68,406 research outputs found
Human response to vibration in residential environments (NANR209), technical report 2: measurement of response
Based on a review of the literature and the best practice guidance available, a social survey questionnaire was developed to measure residents’ self-reported annoyance and to provide data suitable for establishing exposure-response relationships between levels of annoyance and levels of vibration. The development of the questionnaire was influenced by a number of previous studies such as: the social survey questionnaire developed for the NANR172 Pilot Study of this research (Defra, 2007); best practice guidelines for the development of socio-acoustic surveys issued by ICBEN and presented in the current International Standard (Fields et al., 2001; ISO/TS 15666:2003); the Nordtest Method (2001) for the development of socio-vibration surveys, and a peer review of the social survey questionnaire by international experts in the field. In order to avoid influencing responses and reasons for participation in the research, the survey was introduced as a survey of neighbourhood satisfaction. The questionnaire design, through the use of sections, enables new sections to be added to the questionnaire so that specific vibration sources can be investigated in more depth. In addressing the ‘response’ component in the ‘exposure-response’ relationship, the questionnaire was designed to yield interval-level measurement data suitable for analysis with vibration measurement data via two response scales: the five-point semantic and the eleven-point numerical scales. This decision was largely founded upon the ability of the two scales to meet the criteria established by ICBEN (Fields et al., 2001) for socio-acoustic survey design. Detailed procedures were documented, following the field trial of the questionnaire, in terms of the role of the interviewer, the recording of information and the transfer of the data to the relevant database for subsequent analysis and to inform the vibration team responsible for the ‘exposure’ component of this research project
Sensorimotor processing for balance in spinocerebellar ataxia type 6.
We investigated whether balance impairments caused by cerebellar disease are associated with specific sensorimotor processing deficits that generalize across all sensory modalities. Experiments focused on the putative cerebellar functions of scaling and coordinate transformation of balance responses evoked by stimulation of single sensory channels. Vestibular, visual, and proprioceptive sensory channels were stimulated in isolation using galvanic vestibular stimulation, moving visual scenery, and muscle vibration, respectively, in 16 subjects with spinocerebellar ataxia type 6 (SCA6) and 16 matched healthy controls. Two polarities of each stimulus type evoked postural responses of similar form in the forward and backward directions. Disease severity was assessed using the Scale for Assessment and Rating of Ataxia. Impaired balance of SCA6 subjects during unperturbed stance was reflected in faster than normal body sway (P = 0.009), which correlated with disease severity (r = 0.705, P < 0.001). Sensory perturbations revealed a sensorimotor processing abnormality that was specific to response scaling for the visual channel. This manifested as visually evoked postural responses that were approximately three times larger than normal (backward, P < 0.001; forward P = 0.005) and correlated with disease severity (r = 0.543, P = 0.03). Response direction and habituation properties were no different from controls for all three sensory modalities. Cerebellar degeneration disturbs the scaling of postural responses evoked by visual motion, possibly through disinhibition of extracerebellar visuomotor centers. The excessively high gain of the visuomotor channel without compensatory decreases in gains of other sensorimotor channels provides a potential mechanism for instability of the balance control system in cerebellar disease. © 2015 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society
Log-concavity and lower bounds for arithmetic circuits
One question that we investigate in this paper is, how can we build
log-concave polynomials using sparse polynomials as building blocks? More
precisely, let be a
polynomial satisfying the log-concavity condition a\_i^2 \textgreater{} \tau
a\_{i-1}a\_{i+1} for every where \tau
\textgreater{} 0. Whenever can be written under the form where the polynomials have at most
monomials, it is clear that . Assuming that the
have only non-negative coefficients, we improve this degree bound to if \tau \textgreater{} 1,
and to if .
This investigation has a complexity-theoretic motivation: we show that a
suitable strengthening of the above results would imply a separation of the
algebraic complexity classes VP and VNP. As they currently stand, these results
are strong enough to provide a new example of a family of polynomials in VNP
which cannot be computed by monotone arithmetic circuits of polynomial size
The Future Of Volunteer Managed Festivals - Where Do We Go From Here?
Agricultural shows are community based festivals that represent a majority of festivals staged in rural destinations. These shows are predominantly volunteer managed festivals which are finding it difficult to survive in an increasingly competitive and challenging environment. However little is understood about the volunteer managers of these festivals in terms of their motivation, skills and effectiveness in managing these festivals. To address these issues this paper has three aims. First it will present a review of the literature on volunteer managed festivals. Second the paper presents preliminary findings from a study conducted during 2005/2006 on rural agricultural shows. Third this paper discusses the implications for the management of future rural agricultural shows
Three Dimensional Electrical Impedance Tomography
The electrical resistivity of mammalian tissues varies widely and is correlated with physiological
function. Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) can be used to probe such variations in vivo, and offers a
non-invasive means of imaging the internal conductivity distribution of the human body. But the
computational complexity of EIT has severe practical limitations, and previous work has been restricted to
considering image reconstruction as an essentially two-dimensional problem. This simplification can limit
significantly the imaging capabilities of EIT, as the electric currents used to determine the conductivity variations will not in general be confined to a two-dimensional plane. A few studies have attempted three-dimensional EIT image reconstruction, but have not yet succeeded in generating images of a quality suitable for clinical applications. Here we report the development of a three-dimensional EIT system with greatly improved imaging capabilities, which combines our 64-electrode data-collection apparatus with customized matrix inversion techniques. Our results demonstrate the practical potential of EIT for clinical applications, such as lung or brain imaging and diagnostic screening
Preoperative systemic inflammation predicts postoperative infectious complications in patients undergoing curative resection for colorectal cancer
The presence of systemic inflammation before surgery, as evidenced by the glasgow prognostic score (mGPS), predicts poor long-term survival in colorectal cancer. The aim was to examine the relationship between the preoperative mGPS and the development of postoperative complications in patients undergoing potentially curative resection for colorectal cancer. Patients (n=455) who underwent potentially curative resections between 2003 and 2007 were assessed consecutively, and details were recorded in a database. The majority of patients presented for elective surgery (85%) were over the age of 65 years (70%), were male (58%), were deprived (53%), and had TNM stage I/II disease (61%), had preoperative haemoglobin (56%), white cell count (87%) and mGPS 0 (58%) in the normal range. After surgery, 86 (19%) patients developed a postoperative complication; 70 (81%) of which were infectious complications. On multivariate analysis, peritoneal soiling (P<0.01), elevated preoperative white cell count (P<0.05) and mGPS (P<0.01) were independently associated with increased risk of developing a postoperative infection. In elective patients, only the mGPS (OR=1.75, 95% CI=1.17-2.63, P=0.007) was significantly associated with increased risk of developing a postoperative infection. Preoperative elevated mGPS predicts increased postoperative infectious complications in patients undergoing potentially curative resection for colorectal cancer
Cutting out the middleman: measuring nuclear area in histopathology slides without segmentation
The size of nuclei in histological preparations from excised breast tumors is
predictive of patient outcome (large nuclei indicate poor outcome).
Pathologists take into account nuclear size when performing breast cancer
grading. In addition, the mean nuclear area (MNA) has been shown to have
independent prognostic value. The straightforward approach to measuring nuclear
size is by performing nuclei segmentation. We hypothesize that given an image
of a tumor region with known nuclei locations, the area of the individual
nuclei and region statistics such as the MNA can be reliably computed directly
from the image data by employing a machine learning model, without the
intermediate step of nuclei segmentation. Towards this goal, we train a deep
convolutional neural network model that is applied locally at each nucleus
location, and can reliably measure the area of the individual nuclei and the
MNA. Furthermore, we show how such an approach can be extended to perform
combined nuclei detection and measurement, which is reminiscent of
granulometry.Comment: Conditionally accepted for MICCAI 201
Interpreting the Cosmic Ray Composition
Detailed composition measurements can be a very powerful means of tracing
origins, a fact used regularly by forensic scientists and art historians. One
of the main motivating factors for making detailed observations of cosmic rays
was always the hope that a unique compositional signature could be found which
pointed unambiguously to a particular source. This has proven much harder than
expected, but we have now reached a point where it appears possible to begin to
decipher the information contained in the compositional data; the key, we have
discovered, is to read the data not in isolation, but in the context provided
by our general astronomical knowledge and by recent developments in shock
acceleration theory (Meyer, Drury and Ellison, 1997, 1998; Ellison, Drury and
Meyer, 1997). In our view (not, it is only fair to warn the reader, yet
universally accepted) the data show clearly that the Galactic cosmic ray
particles originate predominantly from the gas and dust of the general
interstellar medium.Comment: 14 pages, LaTeX 2.09, 4 figure
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