Particle entrapment as a feedback effect

We consider a suspension of polarizable particles under the action of traveling wave dielectrophoresis (DEP) and focus on particle induced effects. In a situation where the particles are driven by the DEP force, but no external forces are exerted on the fluid, the joint motion of the particles can induce a steady fluid flow, which leads to particle entrapment. This feedback effect is proven to be non-negligible even for small volume concentration of particles.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, submitte

A proposed approach to monitor private-sector policies and practices related to food environments, obesity and non-communicable disease prevention

Private-sector organizations play a critical role in shaping the food environments of individuals and populations. However, there is currently very limited independent monitoring of private-sector actions related to food environments. This paper reviews previous efforts to monitor the private sector in this area, and outlines a proposed approach to monitor private-sector policies and practices related to food environments, and their influence on obesity and non-communicable disease (NCD) prevention. A step-wise approach to data collection is recommended, in which the first (‘minimal’) step is the collation of publicly available food and nutrition-related policies of selected private-sector organizations. The second (‘expanded’) step assesses the nutritional composition of each organization’s products, their promotions to children, their labelling practices, and the accessibility, availability and affordability of their products. The third (‘optimal’) step includes data on other commercial activities that may influence food environments, such as political lobbying and corporate philanthropy. The proposed approach will be further developed and piloted in countries of varying size and income levels. There is potential for this approach to enable national and international benchmarking of private-sector policies and practices, and to inform efforts to hold the private sector to account for their role in obesity and NCD prevention

‘Sons of athelings given to the earth’: Infant Mortality within Anglo-Saxon Mortuary Geography

FOR 20 OR MORE YEARS early Anglo-Saxon archaeologists have believed children are underrepresented in the cemetery evidence. They conclude that excavation misses small bones, that previous attitudes to reporting overlook the very young, or that infants and children were buried elsewhere. This is all well and good, but we must be careful of oversimplifying compound social and cultural responses to childhood and infant mortality. Previous approaches have offered methodological quandaries in the face of this under-representation. However, proportionally more infants were placed in large cemeteries and sometimes in specific zones. This trend is statistically significant and is therefore unlikely to result entirely from preservation or excavation problems. Early medieval cemeteries were part of regional mortuary geographies and provided places to stage events that promoted social cohesion across kinship systems extending over tribal territories. This paper argues that patterns in early Anglo-Saxon infant burial were the result of female mobility. Many women probably travelled locally to marry in a union which reinforced existing social networks. For an expectant mother, however, the safest place to give birth was with experience women in her maternal home. Infant identities were affected by personal and legal association with their mother’s parental kindred, so when an infant died in childbirth or months and years later, it was their mother’s identity which dictated burial location. As a result, cemeteries central to tribal identities became places to bury the sons and daughters of a regional tribal aristocracy

On the criticality of inferred models

Advanced inference techniques allow one to reconstruct the pattern of interaction from high dimensional data sets. We focus here on the statistical properties of inferred models and argue that inference procedures are likely to yield models which are close to a phase transition. On one side, we show that the reparameterization invariant metrics in the space of probability distributions of these models (the Fisher Information) is directly related to the model's susceptibility. As a result, distinguishable models tend to accumulate close to critical points, where the susceptibility diverges in infinite systems. On the other, this region is the one where the estimate of inferred parameters is most stable. In order to illustrate these points, we discuss inference of interacting point processes with application to financial data and show that sensible choices of observation time-scales naturally yield models which are close to criticality.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, version to appear in JSTA

Symmetric Biomechanically Guided Prone-to-Supine Breast Image Registration

Prone-to-supine breast image registration has potential application in the fields of surgical and radiotherapy planning, image guided interventions, and multi-modal cancer diagnosis, staging, and therapy response prediction. However, breast image registration of three dimensional images acquired in different patient positions is a challenging problem, due to large deformations induced to the soft breast tissue caused by the change in gravity loading. We present a symmetric, biomechanical simulation based registration framework which aligns the images in a central, virtually unloaded configuration. The breast tissue is modelled as a neo-Hookean material and gravity is considered as the main source of deformation in the original images. In addition to gravity, our framework successively applies image derived forces directly into the unloading simulation in place of a subsequent image registration step. This results in a biomechanically constrained deformation. Using a finite difference scheme avoids an explicit meshing step and enables simulations to be performed directly in the image space. The explicit time integration scheme allows the motion at the interface between chest and breast to be constrained along the chest wall. The feasibility and accuracy of the approach presented here was assessed by measuring the target registration error (TRE) using a numerical phantom with known ground truth deformations, nine clinical prone MRI and supine CT image pairs, one clinical prone-supine CT image pair and four prone-supine MRI image pairs. The registration reduced the mean TRE for the numerical phantom experiment from initially 19.3 to 0.9 mm and the combined mean TRE for all fourteen clinical data sets from 69.7 to 5.6 mm

Report of the Working Group on `W Mass and QCD' (Phenomenology Workshop on LEP2 Physics, Oxford, April 1997)

The W Mass and QCD Working Group discussed a wide variety of topics relating to present and future measurements of M(W) at LEP2, including QCD backgrounds to W+W- production. Particular attention was focused on experimental issues concerning the direct reconstruction and threshold mass measurements, and on theoretical and experimental issues concerning the four jet final state. This report summarises the main conclusions.Comment: 43 pages LaTeX and 15 encapsulated postscript figures. Uses epsfig and ioplppt macros. Full Proceedings to be published in Journal of Physics

Glargine co-administration with intravenous insulin in pediatric diabetic ketoacidosis is safe and facilitates transition to a subcutaneous regimen

Background: Diabetes ketoacidosis (DKA) is a common presentation and complication of type 1 diabetes (T1D). While intravenous insulin is typically used to treat acute metabolic abnormalities, the transition from intravenous to subcutaneous treatment can present a challenge. We hypothesize that co-administration of glargine, a subcutaneous long-acting insulin analog, during insulin infusion may facilitate a flexible and safe transition from intravenous to subcutaneous therapy. Objective: To determine if the practice of administering subcutaneous glargine during intravenous insulin is associated with an increased risk of hypoglycemia, hypokalemia, or other complications in children with DKA. Methods: Retrospective chart review of patients aged 2 to 21 years, presenting to our center with DKA between April 2012 and June 2014. Patients were divided into two groups: those co-administered subcutaneous glargine with intravenous insulin for over 4 hours (G+); and patients with less than 2 hours of overlap (G−). Results: We reviewed 149 DKA admissions (55 G+, 94 G−) from 129 unique patients. There was a similar incidence of hypoglycemia between groups (25% G+ vs 20% G−, P = 0.46). Hypokalemia (<3.5 mmol/L) occurred more frequently in the G+ group (OR = 3.4, 95% CI 1.7-7.0, P = 0.001). Cerebral edema occurred in 2/55 (3.6%) of the G− group and none of the G+ subjects. Conclusion: Co-administration of glargine early in the course of DKA treatment is well tolerated and convenient for discharge planning; however, this approach is associated with an increased risk of hypokalemia. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Lt

Increased Aβ pathology in aged Tg2576 mice born to mothers fed a high fat diet

Maternal obesity is associated with increased risk of developing diabetes, obesity and premature death in adult offspring. Mid-life diabetes, hypertension and hypercholesterolaemia are risk factors for the development of sporadic Alzheimer's disease (AD). A key pathogenic feature of AD is the accumulation of β-amyloid (Aβ) in the brain. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of high fat diet feeding during early life on Aβ pathology in the Tg2576 mouse model of AD. Female mice were fed a standard (C) or high fat (HF) diet before mating and during gestation and lactation. At weaning, male offspring were fed a C diet. Significantly higher levels of guanidine-soluble Aβ and plaque loads were observed in the hippocampi of 11-month old Tg2576 mice born to mothers fed a HF diet. Changes in the extracellular matrix led to increased retention of Aβ within the parenchyma. These data support a role for maternal and gestational health on the health of the aged brain and pathologies associated with AD and may provide a novel target for both the prevention and treatment of AD

Big Food, Food Systems, and Global Health

In an article that forms part of the PLoS Medicine series on Big Food, guest editors David Stuckler and Marion Nestle lay out why more examination of the food industry is necessary, and offer three competing views on how public health professionals might engage with Big Food

Phase Transitions on Nonamenable Graphs

We survey known results about phase transitions in various models of statistical physics when the underlying space is a nonamenable graph. Most attention is devoted to transitive graphs and trees