Impact of Scotland’s comprehensive, smoke-free legislation on stroke

<p>Background: Previous studies have reported a reduction in acute coronary events following smoke-free legislation. Evidence is lacking on whether stroke is also reduced. The aim was to determine whether the incidence of stroke, overalland by sub-type, fell following introduction of smoke-free legislation across Scotland on 26 March 2006.</p> <p>Methods and Findings: A negative binomial regression model was used to determine whether the introduction of smokefree legislation resulted in a step and/or slope change in stroke incidence. The model was adjusted for age-group, sex, socioeconomic deprivation quintile, urban/rural residence and month. Interaction tests were also performed. Routine hospital administrative data and death certificates were used to identify all hospital admissions and pre-hospital deaths due to stroke (ICD10 codes I61, I63 and I64) in Scotland between 2000 and 2010 inclusive. Prior to the legislation, rates of all stroke, intracerebral haemorrhage and unspecified stroke were decreasing, whilst cerebral infarction was increasing at 0.97% per annum. Following the legislation, there was a dramatic fall in cerebral infarctions that persisted for around 20 months. No visible effect was observed for other types of stroke. The model confirmed an 8.90% (95% CI 4.85, 12.77, p,0.001) stepwise reduction in cerebral infarction at the time the legislation was implemented, after adjustment for potential cofounders.</p> <p>Conclusions: Following introduction of national, comprehensive smoke-free legislation there was a selective reduction in cerebral infarction that was not apparent in other types of stroke.</p&gt

Exploiting locality in lease-based replicated transactional memory via task migration

We present LILAC-TM, the first locality-aware Distributed Software Transactional Memory (DSTM) implementation. LILAC-TM is a fully decentralized lease-based replicated DSTM. It employs a novel self-optimizing lease circulation scheme based on the idea of dynamically determining whether to migrate transactions to the nodes that own the leases required for their validation, or to demand the acquisition of these leases by the node that originated the transaction. Our experimental evaluation establishes that LILAC-TM provides significant performance gains for distributed workloads exhibiting data locality, while typically incurring little or no overhead for non-data local workloads. © Springer-Verlag 2013

Exploiting Locality in Lease-Based Replicated Transactional Memory via Task Migration

Abstract. We present Lilac-TM, the first locality-aware Distributed Software Transactional Memory (DSTM) implementation. Lilac-TM is a fully decentralized lease-based replicated DSTM. It employs a novel self-optimizing lease circulation scheme based on the idea of dynamically determining whether to migrate transactions to the nodes that own the leases required for their validation, or to demand the acquisition of these leases by the node that originated the transaction. Our experimental evaluation establishes that Lilac-TM provides significant performance gains for distributed workloads exhibiting data locality, while typically incurring little or no overhead for non-data local workloads.

As the Egg Turns: Monitoring Egg Attendance Behavior in Wild Birds Using Novel Data Logging Technology

Egg turning is unique to birds and critical for embryonic development in most avian species. Technology that can measure changes in egg orientation and temperature at fine temporal scales (1 Hz) was neither readily available nor small enough to fit into artificial eggs until recently. Here we show the utility of novel miniature data loggers equipped with 3-axis (i.e., triaxial) accelerometers, magnetometers, and a temperature thermistor to study egg turning behavior in free-ranging birds. Artificial eggs containing egg loggers were deployed in the nests of three seabird species for 1–7 days of continuous monitoring. These species (1) turned their eggs more frequently (up to 6.5 turns h−1) than previously reported for other species, but angular changes were often small (1–10° most common), (2) displayed similar mean turning rates (ca. 2 turns h−1) despite major differences in reproductive ecology, and (3) demonstrated distinct diurnal cycling in egg temperatures that varied between 1.4 and 2.4°C. These novel egg loggers revealed high-resolution, three-dimensional egg turning behavior heretofore never measured in wild birds. This new form of biotechnology has broad applicability for addressing fundamental questions in avian breeding ecology, life history, and development, and can be used as a tool to monitor birds that are sensitive to disturbance while breeding

Micro–Computed Tomography Measurements of Peripheral Lung Pathology in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Background: The smaller airways, < 2 mm in diameter, offer little resistance in normal lungs, but become the major site of obstruction in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)

Comparison of daily egg turning rates in auklets, gulls, and albatrosses with and without the use of a magnetometer.

<p>Egg turning was measured using egg loggers that had a triaxial accelerometer and magnetometer. However, datasets of ten individuals within each species were compared with and without incorporating the use of the magnetometer data. Shown are means ± SE. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were used to evaluate statistical differences between turning rates for all individuals within a species. Turning rates were significantly greater for all three species when the magnetometer data were incorporated.</p

Variations in the cycling of daily egg temperatures of nine individual birds (3 from each species).

<p>Each pane shows continuous logging of smoothed egg temperatures across multiple days. Sections of black line overlaid on the blue line denote night time periods based on ephemeris tables for the geographic coordinates of each colony (Table S1 in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0097898#pone.0097898.s005" target="_blank">File S1</a>). Temperature scales are consistent within each species but temporal periods varied slightly between individuals. However, all individuals shown were from equivalent calendar periods within a species to ensure similarity of environmental conditions that could potentially influence incubation behavior. Cycling coincides with a diurnal pattern and there is a distinct trend towards increased rhythmic temperature cycling with increasing egg size (i.e., species size). The pattern is less clear for the auklets but these birds nest in burrows or boxes and may be influenced less by diurnal patterns.</p

Deployment information for study species.

<p>Data from egg loggers were excluded from analyses if deployments were too short (<24 hours), a bird abandoned the nest, or the data logger malfunctioned.</p

Minimum and maximum day and night egg temperatures of each bird species.

<p>Shown are the mean ± SD min and max egg temperatures for each species.</p