1,511 research outputs found
Eye-CU: Sleep Pose Classification for Healthcare using Multimodal Multiview Data
Manual analysis of body poses of bed-ridden patients requires staff to
continuously track and record patient poses. Two limitations in the
dissemination of pose-related therapies are scarce human resources and
unreliable automated systems. This work addresses these issues by introducing a
new method and a new system for robust automated classification of sleep poses
in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) environment. The new method,
coupled-constrained Least-Squares (cc-LS), uses multimodal and multiview (MM)
data and finds the set of modality trust values that minimizes the difference
between expected and estimated labels. The new system, Eye-CU, is an affordable
multi-sensor modular system for unobtrusive data collection and analysis in
healthcare. Experimental results indicate that the performance of cc-LS matches
the performance of existing methods in ideal scenarios. This method outperforms
the latest techniques in challenging scenarios by 13% for those with poor
illumination and by 70% for those with both poor illumination and occlusions.
Results also show that a reduced Eye-CU configuration can classify poses
without pressure information with only a slight drop in its performance.Comment: Ten-page manuscript including references and ten figure
Immediate effects of acupuncture on biceps brachii muscle function in healthy and post-stroke subjects
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The effects of acupuncture on muscle function in healthy subjects are contradictory and cannot be extrapolated to post-stroke patients. This study evaluated the immediate effects of manual acupuncture on myoelectric activity and isometric force in healthy and post-stroke patients.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A randomized clinical trial, with parallel groups, single-blinded study design, was conducted with 32 healthy subjects and 15 post-stroke patients with chronic hemiparesis. Surface electromyography from biceps brachii during maximal isometric voluntary tests was performed before and after 20-min intermittent, and manual stimulation of acupoints <it>Quchi </it>(LI11) or <it>Tianquan </it>(PC2). Pattern differentiation was performed by an automated method based on logistic regression equations.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Healthy subjects showed a decrease in the root mean-squared (RMS) values after the stimulation of LI11 (pre: 1.392 ± 0.826 V; post: 0.612 ± 0.0.320 V; <it>P </it>= 0.002) and PC2 (pre: 1.494 ± 0.826 V; post: 0.623 ± 0.320 V; <it>P </it>= 0.001). Elbow flexion maximal isometric voluntary contraction (MIVC) was not significantly different after acupuncture stimulation of LI11 (pre: 22.2 ± 10.7 kg; post: 21.7 ± 9.5 kg; <it>P </it>= 0.288) or PC2 (pre: 18.8 ± 4.6 kg; post: 18.7 ± 6.0 kg; <it>P </it>= 0.468). Post-stroke patients did not exhibit any significant decrease in the RMS values after the stimulation of LI11 (pre: 0.627 ± 0.335 V; post: 0.530 ± 0.272 V; <it>P </it>= 0.187) and PC2 (pre: 0.601 ± 0.258 V; post: 0.591 ± 0.326 V; <it>P </it>= 0.398). Also, no significant decrease in the MIVC value was observed after the stimulation of LI11 (pre: 9.6 ± 3.9 kg; post: 9.6 ± 4.7 kg; <it>P </it>= 0.499) or PC2 (pre: 10.7 ± 5.6 kg; post: 10.2 ± 5.3 kg; <it>P </it>= 0.251). Different frequency of patterns was observed among healthy subjects and post-stroke patients groups (<it>χ</it><sup>2 </sup>= 9.759; <it>P </it>= 0.021).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Manual acupuncture provides sufficient neuromuscular stimuli to promote immediate changes in motor unit gross recruitment without repercussion in maximal force output in healthy subjects. Post-stroke patients did not exhibit significant reduction on the myoelectric activity and maximal force output after manual acupuncture and needs further evaluation with a larger sample.</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p>Brazilian Clinical Trials Registry RBR-5g7xqh.</p
Postrelease survival, vertical and horizontal movements, and thermal habitats of five species of pelagic sharks in the central Pacific Ocean
From 2001 to 2006, 71 pop-up satellite archival tags (PSATs)
were deployed on five species of pelagic shark (blue shark [Prionace glauca]; shortfin mako [Isurus oxyrinchus]; silky shark [Carcharhinus falciformis]; oceanic whitetip shark
[C. longimanus]; and bigeye thresher [Alopias superciliosus]) in the central Pacific Ocean to determine species-specific movement patterns and survival rates after release from longline fishing gear. Only a single postrelease mortality could be unequivocally documented:
a male blue shark which succumbed seven days after release.
Meta-analysis of published reports and the current study (n=78 reporting PSATs) indicated that the summary
effect of postrelease mortality for blue sharks was 15% (95% CI, 8.5–25.1%) and suggested that catch-and-release
in longline fisheries can be a viable management tool to protect parental biomass in shark populations. Pelagic sharks displayed species-specific depth and temperature ranges, although with significant individual temporal and spatial variability in vertical movement patterns, which
were also punctuated by stochastic events (e.g., El Niño-Southern Oscillation). Pelagic species can be separated
into three broad groups based on daytime temperature preferences by using the unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic averaging clustering on a Kolmogorov-Smirnov
Dmax distance matrix: 1) epipelagic species (silky and oceanic whitetip sharks), which spent >95% of their
time at temperatures within 2°C of sea surface temperature; 2) mesopelagic-I species (blue sharks and shortfin makos, which spent 95% of their time at temperatures from 9.7°
to 26.9°C and from 9.4° to 25.0°C, respectively; and 3) mesopelagic-II species (bigeye threshers), which spent 95% of their time at temperatures from 6.7° to 21.2°C. Distinct
thermal niche partitioning based on body size and latitude was also evident within epipelagic species
COPD and cardiovascular disease
COPD is one of the major public health problems in people aged 40 years or above. It is currently the 4th leading cause of death in the world and projected to be the 3rd leading cause of death by 2020. COPD and cardiac comorbidities are frequently associated. They share common risk factors, pathophysiological processes, signs and symptoms, and act synergistically as negative prognostic factors. Cardiac disease includes a broad spectrum of entities with distinct pathophysiology, treatment and prognosis. From an epidemiological point of view, patients with COPD are particularly vulnerable to cardiac disease. Indeed, mortality due to cardiac disease in patients with moderate COPD is higher than mortality related to respiratory failure. Guidelines reinforce that the control of comorbidities in COPD has a clear benefit over the potential risk associated with the majority of the drugs utilized. On the other hand, the true survival benefits of aggressive treatment of cardiac disease and COPD in patients with both conditions have still not been clarified. Given their relevance in terms of prevalence and prognosis, we will focus in this paper on the management of COPD patients with ischemic coronary disease, heart failure and dysrhythmia.Novartis Portugal
Novartisinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Earthworms in the non-glaciated Americas: intentional introductions, invasions, soil quality indicators, and interactions with native species.
Recommended from our members
Dual blockage of STAT3 and ERK1/2 eliminates radioresistant GBM cells.
Radiotherapy (RT) is the major modality for control of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the most aggressive brain tumor in adults with poor prognosis and low patient survival rate. To improve the RT efficacy on GBM, the mechanism causing tumor adaptive radioresistance which leads to the failure of tumor control and lethal progression needs to be further elucidated. Here, we conducted a comparative analysis of RT-treated recurrent tumors versus primary counterparts in GBM patients, RT-treated orthotopic GBM tumors xenografts versus untreated tumors and radioresistant GBM cells versus wild type cells. The results reveal that activation of STAT3, a well-defined redox-sensitive transcriptional factor, is causally linked with GBM adaptive radioresistance. Database analysis also agrees with the worse prognosis in GBM patients due to the STAT3 expression-associated low RT responsiveness. However, although the radioresistant GBM cells can be resensitized by inhibition of STAT3, a fraction of radioresistant cells can still survive the RT combined with STAT3 inhibition or CRISPR/Cas9-mediated STAT3 knockout. A complementally enhanced activation of ERK1/2 by STAT3 inhibition is identified responsible for the survival of the remaining resistant tumor cells. Dual inhibition of ERK1/2 and STAT3 remarkably eliminates resistant GBM cells and inhibits tumor regrowth. These findings demonstrate a previously unknown feature ofSTAT3-mediated ERK1/2 regulation and an effective combination of two targets in resensitizing GBM to RT
The Expression and Roles of Nde1 and Ndel1 in the Adult Mammalian Central Nervous System
Open Access funded by Wellcome Trust Under a Creative Commons license Acknowledgments We thank Prof Angelo Sementilli, Department of Pathology, Universidade Metropolitana de Santos, SP, Brazil, for the human sample collection. This study is funded by Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance (HR07019 to S. Shen and C.D. McCaig), Medical Research Scotland (384 FRG to B. Lang, United Kingdom), Tenovus Scotland (G12/25 to B. Lang), Sino-UK Higher Education Research Partnership for PhD Studies (C.D. McCaig and Y.Q. Ding) and Wellcome Trust (WT081633MA-NCE to P.J.A. McCaffery, United Kingdom).Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Recommended from our members
The 20 February 2010 Madeira flash-floods: synoptic analysis and extreme rainfall assessment
This study aims to characterise the rainfall exceptionality and the meteorological context of the 20 February 2010 flash-floods in Madeira (Portugal). Daily and hourly precipitation records from the available rain-gauge station networks are evaluated in order to reconstitute the temporal evolution of the rainstorm, as its geographic incidence, contributing to understand the flash-flood dynamics and the type and spatial distribution of the associated impacts. The exceptionality of the rainstorm is further confirmed by the return period associated with the daily precipitation registered at the two long-term record stations, with 146.9 mm observed in the city of Funchal and 333.8 mm on the mountain top, corresponding to an estimated return period of approximately 290 yr and 90 yr, respectively. Furthermore, the synoptic associated situation responsible for the flash-floods is analysed using different sources of information, e.g., weather charts, reanalysis data, Meteosat images and radiosounding data, with the focus on two main issues: (1) the dynamical conditions that promoted such anomalous humidity availability over the Madeira region on 20 February 2010 and (2) the uplift mechanism that induced deep convection activity
- …