholic beverages and fruit availability were positively associated, and fish availability was inversely associated, with SMRs for cardiovascular diseases. Animal products, meat, and animal fats were positively associated with the SMR for ischemic heart disease only. For cancer, the results of analysis using SMRs and incidence rates were contradictory. Alcoholic beverages and fruits were positively associated with SMRs for all cancer but inversely associated with all-cancer incidence rates. Similar findings were obtained for all other foods except vegetables, which were weakly inversely associated with SMRs and incidence rates. Use of a 15-year lag reversed the associations with animal and vegetal products, weakened the association with alcohol and fruits, and strengthened the association with fish.Conclusions: Ecologic associations between food availability and disease vary considerably on the basis of whether mortality or incidence rates are used in the analysis. Great care is thus necessary when interpreting our results

Phase transition of a two dimensional binary spreading model

We investigated the phase transition behavior of a binary spreading process in two dimensions for different particle diffusion strengths ($D$). We found that $N>2$ cluster mean-field approximations must be considered to get consistent singular behavior. The $N=3,4$ approximations result in a continuous phase transition belonging to a single universality class along the $D\in (0,1)$ phase transition line. Large scale simulations of the particle density confirmed mean-field scaling behavior with logarithmic corrections. This is interpreted as numerical evidence supporting that the upper critical dimension in this model is $d_c=2$.The pair density scales in a similar way but with an additional logarithmic factor to the order parameter. At the D=0 endpoint of the transition line we found DP criticality.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figure

Lipomatous hypertrophy of the interatrial septum

Authors describe a case of Lipomatous hypertrophy of the interatrial septum diagnosed by MR. A mass in right atrium with 18cm2 was detected by echocardiography, and later MR showed a homogeneous mass, with high intensity in T1 images and a decrease of signal with fat-suppression

ANALYSIS OF SHIP BEHAVIOR UNDER INFLUENCE OF WAVES AND CURRENTS

The most important environmental factors related to safety of ship and performance on high sea are surface winds and waves. In order to obtain an optimal trajectory of a ship route, it is a prerequisite to know the sea state condition, as well as, the behavior of the ship in waves and currents. The purpose of this study is to analyze the ship behavior under the influence of 3 different sea state conditions over the Southern Brazilian inner shelf near the Rio Grande coastal region. SHIPMOVE and TOMAWAC + TELEMAC3D system were simulated under three different wave scenarios. Day 4 showed the shortest traveled distance and lowest velocity. The sea state of Day 33 deflected the initial vessel path northeasterly and generated high rotational motions. Day 100 depicted the longest final displacement and highest average velocity, where this event showed the most smooth sea state condition. Lastly, the ship behavior seems to be strongly influenced by the sea state condition for the three events

Radiocarbon and blue optically stimulated luminescence chronologies of the Oitavos consolidated dune (Western Portugal)

The dune of Oitavos, the underlying paleosol, and Helix sp. gastropod shells found within the paleosol were dated using a combination of radiocarbon and blue optically stimulated luminescence (OSL). The organic component of the paleosol produced a significantly older age (~20,000 cal BP) than the OSL age measurement (~15,000 yr), while 14C age measurements on the inorganic component and the gastropods produced ages of ~35,000 yr and ~34,000 yr, respectively. Rare-earth element analyses provide evidence that the gastropods incorporate geological carbonate, making them an unreliable indicator of the age of the paleosol. We propose that the 14C age of the small organic component of the paleosol is also likely to be unreliable due to incorporation of residual material. The OSL age measurement of the upper paleosol (~15,000 yr) is consistent with the age for the base of the dune (~14,500 yr). The younger OSL age for the top of the dune (~12,000 yr) suggests that it was built up by at least 2 sand pulses or that there was a remobilization of material at the top during its evolution, prior to consolidation

A Study of Two-Temperature Non-Equilibrium Ising Models: Critical Behavior and Universality

We study a class of 2D non-equilibrium Ising models based on competing dynamics induced by contact with heat-baths at two different temperatures. We make a comparative study of the non-equilibrium versions of Metropolis, heat bath/Glauber and Swendsen-Wang dynamics and focus on their critical behavior in order to understand their universality classes. We present strong evidence that some of these dynamics have the same critical exponents and belong to the same universality class as the equilibrium 2D Ising model. We show that the bond version of the Swendsen-Wang update algorithm can be mapped into an equilibrium model at an effective temperature.Comment: 12 pages of LaTeX plus 18 pages of postscript figures in a uuencoded file (608k