Beverage Consumption and Hypertension: Findings from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

The study sample was comprised of 18,953 subjects aged 18 years and older who participated in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Preference for diet soda over regular soda was higher in females as compared to males and in Caucasians as compared to other races. Mean alcohol consumption was almost three times higher in males than in females. Undiagnosed hypertension was more common in males than in females, in 65-90 than in 50-64 year olds, and in people with less than high school education compared to those with higher education. Diastolic pressure was correlated with the level of consumption of diet soda, coffee, tea, and alcohol. Diet soda and alcohol consumption had a statistically significant positive relationship with hypertension even after adjusting for demographic variables and body mass index. The study provides useful information of the patterns of beverage uses and the prevalence of hypertension in the United States

A Novel Load Balancing Scheme for Hot-spot Cells

The radio spectrum that is available to us is very limited. The cellular network works fine when the traffic conditions are normal or below normal. But when the cellular traffic increases the network cannot perform efficiently under this increasing traffic load as the radio spectrum to serve this increasing traffic is very limited. To avoid degradation and to increase performance of wireless cellular network frequency reuse and channel allocation techniques are used. The sole purpose of the channel allocation techniques is to allocate the available channel in such a way that the call blocking probability is reduced. In this paper we propose a HCA technique which will reduce the call blocking probability when the Cell becomes a hot spot i.e. the cellular traffic is beyond normal. These papers propose a novel load balancing scheme that will allocate channel to the overburden cell using hot spot notification. The HCA scheme is a combination of FCA and DCA scheme which effectively utilize the central pool for allocation of channels to the cells under heavy traffic. This HCA Scheme work like FCA in initial stages i.e. under low traffic levels and more like DCA at later stages i.e. high traffic levels and also reduces the Call blocking probability to great extent

Performance Study of Multi-access Edge Computing Deployment in a Virtualized Environment

Various real-time, latency-sensitive, and high-speed mobile applications are evolving as 5G applications. These applications are realized using Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technologies in the 5G system. MEC platform, MEC service, and MEC application are the main components of an MEC Framework. NFV Orchestrator, Virtualized Infrastructure Manager (VIM), and virtualization technologies such as Virtual Machines (VM) and Containers are the main pillars of the NFV technology. In this paper, we study the impact of the virtualization technologies in the deployment of the MEC framework and its components while. We also study the impact of virtualization technologies on NFV and MEC KPIs such as onboarding time, instantiation time, MEC service and application response times. The experiments and its analysis show that containers perform better than VM to instantiate/terminate MEC components in the NFV framework. The observed MEC service KPIs show that the edge application's performance will be improved to meet the QoE of the applications irrespective of the virtualization technology used. These results can be used as a reference while deploying the MEC components based on their granular functionalities. © 2020 IEEE

PREVED STUDY

This data was collected by reviewing medical records of all patients who visited the emergency department (ED) of NYC Health + Hospitals/Jacobi, a municipal hospital in the Bronx, NY, USA with a chief complaint of dizziness and/or vertigo from January 1st, 2016 to December 31st, 2016

A biophysically detailed computational model of urinary bladder small DRG neuron soma

<div><p>Bladder small DRG neurons, which are putative nociceptors pivotal to urinary bladder function, express more than a dozen different ionic membrane mechanisms: ion channels, pumps and exchangers. Small-conductance Ca²⁺-activated K⁺ (SK_Ca) channels which were earlier thought to be gated solely by intracellular Ca²⁺ concentration ([Ca]_i) have recently been shown to exhibit inward rectification with respect to membrane potential. The effect of SK_Ca inward rectification on the excitability of these neurons is unknown. Furthermore, studies on the role of K_Ca channels in repetitive firing and their contributions to different types of afterhyperpolarization (AHP) in these neurons are lacking. In order to study these phenomena, we first constructed and validated a biophysically detailed single compartment model of bladder small DRG neuron soma constrained by physiological data. The model includes twenty-two major known membrane mechanisms along with intracellular Ca²⁺ dynamics comprising Ca²⁺ diffusion, cytoplasmic buffering, and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and mitochondrial mechanisms. Using modelling studies, we show that inward rectification of SK_Ca is an important parameter regulating neuronal repetitive firing and that its absence reduces action potential (AP) firing frequency. We also show that SK_Ca is more potent in reducing AP spiking than the large-conductance K_Ca channel (BK_Ca) in these neurons. Moreover, BK_Ca was found to contribute to the fast AHP (fAHP) and SK_Ca to the medium-duration (mAHP) and slow AHP (sAHP). We also report that the slow inactivating A-type K⁺ channel (slow K_A) current in these neurons is composed of 2 components: an initial fast inactivating (time constant ∼ 25-100 ms) and a slow inactivating (time constant ∼ 200-800 ms) current. We discuss the implications of our findings, and how our detailed model can help further our understanding of the role of C-fibre afferents in the physiology of urinary bladder as well as in certain disorders.</p></div

SK_Ca with IR: Role of SK_Ca inward rectification and SK_Ca and maximum conductance on inflammatory repetitive firing.

<p>Membrane potential, V_m (upper panel), intracellular calcium concentration, [Ca]_i (middle panel) and instantaneous SK_Ca conductance, <i>g</i> (lower panel) recorded against time for three maximum conductances () of the SK_Ca channel: 9*10⁻⁴ S/cm² (control) (A, D, G), 2.7*10⁻³ S/cm² (B, E, H) and 4.5*10⁻³ S/cm² (C, F, I). The neuron model used had SK_Ca channels endowed with inward rectification (SK_Ca with IR). Stimulus: 1000 ms, 0.12 nA rectangular current clamp.</p

Nutritional spoilage of tomato and brinjal fruits due to post-harvest fungi

In the present investigation spore suspension of previously isolated Alternaria solani, Colletotrichum sp., Fusarium solani, Phoma sp., Phomopsis vexans, Phytophthora sp., Phytophthora parasitica and Rhizopus stolonifer from tomato and brinjal were separately inoculated by sterilized disposable syringe in same aged tomato and brinjal fruits in aseptic condition. After seven days, biochemical parameters like change in dry weight, changes in protein content, changes in total sugar content and changes in vitamin C (Ascorbic acid) content from tomato and brinjal were estimated. Alternaria solani showed maximum decrease in dry weight of tomato fruit. Phytophthora parasitica showed maximum decrease in protein contents, total sugar contents and ascorbic acid contents of tomato fruit. Maximum decrease in dry weight contents of brinjal was due to Phomopsis vexans. Protein content of brinjal was found to be reduced due to all fungi, but Rhizopus stolonifer and Rhizoctonia solani showed maximum reduction in protein content of brinjal. Maximum decrease in total sugar content of tomato was observed due to Rhizopus stolonifer. Ascorbic acid content in brinjal was drastically decreased due to Rhizoctonia solani

Comparison of simulated and experimental APs in Fig 9.

<p>Comparison of simulated and experimental APs in <a href="http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006293#pcbi.1006293.g009" target="_blank">Fig 9</a>.</p

SK_Ca w/o IR: Role of SK_Ca inward rectification and SK_Ca and maximum conductance on inflammatory repetitive firing.

<p>Membrane potential, V_m (upper panel), intracellular calcium concentration, [Ca]_i (middle panel) and instantaneous SK_Ca conductance, <i>g</i> (lower panel) was recorded against time for three maximum conductances of the SK_Ca channel: 9*10⁻⁴ S/cm² (control) (A, D, G), 2.7*10⁻³ S/cm² (B, E, H) and 4.5*10⁻³ S/cm² (C, F, I). The neuron model used had non-inward rectifying SK_Ca channels (SK_Ca w/o IR). Stimulus: 1000 ms, 0.12 nA rectangular current clamp.</p

K_A channel.

<p>(A) Voltage dependence of steady state activation (<i>n</i>_∞, solid line) and inactivation (<i>h</i>_∞, dashed line) of the modelled channel. Squares (<i>n</i>_∞) and triangles (<i>h</i>_∞) represent the experimental data for bladder small DRG neurons from [<a href="http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006293#pcbi.1006293.ref007" target="_blank">7</a>]. (B) The activation time constant(<i>τ</i>_<i>n</i>) of the modelled channel. (C) The inactivation time constants of the channel: <i>τ</i>_{<i>h</i>,<i>slow</i>} (= slow time constant, solid line) and <i>τ</i>_{<i>h</i>,<i>fast</i>} (= fast time constant, dashed line). (D) The currents (<i>I</i>_<i>KA</i>) generated by the model (solid lines) and the currents reported in experiments (symbols, [<a href="http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006293#pcbi.1006293.ref033" target="_blank">33</a>]) using rectangular voltage clamps. The holding potential was kept at −120 mV for 5 ms and test potentials of −20, −10 and 0 mV were applied for 300 ms. Experimental data for currents recorded is shown by triangles (= −20 mV), circles (= −10 mV) and squares (= 0 mV) along corresponding simulated currents (solid lines). (E) Peak I-V relationship from the model generated by recording the peak current at each test potential. Protocol: Rectangular voltage clamp steps were applied from −80 to 20 mV for 300 ms from a holding potential of −80 mV. Other model parameters: , E_K = −84.7 mV, RMP = −53.5 mV, membrane capacitance = 28 pF, soma diameter = 24 <i>μ</i>m. The S values for model fits and their 5% threshold values (given in brackets) are: <i>n</i>_∞ = 0.008 (0.05), <i>h</i>_∞ = 0.003 (0.05), for voltage clamp currents at: 0 mV = 0.157 nA (0.067 nA), −10 mV = 0.161 nA (0.059 nA) and −20 mV = 0.081 nA (0.045 nA).</p