Evaluation and Comparison of Thermal Environment of Atria Enclosed with ETFE Foil Cushion Envelope

AbstractThis paper presents results of on-site monitoring of foil surface temperatures and the thermal environment within two different atria covered with different compositions of ETFE foil cushion roof (one two-layer, the other three-layer) and differing ventilation regimes. Results of the study show strong vertical stratification in both atria. Foil surface temperatures respond rapidly to high solar radiation with the internal layer being hotter than both the external layer and the adjacent internal air. At night the surface temperature of external foil follows the ambient external temperature closely whilst the internal layer temperature follows approximately the mean of adjacent internal temperature in the atria and external temperature

Anti-inflammatory and anti-pyretic effects of hexane fraction of Ardisia crispa Thunb. D.C

Hexane fraction of Ardisia crispa root (ACHE) was used to investigate its anti-inflammatory and anti-pyretic activities in this study. For anti-inflammatory activity, 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA) was applied to ear of mice to induce oedema and treated with 0.5,1 and 2mg/ear of ACHE topically. In cotton-pellet granuloma test, treated groups have received 3, 10, 30 and 100mg/kg of hexane extract administered orally for 7 days. For antipyretic activity, brewer's yeast was injected in mice to induce fever and later, ACHE at dose ranging from 10 to 300 mg/kg were administered to the rats orally. The results exhibited that 1 and 2mg/ear of ACHE produced significant suppression by 19.9% and 20.2% respectively. the lowest dose of ACHE showed no significant effect when compared with control. Results showed that ACHE showed significant anti-pyretic effect at all doses (10, 30, 100 and 300 mg/kg). At 30, 100 and 300mg/kg, ACHE even exhibited higher efficacy when compared with 100 mg/kg acetaminophen. ACHE also elicited a significant (P<0.05) inhibition of granuloma tissue and exudate formation. Thus, it can be concluded that Ardisia crispa posseses antiinflammatory and antipyretic effects

Attentional Biases to Foods: The Effects of Caloric Content and Cognitive Restraint

The goal of the present study was to determine whether female restrained and unrestrained eaters demonstrated differential levels of attentional bias to high calorie foods when they were presented as distractors in a flanker task. This task consisted of four blocks of 68 trials in which three food pictures were briefly presented simultaneously on a computer screen. On each trial a high or low calorie target food was presented in the center of a pair of high or low calorie food flanker pictures and participants’ reaction times to answer a basic question about whether they would consume the target food for breakfast were recorded. In Experiment 1, in which all participants were fed a snack prior to engaging in the flanker task, there was no evidence that restrained (n = 29) or unrestrained (n = 37) eaters had an attentional bias. However, in Experiment 2, when participants completed the flanker task while hungry, restrained eaters (n = 27) experienced response conflict only when low calorie targets were flanked by high calorie distractors, whereas unrestrained eaters (n = 46) were distracted by high calorie flankers regardless of the caloric content of the target cue. The results from this implicit task indicate that flankers interfere with hungry participants’ responses to varying degrees depending on their cognitive restraint. Whether attentional bias to food cues subsequently affects food choices and eating behavior is a topic for further investigation

The hexane fraction of an Ardisia crispa ethanolic extract shows anti-arthritis effects in a rat arthritis model

Ardisia crispa has been claimed by local villagers to have medicinal properties, and it is widely used in treating dysmenorrhea, rheumatism, orchitis, skin problem, coughs, fractured bones, sprains and treatment for women afterbirth [1]. To date, there is no report documented on Ardisia crispa's effect on chronic inflammation especially on anti-arthritic properties. The hexane fraction of an ethanolic extract of Ardisia crispa root (ACHE) was used in this study. Complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA) was injected onto plantar aponeurosis of right paw of rat to induce chronic arthritis. The following day onwards, ACHE at 3, 10, 30, and 100mg/kg and also indomethacin as positive control were administered to the rats. Paw volume of rat was measured with a plethysmometer for 14 days. Ankle tissue was collected for ELISA test of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) and interleukin-1 beta (IL-1β). The result show that ACHE at all doses (3.10.30 and 100mg/kg) have significant (p&lt;0.05) inhibition of oedema by 45.3%, 64.31%, 73.12% and 49.55% respectively. At 3, 10 and 30mg/kg, ACHE significantly reduced TNF-α by 45.2%, 45.7% and 25.1% respectively when compared with control. For IL-1β, only 10mg/kg and 30mg/kg of ACHE elicited a significant (p&lt;0.05) inhibition of this mediator in local tissue by 45.9% and 36.5% respectively. The efficacies of those doses were comparable to the effect of indomethacin (34.6%). Thus, it can be concluded that Ardisia crispa posseses anti-arthritic effect on specific FCA-induced arthritis model in rats

Self-aware Computing in the Angstrom Processor

Addressing the challenges of extreme scale computing requires holistic design of new programming models and systems that support those models. This paper discusses the Angstrom processor, which is designed to support a new Self-aware Computing (SEEC) model. In SEEC, applications explicitly state goals, while other systems components provide actions that the SEEC runtime system can use to meet those goals. Angstrom supports this model by exposing sensors and adaptations that traditionally would be managed independently by hardware. This exposure allows SEEC to coordinate hardware actions with actions specified by other parts of the system, and allows the SEEC runtime system to meet application goals while reducing costs (e.g., power consumption).United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The Ubiquitous High Performance Computing Progra

Cardiac Involvement related to COVID-19 Infection and Vaccination in Children and Adolescents – Hong Kong's Perspective

Myocarditis and Pericarditis have many virological and immunological causes. This article described the SARS-CoV involvement to the heart in children and adolescents, also the entity Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C), a rare but severe consequence of SARS-CoV2 infection. Hong Kong case definition of MIS-C was listed. The consensus from overseas experts was that MIS-C should be managed by multidisciplinary team with a structured long-term follow-up to monitor the functioning of various organs and ascertain the prognosis. The side effect mRNA vaccination causing myocarditis and pericarditis is also concern of paediatricians worldwide. Hong Kong published local epidemiology of acute myocarditis and pericarditis among adolescents following Comirnaty vaccination, the local and overseas data were used in fine-tuning the COVID vaccination program in children and adolescents. To prevent severe and fatal outcome of COVID-19 diseases, it is important to educate the public and to promote COVID-19 vaccination in the community, also to continue monitoring the safety of the available vaccines

Distinct Functional Connectivity Signatures of Impaired Social Cognition in Multiple Sclerosis

Objective: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is characterized by impairments in basic cognitive functions such as information processing speed as well as in more complex, higher-order domains such as social cognition. However, as these deficits often co-occur, it has remained challenging to determine whether they have a specific pathological basis or are driven by shared biology. Methods: To identify neural signatures of social cognition deficits in MS, data were analyzed from n = 29 patients with relapsing-remitting MS and n = 29 healthy controls matched for age, sex, and education. We used neuropsychological assessments of information processing speed, attention, learning, working memory, and relevant aspects of social cognition (theory of mind, emotion recognition (ER), empathy) and employed neuroimaging of CNS networks using resting-state functional connectivity. Results: MS patients showed significant deficits in verbal learning and memory, as well as implicit ER. Performance in these domains was uncorrelated. Functional connectivity analysis identified a distinct network characterized by significant associations between poorer ER and lower connectivity of the fusiform gyrus (FFG) with the right lateral occipital cortex, which also showed lower connectivity in patients compared to controls. Moreover, while ER was correlated with MS symptoms such as fatigue and motor/sensory functioning on a behavioral level, FFG connectivity signatures of social cognition deficits showed no overlap with these symptoms. Conclusions: Our analyses identify distinct functional connectivity signatures of social cognition deficits in MS, indicating that these alterations may occur independently from those in other neuropsychological functions

Risk assessment of failure during transitioning from in-centre to home haemodialysis

Background: Introducing a de-novo home haemodialysis (HHD) program often raises safety concerns as errors could potentially lead to serious adverse events. Despite the complexity of performing haemodialysis at home without the supervision of healthcare staff, HHD has a good safety record. We aim to pre-emptively identify and reduce the risks to our new HHD program by risk assessment and using failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) to identify potential defects in the design and planning of HHD. Methods: We performed a general risk assessment of failure during transitioning from in-centre to HHD with a failure mode and effects analysis focused on the highest areas of failure. We collaborated with key team members from a well-established HHD program and one HHD patient. Risk assessment was conducted separately and then through video conference meetings for joint deliberation. We listed all key processes, sub-processes, step and then identified failure mode by scoring based on risk priority numbers. Solutions were then designed to eliminate and mitigate risk. Results: Transitioning to HHD was found to have the highest risk of failure with 3 main processes and 34 steps. We identified a total of 59 areas with potential failures. The median and mean risk priority number (RPN) scores from failure mode effect analysis were 5 and 38, with the highest RPN related to vascular access at 256. As many failure modes with high RPN scores were related to vascular access, we focussed on FMEA by identifying the risk mitigation strategies and possible solutions in all 9 areas in access-related medical emergencies in a bundled- approach. We discussed, the risk reduction areas of setting up HHD and how to address incidents that occurred and those not preventable. Conclusions: We developed a safety framework for a de-novo HHD program by performing FMEA in high-risk areas. The involvement of two teams with different clinical experience for HHD allowed us to successfully pre-emptively identify risks and develop solutions

Investigation of the structure of beta-Tantalum

The local structure of beta-tantalum was investigated by comparing experimental extended x-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) measurements with calculated spectra of proposed models. Four possible structure candidates were examined: a beta-Uranium based structure, a distorted A15 structure, a bcc-Ta based superlattice structure with N interstitials and a simple hcp structure. The local structural measurements were found to be consistent with the beta-Uranium based model containing 30 atoms per unit cell and having the space group P42/mnm. The thermal effect analysis on x-ray diffraction and EXAFS spectra, which reveals that beta-Ta is highly disordered, agrees with the low symmetry and anisotropic system of the beta-U model.Comment: 26 pages, two tables, 8 figures, submitted to Journal of Applied physic

Medium-term Outcomes of Myocarditis and Pericarditis following BNT162b2 Vaccination among Adolescents in Hong Kong

In this study, we examined the clinical and electrophysiological outcomes of adolescents in Hong Kong who developed myocarditis or pericarditis following BNT162b2 vaccination for COVID-19, and followed-up for 60 to 180 days after their initial diagnosis. Clinical assessments included electrocardiogram (ECG) and echocardiogram at the initial admission and follow-up were compared. Treadmill testing was also performed in some cases. Between 14 June 2021 and 16 February 2022, 53 subjects were approached to participate in this follow-up study, of which 28 patients were followed up for >60 days with a median follow-up period of 100 days (range, 61-178 days) and were included in this study. On admission, 23 patients had ECG abnormalities but no high-grade atrioventricular block. Six patients had echocardiogram abnormalities, including reduced contractility, small rim pericardial effusions, and hyperechoic ventricular walls. All patients achieved complete recovery on follow-up. After discharge, 10 patients (35.7%) reported symptoms, including occasional chest pain, shortness of breath, reduced exercise tolerance, and recurrent vasovagal near-syncope. At follow-up, assessments, including ECGs, were almost all normal. Among the three patients with possible ECG abnormalities, all their echocardiograms or treadmill testings were normal. Sixteen patients (57.1%) underwent treadmill testing at a median of 117 days post-admission, which were also normal. However, at follow-up, there was a significant mean bodyweight increase of 1.81kg (95%CI 0.47-3.1 kg, p=0.01), possibly due to exercise restriction. In conclusion, most adolescents experiencing myocarditis and pericarditis following BNT162b2 vaccination achieved complete recovery. Some patients developed non-specific persistent symptoms, and bodyweight changes shall be monitored