Diabetes mellitus and intermittent claudication: a cross-sectional study of 920 claudicants

INTRODUCTION: Diabetes mellitus (DM) and intermittent claudication (IC) are frequently associated health conditions. Our hypothesis is that the nature, severity and quality of life (QoL) of patients with IC and DM are worse than those of claudicant patients without diabetes. MATERIAL AND METHODS: An observational, cross-sectional and multicentre study of 920 patients with IC, divided into two groups: diabetic (n = 477) and non-diabetic (n = 443). For each group, we examined clinical and biological characteristics (including levels of glucose and lipids), the ankle-brachial index (ABI), responses to the Walking Impairment Questionnaire (WIQ) and the European Quality of Life-5 Dimensions (EQ-5D) questionnaire. RESULTS: Compared with claudicant patients without diabetes, claudicants with diabetes were older (p < 0.001), more likely to be female (p = 0.006), with a higher BMI (p < 0.001), more likely to have a sedentary lifestyle (p < 0.001) and to be a non-smoker (p < 0.001). Claudicant patients with diabetes also had significantly more cardiovascular risk factors (p < 0.001), more frequent ischaemic cardiopathy (p = 0.023) and chronic renal failure (p = 0.002), and fewer prior ictus events (p = 0.003). No significant differences between groups were found with respect to blood pressure, levels of cholesterol or triglycerides. The mean ABI of diabetic-IC patients was slightly lower than IC patients without diabetes (p = 0.016). All WIQ subdomains scores were significantly lower (p < 0.001), indicating poorer walking ability, in claudicant and diabetic patients with compared with those without diabetes. The mean E5-QD global scores and the mean EQ-5D visual analogue scale in the whole series were 0.58 (SD = 0.21) and 55.04 (SD = 21.30), respectively. Both E5-QD scores were significantly lower, indicating poorer QoL, in claudicant patients with diabetes than claudicant patients without diabetes (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Patients with IC and DM had more risk cardiovascular factors, cardiovascular conditions, disability and worse haemodynamic status and QoL than claudicant patients without diabetes

Unisolvency for Multivariate Polynomial Interpolation in Coatmèlec Configurations of Nodes

A new and straightforward proof of the unisolvability of the problem of multivariate polynomial interpolation based on Coatmèlec configurations of nodes, a class of properly posed set of nodes defined by hyperplanes, is presented. The proof generalizes a previous one for the bivariate case and is based on a recursive reduction of the problem to simpler ones following the so-called Radon–Bézout process.The authors thank to Drs. Mariano Gasca and Juan I. Ramos for pointing us some references and for their useful comments which have greatly improved the presentation. The authors also thank a reviewer for pointing out a mistake in the original Proof of Lemma 5. The research reported in this paper was partially supported by Project MTM2010-19969 from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion of Spain and Grant PAID-06-09-2734 from the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia. M. A. G. M. acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education (MEC), Fulbright Commission, and FECYT.García March, MÁ.; Gimenez Palomares, F.; Villatoro, FR.; Pérez Quiles, MJ.; Fernández De Córdoba Castellá, PJ. (2011). Unisolvency for Multivariate Polynomial Interpolation in Coatmèlec Configurations of Nodes. Applied Mathematics and Computation. 217(18):7427-7431. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amc.2011.02.034S742774312171

Microbiological Characterization of the Biofilms Colonizing Bioplastics in Natural Marine Conditions: A Comparison between PHBV and PLA

Biodegradable polymers offer a potential solution to marine pollution caused by plastic waste. The marine biofilms that formed on the surfaces of poly(lactide acid) (PLA) and poly(3- hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) (PHBV) were studied. Bioplastics were exposed for 6 months to marine conditions in the Mediterranean Sea, and the biofilms that formed on their surfaces were assessed. The presence of specific PLA and PHBV degraders was also studied. PHBV showed extensive areas with microbial accumulations and this led to higher microbial surface densities than PLA (4.75 vs. 5.16 log CFU/cm2 ). Both polymers’ surfaces showed a wide variety of microbial structures, including bacteria, fungi, unicellular algae and choanoflagellates. A high bacterial diversity was observed, with differences between the two polymers, particularly at the phylum level, with over 70% of bacteria affiliated to three phyla. Differences in metagenome functions were also detected, revealing a higher presence of proteins involved in PHBV biodegradation in PHBV biofilms. Four bacterial isolates belonging to the Proteobacteria class were identified as PHBV degraders, demonstrating the presence of species involved in the biodegradation of this polymer in seawater. No PLA degraders were detected, confirming its low biodegradability in marine environments. This was a pilot study to establish a baseline for further studies aimed at comprehending the marine biodegradation of biopolymers

Neutral Bremsstrahlung Emission in Xenon Unveiled

[EN] We present evidence of non-excimer-based secondary scintillation in gaseous xenon, obtained using both the NEXT-White time projection chamber (TPC) and a dedicated setup. Detailed comparison with first-principle calculations allows us to assign this scintillation mechanism to neutral bremsstrahlung (NBrS), a process that is postulated to exist in xenon that has been largely overlooked.The NEXT Collaboration acknowledges support from the following agencies and institutions: the European Research Council (ERC) under Advanced Grant No. 339787-NEXT; the European Unions Framework Program for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 (20142020) under Grant Agreements No. 674896, No. 690575, and No. 740055; the Ministerio de Economa y Competitividad and the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacin y Universidades of Spain under Grants No. FIS2014-53371-C04 and No. RTI2018-095979, the Severo Ochoa Program Grants No. SEV-2014-0398 and No. CEX2018-000867-S, and the Mara de Maeztu Program MDM-2016-0692; the Generalitat Valenciana under Grants No. PROMETEO/2016/120 and No. SEJI/2017/011; the Portuguese FCT under Project No. PTDC/FIS-NUC/3933/2021 and under Project No. UIDP/04559/2020 to fund the activities of LIBPhys-UC; the U.S. Department of Energy under Contracts No. DE-AC02-06CH11357 (Argonne National Laboratory), No. DE-AC02-07CH11359 (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory), No. DE-FG02-13ER42020 (Texas A&M), and No. DE-SC0019223/DE-SC0019054 (University of Texas at Arlington); and the University of Texas at Arlington (USA). D. G.-D. acknowledges Ramon y Cajal program (Spain) under Contract No. RYC- 2015-18820. J. M.-A. acknowledges support from Fundacin Bancaria la Caixa (ID 100010434), Grant No. LCF/BQ/PI19/11690012. We would like to thank Lorenzo Muniz for insightful discussions on the subtleties of electron transport in gases.Henriques, C.; Amedo, P.; Teixeira, JMR.; González-Díaz, D.; Azevedo, C.; Para, A.; Martín-Albo, J.... (2022). Neutral Bremsstrahlung Emission in Xenon Unveiled. Physical Review X. 12(2):021005-1-021028-23. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.12.021005021005-1021028-2312

Pure-glue hidden valleys through the Higgs portal

We consider the possibility that the Higgs boson can act as a link to a hidden sector in the context of pure-glue hidden valley models. In these models the standard model is weakly coupled, through loops of heavy messengers fields, to a hidden sector whose low energy dynamics is described by a pure-Yang-Mills theory. Such a hidden sector contains several metastable hidden glueballs. In this work we shall extend earlier results on hidden valleys to include couplings of the messengers to the standard model Higgs sector. The effective interactions at one-loop couple the hidden gluons to the standard model particles through the Higgs sector. These couplings in turn induce hidden glueball decays to fermion pairs, or cascade decays with multiple Higgs emission. The presence of effective operators of different mass dimensions, often competing with each other, together with a great diversity of states, leads to a great variability in the lifetimes and decay modes of the hidden glueballs. We find that most of the operators considered in this paper are not heavily constrained by precision electroweak physics, therefore leaving plenty of room in the parameter space to be explored by the future experiments at the LHC.Comment: 44 pages, 16 figures. Major revision for JHEP, corrected an error in Eq. 5.1, comments adde

Multicore and FPGA implementations of emotional-based agent architectures

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11227-014-1307-6.Control architectures based on Emotions are becoming promising solutions for the implementation of future robotic agents. The basic controllers of the architecture are the emotional processes that decide which behaviors of the robot must activate to fulfill the objectives. The number of emotional processes increases (hundreds of millions/s) with the complexity level of the application, reducing the processing capacity of the main processor to solve complex problems (millions of decisions in a given instant). However, the potential parallelism of the emotional processes permits their execution in parallel on FPGAs or Multicores, thus enabling slack computing in the main processor to tackle more complex dynamic problems. In this paper, an emotional architecture for mobile robotic agents is presented. The workload of the emotional processes is evaluated. Then, the main processor is extended with FPGA co-processors through Ethernet link. The FPGAs will be in charge of the execution of the emotional processes in parallel. Different Stratix FPGAs are compared to analyze their suitability to cope with the proposed mobile robotic agent applications. The applications are set up taking into account different environmental conditions, robot dynamics and emotional states. Moreover, the applications are run also on Multicore processors to compare their performance in relation to the FPGAs. Experimental results show that Stratix IV FPGA increases the performance in about one order of magnitude over the main processor and solves all the considered problems. Quad-Core increases the performance in 3.64 times, allowing to tackle about 89 % of the considered problems. Quad-Core has a lower cost than a Stratix IV, so more adequate solution but not for the most complex application. Stratix III could be applied to solve problems with around the double of the requirements that the main processor could support. Finally, a Dual-Core provides slightly better performance than stratix III and it is relatively cheaper.This work was supported in part under Spanish Grant PAID/2012/325 of "Programa de Apoyo a la Investigacion y Desarrollo. Proyectos multidisciplinares", Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Spain.Domínguez Montagud, CP.; Hassan Mohamed, H.; Crespo, A.; Albaladejo Meroño, J. (2015). Multicore and FPGA implementations of emotional-based agent architectures. Journal of Supercomputing. 71(2):479-507. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-014-1307-6S479507712Malfaz M, Salichs MA (2010) Using MUDs as an experimental platform for testing a decision making system for self-motivated autonomous agents. Artif Intell Simul Behav J 2(1):21–44Damiano L, Cañamero L (2010) Constructing emotions. Epistemological groundings and applications in robotics for a synthetic approach to emotions. In: Proceedings of international symposium on aI-inspired biology, The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence, pp 20–28Hawes N, Wyatt J, Sloman A (2009) Exploring design space for an integrated intelligent system. Knowl Based Syst 22(7):509–515Sloman A (2009) Some requirements for human-like robots: why the recent over-emphasis on embodiment has held up progress. Creat Brain Like Intell 2009:248–277Arkin RC, Ulam P, Wagner AR (2012) Moral decision-making in autonomous systems: enforcement, moral emotions, dignity, trust and deception. In: Proceedings of the IEEE, Mar 2012, vol 100, no 3, pp 571–589iRobot industrial robots website. http://www.irobot.com/gi/ground/ . Accessed 22 Sept 2014Moravec H (2009) Rise of the robots: the future of artificial intelligence. Scientific American, March 2009. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rise-of-the-robots/ . 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Proc IEEE 100(3):571–589Salichs MA, Malfaz M (2012) A new approach to modeling emotions and their use on a decision-making system for artificial agents. Affect Comput IEEE Trans 3(1):56–68Altera Corporation (2011) Stratix III device handbook, vol 1–2, version 2.2. http://www.altera.com/literature/lit-stx3.jsp . Accessed 14 Oct 2014.Altera Corporation (2014) Stratix IV device handbook, vol 1–4, version 5.9. http://www.altera.com/literature/lit-stratix-iv.jsp . Accessed 14 Oct 2014.Naouar MW, Monmasson E, Naassani AA, Slama-Belkhodja I, Patin N (2007) FPGA-based current controllers for AC machine drives: a review. IEEE Trans Ind Electr 54(4):1907–1925Intel Corporation (2014) Desktop 4th generation Intel Core Processor Family, Desktop Intel Pentium Processor Family, and Desktop Intel Celeron Processor Family, Datasheet, vol 1, 2March JL, Sahuquillo J, Hassan H, Petit S, Duato J (2011) A new energy-aware dynamic task set partitioning algorithm for soft and hard embedded real-time systems. 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In: Proceedings of international joint conference on neural networks, IEEE (IJCNN’2013)IBM Cognitive Computing and Neurosynaptic chips website. http://www.research.ibm.com/cognitive-computing/neurosynaptic-chips.shtml . Accessed 22 Sept 2014Seo E, Jeong J, Park S, Lee J (2008) Energy efficient scheduling of real-time tasks on multicore processors. IEEE Trans Parallel Distrib Syst 19(11):1540–1552Lehoczky J, Sha L, Ding Y (1989) The rate monotonic scheduling algorithm: exact characterization and average case behavior. In: Proceedings of real time systems symposium, IEEE 1989, pp 166–171Ng-Thow-Hing V, Lim J, Wormer J, Sarvadevabhatla RK, Rocha C, Fujimura K, Sakagami Y (2008) The memory game: creating a human-robot interactive scenario for ASIMO. In: Proceedings of intelligent robots and systems, 2008, IROS 2008, IEEE/RSJ international conference, pp 779–78

Brahma Is Required for Proper Expression of the Floral Repressor FLC in Arabidopsis

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.[Background]: BRAHMA (BRM) is a member of a family of ATPases of the SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling complexes from Arabidopsis. BRM has been previously shown to be crucial for vegetative and reproductive development. [Methodology/Principal Findings]: Here we carry out a detailed analysis of the flowering phenotype of brm mutant plants which reveals that, in addition to repressing the flowering promoting genes CONSTANS (CO), FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) and SUPPRESSOR OF OVEREXPRESSION OF CO1 (SOC1), BRM also represses expression of the general flowering repressor FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC). Thus, in brm mutant plants FLC expression is elevated, and FLC chromatin exhibits increased levels of histone H3 lysine 4 tri-methylation and decreased levels of H3 lysine 27 tri-methylation, indicating that BRM imposes a repressive chromatin configuration at the FLC locus. However, brm mutants display a normal vernalization response, indicating that BRM is not involved in vernalization-mediated FLC repression. Analysis of double mutants suggests that BRM is partially redundant with the autonomous pathway. Analysis of genetic interactions between BRM and the histone H2A.Z deposition machinery demonstrates that brm mutations overcome a requirement of H2A.Z for FLC activation suggesting that in the absence of BRM, a constitutively open chromatin conformation renders H2A.Z dispensable. [Conclusions/Significance]: BRM is critical for phase transition in Arabidopsis. Thus, BRM represses expression of the flowering promoting genes CO, FT and SOC1 and of the flowering repressor FLC. Our results indicate that BRM controls expression of FLC by creating a repressive chromatin configuration of the locus.This work was supported by Ministerio de Educacin y Ciencia (BFU2008-00238, CSD2006-00049), and by Junta de Andaluca (P06-CVI-01400) to J.C.R. and by the National Institutes of Health (grant no. 1R01GM079525), and the National Science Foundation (grant no. 0446440) to R.A. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewe

Validation of a screening questionnaire for hip and knee osteoarthritis in old people

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>To develop a sensitive and specific screening tool for knee and hip osteoarthritis in the general population of elderly people.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The Knee and Hip OsteoArthritis Screening Questionnaire (KHOA-SQ) was developed based on previous studies and observed data and sent to 11,002 people aged 60 to 90 years, stratified by age and gender, who were selected by random sampling. Algorithms of the KHOA-SQ were created. Respondents positive for knee or hip OA on the KHOA-SQ were invited to be evaluated by an orthopedic surgeon. A sample of 300 individuals negative for knee or hip OA on the KHOA-SQ were also invited for evaluation. Sensitivity and specificity were determined for the KHOA-SQ, as well as for KHOA-SQ questions. Classification and Regression Tree analysis was used to find alternative screening algorithms from the questionnaire.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Of 11,002 individuals contacted, 7,577 completed the KHOA-SQ. Of 1,115 positive for knee OA, on the KHOA-SQ, 710 (63.6%) were diagnosed with it. For hip OA, 339 of the 772 who screened positive (43.9%) were diagnosed it. Sensitivity for the hip algorithm was 87.4% and specificity 59.8%; for the knee, sensitivity was 94.5% and specificity 43.8%. Two alternative algorithms provided lower specificity.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The KHOA-SQ offers high sensitivity and moderate specificity. Although this tool correctly identifies individuals with knee or hip OA, the high false positive rate could pose problems. Based on our questions, no better algorithm was found.</p

Wide-Geographic and Long-Term Analysis of the Role of Pathogens in the Decline of Pinna nobilis to Critically Endangered Species

20 Pág.A mass mortality event (MME) affecting the fan mussel Pinna nobilis was first detected in Spain in autumn 2016 and spread north- and eastward through the Mediterranean Sea. Various pathogens have been blamed for contributing to the MME, with emphasis in Haplosporidium pinnae, Mycobacterium sp. and Vibrio spp. In this study, samples from 762 fan mussels (necropsies from 263 individuals, mantle biopsies from 499) of various health conditions, with wide geographic and age range, taken before and during the MME spread from various environments along Mediterranean Sea, were used to assess the role of pathogens in the MME. The number of samples processed by both histological and molecular methods was 83. The most important factor playing a main role on the onset of the mass mortality of P. nobilis throughout the Mediterranean Sea was the infection by H. pinnae. It was the only non-detected pathogen before the MME while, during MME spreading, its prevalence was higher in sick and dead individuals than in asymptomatic ones, in MME-affected areas than in non-affected sites, and it was not associated with host size, infecting both juveniles and adults. Conversely, infection with mycobacteria was independent from the period (before or during MME), from the affection of the area by MME and from the host health condition, and it was associated with host size. Gram (-) bacteria neither appeared associated with MME.This work was funded by: DG Pesca i Medi Mari (GOIB),EsMarEs (order IEO by MITECO, Spanish government), Life UFE IP-PAF INTEMARES (LIFE15 IPE ES 012) “Gestión integrada, innovadora y participativa de la Red Natura 2000 en el medio marino español,” the research project “Estado de conservación del bivalvo amenazado Pinna nobilis en el PNAC” (OAPN 024/2010), the project RECONNECT (MIS 5017160) of the Programme Interreg V-B “Balkan-Mediterranean 2014–2020.” MTES (French Government), DREAL (Direction Régionale Environnement Aménagement Logement) and Région Occitanie (France) for funding research and monitoring of Pinna.GC and PP were contracted under the INIA-CCAA cooperative research programme for postdoctoral incorporation from the Spanish National Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Technology (INIA) (DOC INIA 8/2013 and 15/2015). MV-L was supported by a Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación postdoctoral contract (ICJI-2016-29329, MICIU Programme). ML-S and EÁ were supported by a Personal Técnico de Apoyo contract MINECO programme (PTA2015-11709-I and PTA2015-10829- I, respectively). CP and GS were supported by the project RECONNECT (MIS 5017160) financed by the Transnational Cooperation Programme Interreg V-B “Balkan-Mediterranean 2014–2020” and co-funded by the European Union and national funds of the participating countries. CP was supported by Sorbonne University.Peer reviewe