Obstructive Sleep Apnea: A Staff Educational Program and Protocol

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a common sleep breathing disorder. Despite its prevalence, OSA often goes undiagnosed. This can result in negative sequelae. By educating healthcare providers about OSA, screening patients, and altering the plan of care, better outcomes will arise and complications can be minimized. The purpose of this project was to develop an obstructive sleep apnea educational program and protocol based on available current literature for anesthesia providers at a community hospital. The educational project and protocol consisted of an informational PowerPoint, pretest and posttest surveys, an OSA screening tool and identification of a high risk OSA patient by placing a sticker in front of the patient’s chart, management guidelines, and a question and answer period. The overall objective was to improve care for patients who are identified as high risk for OSA. The results of the surveys concluded that the anesthesia providers increased knowledge after the presentation. The educational component of the practice project was useful in increasing providers’ knowledge of OSA and management strategies and in turn was valuable in improving patient care

Rheumatoid Arthritis Naive T Cells Share Hypermethylation Sites With Synoviocytes.

ObjectiveTo determine whether differentially methylated CpGs in synovium-derived fibroblast-like synoviocytes (FLS) of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) were also differentially methylated in RA peripheral blood (PB) samples.MethodsFor this study, 371 genome-wide DNA methylation profiles were measured using Illumina HumanMethylation450 BeadChips in PB samples from 63 patients with RA and 31 unaffected control subjects, specifically in the cell subsets of CD14+ monocytes, CD19+ B cells, CD4+ memory T cells, and CD4+ naive T cells.ResultsOf 5,532 hypermethylated FLS candidate CpGs, 1,056 were hypermethylated in CD4+ naive T cells from RA PB compared to control PB. In analyses of a second set of CpG candidates based on single-nucleotide polymorphisms from a genome-wide association study of RA, 1 significantly hypermethylated CpG in CD4+ memory T cells and 18 significant CpGs (6 hypomethylated, 12 hypermethylated) in CD4+ naive T cells were found. A prediction score based on the hypermethylated FLS candidates had an area under the curve of 0.73 for association with RA case status, which compared favorably to the association of RA with the HLA-DRB1 shared epitope risk allele and with a validated RA genetic risk score.ConclusionFLS-representative DNA methylation signatures derived from the PB may prove to be valuable biomarkers for the risk of RA or for disease status

A Compact Gamma Ray and X-Ray Detector for Cube Satellites

Cosmic radiation continues to be a constant threat to any prolonged space mission. Harboring biological or non-biological payloads aboard a spacecraft traveling in space, cosmic radiation showers ionizing particles such as gamma and x-ray particles from our neighboring stars in our solar system and galaxy clusters. These ionizing particles create extensive issues for extended space missions such as traveling to Mars due to their degrading radiation effects on the human body and spacecraft electronics. Although precise instruments give more accurate results, they are presented as expensive, bulky, and heavy for space missions. This paper presents the background, capabilities, and opportunity of a small, low-cost particle detector aimed to (1) measure directional originating sources of the formation of cosmic radiation (2) narrow and establish a gamma and x-ray radiation shielding material used to protect spacecraft electronics, and (3) offer an open-source economical and educational solution used to inform and educate the populace on cosmic radiation activities. This paper is intended for the use and operation in small cube satellites operating within the PC-104 form factor architecture; but can be rearranged for specific intended use

Deletion of apolipoprotein E gene modifies the rate of depletion of alpha tocopherol (vitamin E) from mice brains

AbstractOur previous reports show that apolipoprotein E (apoE) influences the dynamics of alpha tocopherol (vitamin E) in brain. In this investigation, the patterns of depletion of alpha tocopherol from tissues of apoE deficient and wild type mice were compared after the animals were fed vitamin E deficient diets. Alpha tocopherol concentrations in specific regions of the brain and peripheral tissues at different times were determined by HPLC with electrochemical detection. ApoE deficiency significantly retarded the rate of depletion of alpha tocopherol from all regions of the brain. In addition, comparison of the rates of depletion of alpha tocopherol in both apoE deficient and wild type animals showed that cerebellum behaved differently from other areas such as cortex, hippocampus and striatum. This reinforces the uniqueness of cerebellum with regard to vitamin E biology. Patterns of depletion of tocopherol from peripheral tissues were different from brain. Serum tocopherol was higher in apoE deficient animals and remained higher than wild type during E deficiency. Depletion of liver tocopherol also tended to be unaffected by apoE deficiency. Our current and previous observations strongly suggest that apoE has an important role in modulating tocopherol concentrations in brain, probably acting in concert with other proteins as well

Mother-child histocompatibility and risk of rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus among mothers.

The study objective was to test the hypothesis that having histocompatible children increases the risk of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), possibly by contributing to the persistence of fetal cells acquired during pregnancy. We conducted a case control study using data from the UC San Francisco Mother Child Immunogenetic Study and studies at the Inova Translational Medicine Institute. We imputed human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles and minor histocompatibility antigens (mHags). We created a variable of exposure to histocompatible children. We estimated an average sequence similarity matching (SSM) score for each mother based on discordant mother-child alleles as a measure of histocompatibility. We used logistic regression models to estimate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals. A total of 138 RA, 117 SLE, and 913 control mothers were analyzed. Increased risk of RA was associated with having any child compatible at HLA-B (OR 1.9; 1.2-3.1), DPB1 (OR 1.8; 1.2-2.6) or DQB1 (OR 1.8; 1.2-2.7). Compatibility at mHag ZAPHIR was associated with reduced risk of SLE among mothers carrying the HLA-restriction allele B*07:02 (n = 262; OR 0.4; 0.2-0.8). Our findings support the hypothesis that mother-child histocompatibility is associated with risk of RA and SLE

A soluble guanylate cyclase stimulator, BAY 41-8543, preserves pulmonary artery endothelial function in experimental pulmonary embolism

Background: BAY 41-8543 reduces pulmonary vascular resistance and right ventricle injury in experimental PE. Objective: Test if BAY 41-8543 protects pulmonary artery (PA) endothelial function in PE. Methods: PE was induced (anesthetized, Sprague-Dawley rats, 25 µm polystyrene microspheres, 1.95 million/100g, IV) with BAY 41-8543 (50 ug/kg, IV) or solvent treatment. Controls had vehicle for microspheres. Rings isolated from primary PA branches (5hr. PE) were contracted (phenylephrine, 10-6M) and dilation was endothelium-dependent (acetylcholine, 10-7M – 10-5M) or with BAY 41-8543 (10-8M – 10-6M). Oxidant stress was assessed: PA tissue 4-hydroxynoneal (4-HNE) immunohistochemistry; plasma malondialdehyde (MDA). Other Control rings received red blood cell (RBC) lysate. Results: PE inhibited dilation to acetylcholine vs. Control (dose x group interaction p=0.001), while dilation to BAY 41-8543 was minimally changed. PE raised plasma hemoglobin (30-fold, p=0.003), 4-HNE stain and plasma MDA (2.2-fold, p=0.009). Treating PE rats with BAY 41-8543 reduced plasma hemoglobin, 4-HNE and MDA to levels not different from Control. Dilation to acetylcholine significantly improved in PE + BAY 41-8543 rats vs. PE (dose x group interaction p=0.04). Addition of RBC lysate to Control rings reduced dilation to acetylcholine, while BAY 41-8543 responses remained strong. Conclusion: PE caused PA endothelial dysfunction, elevated plasma hemoglobin and oxidant stress. Treating rats with BAY 41-8543 lowered plasma hemoglobin, oxidant stress and endothelial dysfunction in PE. Treating isolated rings with BAY 41-8543 bypassed endothelial dysfunction with PE or RBC lysate

Improved Multi-Scale Grid Rendering of Point Clouds for Radar Object Detection Networks

Architectures that first convert point clouds to a grid representation and then apply convolutional neural networks achieve good performance for radar-based object detection. However, the transfer from irregular point cloud data to a dense grid structure is often associated with a loss of information, due to the discretization and aggregation of points. In this paper, we propose a novel architecture, multi-scale KPPillarsBEV, that aims to mitigate the negative effects of grid rendering. Specifically, we propose a novel grid rendering method, KPBEV, which leverages the descriptive power of kernel point convolutions to improve the encoding of local point cloud contexts during grid rendering. In addition, we propose a general multi-scale grid rendering formulation to incorporate multi-scale feature maps into convolutional backbones of detection networks with arbitrary grid rendering methods. We perform extensive experiments on the nuScenes dataset and evaluate the methods in terms of detection performance and computational complexity. The proposed multi-scale KPPillarsBEV architecture outperforms the baseline by 5.37% and the previous state of the art by 2.88% in Car AP4.0 (average precision for a matching threshold of 4 meters) on the nuScenes validation set. Moreover, the proposed single-scale KPBEV grid rendering improves the Car AP4.0 by 2.90% over the baseline while maintaining the same inference speed.Comment: (c) 2023 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other work

Autonomy Operating System for UAVs: Pilot-in-a-Box

The Autonomy Operating System (AOS) is an open flight software platform with Artificial Intelligence for smart UAVs. It is built to be extendable with new apps, similar to smartphones, to enable an expanding set of missions and capabilities. AOS has as its foundations NASAs core flight executive and core flight software (cFEcFS). Pilot-in-a-Box (PIB) is an expanding collection of interacting AOS apps that provide the knowledge and intelligence onboard a UAV to safely and autonomously fly in the National Air Space, eventually without a remote human ground crew. Longer-term, the goal of PIB is to provide the capability for pilotless air vehicles such as air taxis that will be key for new transportation concepts such as mobility-on-demand. PIB provides the procedural knowledge, situational awareness, and anticipatory planning (thinking ahead of the plane) that comprises pilot competencies. These competencies together with a natural language interface will enable Pilot-in-a-Box to dialogue directly with Air Traffic Management from takeoff through landing. This paper describes the overall AOS architecture, Artificial Intelligence reasoning engines, Pilot-in-a-box competencies, and selected experimental flight tests to date

Exploiting Sparsity in Automotive Radar Object Detection Networks

Having precise perception of the environment is crucial for ensuring the secure and reliable functioning of autonomous driving systems. Radar object detection networks are one fundamental part of such systems. CNN-based object detectors showed good performance in this context, but they require large compute resources. This paper investigates sparse convolutional object detection networks, which combine powerful grid-based detection with low compute resources. We investigate radar specific challenges and propose sparse kernel point pillars (SKPP) and dual voxel point convolutions (DVPC) as remedies for the grid rendering and sparse backbone architectures. We evaluate our SKPP-DPVCN architecture on nuScenes, which outperforms the baseline by 5.89% and the previous state of the art by 4.19% in Car AP4.0. Moreover, SKPP-DPVCN reduces the average scale error (ASE) by 21.41% over the baseline