Development of a high temperature battery final report

Development of battery with lithium-magnesium alloy anode, molten cuprous chloride cathode, and zeolite separator cells and cupric oxide cathode and porous glass separator cell

Prenatal exposure to methadone or buprenorphine: Early childhood developmental outcomes.

BACKGROUND: Methadone and buprenorphine are recommended to treat opioid use disorders during pregnancy. However, the literature on the relationship between longer-term effects of prenatal exposure to these medications and childhood development is both spare and inconsistent. METHODS: Participants were 96 children and their mothers who participated in MOTHER, a randomized controlled trial of opioid-agonist pharmacotherapy during pregnancy. The present study examined child growth parameters, cognition, language abilities, sensory processing, and temperament from 0 to 36 months of the child\u27s life. Maternal perceptions of parenting stress, home environment, and addiction severity were also examined. RESULTS: Tests of mean differences between children prenatally exposed to methadone vs. buprenorphine over the three-year period yielded 2/37 significant findings for children. Similarly, tests of mean differences between children treated for NAS relative to those not treated for NAS yielded 1/37 significant finding. Changes over time occurred for 27/37 child outcomes including expected child increases in weight, head and height, and overall gains in cognitive development, language abilities, sensory processing, and temperament. For mothers, significant changes over time in parenting stress (9/17 scales) suggested increasing difficulties with their children, notably seen in increasing parenting stress, but also an increasingly enriched home environment (4/7 scales). CONCLUSIONS: Findings strongly suggest no deleterious effects of buprenorphine relative to methadone or of treatment for NAS severity relative to not-treated for NAS on growth, cognitive development, language abilities, sensory processing, and temperament. Moreover, findings suggest that prenatal opioid agonist exposure is not deleterious to normal physical and mental development

Experimental Validation of Contact Dynamics for In-Hand Manipulation

This paper evaluates state-of-the-art contact models at predicting the motions and forces involved in simple in-hand robotic manipulations. In particular it focuses on three primitive actions --linear sliding, pivoting, and rolling-- that involve contacts between a gripper, a rigid object, and their environment. The evaluation is done through thousands of controlled experiments designed to capture the motion of object and gripper, and all contact forces and torques at 250Hz. We demonstrate that a contact modeling approach based on Coulomb's friction law and maximum energy principle is effective at reasoning about interaction to first order, but limited for making accurate predictions. We attribute the major limitations to 1) the non-uniqueness of force resolution inherent to grasps with multiple hard contacts of complex geometries, 2) unmodeled dynamics due to contact compliance, and 3) unmodeled geometries dueto manufacturing defects.Comment: International Symposium on Experimental Robotics, ISER 2016, Tokyo, Japa

Lymphoid Infiltrates in B Cell Non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma: Comparing Nuclear Characteristics between Lymph Node and Bone Marrow; and Evaluating Diagnostic Features of Bone Marrow Infiltrates in Paraffin Embedded Tissues

Distinguishing non Hodgkin’s lymphoma from benign lymphoid aggregates in bone marrow is well recognised to be difficult. Our objective was to evaluate nuclear morphology, and to perform morphometry on benign and neoplastic lymphoid infiltrates, to establish if objective criteria were of value in the diagnosis of neoplasia. By comparing neoplastic infiltrates in bone marrow with infiltrates in lymph nodes, the validity of grading non Hodgkin’s lymphoma on the basis of bone marrow histology alone was assessed. 82 cases of B cell non Hodgkin’s lymphoma (44 low grade and 38 high grade), known to have both lymph node and bone marrow involvement at the time of presentation, were compared with bone marrow trephines containing reactive lymphoid infiltrates

Crustal Accretion in the Gulf of California: An Intermediaterate Spreading Axis

An important objective of Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) Leg 65 was to study crustal accretion at an ocean ridge axis with an intermediate-spreading rate for comparison with previously studied sections displaying slowand fast-spreading rates. The southern Gulf of California was selected for this purpose because the basement displays high seismic velocities (comparable to those observed for Cretaceous basement in the western North Atlantic) and high ambient sedimentation rates, which facilitated penetration of zero-age basement. Four sites were drilled, forming an axial transect immediately south of the Tamayo Fracture Zone (Figs. 1 and 2) and providing a series of characteristic sections into the crust. This chapter attempts to provide a brief synthesis of the results from Leg 65, focusing particularly on the lithology, geochemistry, and paleomagnetic properties of the cored basement material. From these data, we present an interpretation of the processes of magmatic evolution and crustal accretion occurring at the Gulf of California spreading axis

Altered brain energetics induces mitochondrial fission arrest in Alzheimer's Disease.

Altered brain metabolism is associated with progression of Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Mitochondria respond to bioenergetic changes by continuous fission and fusion. To account for three dimensional architecture of the brain tissue and organelles, we applied 3-dimensional electron microscopy (3D EM) reconstruction to visualize mitochondrial structure in the brain tissue from patients and mouse models of AD. We identified a previously unknown mitochondrial fission arrest phenotype that results in elongated interconnected organelles, "mitochondria-on-a-string" (MOAS). Our data suggest that MOAS formation may occur at the final stages of fission process and was not associated with altered translocation of activated dynamin related protein 1 (Drp1) to mitochondria but with reduced GTPase activity. Since MOAS formation was also observed in the brain tissue of wild-type mice in response to hypoxia or during chronological aging, fission arrest may represent fundamental compensatory adaptation to bioenergetic stress providing protection against mitophagy that may preserve residual mitochondrial function. The discovery of novel mitochondrial phenotype that occurs in the brain tissue in response to energetic stress accurately detected only using 3D EM reconstruction argues for a major role of mitochondrial dynamics in regulating neuronal survival

Whose campus, whose security? Students’ views on and experiences of security services and police on university campuses

In recent years, high-profile incidents and student activism have raised questions about how securitisation on university campuses is experienced by students, yet there is a stark absence of academic research on the topic. Whose campus, whose security? draws on three datasets: a national survey of 635 students, regional interviews with 30 students and data obtained through Freedom of Information requests. The study provides the first empirical account of students’ views on, and experiences of, security services and police on UK university campuses. In doing so, it deliberately centres student views and experiences to provide an evidence base for higher education institutions as they operationalise their commitments to the equality, diversity and inclusion agenda

Increasing Short-Stay Unplanned Hospital Admissions among Children in England; Time Trends Analysis '97-'06

BACKGROUND: Timely care by general practitioners in the community keeps children out of hospital and provides better continuity of care. Yet in the UK, access to primary care has diminished since 2004 when changes in general practitioners' contracts enabled them to 'opt out' of providing out-of-hours care and since then unplanned pediatric hospital admission rates have escalated, particularly through emergency departments. We hypothesised that any increase in isolated short stay admissions for childhood illness might reflect failure to manage these cases in the community over a 10 year period spanning these changes. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We conducted a population based time trends study of major causes of hospital admission in children 2 days. By 2006, 67.3% of all unplanned admissions were isolated short stays <2 days. The increases in admission rates were greater for common non-infectious than infectious causes of admissions. CONCLUSIONS: Short stay unplanned hospital admission rates in young children in England have increased substantially in recent years and are not accounted for by reductions in length of in-hospital stay. The majority are isolated short stay admissions for minor illness episodes that could be better managed by primary care in the community and may be evidence of a failure of primary care services

Utilization of the out of hours service in Poland: an observational study from Krakow

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In 2000 a new GP contract was introduced in Poland. It allowed GPs to subcontract out of hours care to specialized deputizing services. One such service in Kraków provides care to 61 GP practices with a population of 420 000 inhabitants. The aim of this study is to analyze seasonal and geographical variation in out of hours care use and to find the most important factors influencing it.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Routinely collected data for 24 months (2003–2004) containing type, date and time of the contacts were used.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>During the study period 238 072 contacts were recorded: 149 911 ambulatory doctor visits, 23 434 home visits and 64 727 nurse procedures. The mean rate of out of hours contacts was: for ambulatory visits 178 per 1000 inhabitants/year (varied between practices from 9 to 696), for home visits 28 (from 1 to 36) and for nurse procedures 77 (from 3 to 327). The highest rate of ambulatory visits was 739 in the age group 0–4, the lowest – 104 in the age group 45–49. The highest rate of home visits was 221 in the age group over 85. The rate of ambulatory GP visits and nurse procedures was negatively correlated with the distance between the location of GP practice and the nearest out of hours clinic. The rate of home visits was positively correlated with the age of the patient.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Significant differences between practices suggest that non medical factors may play an important role in the patient's decision to see a GP when the surgery is closed. Their influence should be limited to make the system more efficient.</p