Extremely High Energy Neutrinos and their Detection

We discuss in some detail the production of extremely high energy (EHE) neutrinos with energies above 10^18 eV. The most certain process for producing such neutrinos results from photopion production by EHE cosmic rays in the cosmic background photon field. However, using assumptions for the EHE cosmic ray source evolution which are consistent with results from the deep QSO survey in the radio and X-ray range, the resultant flux of neutrinos from this process is not strong enough for plausible detection. A measurable flux of EHE neutrinos may be present, however, if the highest energy cosmic rays which have recently been detected well beyond 10^20 eV are the result of the annihilation of topological defects which formed in the early universe. Neutrinos resulting from such decays reach energies of the grand unification (GUT) scale, and collisions of superhigh energy neutrinos with the cosmic background neutrinos initiate neutrino cascading which enhances the EHE neutrino flux at Earth. We have calculated the neutrino flux including this cascading effect for either massless or massive neutrinos and we find that these fluxes are conceivably detectable by air fluorescence detectors now in development. The neutrino-induced showers would be recognized by their starting deep in the atmosphere. We evaluate the feasibility of detecting EHE neutrinos this way using air fluorescence air shower detectors and derive the expected event rate. Other processes for producing deeply penetrating air showers constitute a negligible background.Comment: 33 pages, including 12 eps figures, LaTe

Percutaneous tracheostomy by Griggs technique: a retrospective analysis

Background: The scope of percutaneous tracheostomy (PCT) is increasing with experience with successful conduct in conditions traditionally described as contra indications such as difficult anatomy, bleeding diathesis and high ventilatory requirement. The objectives of this study were to assess the safety of PCT in patients with obesity, short neck, thrombocytopenia, coagulopathy, high FiO2 and PEEP requirement. We also aimed to determine complication rate and average time required.Methods: This retrospective study was conducted in the surgical intensive care unit at a tertiary care centre. Seventy five patients who underwent PCT by Griggs technique, with ultrasonographic and bronchoscopic guidance during a period of one year from January to December 2014 were included. Age, sex, height, weight, BMI, platelet count, INR, crico sternal distance and duration of procedure were noted. We analyzed all high risk factors and peri procedural complications.Results: Obesity was present in 5 (6.66%), short neck in 6 (8%), coagulopathy in 25 (33.33%), thrombocytopenia in 22 (29.33%), high FiO2 requirement in 28 (37.33%) and high PEEP requirement in 30 (40%) patients. Minor complications were present in 11 patients (14.66%). No life threatening complications were noted. One patient required conversion into open tracheostomy. The average time taken for PCT was 4.87 ± 1.1 min.Conclusion: PCT can be safely performed in patients with obesity, short neck, thrombocytopenia, coagulopathy and high ventilatory requirement with minimal complication rate, aided by tools like ultrasonography and fiberoptic bronchoscope.

Identification of functional modules that correlate with phenotypic difference: the influence of network topology

A gene set enrichment analysis method for including network topology in the identification of genes involved in phenotypic alterations is described. Classifications: Genome studies, Method

Factors Associated With Leisure Participation Among the Elderly Living in Long-term Care Facilities

SummaryBackgroundA lack of participation in leisure activities often leads to depression in the elderly. This study investigated the factors impacting leisure participation among the elderly living in long-term care facilities.MethodsThis cross-sectional study recruited 309 individuals older than 65 years from six long-term care facilities located in the Taipei area. Structured in-person questionnaires were administered to assess their demographic characteristics, general self-rated health status, leisure constraints, and leisure participation.ResultsThe average frequency of leisure participation was 27.20 ± 12.48 points. The top five most popular leisure activities were watching television, walking, chatting, reading, and participating in religious activities. Elderly subjects who tended to be female, have religious beliefs, have a high school education level, be married, perceive themselves in better health, demonstrate better cognitive function and have higher scores on activities of daily living and instrumental activities of daily living scales were more likely to participate in leisure activities (p < 0.05). In contrast, those who were older, had stayed in the facility for a longer time period and had more leisure constraints were less likely to participate in leisure activities (p < 0.05). Overall, the predictive factors for leisure participation included religious beliefs, educational level, cognitive skill, instrumental activities of daily living score, depression, personal inner constraints, and structural constraints. The entire model was significant (F = 11.03, p < 0.001).ConclusionBased on the self-reported interests, health status and level of cognitive skill of elderly residents, long-term care facilities should arrange appropriate leisure activities to prevent depression and to improve quality of life

Improving Success Rates of Percutaneous Coronary Intervention for Chronic Total Occlusion at a Rural Hospital in East Taiwan

SummaryBackgroundWe aimed to report the results of percutaneous coronary intervention for chronic total occlusion (CTO) in a remote hospital of southeast Taiwan that does not have on-site coronary artery bypass graft support and has insufficient medical resources.MethodsFrom 2006 to 2009, we identified 96 patients who underwent percutaneous coronary intervention and whose coronary angiogram showed CTO lesions. On-site cardiovascular surgeons were unavailable from 2006 to 2009.ResultsThe success rate (test for trend, p = 0.02) and numbers of guidewires used (test for trend, p = 0.59) significantly increased from 2006 to 2009, and the procedural time reduced significantly (test for trend, p = 0.001). The volume of contrast media injected decreased, although this result was not statistically significant (p = 0.70).ConclusionOur experience in managing CTO lesions substantially improved and the procedural time reduced over 4 years, even when constrained by a relative shortage of medical resources

The effect of menu labeling with calories and exercise equivalents on food selection and consumption

Background Better techniques are needed to help consumers make lower calorie food choices. This pilot study examined the effect of menu labeling with caloric information and exercise equivalents (EE) on food selection. Participants, 62 females, ages 18-34, recruited for this study, ordered a fast food meal with menus that contained the names of the food (Lunch 1 (L1), control meal). One week later (Lunch 2 (L2), experiment meal), participants ordered a meal from one of three menus with the same items as the previous week: no calorie information, calorie information only, or calorie information and EE. Results There were no absolute differences between groups in calories ordered from L1 to L2. However, it is noteworthy that calorie only and calorie plus exercise equivalents ordered about 16% (206 kcal) and 14% (162 kcal) fewer calories from Lunch 1 to Lunch 2, respectively; whereas, the no information group ordered only 2% (25 kcal) fewer. Conclusions Menu labeling alone may be insufficient to reduce calories; however, further research is needed in finding the most effective ways of presenting the menu labels for general public

Tox21Enricher-Shiny: an R Shiny application for toxicity functional annotation analysis

Inference of toxicological and mechanistic properties of untested chemicals through structural or biological similarity is a commonly employed approach for initial chemical characterization and hypothesis generation. We previously developed a web-based application, Tox21Enricher-Grails, on the Grails framework that identifies enriched biological/toxicological properties of chemical sets for the purpose of inferring properties of untested chemicals within the set. It was able to detect significantly overrepresented biological (e.g., receptor binding), toxicological (e.g., carcinogenicity), and chemical (e.g., toxicologically relevant chemical substructures) annotations within sets of chemicals screened in the Tox21 platform. Here, we present an R Shiny application version of Tox21Enricher-Grails, Tox21Enricher-Shiny, with more robust features and updated annotations. Tox21Enricher-Shiny allows users to interact with the web application component (available at http://hurlab.med.und.edu/Tox21Enricher/) through a user-friendly graphical user interface or to directly access the application’s functions through an application programming interface. This version now supports InChI strings as input in addition to CASRN and SMILES identifiers. Input chemicals that contain certain reactive functional groups (nitrile, aldehyde, epoxide, and isocyanate groups) may react with proteins in cell-based Tox21 assays: this could cause Tox21Enricher-Shiny to produce spurious enrichment analysis results. Therefore, this version of the application can now automatically detect and ignore such problematic chemicals in a user’s input. The application also offers new data visualizations, and the architecture has been greatly simplified to allow for simple deployment, version control, and porting. The application may be deployed onto a Posit Connect or Shiny server, and it uses Postgres for database management. As other Tox21-related tools are being migrated to the R Shiny platform, the development of Tox21Enricher-Shiny is a logical transition to use R’s strong data analysis and visualization capacities and to provide aesthetic and developmental consistency with other Tox21 applications developed by the Division of Translational Toxicology (DTT) at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)

VisANT 3.5: multi-scale network visualization, analysis and inference based on the gene ontology

Despite its wide usage in biological databases and applications, the role of the gene ontology (GO) in network analysis is usually limited to functional annotation of genes or gene sets with auxiliary information on correlations ignored. Here, we report on new capabilities of VisANT—an integrative software platform for the visualization, mining, analysis and modeling of the biological networks—which extend the application of GO in network visualization, analysis and inference. The new VisANT functions can be classified into three categories. (i) Visualization: a new tree-based browser allows visualization of GO hierarchies. GO terms can be easily dropped into the network to group genes annotated under the term, thereby integrating the hierarchical ontology with the network. This facilitates multi-scale visualization and analysis. (ii) Flexible annotation schema: in addition to conventional methods for annotating network nodes with the most specific functional descriptions available, VisANT also provides functions to annotate genes at any customized level of abstraction. (iii) Finding over-represented GO terms and expression-enriched GO modules: two new algorithms have been implemented as VisANT plugins. One detects over-represented GO annotations in any given sub-network and the other finds the GO categories that are enriched in a specified phenotype or perturbed dataset. Both algorithms take account of network topology (i.e. correlations between genes based on various sources of evidence). VisANT is freely available at http://visant.bu.edu

Association of Female Menopause With Atrioventricular Mechanics and Outcomes

BACKGROUND: Despite known sex differences in cardiac structure and function, little is known about how menopause and estrogen associate with atrioventricular mechanics and outcomes. OBJECTIVE: To study how, sex differences, loss of estrogen in menopause and duration of menopause, relate to atrioventricular mechanics and outcomes. METHODS: Among 4051 asymptomatic adults (49.8 ± 10.8 years, 35%women), left ventricular (LV) and left atrial (LA) mechanics were assessed using speckle-tracking. RESULTS: Post-menopausal (vs. pre-menopausal) women had similar LV ejection fraction but reduced GLS, reduced PALS, increased LA stiffness, higher LV sphericity and LV torsion (all p < 0.001). Multivariable analysis showed menopause to be associated with greater LV sphericity (0.02, 95%CI 0.01, 0.03), higher indexed LV mass (LVMi), lower mitral e’, lower LV GLS (0.37, 95%CI 0.04–0.70), higher LV torsion, larger LA volume, worse PALS (∼2.4-fold) and greater LA stiffness (0.028, 95%CI 0.01–0.05). Increasing years of menopause was associated with further reduction in GLS, markedly worse LA mechanics despite greater LV sphericity and higher torsion. Lower estradiol levels correlated with more impaired LV diastolic function, impaired LV GLS, greater LA stiffness, and increased LV sphericity and LV torsion (all p < 0.05). Approximately 5.5% (37/669) of post-menopausal women incident HF over 2.9 years of follow-up. Greater LV sphericity [adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) 1.04, 95%CI 1.00–1.07], impaired GLS (aHR 0.87, 95%CI 0.78–0.97), reduced peak left atrial longitudinal strain (PALS, aHR 0.94, 95%CI 0.90–0.99) and higher LA stiffness (aHR 10.5, 95%CI 1.69–64.6) were independently associated with the primary outcome of HF hospitalizations in post-menopause. Both PALS < 23% (aHR:1.32, 95%CI 1.01–3.49) and GLS < 16% (aHR:5.80, 95%CI 1.79–18.8) remained prognostic for the incidence of HF in post-menopausal women in dichotomous analyses, even after adjusting for confounders. Results were consistent with composite outcomes of HF hospitalizations and 1-year all-cause mortality as well. CONCLUSION: Menopause was associated with greater LV/LA remodeling and reduced LV longitudinal and LA function in women. The cardiac functional deficit with menopause and lower estradiol levels, along with their independent prognostic value post-menopause, may elucidate sex differences in heart failure further