Assessment of cognitive function in patients with essential hypertension treated with lercanidipine

J Tisaire-Sánchez1, J Roma2, Ignacio Camacho-Azcargorta3, J Bueno-Gómez1, J Mora-Maciá4, Angel Navarro51Fundación para la Investigación de la Hipertensión Arterial, Zaragoza, Spain; 2Fundació per l’Estudi de la Hipertensió Arterial als Hospitals Comarcals de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain; 3Servicio de Cardiología, Clínica San José, Valencia, Spain; 4Unidad de Hipertensión Arterial, Instituto Médico Tecnológico, Barcelona, Spain; 5Recordati España, Madrid, SpainObjectives: The aim of this longitudinal, open-label, comparative, multicenter study was to assess cognitive function in hypertensive patients receiving mid-term treatment with lercanidipine.Methods: Hypertensive patients aged 40 years or older were treated with lercanidipine (10 mg daily) after 7–10 days washout period. The duration of the study was 6 months. Blood pressure (BP) was measured every 4 weeks (JNC 6th report). In patients with inadequate BP control, doxazosin was added and up-titrated. At baseline and after 6 months of treatment, cognitive function was evaluated using the Spanish validated version of the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Trail Making Test (TMT). Results: In the study population of 467 patients, BP decreased from 154.4/95.3 mmHg at baseline to 134.8/80.7 mmHg at 6 months. At the end of the study, 98% of patients were receiving lercanidipine, 20% an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor, and 6% doxazosin. Adequate BP control was obtained in 68% of patients. The mean (standard deviation) MMSE scores improved from 32.35 (2.59) to 33.25 (2.36) (p<0.0001). Patients with good BP control scored significantly better than those with inadequate BP control (p<0.05), which was already observed at the first month. Conclusions: The third-generation calcium channel antagonist, lercanidipine, improved cognitive function after 6 months of treatment especially in patients with good BP control, suggesting that improvements in cognitive function may be associated with a decrease in BP. Keywords: lercanidipine, hypertension, cognitive functio

Inequality in mortality in pre-industrial Southern Europe during an epidemic episode : socio-economic determinants (eighteenth - nineteenth centuries Spain)

The objective of this study is to gain more comprehensive knowledge about social inequality in mortality in pre-industrial periods. With this aim, we have reconstructed the life courses of the inhabitants of the town of Vera in south-east Spain for the period 1797-1812 in order to estimate the influence of socio-economic status on ordinary and extraordinary mortality, given that, during this period, the town suffered from several epidemic outbreaks of yellow fever. As a result of these outbreaks, around a quarter of the town's population died. The results obtained indicate social inequality in mortality at least from the end of the eighteenth century. Although the differences are higher in mortality caused by non-infectious diseases or ill-defined causes, the coefficients also show a certain social gradient in mortality derived from infectious diseases. However, with respect to this latter type of mortality, the place of residence - seems to have a greater influence on the chances of survival than socio-economic status

Characterization and Melodic Similarity of A Cappella Flamenco Cantes

This paper intends to research on the link between musical similarity and style and sub-style (variant) classification in the context of flamenco a cappella singing styles. Given the limitation of standard computational models for melodic characterization and similarity computation in this particular context, we have proposed a specific set of melodic features adapted to flamenco singing styles. In order to evaluate them, we have gathered a collection of music recordings from the most representative singers and have manually extracted those proposed features. Based on those features, we have defined a similarity measure between two performances and have validated their usefulness in differentiating several styles and variants. The main conclusion of this work is the need to incorporate specific musical features to the design of similarity measures for flamenco music so that flamencoadapted MIR systems can be develope

Design Optimization of a Planar Spiral Inductor Using Space Mapping

This paper addresses the implementation of a computationally efficient optimization technique for designing structures simulated in 3D electromagnetic field solvers. A probe of concept is done by the EM-based optimization of a planar spiral inductor for high-power applications. The optimization technique employed is based on space mapping (SM) methods, more specifically on the Broyden-based input space mapping algorithm. Our optimization results confirm the efficiency of the proposed approach

Comparative Melodic Analysis of A Cappella Flamenco Cantes.

Background in ethnomusicology and music analysis. A cappella singing styles (called cantes in the flamenco jargon) are among the most fundamental song styles within the flamenco repertoire. Until very recently, flamenco singers have been only using oral transmission to learn them. Because of this form of diffusion, melody has become one of the main musical facets to be listened to, remembered, elaborated and spread in flamenco singing styles. Moreover, melody has helped flamenco enthusiasts to remember and identify variants of a particular style or genre. A frequent discussion and unanswered question among flamenco scholars is how to quantify the similarity between two melodies, and how to use this similarity measure to differentiate different styles and variants among performers, and to study the roots and evolution of flamenco styles

Constructing a small modular stellarator in Latin America

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84938118149&partnerID=40&md5=1d385f1e177901beaf6f30228abdd67bThis paper aims at briefly describing the design and construction issues of the stellarator of Costa Rica 1 (SCR-1). The SCR-1 is a small modular stellarator for magnetic confinement of plasma developed by the Plasma Laboratory for Fusion Energy and Applications of the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica (ITCR). SCR-1 will be a 2-field period small modular stellarator with an aspect ratio > 4.4; low shear configuration with core and edge rotational transform equal to 0.32 and 0.28; it will hold plasma in a 6061-T6 aluminum torus shaped vacuum vessel with an minor plasma radius 54.11 mm, a volume of 13.76 liters (0.01 m3), and major radius R = 238 mm. Plasma will be confined in the volume by on axis magnetic field 43.8 mT generated by 12 modular coils with 6 turns each, carrying a current of 767.8 A per turn providing a total toroidal field (TF) current of 4.6 kA-turn per coil. The coils will be supplied by a bank of cell batteries of 120 V. Typical length of the plasma pulse will be between 4 s to 10 s. The SCR-1 plasmas will be heated by ECH second harmonic at 2.45 GHz with a plasma density cut-off value of 7.45 × 1016 m-3. Two magnetrons with a maximum output power of 2 kW and 3 kW will be used. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.Ad Astra Rocket Company,Instituto Tecnologico de Costa Rica,International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),Universidad Nacional de Costa Ric

Using the Mooney Space to Characterize the Non-Affine Behavior of Elastomers

The formulation of the entropic statistical theory and the related neo-Hookean model has been a major advance in the modeling of rubber-like materials, but the failure to explain some experimental observations such as the slope in Mooney plots resulted in hundreds of micromechanical and phenomenological models. The origin of the difficulties, the reason for the apparent need for the second invariant, and the reason for the relative success of models based on the Valanis–Landel decomposition have been recently explained. From that insight, a new micro–macro chain stretch connection using the stretch tensor (instead of the right Cauchy–Green deformation tensor) has been proposed and supported both theoretically and from experimental data. A simple three-parameter model using this connection has been suggested. The purpose of this work is to provide further insight into the model, to provide an analytical expression for the Gaussian contribution, and to provide a simple procedure to obtain the parameters from a tensile test using the Mooney space or the Mooney–Rivlin constants. From different papers, a wide variety of experimental tests on different materials and loading conditions have been selected to demonstrate that the simple model calibrated only from a tensile test provides accurate predictions for a wide variety of elastomers under different deformation levels and multiaxial patterns

Study of the chlorfenvinphos pesticide removal under different anodic materials and different reactor configuration

The present manuscript focuses on the study of the electrochemical oxidation of the insecticide Chlorfenvinphos (CVP). The assays were carried out under galvanostatic conditions using boron-doped diamond (BDD) and lowcost tin dioxide doped with antimony (Sb-doped SnO2) as anodes. The influence of the operating variables, such as applied current density, presence or absence of a cation-exchange membrane and concentration of supporting electrolyte, was discussed. The results revealed that the higher applied current density the higher degradation and mineralization of the insecticide for both anodes. The presence of the membrane and the highest concentration of Na2SO4 studied (0.1 M) as a supporting electrolyte benefited the oxidation process of CVP using the BDD electrode, while with the ceramic anode the elimination of CVP was lower under these experimental conditions. Although the BDD electrode showed the best performance, ceramic anodes appear as an interesting alternative as they were able to degrade CVP completely for the highest applied current density values. Toxicity tests revealed that the initial solution of CVP was more toxic than the samples treated with the ceramic electrode, while using the BDD electrode the toxicity of the sample increased

Basic Module Theory over Non-Commutative Rings with Computational Aspects of Operator Algebras

The present text surveys some relevant situations and results where basic Module Theory interacts with computational aspects of operator algebras. We tried to keep a balance between constructive and algebraic aspects.Comment: To appear in the Proceedings of the AADIOS 2012 conference, to be published in Lecture Notes in Computer Scienc