Strong coupling of ionising transitions

We demonstrate that a ionising transition can be strongly coupled to a photonic resonance. The strong coupling manifests itself with the appearance of a narrow optically active resonance below the ionisation threshold. Such a resonance is due to electrons transitioning into a novel bound state created by the collective coupling of the electron gas with the vacuum field of the photonic resonator. Applying our theory to the case of bound-to-continuum transitions in microcavity-embedded doped quantum wells, we show how those strong-coupling features can be exploited as a novel knob to tune both optical and electronic properties of semiconductor heterostructures.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Improving Surgical Training Phantoms by Hyperrealism: Deep Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation from Real Surgeries

Current `dry lab' surgical phantom simulators are a valuable tool for surgeons which allows them to improve their dexterity and skill with surgical instruments. These phantoms mimic the haptic and shape of organs of interest, but lack a realistic visual appearance. In this work, we present an innovative application in which representations learned from real intraoperative endoscopic sequences are transferred to a surgical phantom scenario. The term hyperrealism is introduced in this field, which we regard as a novel subform of surgical augmented reality for approaches that involve real-time object transfigurations. For related tasks in the computer vision community, unpaired cycle-consistent Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have shown excellent results on still RGB images. Though, application of this approach to continuous video frames can result in flickering, which turned out to be especially prominent for this application. Therefore, we propose an extension of cycle-consistent GANs, named tempCycleGAN, to improve temporal consistency.The novel method is evaluated on captures of a silicone phantom for training endoscopic reconstructive mitral valve procedures. Synthesized videos show highly realistic results with regard to 1) replacement of the silicone appearance of the phantom valve by intraoperative tissue texture, while 2) explicitly keeping crucial features in the scene, such as instruments, sutures and prostheses. Compared to the original CycleGAN approach, tempCycleGAN efficiently removes flickering between frames. The overall approach is expected to change the future design of surgical training simulators since the generated sequences clearly demonstrate the feasibility to enable a considerably more realistic training experience for minimally-invasive procedures.Comment: 8 pages, accepted at MICCAI 2018, supplemental material at https://youtu.be/qugAYpK-Z4

Insufficient control of blood pressure and incident diabetes

OBJECTIVE: Incidence of type 2 diabetes might be associated with preexisting hypertension. There is no information on whether incident diabetes is predicted by blood pressure control. We evaluated the hazard of diabetes in relation to blood pressure control in treated hypertensive patients. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Nondiabetic, otherwise healthy, hypertensive patients (N = 1,754, mean +/- SD age 52 +/- 11 years, 43% women) participated in a network over 3.4 +/- 1 years of follow-up. Blood pressure was considered uncontrolled if systolic was >or=140 mmHg and/or diastolic was >or=90 mmHg at the last outpatient visit. Diabetes was defined according to American Diabetes Association guidelines. RESULTS: Uncontrolled blood pressure despite antihypertensive treatment was found in 712 patients (41%). At baseline, patients with uncontrolledblood pressure were slightly younger than patients with controlled blood pressure (51 +/- 11 vs. 53 +/- 12 years, P < 0.001), with no differences in sex distribution, BMI, duration of hypertension, baseline blood pressure, fasting glucose, serum creatinine and potassium, lipid profile, or prevalence of metabolic syndrome. During follow-up, 109 subjects developed diabetes. Incidence of diabetes was significantly higher in patients with uncontrolled (8%) than in those with controlled blood pressure (4%, odds ratio 2.08, P < 0.0001). In Cox regression analysis controlling for baseline systolic blood pressure and BMI, family history of diabetes, and physical activity, uncontrolled blood pressure doubled the risk of incident diabetes (hazard ratio [HR] 2.10, P < 0.001), independently of significant effects of age (HR 1.02 per year, P = 0.03) and baseline fasting glucose (HR 1.10 per mg/dl, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: In a large sample of treated nondiabetic hypertensive subjects, uncontrolled blood pressure is associated with twofold increased risk of incident diabetes independently of age, BMI, baseline blood pressure, or fasting glucose

Insufficient control of blood pressure and incident diabetes

OBJECTIVE: Incidence of type 2 diabetes might be associated with preexisting hypertension. There is no information on whether incident diabetes is predicted by blood pressure control. We evaluated the hazard of diabetes in relation to blood pressure control in treated hypertensive patients. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Nondiabetic, otherwise healthy, hypertensive patients (N = 1,754, mean +/- SD age 52 +/- 11 years, 43% women) participated in a network over 3.4 +/- 1 years of follow-up. Blood pressure was considered uncontrolled if systolic was >or=140 mmHg and/or diastolic was >or=90 mmHg at the last outpatient visit. Diabetes was defined according to American Diabetes Association guidelines. RESULTS: Uncontrolled blood pressure despite antihypertensive treatment was found in 712 patients (41%). At baseline, patients with uncontrolledblood pressure were slightly younger than patients with controlled blood pressure (51 +/- 11 vs. 53 +/- 12 years, P < 0.001), with no differences in sex distribution, BMI, duration of hypertension, baseline blood pressure, fasting glucose, serum creatinine and potassium, lipid profile, or prevalence of metabolic syndrome. During follow-up, 109 subjects developed diabetes. Incidence of diabetes was significantly higher in patients with uncontrolled (8%) than in those with controlled blood pressure (4%, odds ratio 2.08, P < 0.0001). In Cox regression analysis controlling for baseline systolic blood pressure and BMI, family history of diabetes, and physical activity, uncontrolled blood pressure doubled the risk of incident diabetes (hazard ratio [HR] 2.10, P < 0.001), independently of significant effects of age (HR 1.02 per year, P = 0.03) and baseline fasting glucose (HR 1.10 per mg/dl, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: In a large sample of treated nondiabetic hypertensive subjects, uncontrolled blood pressure is associated with twofold increased risk of incident diabetes independently of age, BMI, baseline blood pressure, or fasting glucose

What Adolescents Have to Say about Problematic Internet Use: A Qualitative Study Based on Focus Groups

In this paper, the study presented is designed to gain a deeper insight into how adolescents describe, understand, and suggest dealing with Problematic Internet Use (PIU). Eight focus groups were activated with a total of 70 students from the 9th and 11th grades (Mean Age = 15.53 ± 1.202; Female = 44.4%) in four different schools in Southern Italy. A Thematic Analysis was applied to the verbatim transcripts, and seven macro-categories were identified throughout the discourses collected: definition of PIU, symptomatology, impact, determinants, intervention strategy, opportunities and limits of the digital world, and needs that adolescents try to satisfy by surfing the net and which the offline world does not fulfill. Participants converge in seeing PIU in terms of addiction but adopt heterogeneous viewpoints in talking about the reasons for problematic engagement and possible preventive intervention strategies. In the overall picture emerging from the responses, PIU appeared to be the outcome of a psychological dynamic emerging from the interaction of individual, interpersonal, and sociocultural dimensions

Achieving Isolation in Mixed-Criticality Industrial Edge Systems with Real-Time Containers Appendix

Real-time containers are a promising solution to reduce latencies in time-sensitive cloud systems. Recent efforts are emerging to extend their usage in industrial edge systems with mixed-criticality constraints. In these contexts, isolation becomes a major concern: a disturbance (such as timing faults or unexpected overloads) affecting a container must not impact the behavior of other containers deployed on the same hardware. In this paper, we propose a novel architectural solution to achieve isolation in real-time containers, based on real-time co-kernels, hierarchical scheduling, and time-division networking. The architecture has been implemented on Linux patched with the Xenomai co-kernel, extended with a new hierarchical scheduling policy, named SCHED_DS, and integrating the RTNet stack. Experimental results are promising in terms of overhead and latency compared to other Linux-based solutions. More importantly, the isolation of containers is guaranteed even in presence of severe co-located disturbances, such as faulty tasks (elapsing more time than declared) or high CPU, network, or I/O stress on the same machine