Complementary and alternative medical therapy utilization by people with chronic fatiguing illnesses in the United States

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Chronic fatiguing illnesses, including chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), pose a diagnostic and therapeutic challenge. Previous clinical reports addressed the utilization of health care provided to patients with CFS by a variety of practitioners with other than allopathic training, but did not examine the spectrum of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies used. This study was designed to measure CAM therapy use by persons with fatiguing illnesses in the United States population.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>During a random-digit dialing survey to estimate the prevalence of CFS-like illness in urban and rural populations from different geographic regions of the United States, we queried the utilization of CAM including manipulation or body-based therapies, alternative medical systems, mind-body, biologically-based, and energy modalities.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Four hundred forty fatigued and 444 non-fatigued persons from 2,728 households completed screening. Fatigued subjects included 53 persons with prolonged fatigue, 338 with chronic fatigue, and 49 with CFS-like illness. Mind-body therapy (primarily personal prayer and prayer by others) was the most frequently used CAM across all groups. Among women, there was a significant trend of increasing overall CAM use across all subgroups (p-trend = 0.003). All categories of CAM use were associated with significantly poorer physical health scores, and all but one (alternative medicine systems) were associated with significantly poorer mental health scores. People with CFS-like illness were significantly more likely to use body-based therapy (chiropractic and massage) than non-fatigued participants (OR = 2.52, CI = 1.32, 4.82). Use of body-based therapies increased significantly in a linear trend across subgroups of non-fatigued, prolonged fatigued, chronic fatigued, and CFS-like subjects (p-trend = 0.002). People with chronic fatigue were also significantly more likely to use body-based therapy (OR = 1.52, CI = 1.07, 2.16) and mind-body (excluding prayer) therapy than non-fatigued participants (OR = 1.73, CI = 1.20 – 2.48).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Utilization of CAM was common in fatiguing illnesses, and was largely accounted for by the presence of underlying conditions and poor physical and mental health. Compared to non-fatigued persons, those with CFS-like illness or chronic fatigue were most likely to use body-based and mind-body therapies. These observations have important implications for provider education programs and development of intervention strategies for CFS.</p

Roadmap for unconventional computing with nanotechnology

In the ‘Beyond Moore’s Law’ era, with increasing edge intelligence, domain-specific computing embracing unconventional approaches will become increasingly prevalent. At the same time, adopting a variety of nanotechnologies will offer benefits in energy cost, computational speed, reduced footprint, cyber resilience, and processing power. The time is ripe for a roadmap for unconventional computing with nanotechnologies to guide future research, and this collection aims to fill that need. The authors provide a comprehensive roadmap for neuromorphic computing using electron spins, memristive devices, two-dimensional nanomaterials, nanomagnets, and various dynamical systems. They also address other paradigms such as Ising machines, Bayesian inference engines, probabilistic computing with p-bits, processing in memory, quantum memories and algorithms, computing with skyrmions and spin waves, and brain-inspired computing for incremental learning and problem-solving in severely resource-constrained environments. These approaches have advantages over traditional Boolean computing based on von Neumann architecture. As the computational requirements for artificial intelligence grow 50 times faster than Moore’s Law for electronics, more unconventional approaches to computing and signal processing will appear on the horizon, and this roadmap will help identify future needs and challenges. In a very fertile field, experts in the field aim to present some of the dominant and most promising technologies for unconventional computing that will be around for some time to come. Within a holistic approach, the goal is to provide pathways for solidifying the field and guiding future impactful discoveries.</p

Residual order within thermally grown amorphous SiO2 on crystalline silicon

The origin of x-ray diffraction peaks observed on the crystal truncation rods (CTR’s) in reciprocal space for thermally grown SiO_2 films has been investigated by large-scale atomistic simulation of silicon oxidation. Three models of SiO_2 on Si(001), Si(111), and Si(113) were formed by introducing oxygen atoms in crystalline Si from the surfaces in an atom-by-atom manner. The SiO_2 structures are classified as being amorphous in conventional characterizations, but retain the residual order originating from the {111} atomic planes in their parent crystals. The calculated diffraction patterns exhibit intensity peaks with Laue-function-like fringe profiles along the CTR’s, at positions depending on the substrate orientations, agreeing quite well with experimental results.K. Tatsumura, T. Watanabe, D. Yamasaki, T. Shimura, M. Umeno and I. Ohdomari. Residual order within thermally grown amorphous SiO_2 on crystalline silicon. Physical Review B, 2004, 69(8), 085212. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.69.085212. Copyright 2004 by the American Physical Society

Structural investigation of organosilane self-assembled monolayers by atomic scale simulation

Molecular mechanics (MM) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations have been performed to investigate the two-dimensional structure of organosilane self-assembled monolayers (SAMs). Unlike alkanethiol SAMs, the arrangement of molecules in organosilane SAMs is not crystalline, and their molecular structure yet remains undetermined. AMBER 8 is employed with our newly developed Si parameters for the MM/MD simulations. Simulations performed for structures with different bonding networks in the polysiloxane layer shows that the ratio of hydrogen bonds has a profound effect on conformations and strain energies of optimized structures. Our results suggest that alkylsilane SAMs formed on substrates are not perfectly uniform but may have some defects

Reactions and diffusion of atomic and molecular oxygen in the SiO2 network

To address the reactions and diffusion of atomic and molecular oxygen in SiO_2, the modification of the SiO_2 network on exposure to an atomic or molecular oxygen atmosphere is investigated by measuring the x-ray-diffraction profile of the residual order peak emanating from the oxide. Analyses of the peak intensity and its fringe pattern provide experimental evidence for the recent theoretical predictions, indicating that atomic oxygen is incorporated into the SiO_2 network near the surface and diffuses toward the interface along with modifying it even at a low temperature of 400°C, whereas molecular oxygen diffuses without reacting with the bulk SiO_2 even at a temperature of 850°C that is sufficiently high for oxidation reaction at the interface.Tatsumura K., Shimura T., Mishima E., et al. Reactions and diffusion of atomic and molecular oxygen in the SiO_2 network. Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics, 2005, 72(4), 045205. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.72.045205. Copyright 2005 by the American Physical Society