7,501 research outputs found
Cytokine gene polymorphisms in preterm infants with necrotising enterocolitis: genetic association study
BACKGROUND The inflammatory cytokine cascade is implicated in the pathogenesis of necrotising enterocolitis (NEC). Genetic association studies of cytokine polymorphisms may help to detect molecular mechanisms that are causally related to the disease process. AIM To examine associations between the common genetic variants in candidate inflammatory cytokine genes and NEC in preterm infants. METHODS Multi-centre case-control and genetic association study. DNA samples were collected from 50 preterm infants with NEC and 50 controls matched for gestational age and ethnic group recruited to a multi-centre case-control study. Ten candidate single-nucleotide polymorphisms in cytokines previously associated with infectious or inflammatory diseases were genotyped. The findings were included in random-effects meta-analyses with data from previous genetic association studies. RESULTS All allele distributions were in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. None of the studied cytokine polymorphisms was significantly associated with NEC. Four previous genetic association studies of cytokine polymorphisms and NEC in preterm infants were found. Meta-analyses were possible for several single-nucleotide polymorphisms. These increased the precision of the estimates of effect size but did not reveal any significant associations. CONCLUSIONS The available data are not consistent with more than modest associations between these candidate cytokine variant alleles and NEC in preterm infants. Data from future association studies of these polymorphisms may be added to the meta-analyses to obtain more precise estimates of effects sizes.The study was funded by Tenovus (Scotland)
Multi-Modal Human-Machine Communication for Instructing Robot Grasping Tasks
A major challenge for the realization of intelligent robots is to supply them
with cognitive abilities in order to allow ordinary users to program them
easily and intuitively. One way of such programming is teaching work tasks by
interactive demonstration. To make this effective and convenient for the user,
the machine must be capable to establish a common focus of attention and be
able to use and integrate spoken instructions, visual perceptions, and
non-verbal clues like gestural commands. We report progress in building a
hybrid architecture that combines statistical methods, neural networks, and
finite state machines into an integrated system for instructing grasping tasks
by man-machine interaction. The system combines the GRAVIS-robot for visual
attention and gestural instruction with an intelligent interface for speech
recognition and linguistic interpretation, and an modality fusion module to
allow multi-modal task-oriented man-machine communication with respect to
dextrous robot manipulation of objects.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figure
Thermoelectric properties of Co, Ir, and Os-Doped FeSi Alloys: Evidence for Strong Electron-Phonon Coupling
The effects of various transition metal dopants on the electrical and thermal
transport properties of Fe1-xMxSi alloys (M= Co, Ir, Os) are reported. The
maximum thermoelectric figure of merit ZTmax is improved from 0.007 at 60 K for
pure FeSi to ZT = 0.08 at 100 K for 4% Ir doping. A comparison of the thermal
conductivity data among Os, Ir and Co doped alloys indicates strong
electron-phonon coupling in this compound. Because of this interaction, the
common approximation of dividing the total thermal conductivity into
independent electronic and lattice components ({\kappa}Total =
{\kappa}electronic + {\kappa}lattice) fails for these alloys. The effects of
grain size on thermoelectric properties of Fe0.96Ir0.04Si alloys are also
reported. The thermal conductivity can be lowered by about 50% with little or
no effect on the electrical resistivity or Seebeck coefficient. This results in
ZTmax = 0.125 at 100 K, still about a factor of five too low for solid-state
refrigeration applications
Physical properties of Ce3-xTe4 below room temperature
The physical properties of polycrystalline Ce3-xTe4 were investigated by
measurements of the thermoelectric properties, Hall coefficient, heat capacity,
and magnetization. The fully-filled, metallic x=0 compound displays a soft
ferromagnetic transition near 4K, and analysis of the corresponding heat
capacity anomaly suggests a doublet ground state for Ce^{3+}. The transition is
suppressed to below 2K in the insulating x=0.33 composition, revealing that
magnetic order in Ce3-xTe4 is driven by an RKKY-type interaction. The
thermoelectric properties trend with composition as expected from simple
electron counting, and the transport properties in Ce3Te4 are observed to be
similar to those in La3Te4. Trends in the low temperature thermal conductivity
data reveal that the phonons are efficiently scattered by electrons, while all
compositions examined have a lattice thermal conductivity near 1.2W/m/K at
200K.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev.
Dephasing Effects by Ferromagnetic Boundary on Resistivity in Disordered Metallic Layer
The resistivity of disordered metallic layer sandwiched by two ferromagnetic
layers at low-temperature is investigated theoretically. It is shown that the
magnetic field acting at the interface does not affect the classical Boltzmann
resistivity but causes a dephasing among electrons in the presence of the
spin-orbit interaction, suppressing the anti-localization due to the spin-orbit
interaction. The dephasing turns out to be stronger in the case where the
magnetization of the two layers is parallel, contributing to a positive
magnetoresistance close to a switching field at low temperature.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures. Title modified in journal versio
Four-well tunneling states and elastic response of clathrates
We present resonant ultrasound elastic constant measurements of the clathrate
compounds Eu8Ga16Ge30 and Sr8Ga16Ge30. The elastic response of the Eu clathrate
provides clear evidence for the existence of a new type of four-well tunneling
states, described by two nearly degenerate four level systems (FLS). The FLS's
are closely linked with the fourfold split positions of Eu known from neutron
diffraction density profiles. Using a realistic potential we estimate the
tunneling frequencies and show that the energy gap between the two FLS's is of
the same order as the Einstein oscillator frequency. This explains why the
observed harmonic oscillator type specific heat is not modified by tunneling
states. In addition the quadrupolar interaction of FLS's with elastic strains
explains the pronounced depression observed in elastic constant measurements.
In the case of the Sr clathrate, we show that the shallow dip in the elastic
constant c44 is explained using the same type of quadrupolar interaction with a
soft Einstein mode instead of a FLS.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; accepted for publication in Physical Review
Letter
Corticolimbic dysfunction during facial and prosodic emotional recognition in first-episode psychosis patients and individuals at ultra-high risk
Emotional processing dysfunction is widely reported in patients with chronic schizophrenia and first-episode psychosis (FEP), and has been linked to functional abnormalities of corticolimbic regions. However, corticolimbic dysfunction is less studied in people at ultra-high risk for psychosis (UHR), particularly during processing prosodic voices. We examined corticolimbic response during an emotion recognition task in 18 UHR participants and compared them with 18 FEP patients and 21 healthy controls (HC). Emotional recognition accuracy and corticolimbic response were measured during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) using emotional dynamic facial and prosodic voice stimuli. Relative to HC, both UHR and FEP groups showed impaired overall emotion recognition accuracy. Whilst during face trials, both UHR and FEP groups did not show significant differences in brain activation relative to HC, during voice trials, FEP patients showed reduced activation across corticolimbic networks including the amygdala. UHR participants showed a trend for increased response in the caudate nucleus during the processing of emotionally valenced prosodic voices relative to HC. The results indicate that corticolimbic dysfunction seen in FEP patients is also present, albeit to a lesser extent, in an UHR cohort, and may represent a neural substrate for emotional processing difficulties prior to the onset of florid psychosis
A Primer on the Economics of Prescription Pharmaceutical Pricing in Health Insurance Markets
The pricing of medical products and services in the U.S. is notoriously complex. In health care, supply prices (those received by the manufacturer) are distinct from demand prices (those paid by the patient) due to health insurance. The insurer, in designing the benefit, decides what prices patients pay out-of-pocket for drugs and other products. In this primer we characterize cost and supply conditions in markets for generic and branded drugs, and apply basic tools of microeconomics to describe how an insurer, acting on behalf of its enrollees, would set demand prices for drugs. Importantly, we show how the market structure on the supply side, characterized alternatively by monopoly (unique brands), Bertrand differentiated product markets (therapeutic competition), and competition (generics), influences the insurer’s choices about demand prices. This perspective sheds light on the choice of coinsurance versus copayments, the structure of tiered formularies, and developments in the retail market.
Neural Circuitry of Novelty Salience Processing in Psychosis Risk: Association With Clinical Outcome
Psychosis has been proposed to develop from dysfunction in a hippocampal-striatal-midbrain circuit, leading to aberrant salience processing. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during novelty salience processing to investigate this model in people at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis according to their subsequent clinical outcomes. Seventy-six CHR participants as defined using the Comprehensive Assessment of At-Risk Mental States (CAARMS) and 31 healthy controls (HC) were studied while performing a novelty salience fMRI task that engaged an a priori hippocampal-striatal-midbrain circuit of interest. The CHR sample was then followed clinically for a mean of 59.7 months (~5 y), when clinical outcomes were assessed in terms of transition (CHR-T) or non-transition (CHR-NT) to psychosis (CAARMS criteria): during this period, 13 individuals (17%) developed a psychotic disorder (CHR-T) and 63 did not. Functional activation and effective connectivity within a hippocampal-striatal-midbrain circuit were compared between groups. In CHR individuals compared to HC, hippocampal response to novel stimuli was significantly attenuated (P = .041 family-wise error corrected). Dynamic Causal Modelling revealed that stimulus novelty modulated effective connectivity from the hippocampus to the striatum, and from the midbrain to the hippocampus, significantly more in CHR participants than in HC. Conversely, stimulus novelty modulated connectivity from the midbrain to the striatum significantly less in CHR participants than in HC, and less in CHR participants who subsequently developed psychosis than in CHR individuals who did not become psychotic. Our findings are consistent with preclinical evidence implicating hippocampal-striatal-midbrain circuit dysfunction in altered salience processing and the onset of psychosis
Subsonic cascade wind tunnel tests of a sundstrand controlled-diffusion fan blade section
Results are given of subsonic cascade wind tunnel tests of a controlled diffusion fan blade section designed by Sundstrand Corporation. Data were obtained successfully at air inlet angles less than and approaching design incidence. Operation at design and higher incidence angles would require side wall suction. It was concluded that the design was successful and that a fan test should be consideredThis report formally documents the results and conclusions
of a cascade wind tunnel test program sponsored by Sundstrand
Aviation Operations, Sundstrand Corporation, (Purchase Order
No. E2E4745-24M, dated 9/20/82) under the cognizance of
Dr. Paul Hermann.http://archive.org/details/subsoniccascadew00mcg
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