690 research outputs found
Disproportional decrease in office blood pressure compared with 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure with antihypertensive treatment: dependency on pretreatment blood pressure levels
The long-term relationship between 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) and office BP in patients on therapy is not well documented. From a registry we included all patients in whom antihypertensive therapy needed to be uptitrated. Drug treatment included the direct renin inhibitor aliskiren or an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor/angiotensin receptor blocker or drugs not blocking the renin-angiotensin system, alone or on top of an existing drug regimen. In all patients, office BP and 24-hour ABP were obtained at baseline and after 1 year with validated devices. In the study population of 2722 patients, there was a good correlation between the change in office BP and 24-hour ABP (systolic: r=0.39; P<0.001; diastolic: r=0.34; P<0.001). However, the numeric decrease in office BP did not correspond to the decrease in ABP in a 1:1 fashion, for example, a decrease of 10, 20, and 30 mm Hg corresponded to a decrease of ~7.2, 10.5, and 13.9 mm Hg in systolic ABP, respectively. The disproportionally greater decrease in systolic office BP compared with ABP was dependent on the level of the pretreatment BP, which was consistently higher for office BP than ABP. The white coat effect (difference between office BP and ABP) was on average 10/5 mm Hg lower 1 year after intensifying treatment and the magnitude of that was also dependent on pretreatment BP. There was a disproportionally greater decrease in systolic office BP than in ABP, which for both office BP and ABP seemed to depend on the pretreatment BP level
F1: An Eight Channel Time-to-Digital Converter Chip for High Rate Experiments
A new TDC chip has been developed for the COMPASS experiment at CERN. The resulting ASIC offers an unprecedented degree of flexibility and functionality. Its capability to handle highest hit and trigger input rates as well as its low power consumption makes it an ideal tool for future collider and fixed target experiments. First front-end boards equipped with the F1 chip have been used recently at testbeam experiments at CERN. A functional description and specification for this new TDC chip is presented.A new TDC chip has been developed for the COMPASS experiment at CERN. The resulting ASIC offers an unprecedented degree of flexibility and functionality. Its capability to handle highest hit and trigger input rates as well as its low power consumption makes it an ideal tool for future collider and fixed target experiments. First front-end boards equipped with the F1 chip have been used recently at testbeam experiments at CERN. A functional description and specification for this new TDC chip is presented
Transitions between Inherent Structures in Water
The energy landscape approach has been useful to help understand the dynamic
properties of supercooled liquids and the connection between these properties
and thermodynamics. The analysis in numerical models of the inherent structure
(IS) trajectories -- the set of local minima visited by the liquid -- offers
the possibility of filtering out the vibrational component of the motion of the
system on the potential energy surface and thereby resolving the slow
structural component more efficiently. Here we report an analysis of an IS
trajectory for a widely-studied water model, focusing on the changes in
hydrogen bond connectivity that give rise to many IS separated by relatively
small energy barriers. We find that while the system \emph{travels} through
these IS, the structure of the bond network continuously modifies, exchanging
linear bonds for bifurcated bonds and usually reversing the exchange to return
to nearly the same initial configuration. For the 216 molecule system we
investigate, the time scale of these transitions is as small as the simulation
time scale ( fs). Hence for water, the transitions between each of
these IS is relatively small and eventual relaxation of the system occurs only
by many of these transitions. We find that during IS changes, the molecules
with the greatest displacements move in small ``clusters'' of 1-10 molecules
with displacements of nm, not unlike simpler liquids.
However, for water these clusters appear to be somewhat more branched than the
linear ``string-like'' clusters formed in a supercooled Lennar d-Jones system
found by Glotzer and her collaborators.Comment: accepted in PR
Prolactin
During an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) glucose and insulin levels were measured in 26 patients with prolactin-producing pituitary tumours without growth hormone excess. Basal glucose and insulin levels did not differ from the values of an age-matched control group. After glucose load the hyperprolactinaemic patients showed a decrease in glucose tolerance and a hyperinsulinaemia. Bromocriptine (CB 154), which suppressed PRL, improved glucose tolerance and decreased insulin towards normal in a second OGTT. — Human PRL or CB 154 had no significant influence on insulin release due to glucose in the perfused rat pancreas. — These findings suggest a diabetogenic effect of PRL. CB 154 might be a useful drug in improving glucose utilization in hormone-active pituitary tumours
Effects of the field modulation on the Hofstadter's spectrum
We study the effect of spatially modulated magnetic fields on the energy
spectrum of a two-dimensional (2D) Bloch electron. Taking into account four
kinds of modulated fields and using the method of direct diagonalization of the
Hamiltonian matrix, we calculate energy spectra with varying system parameters
(i.e., the kind of the modulation, the relative strength of the modulated field
to the uniform background field, and the period of the modulation) to elucidate
that the energy band structure sensitively depends on such parameters:
Inclusion of spatially modulated fields into a uniform field leads occurrence
of gap opening, gap closing, band crossing, and band broadening, resulting
distinctive energy band structure from the Hofstadter's spectrum. We also
discuss the effect of the field modulation on the symmetries appeared in the
Hofstadter's spectrum in detail.Comment: 7 pages (in two-column), 10 figures (including 2 tables
Endocytic delivery of lipocalin-siderophore-iron complex rescues the kidney from ischemia-reperfusion injury
Neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (Ngal), also known as siderocalin, forms a complex with iron-binding siderophores (Ngal:siderophore:Fe). This complex converts renal progenitors into epithelial tubules. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that Ngal:siderophore:Fe protects adult kidney epithelial cells or accelerates their recovery from damage. Using a mouse model of severe renal failure, ischemia-reperfusion injury, we show that a single dose of Ngal (10 microg), introduced during the initial phase of the disease, dramatically protects the kidney and mitigates azotemia. Ngal activity depends on delivery of the protein and its siderophore to the proximal tubule. Iron must also be delivered, since blockade of the siderophore with gallium inhibits the rescue from ischemia. The Ngal:siderophore:Fe complex upregulates heme oxygenase-1, a protective enzyme, preserves proximal tubule N-cadherin, and inhibits cell death. Because mouse urine contains an Ngal-dependent siderophore-like activity, endogenous Ngal might also play a protective role. Indeed, Ngal is highly accumulated in the human kidney cortical tubules and in the blood and urine after nephrotoxic and ischemic injury. We reveal what we believe to be a novel pathway of iron traffic that is activated in human and mouse renal diseases, and it provides a unique method for their treatment
HI in the Outskirts of Nearby Galaxies
The HI in disk galaxies frequently extends beyond the optical image, and can
trace the dark matter there. I briefly highlight the history of high spatial
resolution HI imaging, the contribution it made to the dark matter problem, and
the current tension between several dynamical methods to break the disk-halo
degeneracy. I then turn to the flaring problem, which could in principle probe
the shape of the dark halo. Instead, however, a lot of attention is now devoted
to understanding the role of gas accretion via galactic fountains. The current
cold dark matter theory has problems on galactic scales, such as
the core-cusp problem, which can be addressed with HI observations of dwarf
galaxies. For a similar range in rotation velocities, galaxies of type Sd have
thin disks, while those of type Im are much thicker. After a few comments on
modified Newtonian dynamics and on irregular galaxies, I close with statistics
on the HI extent of galaxies.Comment: 38 pages, 17 figures, invited review, book chapter in "Outskirts of
Galaxies", Eds. J. H. Knapen, J. C. Lee and A. Gil de Paz, Astrophysics and
Space Science Library, Springer, in pres
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