1,355 research outputs found
The law of brevity in macaque vocal communication is not an artifact of analyzing mean call durations
Words follow the law of brevity, i.e. more frequent words tend to be shorter.
From a statistical point of view, this qualitative definition of the law states
that word length and word frequency are negatively correlated. Here the recent
finding of patterning consistent with the law of brevity in Formosan macaque
vocal communication (Semple et al., 2010) is revisited. It is shown that the
negative correlation between mean duration and frequency of use in the
vocalizations of Formosan macaques is not an artifact of the use of a mean
duration for each call type instead of the customary 'word' length of studies
of the law in human language. The key point demonstrated is that the total
duration of calls of a particular type increases with the number of calls of
that type. The finding of the law of brevity in the vocalizations of these
macaques therefore defies a trivial explanation.Comment: Little improvements of the statistical argument
Quality and availability of consumer information on heart failure in Australia
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Provision of consumer information and patient education are considered an essential part of chronic disease management programmes developed for patients with heart failure. This study aimed to review the quality and availability of consumer information materials for people with heart failure in Australia.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The availability of consumer information was assessed through a questionnaire-based survey of the major organisations in Australia known, or thought, to be producing or using consumer materials on heart failure, including hospitals. The questionnaire was designed to explore issues around the use, production and dissemination of consumer materials. Only groups that had produced consumer information on heart failure were asked to complete the totality of the questionnaire.</p> <p>The quality of information booklets was assessed by using a standardised checklist.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Of 101 organisations which were sent a questionnaire, 33 had produced 61 consumer resources on heart failure including 21 information booklets, 3 videos, 5 reminder fridge magnets, 7 websites, 15 self-management diaries and 10 self-management plans. Questionnaires were completed for 40 separate information resources. Most had been produced by hospitals or health services. Two information booklets had been translated into other languages. There were major gaps in the availability of these resources as more than half of the resources were developed in 2 of the 8 Australian states and territories, New South Wales and Victoria.</p> <p>Quality assessment of 19 information booklets showed that most had good presentation and language. Overall eight high quality booklets were identified. There were gaps in terms of topics covered, provision of references, quantitative information about treatment outcomes and quality and level of scientific evidence to support medical recommendations. In only one case was there evidence that consumers had been involved in the production of the booklets.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Key findings arising from the study included the need to develop a nationally coordinated approach for increasing the dissemination of information resources on heart failure. While the more recent publication of a booklet by the National Heart Foundation may have improved the situation, dissemination of written information materials may remain sub-optimal, especially among patients who are not enrolled in chronic heart failure management programmes.</p
The comparative clinical course of pregnant and non-pregnant women hospitalised with influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 infection
Introduction: The Influenza Clinical Information Network (FLU-CIN) was established to gather detailed clinical and epidemiological information about patients with laboratory confirmed A(H1N1)pdm09 infection in UK hospitals. This report focuses on the clinical course and outcomes of infection in pregnancy.Methods: A standardised data extraction form was used to obtain detailed clinical information from hospital case notes and electronic records, for patients with PCR-confirmed A(H1N1)pdm09 infection admitted to 13 sentinel hospitals in five clinical 'hubs' and a further 62 non-sentinel hospitals, between 11th May 2009 and 31st January 2010.Outcomes were compared for pregnant and non-pregnant women aged 15-44 years, using univariate and multivariable techniques.Results: Of the 395 women aged 15-44 years, 82 (21%) were pregnant; 73 (89%) in the second or third trimester. Pregnant women were significantly less likely to exhibit severe respiratory distress at initial assessment (OR?=?0.49 (95% CI: 0.30-0.82)), require supplemental oxygen on admission (OR?=?0.40 (95% CI: 0.20-0.80)), or have underlying co-morbidities (p-trend <0.001). However, they were equally likely to be admitted to high dependency (Level 2) or intensive care (Level 3) and/or to die, after adjustment for potential confounders (adj. OR?=?0.93 (95% CI: 0.46-1.92). Of 11 pregnant women needing Level 2/3 care, 10 required mechanical ventilation and three died.Conclusions: Since the expected prevalence of pregnancy in the source population was 6%, our data suggest that pregnancy greatly increased the likelihood of hospital admission with A(H1N1)pdm09. Pregnant women were less likely than non-pregnant women to have respiratory distress on admission, but severe outcomes were equally likely in both groups
Measuring Air Quality for Advocacy in Africa (MA3): Feasibility and Practicality of Longitudinal Ambient PM2.5 Measurement Using Low-Cost Sensors.
Ambient air pollution in urban cities in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is an important public health problem with models and limited monitoring data indicating high concentrations of pollutants such as fine particulate matter (PM2.5). On most global air quality index maps, however, information about ambient pollution from SSA is scarce. We evaluated the feasibility and practicality of longitudinal measurements of ambient PM2.5 using low-cost air quality sensors (Purple Air-II-SD) across thirteen locations in seven countries in SSA. Devices were used to gather data over a 30-day period with the aim of assessing the efficiency of its data recovery rate and identifying challenges experienced by users in each location. The median data recovery rate was 94% (range: 72% to 100%). The mean 24 h concentration measured across all sites was 38 ”g/m3 with the highest PM2.5 period average concentration of 91 ”g/m3 measured in Kampala, Uganda and lowest concentrations of 15 ”g/m3 measured in Faraja, The Gambia. Kampala in Uganda and Nnewi in Nigeria recorded the longest periods with concentrations >250”g/m3. Power outages, SD memory card issues, internet connectivity problems and device safety concerns were important challenges experienced when using Purple Air-II-SD sensors. Despite some operational challenges, this study demonstrated that it is reasonably practicable and feasible to establish a network of low-cost devices to provide data on local PM2.5 concentrations in SSA countries. Such data are crucially needed to raise public, societal and policymaker awareness about air pollution across SSA
Insights into the biodegradation of weathered hydrocarbons in contaminated soils by bioaugmentation and nutrient stimulation
Acknowledgements This work was supported by the LINK Bioremediation programme (BIOREM_35), the Environment Agency and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council BBSRC (Grant BB/B512432/1). The authors also thank the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for financial support to carry out this work through a CASE award supported by the former FIRSTFARADAY (Environmental Sustainability KTN) partnership (Ref No. 5010978). The views expressed are authorsâ alone and may not reflect the views or policies of their employing organisations.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Circular Networks from Distorted Metrics
Trees have long been used as a graphical representation of species
relationships. However complex evolutionary events, such as genetic
reassortments or hybrid speciations which occur commonly in viruses, bacteria
and plants, do not fit into this elementary framework. Alternatively, various
network representations have been developed. Circular networks are a natural
generalization of leaf-labeled trees interpreted as split systems, that is,
collections of bipartitions over leaf labels corresponding to current species.
Although such networks do not explicitly model specific evolutionary events of
interest, their straightforward visualization and fast reconstruction have made
them a popular exploratory tool to detect network-like evolution in genetic
datasets.
Standard reconstruction methods for circular networks, such as Neighbor-Net,
rely on an associated metric on the species set. Such a metric is first
estimated from DNA sequences, which leads to a key difficulty: distantly
related sequences produce statistically unreliable estimates. This is
problematic for Neighbor-Net as it is based on the popular tree reconstruction
method Neighbor-Joining, whose sensitivity to distance estimation errors is
well established theoretically. In the tree case, more robust reconstruction
methods have been developed using the notion of a distorted metric, which
captures the dependence of the error in the distance through a radius of
accuracy. Here we design the first circular network reconstruction method based
on distorted metrics. Our method is computationally efficient. Moreover, the
analysis of its radius of accuracy highlights the important role played by the
maximum incompatibility, a measure of the extent to which the network differs
from a tree.Comment: Submitte
Brain development in fetuses of mothers with diabetes: a case-control magnetic resonance imaging study
Quadrupole and Hexadecapole Correlations in Rotating Nuclei Studied within the Single-j Shell Model
The influence of quadrupole and hexadecapole residual interactions on
rotational bands is investigated in a single-j shell model. An exact
shell-model diagonalization of quadrupole-plus-hexadecapole interaction can
sometimes produce a staggering of energy levels in the yrast bands.Comment: 15 pages, 9 Postscript figures, REVTEX, to be published in PR
On the classification of OADP varieties
The main purpose of this paper is to show that OADP varieties stand at an
important crossroad of various main streets in different disciplines like
projective geometry, birational geometry and algebra. This is a good reason for
studying and classifying them. Main specific results are: (a) the
classification of all OADP surfaces (regardless to their smoothness); (b) the
classification of a relevant class of normal OADP varieties of any dimension,
which includes interesting examples like lagrangian grassmannians. Following
[PR], the equivalence of the classification in (b) with the one of
quadro-quadric Cremona transformations and of complex, unitary, cubic Jordan
algebras are explained.Comment: 13 pages. Dedicated to Fabrizio Catanese on the occasion of his 60th
birthday. To appear in a special issue of Science in China Series A:
Mathematic
Staggering effects in nuclear and molecular spectra
It is shown that the recently observed Delta J = 2 staggering effect (i.e.
the relative displacement of the levels with angular momenta J, J+4, J+8, ...,
relatively to the levels with angular momenta J+2, J+6, J+10, ...) seen in
superdeformed nuclear bands is also occurring in certain electronically excited
rotational bands of diatomic molecules (YD, CrD, CrH, CoH), in which it is
attributed to interband interactions (bandcrossings). In addition, the Delta J
= 1 staggering effect (i.e. the relative displacement of the levels with even
angular momentum J with respect to the levels of the same band with odd J) is
studied in molecular bands free from Delta J = 2 staggering (i.e. free from
interband interactions/bandcrossings). Bands of YD offer evidence for the
absence of any Delta J = 1 staggering effect due to the disparity of nuclear
masses, while bands of sextet electronic states of CrD demonstrate that Delta J
= 1 staggering is a sensitive probe of deviations from rotational behaviour,
due in this particular case to the spin-rotation and spin-spin interactions.Comment: LaTeX, 16 pages plus 30 figures given in separate .ps files. To
appear in the proceedings of the 4th European Workshop on Quantum Systems in
Chemistry and Physics (Marly-le-Roi, France, 1999), ed. J. Maruani et al.
(Kluwer, Dordrecht
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