823 research outputs found
Socioeconomic status, alcohol use disorders, and depression: A population-based study.
Depressive disorders (DD) and alcohol use disorders (AUD) frequently co-occur. They are key to understanding the current increases in "deaths of despair" among individuals with lower socioeconomic status (SES). The aim of this study was to assess the prospective bidirectional associations between AUD and DD, as well as the effect of SES on these two conditions.
The National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions is a cohort study representative of the US adult population, which began in 2001-2002, with follow-up interviews conducted 3 years later. SES was primarily operationalized as educational attainment. AUD, DD, and their levels of severity were defined according to the DSM-5 criteria.
The risk of developing an incident DD increased gradually with the recency and the severity of AUD at baseline, but the converse was not observed. Lower SES was an independent risk for incident AUD or DD. SES did not modify the prospective association between AUD and DD.
The absence of interaction between SES and moderate or severe AUD for the incident DD must be considered with caution due to the limited number of DD cases reported in these AUD categories.
This result is consistent with a causal relationship between AUD and DD, and suggests that therapeutic interventions for AUD may also have beneficial effects to lower DD rates. The independent effects of a lower SES and AUD on DD may result in a vulnerable population cumulating disorders with heavy consequences on health and social well-being
Cosmological post-Newtonian expansions to arbitrary order
We prove the existence of a large class of one parameter families of
solutions to the Einstein-Euler equations that depend on the singular parameter
\ep=v_T/c (0<\ep < \ep_0), where is the speed of light, and is a
typical speed of the gravitating fluid. These solutions are shown to exist on a
common spacetime slab M\cong [0,T)\times \Tbb^3, and converge as \ep
\searrow 0 to a solution of the cosmological Poisson-Euler equations of
Newtonian gravity. Moreover, we establish that these solutions can be expanded
in the parameter \ep to any specified order with expansion coefficients that
satisfy \ep-independent (nonlocal) symmetric hyperbolic equations
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Mulsemedia: State of the art, perspectives, and challenges
Mulsemedia-multiple sensorial media-captures a wide variety of research efforts and applications. This article presents a historic perspective on mulsemedia work and reviews current developments in the area. These take place across the traditional multimedia spectrum-from virtual reality applications to computer games-as well as efforts in the arts, gastronomy, and therapy, to mention a few. We also describe standardization efforts, via the MPEG-V standard, and identify future developments and exciting challenges the community needs to overcome
Vaginal flora morphotypic profiles and assessment of bacterial vaginosis in women at risk for HIV infection.
Specific morphotypic profiles of normal and abnormal vaginal flora, including bacterial vaginosis (BV), were characterized. A prospective study of 350 women yielded concurrent Gram-stain data and clinical assessment (n = 3455 visits). Microbiological profiles were constructed by Gram stain. Eight profile definitions were based on dichotomizing the levels of Lactobacillus, Gardnerella, and curved, Gram-negative bacillus (Mobiluncus) morphotypes. Of these, two were rare, and the other six demonstrated a graded association with the clinical components of BV. The proposed profiles from the Gram stain reflect the morphotypic categories describing vaginal flora that may enable clearer elucidation of gynecologic and obstetric outcomes in various populations
3D high throughput screening and profiling of embryoid bodies in thermoformed microwell plates
3D organoids using stem cells to study development and disease are now widespread. These models are powerful to mimic in vivo situations but are currently associated with high variability and low throughput. For biomedical research, platforms are thus necessary to increase reproducibility and allow high-throughput screens (HTS). Here, we introduce a microwell platform, integrated in standard culture plates, for functional HTS. Using micro-thermoforming, we form round-bottom microwell arrays from optically clear cyclic olefin polymer films, and assemble them with bottom-less 96-well plates. We show that embryonic stem cells aggregate faster and more reproducibly (centricity, circularity) as compared to a state-of-the-art microwell array. We then run a screen of a chemical library to direct differentiation into primitive endoderm (PrE) and, using on-chip high content imaging (HCI), we identify molecules, including regulators of the cAMP pathway, regulating tissue size, morphology and PrE gene activity. We propose that this platform will benefit to the systematic study of organogenesis in vitro
Existence of families of spacetimes with a Newtonian limit
J\"urgen Ehlers developed \emph{frame theory} to better understand the
relationship between general relativity and Newtonian gravity. Frame theory
contains a parameter , which can be thought of as , where
is the speed of light. By construction, frame theory is equivalent to general
relativity for , and reduces to Newtonian gravity for .
Moreover, by setting \ep=\sqrt{\lambda}, frame theory provides a framework to
study the Newtonian limit \ep \searrow 0 (i.e. ). A number of
ideas relating to frame theory that were introduced by J\"urgen have
subsequently found important applications to the rigorous study of both the
Newtonian limit and post-Newtonian expansions. In this article, we review frame
theory and discuss, in a non-technical fashion, some of the rigorous results on
the Newtonian limit and post-Newtonian expansions that have followed from
J\"urgen's work
Post-Newtonian expansions for perfect fluids
We prove the existence of a large class of dynamical solutions to the
Einstein-Euler equations that have a first post-Newtonian expansion. The
results here are based on the elliptic-hyperbolic formulation of the
Einstein-Euler equations used in \cite{Oli06}, which contains a singular
parameter \ep = v_T/c, where is a characteristic velocity associated
with the fluid and is the speed of light. As in \cite{Oli06}, energy
estimates on weighted Sobolev spaces are used to analyze the behavior of
solutions to the Einstein-Euler equations in the limit \ep\searrow 0, and to
demonstrate the validity of the first post-Newtonian expansion as an
approximation
Xpert MTB/RIF Assay Shows Faster Clearance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis DNA with Higher Levels of Rifapentine Exposure.
The Xpert MTB/RIF assay is both sensitive and specific as a diagnostic test. Xpert also reports quantitative output in cycle threshold (CT) values, which may provide a dynamic measure of sputum bacillary burden when used longitudinally. We evaluated the relationship between Xpert CT trajectory and drug exposure during tuberculosis (TB) treatment to assess the potential utility of Xpert CT for treatment monitoring. We obtained serial sputum samples from patients with smear-positive pulmonary TB who were consecutively enrolled at 10 international clinical trial sites participating in study 29X, a CDC-sponsored Tuberculosis Trials Consortium study evaluating the tolerability, safety, and antimicrobial activity of rifapentine at daily doses of up to 20 mg/kg of body weight. Xpert was performed at weeks 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 12. Longitudinal CT data were modeled using a nonlinear mixed effects model in relation to rifapentine exposure (area under the concentration-time curve [AUC]). The rate of change of CT was higher in subjects receiving rifapentine than in subjects receiving standard-dose rifampin. Moreover, rifapentine exposure, but not assigned dose, was significantly associated with rate of change in CT (P = 0.02). The estimated increase in CT slope for every additional 100 μg · h/ml of rifapentine drug exposure (as measured by AUC) was 0.11 CT/week (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.05 to 0.17). Increasing rifapentine exposure is associated with a higher rate of change of Xpert CT, indicating faster clearance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis DNA. These data suggest that the quantitative outputs of the Xpert MTB/RIF assay may be useful as a dynamic measure of TB treatment response
Self-gravitating elastic bodies
Extended objects in GR are often modelled using distributional solutions of
the Einstein equations with point-like sources, or as the limit of
infinitesimally small "test" objects. In this note, I will consider models of
finite self-gravitating extended objects, which make it possible to give a
rigorous treatment of the initial value problem for (finite) extended objects.Comment: 16 pages. Based on a talk given at the 2013 WE-Heraeus seminar on
"Equations of motion in relativistic gravity
Isotope shift calculations for atoms with one valence electron
This work presents a method for the ab initio calculation of isotope shift in
atoms and ions with one valence electron above closed shells. As a zero
approximation we use relativistic Hartree-Fock and then calculate correlation
corrections. The main motivation for developing the method comes from the need
to analyse whether different isotope abundances in early universe can
contribute to the observed anomalies in quasar absorption spectra. The current
best explanation for these anomalies is the assumption that the fine structure
constant, alpha, was smaller at early epoch. We test the isotope shift method
by comparing the calculated and experimental isotope shift for the alkali and
alkali-like atoms Na, MgII, K, CaII and BaII. The agreement is found to be
good. We then calculate the isotope shift for some astronomically relevant
transitions in SiII and SiIV, MgII, ZnII and GeII.Comment: 11 page
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