Circadian rest-activity rhythms predict cognitive function in early Parkinson's disease independently of sleep

BACKGROUND: Cognitive impairment is a common and debilitating symptom of Parkinson's disease (PD), and its etiology is likely multifactorial. One candidate mechanism is circadian disruption. Although there is evidence of circadian abnormalities in PD, no studies have directly assessed their association with cognitive impairment. OBJECTIVES: Investigate whether circadian rest-activity rhythm is associated with cognitive function in PD independently of sleep. METHODS: Thirty-five participants with PD wore wrist actigraph monitors and completed sleep diaries for 7 to 10 days, then underwent neuropsychological testing. Rest-activity rhythm was characterized using nonparametric circadian rhythm analysis of actigraphy data. Objective sleep parameters were also estimated using actigraphy data. Hierarchical regression models assessed the independent contributions of sleep and rest-activity rhythm to cognitive performance. RESULTS: Less stable day-to-day rest-activity rhythm was associated with poorer executive, visuospatial, and psychomotor functioning, but not with memory. Hierarchical regressions showed that interdaily stability's contribution to cognitive performance was independent of sleep's contributions. Whereas sleep contributed to executive function, but not psychomotor or visuospatial performance, rest-activity rhythm stability significantly contributed to variance in all three of these domains, uniquely accounting for 14.4% to 17.6% of their performance variance. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicate that circadian rest-activity rhythm is associated with cognitive impairment independently of sleep. This suggests the possible utility of rest-activity rhythm as a biomarker for circadian function in PD. Future research should explore interventions to stabilize behavioral rhythms in order to strengthen circadian function, which, in turn, may reduce cognitive impairment in PD.R00 HL102241 - NHLBI NIH HHS; R01 AG048108 - NIA NIH HHSAccepted manuscrip

Refugees or Victims of Human Trafficking? The case of migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong

China is party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 2000 UN Trafficking Protocol, but has not extended coverage of either of the treaties to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China (Hong Kong). Hong Kong does however offer non-refoulement protection on the basis of risks of torture or persecution. Further, Hong Kong legislation defines human trafficking, albeit only in terms of cross-border sex work. Victim identification also remains inadequate. The limited extant protection systems for refugees and victims of human trafficking operate separately and assume that such people are distinct with respect to their experiences and needs. These practices are often mirrored in the approaches of NGOs working in the city. Based on research undertaken by Justice Centre Hong Kong, this paper argues instead that boundaries between the two categories are blurry. The paper focuses on migrant domestic workers who may have claims to asylum and may be at the same time victims of human trafficking. It explores some of the implications for NGOs trying to secure better protections for such groups in Hong Kong. The paper concludes that siloing the refugee and the human trafficking frameworks creates a protection gap, particularly for people who enter Hong Kong as migrant domestic workers and cannot return home because they face a risk of persecution or torture

Succession Planning in Malaysian Family Owned Business– Case Studies in Malaysian Chinese Owned Business

Transferring a business to the next generation can pose serious challenges, especially in the SMEs sector. In many cases, the owner of the SMEs is the pillar of the company and he/she is responsible for most of the functions in the business. Some are near irreplaceable, thus, making succession even more difficult. According to research, about two-thirds of all family businesses fail to make it from the first generation to the second, and even less make it to the third. Researchers believe that the reason for this immortality is lack of planning. Predecessors do not address the issue of succession until they are forced to or when they fall sick. Based on my research with 7 family business owners in Malaysia, they all have selected their internal family member as their successor. There was no formal planning carried out in the selection of a successor. The choice is purely based on emotions and relationship. These factors are also the Chinese way of doing business, that is, depending of connections and relationships (guanxi). It is too early to tell if the ‘Malaysian way’ of succession works in the current economy/era. We need to observe longer, perhaps another 20 – 30 years to see if the second generation leaders are successful in persevering the family wealth. Family firms, especially in the SMEs sector, lacks of money and human capital. Therefore, it is important that the management of these family firms recognise this and plan strategically around such circumstances. The dynamics of the economy is changing so rapidly that the leaders in the family firms have to catch up fast

Reproducible and Portable Big Data Analytics in the Cloud

Cloud computing has become a major approach to help reproduce computational experiments because it supports on-demand hardware and software resource provisioning. Yet there are still two main difficulties in reproducing big data applications in the cloud. The first is how to automate end-to-end execution of analytics including environment provisioning, analytics pipeline description, pipeline execution, and resource termination. The second is that an application developed for one cloud is difficult to be reproduced in another cloud, a.k.a. vendor lock-in problem. To tackle these problems, we leverage serverless computing and containerization techniques for automated scalable execution and reproducibility, and utilize the adapter design pattern to enable application portability and reproducibility across different clouds. We propose and develop an open-source toolkit that supports 1) fully automated end-to-end execution and reproduction via a single command, 2) automated data and configuration storage for each execution, 3) flexible client modes based on user preferences, 4) execution history query, and 5) simple reproduction of existing executions in the same environment or a different environment. We did extensive experiments on both AWS and Azure using four big data analytics applications that run on virtual CPU/GPU clusters. The experiments show our toolkit can achieve good execution performance, scalability, and efficient reproducibility for cloud-based big data analytics

Survey, Excavation, and Geophysics at Songjiaheba—A Small Bronze Age Site in the Chengdu Plain

Archaeological survey in the Chengdu Plain of Sichuan Province has revealed settlement patterns surrounding Late Neolithic walled sites, including large numbers of small settlements from the Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Han Dynasty eras. Here geophysical survey and excavation at one of these small-scale sites dating to the Middle Bronze Age are reported, showing for the first time the value of high-resolution geophysics for evaluating site size and integrity in the Chengdu region

Fuel governor augmented control of recompression HCCI combustion during large load transients

Abstract-A control strategy designed to track desired combustion phasing for a homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) engine during large load transitions is presented in this work. Three inputs are controlled, namely valve timings, fuel injection amount and fuel injection timing. The valve and fuel injection timings are manipulated to track combustion phasing using a mid-ranging control strategy. A fuel governor is then added on to the compensated system to modify the fuel injection amount by enforcing pointwise-in-time actuator constraints. The fuel governor is shown to improve the transient response of combustion phasing and load during large load transitions, when the possibility of future constraint violations exists. The use of the fuel governor during large load reductions can prevent engine misfire. Moreover, the fuel governor strategy simplifies the overall controller design by decoupling the phasing controller from the constraint enforcing mechanism. System complexity is reduced by approximating the nonlinear fuel governor as a set of linear algebraic expressions. This is solved with very little computational overhead and without incurring a significant loss in performance, as presented in simulations

Diagnosis of Dementia with Lewy Bodies: Fluctuations, Biomarkers, and Beyond

Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), the second most common cause of dementia, remains a difficult condition to accurately diagnose and manage. Variable involvement of motor and cognitive functions, plus psychiatric and behavioral symptoms, contributes to the difficulty in managing DLB. Additionally, DLB can cause severe sleep disruption through REM sleep behavior disorder, autonomic symptoms, disruptions of olfaction/taste and mood, hallucinations, and more. In this chapter, advances and remaining challenges in the diagnosis of DLB are discussed, including a review of the current consensus criteria for DLB. The spectrum of disorders with Lewy bodies (LBs) are described including their wide-range of clinical presentations and overlap with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease with and without dementia. Particular consideration is given to advancements in quantification of cognitive fluctuations through improved clinical instruments, EEG, and other advanced biomarkers. Detection of DLB has improved, but establishing the “primary” pathology in cases with concomitant LB andd AD remains difficult. Likelihood of a clinical DLB syndrome is thought to be a function of distribution of LBs and severity of AD-type pathology. Further work is needed to better understand LB disease subtypes and the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms to allow for more targeted and comprehensive therapies

Generation and representation of air quality indexes: a case study applied to Manizales

Se implementaron indicadores de calidad del aire para el dominio de Manizales y se estructuró una bodega de datos que permite a la población visualizar y obtener esta información gratuitamente. Dos tipos de indicadores fueron calculados: índices de calidad del aire (ICA) y porcentaje excedencia de los límites normados (PELN). Se analizaron e interpretaron estos indicadores para los contaminantes Dióxido de azufre (SO2), Ozono (O3) y Material particulado (PM10 y PM2.5), utilizando el software R y la librería Openair. La bodega de datos puede ser visualizada desde la plataforma virtual llamada Centro de Datos e Indicadores Ambientales de Caldas (CDIAC), el cual cumple con la función de almacenar, procesar y poner a disposición del público la información obtenida desde las estaciones de monitoreo del Sistema de Vigilancia de Calidad del Aire de Manizales. Los resultados mostraron bajas concentraciones de los contaminantes analizados con valores de ICA normalmente entre 10 y 60 para material particulado, y entre 0 y 27 para los gases. En general los ICA se ubicaron en la categoría Buena y en pocas ocasiones en la categoría Moderada. El PELN de los contaminantes no ha sobrepasado el 1%.Air quality indexes for Manizales domain were  implemented  and  a  data  warehouse  was  structured, allowing to people to display and obtain indexes information for free. Two kinds of indexes were calculated: Air Quality Indexes (AQI) and Percentage of exceedance of normed Limits (PELN). Indexes for Sulfur dioxide (SO2), Ozone (O3) and Particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5) were calculated and analyzed using R software and Openair library.  Access to the  data warehouse  is  possible  from  the  virtual  platform  called  Centro  de  Datos  e  Indicadores Ambientales de Caldas (CDIAC) in charge of storing, processing and providing to people the information from the system of air quality monitoring stations. Results exhibit low concentrations of analyzed pollutants, with AQI ranging  from  10  to  60  for  particulate  matter  and,  from 0 to 27 for gases. Generally AQI remained at Good category and occasionally at Moderate category.  The PELN of pollutants did not exceed 1%

Industrial brewing yeast engineered for the production of primary flavor determinants in hopped beer

Production of aromatic monoterpene molecules in hop flowers is affected by genetic, environmental, and processing factors. Here, the authors engineer brewer’s yeast for the production of linalool and geraniol, and show pilot-scale beer produced by engineered strains reconstitutes some qualities of hop flavor