The distribution of meteorite finds in the Namibian desert and recovery of a highly shocked meteorite pairing group.

Published versio

The Sydney Triage to Admission Risk Tool (START) to predict Emergency Department Disposition: A derivation and internal validation study using retrospective state-wide data from New South Wales, Australia.

BACKGROUND: Disposition decisions are critical to the functioning of Emergency Departments. The objectives of the present study were to derive and internally validate a prediction model for inpatient admission from the Emergency Department to assist with triage, patient flow and clinical decision making. METHODS: This was a retrospective analysis of State-wide Emergency Department data in New South Wales, Australia. Adult patients (age ≥ 16 years) were included if they presented to a Level five or six (tertiary level) Emergency Department in New South Wales, Australia between 2013 and 2014. The outcome of interest was in-patient admission from the Emergency Department. This included all admissions to short stay and medical assessment units and being transferred out to another hospital. Analyses were performed using logistic regression. Discrimination was assessed using area under curve and derived risk scores were plotted to assess calibration. RESULTS: 1,721,294 presentations from twenty three Level five or six hospitals were analysed. Of these 49.38% were male and the mean (sd) age was 49.85 years (22.13). Level 6 hospitals accounted for 47.70% of cases and 40.74% of cases were classified as an in-patient admission based on their mode of separation. The final multivariable model including age, arrival by ambulance, triage category, previous admission and presenting problem had an AUC of 0.82 (95% CI 0.81, 0.82). CONCLUSION: By deriving and internally validating a risk score model to predict the need for in-patient admission based on basic demographic and triage characteristics, patient flow in ED, clinical decision making and overall quality of care may be improved. Further studies are now required to establish clinical effectiveness of this risk score model

Computerized ICU Data Management Pitfalls and Promises

journal articleBiomedical Informatic

The emotional movie database (EMDB): a self-report and psychophysiological study

Film clips are an important tool for evoking emotional responses in the laboratory. When compared with other emotionally potent visual stimuli (e.g., pictures), film clips seem to be more effective in eliciting emotions for longer periods of time at both the subjective and physiological levels. The main objective of the present study was to develop a new database of affective film clips without auditory content, based on a dimensional approach to emotional stimuli (valence, arousal and dominance). The study had three different phases: (1) the pre-selection and editing of 52 film clips (2) the self-report rating of these film clips by a sample of 113 participants and (3) psychophysiological assessment [skin conductance level (SCL) and the heart rate (HR)] on 32 volunteers. Film clips from different categories were selected to elicit emotional states from different quadrants of affective space. The results also showed that sustained exposure to the affective film clips resulted in a pattern of a SCL increase and HR deceleration in high arousal conditions (i.e., horror and erotic conditions). The resulting emotional movie database can reliably be used in research requiring the presentation of non-auditory film clips with different ratings of valence, arousal and dominance.Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology with individual grants (SFRH/BD/41484/2007 and SFRH/BD/64355/2009

Positive words carry less information than negative words

We show that the frequency of word use is not only determined by the word length \cite{Zipf1935} and the average information content \cite{Piantadosi2011}, but also by its emotional content. We have analyzed three established lexica of affective word usage in English, German, and Spanish, to verify that these lexica have a neutral, unbiased, emotional content. Taking into account the frequency of word usage, we find that words with a positive emotional content are more frequently used. This lends support to Pollyanna hypothesis \cite{Boucher1969} that there should be a positive bias in human expression. We also find that negative words contain more information than positive words, as the informativeness of a word increases uniformly with its valence decrease. Our findings support earlier conjectures about (i) the relation between word frequency and information content, and (ii) the impact of positive emotions on communication and social links.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, 3 table

Confronting Standard Models of Proto–Planetary Disks With New Mid–Infrared Sizes from the Keck Interferometer

This is the final version of the article. Available from American Astronomical Society via the DOI in this record.The accepted author manuscript is in ORE at http://hdl.handle.net/10871/21611We present near- and mid-infrared (MIR) interferometric observations made with the Keck Interferometer Nuller and near-contemporaneous spectro-photometry from the infrared telescope facilities (IRTFs) of 11 well-known young stellar objects, several of which were observed for the first time in these spectral and spatial resolution regimes. With au-level spatial resolution, we first establish characteristic sizes of the infrared emission using a simple geometrical model consisting of a hot inner rim and MIR disk emission. We find a high degree of correlation between the stellar luminosity and the MIR disk sizes after using near-infrared data to remove the contribution from the inner rim. We then use a semi-analytical physical model to also find that the very widely used "star + inner dust rim + flared disk" class of models strongly fails to reproduce the spectral energy distribution (SED) and spatially resolved MIR data simultaneously; specifically a more compact source of MIR emission is required than results from the standard flared disk model. We explore the viability of a modification to the model whereby a second dust rim containing smaller dust grains is added, and find that the 2-rim model leads to significantly improved fits in most cases. This complexity is largely missed when carrying out SED modeling alone, although detailed silicate feature fitting by McClure et al. recently came to a similar conclusion. As has been suggested recently by Menu et al., the difficulty in predicting MIR sizes from the SED alone might hint at "transition disk"-like gaps in the inner au; however, the relatively high correlation found in our MIR disk size versus stellar luminosity relation favors layered disk morphologies and points to missing disk model ingredients instead.M.S. was supported by NASA ADAP grant NNX09AC73G. R.W.R. was supported by the IR&D program of The Aerospace Corporation

The adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW) for European Portuguese

This study presents the adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW; Bradley & Lang, 1999a) for European Portuguese (EP). The EP adaptation of the ANEW was based on the affective ratings made by 958 college students who were EP native speakers. Participants assessed about 60 words by considering the affective dimensions of valence, arousal, and dominance, using the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) in either a paper-and-pencil and a web survey procedures. Results of the adaptation of the ANEW for EP are presented. Furthermore, the differences between EP, American (Bradley & Lang, 1999a), and Spanish (Redondo, Fraga, Padrón, & Comesaña, 2007) standardizations were explored. Results showed that the ANEW words were understood in a similar way by EP, American, and Spanish subjects, although some sex and cross-cultural differences were observed. The EP adaptation of the ANEW is shown to be a valid and useful tool that will allow researchers to control and/or manipulate the affective properties of stimuli as well as to develop cross-linguistic studies. The normative values of EP adaptation of the ANEW can be downloaded at http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.COMPETE - Programa Operacional Factores de CompetitividadeFundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional - FEDERQuadro de Referência Estratégico Nacional - QRENFundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - research project “Procura Palavras (P-Pal ): A software program for deriving objective and subjective psycholinguistic indices for European Portuguese words

The role of glucocorticoids in the induction of zinc-α2-glycoprotein expression in adipose tissue in cancer cachexia

Loss of adipose tissue in cancer cachexia in mice bearing the MAC16 tumour arises from an increased lipid mobilisation through increased expression of zinc-α2-glycoprotein (ZAG) in white (WAT) and brown (BAT) adipose tissue. Glucocorticoids have been suggested to increase ZAG expression, and this study examines their role in cachexia and the mechanisms involved. In mice bearing the MAC16 tumour, serum cortisol concentrations increased in parallel with weight loss, and the glucocorticoid receptor antagonist RU38486 (25 mg kg−1) attenuated both the loss of body weight and ZAG expression in WAT. Dexamethasone (66 μg kg−1) administration to normal mice produced a six-fold increase in ZAG expression in both WAT and BAT, which was also attenuated by RU38486. In vitro studies using 3T3-L1 adipocytes showed dexamethasone (1.68 μM) to stimulate lipolysis and increase ZAG expression, and both were attenuated by RU38486 (10 μM), anti-ZAG antibody (1 μgml−1), and the β3-adrenoreceptor (β3-AR) antagonist SR59230A (10 μM). Zinc-α2-glycoprotein also increased its own expression and this was attenuated by SR59230A, suggesting that it was mediated through the β3-AR. This suggests that glucocorticoids stimulate lipolysis through an increase in ZAG expression, and that they are responsible for the increase in ZAG expression seen in adipose tissue of cachectic mice