279 research outputs found
Ultrasonographic scoring system for superficial digital flexor tendon injuries in horses: intra- and inter-rater variability
Superficial digital flexor tendon (SDFT) tendinopathy is an important musculoskeletal problem in horses. The study objective was to validate an ultrasonographic scoring system for SDFT injuries. Ultrasonographic images from 14 Thoroughbred racehorses with SDFT lesions (seven core; seven diffuse) and two controls were blindly assessed by five clinicians on two occasions. Ultrasonographic parameters evaluated were: type and extent of the injury, location, echogenicity, cross-sectional area and longitudinal fibre pattern of the maximal injury zone (MIZ). Inter-rater variability and intra-rater reliability were assessed using Kendall’s coefficient of concordance (KC) and Lin’s concordance correlation coefficient (LC), respectively. Type of injury (core vs. diffuse) had perfect inter/intra-rater agreement. Cases with core lesions had very strong inter-rater agreement (KC ≥0.74, P<0.001) and intra-rater reliability (LC ≥0.73) for all parameters apart from echogenicity. Cases with diffuse lesions had strong inter-rater agreement (KC ≥0.62) for all parameters, but weak agreement for echogenicity (KC=0.22); intra-rater reliability was excellent for MIZ location and fibre pattern (LC ≥0.82), and moderate (LC ≥0.58) for cross-sectional area and number of zones affected. This scoring system was reliable and repeatable for all parameters, except for echogenicity. A validated scoring system will facilitate reliable recording of SDFT injuries and inter-study meta-analyses
Factors related to adolescent drinking in Appalachia
Objectives: To examine the relationships among parental monitoring, perceptions of peer drinking, and adolescent alcohol consumption.
Methods: Tenth- and 12thgrade students (N=648) in a rural,
Appalachian county were surveyed.
Results: A binomial logistic regression revealed a composite of those who had perceptions that many
peers drank, low parental monitoring, and no biological male guardian in the home were 8.496 times more likely to have ever been drunk.
Other characteristics resulted in lower odds. Conclusions: Parental monitoring and perceptions of peer drinking were important predictors of drinking in this rural sample.
Prevention efforts in school and at home should address both variables
Primum Non Nocere (First Do No Harm): Symptom Worsening And Improvement In Female Assault Victims After Prolonged Exposure For Ptsd
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106816/1/da22225.pd
Association Between Residential Greenness and Cardiovascular Disease Risk
Background Exposure to green vegetation has been linked to positive health, but the pathophysiological processes affected by exposure to vegetation remain unclear. To study the relationship between greenness and cardiovascular disease, we examined the association between residential greenness and biomarkers of cardiovascular injury and disease risk in susceptible individuals. Methods and Results In this cross-sectional study of 408 individuals recruited from a preventive cardiology clinic, we measured biomarkers of cardiovascular injury and risk in participant blood and urine. We estimated greenness from satellite-derived normalized difference vegetation index ( NDVI ) in zones with radii of 250 m and 1 km surrounding the participants' residences. We used generalized estimating equations to examine associations between greenness and cardiovascular disease biomarkers. We adjusted for residential clustering, demographic, clinical, and environmental variables. In fully adjusted models, contemporaneous NDVI within 250 m of participant residence was inversely associated with urinary levels of epinephrine (-6.9%; 95% confidence interval, -11.5, -2.0/0.1 NDVI ) and F2-isoprostane (-9.0%; 95% confidence interval, -15.1, -2.5/0.1 NDVI ). We found stronger associations between NDVI and urinary epinephrine in women, those not on β-blockers, and those who had not previously experienced a myocardial infarction. Of the 15 subtypes of circulating angiogenic cells examined, 11 were inversely associated (8.0-15.6% decrease/0.1 NDVI ), whereas 2 were positively associated (37.6-45.8% increase/0.1 NDVI ) with contemporaneous NDVI . Conclusions Independent of age, sex, race, smoking status, neighborhood deprivation, statin use, and roadway exposure, residential greenness is associated with lower levels of sympathetic activation, reduced oxidative stress, and higher angiogenic capacity
FALCO simulations of high-contrast polarimetry with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Coronagraph Instrument
The Coronagraph Instrument of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman
Coronagraph) will be capable of both total intensity and polarization
measurements of circumstellar disks. The polarimetric performance is impacted
by polarization effects introduced by all mirrors before the Wollaston prisms.
In this paper, we aim to characterize these effects for the Roman Coronagraph
in bands 1 and 4 using the FALCO and PROPER packages. We simulate the effect of
polarization aberrations that impact the polarimetric contrast and the
instrumental polarization effects to study the polarimetric accuracy. We
include spacecraft rolls, but leave out systematic camera noise. We find that
polarimetric differential imaging (PDI) improves the contrast by a factor of
six. The PDI contrast of is limited by polarized
speckles from instrumental polarization effects and polarization aberrations.
By injecting polarized companions with at various contrast levels and
demodulating their polarimetric signal, we recover their source Stokes vector
within 2%.Comment: 16 pages, 16 figures, SPIE Optics + Photonics - Techniques and
Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets X
Neonatal mouse gut metabolites influence Cryptosporidium parvum infection in intestinal epithelial cells
The protozoan parasit
End-to-end numerical modeling of the Roman Space Telescope coronagraph
The Roman Space Telescope will have the first advanced coronagraph in space,
with deformable mirrors for wavefront control, low-order wavefront sensing and
maintenance, and a photon-counting detector. It is expected to be able to
detect and characterize mature, giant exoplanets in reflected visible light.
Over the past decade the performance of the coronagraph in its flight
environment has been simulated with increasingly detailed diffraction and
structural/thermal finite element modeling. With the instrument now being
integrated in preparation for launch within the next few years, the present
state of the end-to-end modeling is described, including the measured flight
components such as deformable mirrors. The coronagraphic modes are thoroughly
described, including characteristics most readily derived from modeling. The
methods for diffraction propagation, wavefront control, and structural and
thermal finite-element modeling are detailed. The techniques and procedures
developed for the instrument will serve as a foundation for future
coronagraphic missions such as the Habitable Worlds Observatory.Comment: 113 pages, 85 figures, to be published in SPIE Journal of
Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and System
Rare variants implicate NMDA receptor signaling and cerebellar gene networks in risk for bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder is an often-severe mental health condition characterized by alternation between extreme mood states of mania and depression. Despite strong heritability and the recent identification of 64 common variant risk loci of small effect, pathophysiological mechanisms remain unknown. Here, we analyzed genome sequences from 41 multiply-affected pedigrees and identified variants in 741 genes with nominally significant linkage or association with bipolar disorder. These 741 genes overlapped known risk genes for neurodevelopmental disorders and clustered within gene networks enriched for synaptic and nuclear functions. The top variant in this analysis - prioritized by statistical association, predicted deleteriousness, and network centrality - was a missense variant in the gene encoding D-amino acid oxidase (DAOG131V). Heterologous expression of DAOG131V in human cells resulted in decreased DAO protein abundance and enzymatic activity. In a knock-in mouse model of DAOG131, DaoG130V/+, we similarly found decreased DAO protein abundance in hindbrain regions, as well as enhanced stress susceptibility and blunted behavioral responses to pharmacological inhibition of N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs). RNA sequencing of cerebellar tissue revealed that DaoG130V resulted in decreased expression of two gene networks that are enriched for synaptic functions and for genes expressed, respectively, in Purkinje neurons or granule neurons. These gene networks were also down-regulated in the cerebellum of patients with bipolar disorder compared to healthy controls and were enriched for additional rare variants associated with bipolar disorder risk. These findings implicate dysregulation of NMDAR signaling and of gene expression in cerebellar neurons in bipolar disorder pathophysiology and provide insight into its genetic architecture
Nutritional predictors of complications following radical cystectomy
To determine the impact of preoperative nutritional status on the development of surgical complications following cystectomy using the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS-NSQIP)
Complexities in barrier island response to sea level rise : insights from numerical model experiments, North Carolina Outer Banks
Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2010. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 115 (2010): F03004, doi:10.1029/2009JF001299.Using a morphological-behavior model to conduct sensitivity experiments, we investigate the sea level rise response of a complex coastal environment to changes in a variety of factors. Experiments reveal that substrate composition, followed in rank order by substrate slope, sea level rise rate, and sediment supply rate, are the most important factors in determining barrier island response to sea level rise. We find that geomorphic threshold crossing, defined as a change in state (e.g., from landward migrating to drowning) that is irreversible over decadal to millennial time scales, is most likely to occur in muddy coastal systems where the combination of substrate composition, depth-dependent limitations on shoreface response rates, and substrate erodibility may prevent sand from being liberated rapidly enough, or in sufficient quantity, to maintain a subaerial barrier. Analyses indicate that factors affecting sediment availability such as low substrate sand proportions and high sediment loss rates cause a barrier to migrate landward along a trajectory having a lower slope than average barrier island slope, thereby defining an “effective” barrier island slope. Other factors being equal, such barriers will tend to be smaller and associated with a more deeply incised shoreface, thereby requiring less migration per sea level rise increment to liberate sufficient sand to maintain subaerial exposure than larger, less incised barriers. As a result, the evolution of larger/less incised barriers is more likely to be limited by shoreface erosion rates or substrate erodibility making them more prone to disintegration related to increasing sea level rise rates than smaller/more incised barriers. Thus, the small/deeply incised North Carolina barriers are likely to persist in the near term (although their long-term fate is less certain because of the low substrate slopes that will soon be encountered). In aggregate, results point to the importance of system history (e.g., previous slopes, sediment budgets, etc.) in determining migration trajectories and therefore how a barrier island will respond to sea level rise. Although simple analytical calculations may predict barrier response in simplified coastal environments (e.g., constant slope, constant sea level rise rate, etc.), our model experiments demonstrate that morphological-behavior modeling is necessary to provide critical insights regarding changes that may occur in environments having complex geometries, especially when multiple parameters change simultaneously.This work was partially supported by the U.S.
Geological Survey, Woods Hole Science Center and a sabbatical leave fellowship
from Oberlin College to Laura Moore from the Mellon‐8 Consortium
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