Effect of Antioxidants on the Outcome of Therapy in Paraquat-intoxicated Patients

Purpose: The present study was conducted to determine the effect of vitamins C and E administration on the outcome of therapy in patients with paraquat intoxication admitted in the Poisoning EmergencyDepartment (PED) of Noor Teaching General Hospital, Isfahan, Iran.Methods: We studied retrospectively medical records of 186 patients admitted to the PED in two different study periods: 157 patients were evaluated from 1985 to 2001 (first study period) in which patients received conventional treatment protocol consisting of fluid replacement, oral absorbents, haemodialysis, etc, Also, 29 other patients were assessed from 2001 to 2005 (second study period) in which vitamins C and E had been administered to the patients, in addition to the conventional protocol.The patients' mortality rate after the first study period was compared to that of the second one, with regard to the impact of the additional therapeutic intervention (use of antioxidant vitamins).Results: Most of the patients (40.5 %) had ingested more than 20 mL of 20 % paraquat solution and were admitted to the hospital during the first 4 h after exposure. Paraquat poisoning was more common in men (76.6 %), young adults in the age group 19 - 34 (47 %) and during summer (43.3 %). Mean (± SE) length of hospital stay was 62.6 ± 15.6 h. Overall mortality rates were 31 and 55.2 % in the first and second periods, respectively.Conclusion: Although the addition of antioxidants (vitamins C and E) to the conventional therapy did not reduce the mortality rate, other dependent variables including different doses of antioxidants may beconsidered for future studies

Visual reinforcers designed for children with developmental disabilities

A library of visual reinforcers has been created to facilitate visual reinforcement audiometry (VRA) testing in children with developmental disabilities. The library includes 45 reinforcer sets – photos or videos grouped by a common theme – that were created based on commonly reported interests of children with developmental disabilities. Each reinforcer set contains a minimum of 20 unique photo or video files that can be download in two formats: one for commercially available VRA reinforcement systems and another for a custom setup. The library is freely available for download online under a Creative Commons License (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License). Use of these materials has the potential to improve behavioral testing outcomes for children with developmental disabilities, including children with restricted interests. Future research is needed to determine the effectiveness of implementing these materials in clinical settings

Attention and the motion after effect

We measured the effects of attentional distraction on the time course and asymptote of motion adaptation strength, using visual search performance (percent correct and reaction time). In the first two experiments, participantsadapted to a spatial array of moving Gaborpatches, either all vertically oriented (Experiment 1) or randomly oriented (Experiment 2). On each trial the adaptingarray was followed by a test array in which all of the test patchesexcept one were identical in orientation and movement direction to their retinotopically corresponding adaptors, but thetarget moved in the opposite direction to its adaptor. Participantswere required to identify the location of the changed targetwith a mouse click. The ability to do so increased with the number of adapting trials. Neither search speed nor accuracy was affected by an attentionallydemanding conjunction task at the fixation point during adaptation, suggesting low-level (pre-attentive) sites in the visual pathway for the adaptation. In Experiment 3 the same participants were required to identify the one element in the test array that was slowly moving. Reaction times in this case were elevated following adaptation, but once again there was nosignificant effect of the distracting task upon performance.In Experiment 4 participants were required to make eye movements, so that retinotopically corresponding adaptors could be distinguished from spatiotopically corresponding adaptors.Performance in Experiments 1 and 2 correlated positively with reaction times in Experiment 3, suggesting a general trait for adaptation strength

A Student-t based filter for robust signal detection

The search for gravitational-wave signals in detector data is often hampered by the fact that many data analysis methods are based on the theory of stationary Gaussian noise, while actual measurement data frequently exhibit clear departures from these assumptions. Deriving methods from models more closely reflecting the data's properties promises to yield more sensitive procedures. The commonly used matched filter is such a detection method that may be derived via a Gaussian model. In this paper we propose a generalized matched-filtering technique based on a Student-t distribution that is able to account for heavier-tailed noise and is robust against outliers in the data. On the technical side, it generalizes the matched filter's least-squares method to an iterative, or adaptive, variation. In a simplified Monte Carlo study we show that when applied to simulated signals buried in actual interferometer noise it leads to a higher detection rate than the usual ("Gaussian") matched filter.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figure

Scintillation time dependence and pulse shape discrimination in liquid argon

Using a single-phase liquid argon detector with a signal yield of 4.85 photoelectrons per keV of electronic-equivalent recoil energy (keVee), we measure the scintillation time dependence of both electronic and nuclear recoils in liquid argon down to 5 keVee. We develop two methods of pulse shape discrimination to distinguish between electronic and nuclear recoils. Using one of these methods, we measure a background and statistics-limited level of electronic recoil contamination to be $7.6\times10^{-7}$ between 60 and 128 keV of nuclear recoil energy (keVr) for a nuclear recoil acceptance of 50% with no nuclear recoil-like events above 72 keVr. Finally, we develop a maximum likelihood method of pulse shape discrimination using the measured scintillation time dependence and predict the sensitivity to WIMP-nucleon scattering in three configurations of a liquid argon dark matter detector.Comment: 13 pages, 14 figures, Revision 3 (published

Conformational effects on the Circular Dichroism of Human Carbonic Anhydrase II: a multilevel computational study

Circular Dichroism (CD) spectroscopy is a powerful method for investigating conformational changes in proteins and therefore has numerous applications in structural and molecular biology. Here a computational investigation of the CD spectrum of the Human Carbonic Anhydrase II (HCAII), with main focus on the near-UV CD spectra of the wild-type enzyme and it seven tryptophan mutant forms, is presented and compared to experimental studies. Multilevel computational methods (Molecular Dynamics, Semiempirical Quantum Mechanics, Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory) were applied in order to gain insight into the mechanisms of interaction between the aromatic chromophores within the protein environment and understand how the conformational flexibility of the protein influences these mechanisms. The analysis suggests that combining CD semi empirical calculations, crystal structures and molecular dynamics (MD) could help in achieving a better agreement between the computed and experimental protein spectra and provide some unique insight into the dynamic nature of the mechanisms of chromophore interactions

The Great Recession and inequalities in access to health care: a study of unemployment and unmet medical need in Europe in the economic crisis

Background: Unmet medical need (UMN) had been declining steadily across Europe until the 2008 Recession, a period characterized by rising unemployment. We examined whether becoming unemployed increased the risk of UMN during the Great Recession and whether the extent of out-of-pocket payments (OOP) for health care and income replacement for the unemployed (IRU) moderated this relationship. Methods: We used the European Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) to construct a pseudo-panel (n = 135 529) across 25 countries to estimate the relationship between unemployment and UMN. We estimated linear probability models, using a baseline of employed people with no UMN, to test whether this relationship is mediated by financial hardship and moderated by levels of OOP and IRU. Results: Job loss increased the risk of UMN [β = 0.027, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.022–0.033] and financial hardship exacerbated this effect. Fewer people experiencing job loss lost access to health care in countries where OOPs were low or in countries where IRU is high. The results are robust to different model specifications. Conclusions: Unemployment does not necessarily compromise access to health care. Rather, access is jeopardized by diminishing financial resources that accompany job loss. Lower OOPs or higher IRU protect against loss of access, but they cannot guarantee it. Policy solutions should secure financial protection for the unemployed so that resources do not have to be diverted from health