1,680 research outputs found

    Minimum Renyi and Wehrl entropies at the output of bosonic channels

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    The minimum Renyi and Wehrl output entropies are found for bosonic channels in which the signal photons are either randomly displaced by a Gaussian distribution (classical-noise channel), or in which they are coupled to a thermal environment through lossy propagation (thermal-noise channel). It is shown that the Renyi output entropies of integer orders z>1 and the output Wehrl entropy are minimized when the channel input is a coherent state.Comment: Minimal revision. Accepted for publication on Phys. Rev.

    Controlled clinical trial of canine therapy versus usual care to reduce patient anxiety in the emergency department

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    Objective Test if therapy dogs reduce anxiety in emergency department (ED) patients. Methods In this controlled clinical trial (NCT03471429), medically stable, adult patients were approached if the physician believed that the patient had “moderate or greater anxiety.” Patients were allocated on a 1:1 ratio to either 15 min exposure to a certified therapy dog and handler (dog), or usual care (control). Patient reported anxiety, pain and depression were assessed using a 0–10 scale (10 = worst). Primary outcome was change in anxiety from baseline (T0) to 30 min and 90 min after exposure to dog or control (T1 and T2 respectively); secondary outcomes were pain, depression and frequency of pain medication. Results Among 93 patients willing to participate in research, 7 had aversions to dogs, leaving 86 (92%) were willing to see a dog six others met exclusion criteria, leaving 40 patients allocated to each group (dog or control). Median and mean baseline anxiety, pain and depression scores were similar between groups. With dog exposure, median anxiety decreased significantly from T0 to T1: 6 (IQR 4–9.75) to T1: 2 (0–6) compared with 6 (4–8) to 6 (2.5–8) in controls (P<0.001, for T1, Mann-Whitney U and unpaired t-test). Dog exposure was associated with significantly lower anxiety at T2 and a significant overall treatment effect on two-way repeated measures ANOVA for anxiety, pain and depression. After exposure, 1/40 in the dog group needed pain medication, versus 7/40 in controls (P = 0.056, Fisher’s exact test). Conclusions Exposure to therapy dogs plus handlers significantly reduced anxiety in ED patients

    Designing real-time, continuous emotion annotation techniques for 360° VR videos

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    With the increasing availability of head-mounted displays (HMDs) that show immersive 360° VR content, it is important to understand to what extent these immersive experiences can evoke emotions. Typically to collect emotion ground truth labels, users rate videos through post-experience self-reports that are discrete in nature. However, post-stimuli self-reports are temporally imprecise, especially after watching 360° videos. In this work, we design six continuous emotion annotation techniques for the Oculus Rift HMD aimed at minimizing workload and distraction. Based on a co-design session with six experts, we contribute HaloLight and DotSize, two continuous annotation methods deemed unobtrusive and easy to understand. We discuss the next challenges for evaluating the usability of these techniques, and reliability of continuous annotations

    Cranial and intra-axial metastasis originating from a primary ovarian Dysgerminoma.

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    Dysgerminomas are aggressive germ cell tumors that typically have a favorable prognosis, especially in patients diagnosed with early stage disease. We recount the history of a 23-year-old woman who was treated for a stage IA ovarian dysgerminoma in November 2017. Postoperatively, the patient was noncompliant insofar as obtaining routine lab evaluations; ten months later, she was diagnosed with a cranial metastasis that extended into the meninges. The patient subsequently underwent a posterior fossa craniotomy and adjuvant etoposide, bleomycin and cisplatin chemotherapy to which she initially responded; however, during cycle 4, she developed pancytopenia whereupon the chemotherapy was summarily discontinued. Thereafter, the patient was surveilled and currently, she remains in clinical remission. Early stage ovarian dysgerminoma, albeit rarely, has the capacity to metastasize to the cranium or brain, further underscoring the significance of employing active follow-up with these patients

    Unimodality Problems in Ehrhart Theory

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    Ehrhart theory is the study of sequences recording the number of integer points in non-negative integral dilates of rational polytopes. For a given lattice polytope, this sequence is encoded in a finite vector called the Ehrhart hh^*-vector. Ehrhart hh^*-vectors have connections to many areas of mathematics, including commutative algebra and enumerative combinatorics. In this survey we discuss what is known about unimodality for Ehrhart hh^*-vectors and highlight open questions and problems.Comment: Published in Recent Trends in Combinatorics, Beveridge, A., et al. (eds), Springer, 2016, pp 687-711, doi 10.1007/978-3-319-24298-9_27. This version updated October 2017 to correct an error in the original versio

    New challenges in studying nutrition-disease interactions in the developing world.

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    Latest estimates indicate that nutritional deficiencies account for 3 million child deaths each year in less-developed countries. Targeted nutritional interventions could therefore save millions of lives. However, such interventions require careful optimization to maximize benefit and avoid harm. Progress toward designing effective life-saving interventions is currently hampered by some serious gaps in our understanding of nutrient metabolism in humans. In this Personal Perspective, we highlight some of these gaps and make some proposals as to how improved research methods and technologies can be brought to bear on the problems of undernourished children in the developing world

    LINE-1 Retrotransposition Activity in Human Genomes

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    SummaryHighly active (i.e., “hot”) long interspersed element-1 (LINE-1 or L1) sequences comprise the bulk of retrotransposition activity in the human genome; however, the abundance of hot L1s in the human population remains largely unexplored. Here, we used a fosmid-based, paired-end DNA sequencing strategy to identify 68 full-length L1s that are differentially present among individuals but are absent from the human genome reference sequence. The majority of these L1s were highly active in a cultured cell retrotransposition assay. Genotyping 26 elements revealed that two L1s are only found in Africa and that two more are absent from the H952 subset of the Human Genome Diversity Panel. Therefore, these results suggest that hot L1s are more abundant in the human population than previously appreciated, and that ongoing L1 retrotransposition continues to be a major source of interindividual genetic variation

    Phosphorylation and calcium antagonistically tune myosin-binding protein C\u27s structure and function

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    During each heartbeat, cardiac contractility results from calcium-activated sliding of actin thin filaments toward the centers of myosin thick filaments to shorten cellular length. Cardiac myosin-binding protein C (cMyBP-C) is a component of the thick filament that appears to tune these mechanochemical interactions by its N-terminal domains transiently interacting with actin and/or the myosin S2 domain, sensitizing thin filaments to calcium and governing maximal sliding velocity. Both functional mechanisms are potentially further tunable by phosphorylation of an intrinsically disordered, extensible region of cMyBP-C\u27s N terminus, the M-domain. Using atomic force spectroscopy, electron microscopy, and mutant protein expression, we demonstrate that phosphorylation reduced the M-domain\u27s extensibility and shifted the conformation of the N-terminal domain from an extended structure to a compact configuration. In combination with motility assay data, these structural effects of M-domain phosphorylation suggest a mechanism for diminishing the functional potency of individual cMyBP-C molecules. Interestingly, we found that calcium levels necessary to maximally activate the thin filament mitigated the structural effects of phosphorylation by increasing M-domain extensibility and shifting the phosphorylated N-terminal fragments back to the extended state, as if unphosphorylated. Functionally, the addition of calcium to the motility assays ablated the impact of phosphorylation on maximal sliding velocities, fully restoring cMyBP-C\u27s inhibitory capacity. We conclude that M-domain phosphorylation may have its greatest effect on tuning cMyBP-C\u27s calcium-sensitization of thin filaments at the low calcium levels between contractions. Importantly, calcium levels at the peak of contraction would allow cMyBP-C to remain a potent contractile modulator, regardless of cMyBP-C\u27s phosphorylation state

    Effects of Exercise on Immune Responses to Vaccination in Chronically Stressed Mice

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    Introduction: Previous studies have shown that exercise has been related with strengthened vaccine-induced immune responses and chronic stress decreases immune function. This study aims to determine whether exercise can alleviate chronic stress-induced attenuation of vaccination responses in mice. Methods: C57BL/6 mice, aged 7 weeks old, were randomly assigned: control (CTRL, n=9), sedentary (SED, n=7), eccentric exercise (ECC, n=9), or voluntary wheel running (VWR, n=10) group. SED, ECC, and VWR mice received restraint stress for 6 hours/day, 5 days/week for 3 weeks. CTRL mice did not receive restraint stress. ECC mice exercised running downhill at -20% grade at 17m/min for 45 min. VWR mice voluntarily ran on a telemetered wheel. All groups received an OVA vaccination in two phases: first a sensitization phase with an intramuscular vaccination post 1-week of stress in the gastrocnemius muscle, a second intradermal vaccination in the ear post 3-weeks of stress. Swelling in the ear was measured to determine the proportional delayed-type hypersensitivity (DTH) reaction as part of the cell-mediated immune response (recruitment of memory T cells and effector cells) to the vaccine. Blood from the retro-orbital vein was collected pre-vaccination, 1wk, 2wk and 4wk post-vaccination for antibody responses. Results: In this study, there was a trend in increased humoral immunity, in regards to IgM and IgG antibody titers in the exercised groups. This study did not show any significant differences in cell-mediated immunity (indicated with delayed-type hypersensitivity (DTH)), with respect to the effect of exercise on chronic stress. Conclusion: Both acute eccentric exercise and voluntary wheel exercise training had a tendency to attenuate stress-induced reductions in antibody responses, but not cell-mediated responses. Further experiments are required to determine the precise significance of exercise’s effects, as well as the determination of the underlying mechanisms.Ope
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