Pathogenesis of sudden death following water immersion (immersion syndrome)

Sympathetic activity under cold stress is investigated. Predominantly vagal cardio-depressive reflexes are discussed besides currently known mechanisms of sudden death after water immersion. Pronounced circulatory centralization in diving animals as well as following exposure in cold water indicates additional sympathetic activity. In cold water baths of 15 C, measurements indicate an increase in plasma catecholamine levels by more than 300 percent. This may lead to cardiac arrhythmias by the following mechanisms: cold water essentially induces sinus bradycardia; brady-and tachycardiarrhythmias may supervene as secondary complications; sinusbradycardia may be enhanced by sympathetic hypertonus. Furthermore, ectopic dysrhythmias are liable to be induced by the strictly sympathetic innervation of the ventricle. Myocardial ischemia following a rise in peripheral blood pressure constitutes another arrhythmogenic factor. Some of these reactions are enhanced by alcohol intoxication

Intellectual Property Rights, Product Complexity, and the Organization of Multinational Firms

This paper studies how the Intellectual Property Right (IPR) regime in destination countries influences the way multinationals structure the international organization of their production. In particular, we explore how multinationals divide tasks of different complexities across countries with different levels of IPR protection. The analysis studies the decision of firms between procurement from related parties and outsourcing to independents suppliers at the product level. It also breaks down outsourcing into two types by distinguishing whether or not they involve technology sharing between the two parties. We combine data from a French firm-level survey on the mode choice for each transaction with a newly developed complexity measure at the product level. Our results confirm that firms are generally reluctant to source highly complex goods from outside firm boundaries. By studying the interaction between product complexity and the IPR protection, we obtain that (i) for technology-sharing-outsourcing IPRs promote outsourcing of more complex goods to a destination country by guaranteeing the protection of their technology, (ii) for non-technology-related-outsourcing IPRs attract the outsourcing of less complex products that are more prone to reverse engineering and simpler to decodify and imitate.

Application-Directed Modeling of Radiation and Prpagation of Elastic Waves in Anisotropic Media: GPSS and OPOSSM

In ultrasonic nondestructive testing use is made of the physical properties of elastic waves in solids in order to detect defects and material inhomogeneities. Difficulties in testing anisotropic materials are due to the direction dependence of the ultrasonic velocities and to the inherent effects of beam divergence and beam distortion. Based on a theory of elastic wave propagation in transversely isotropic media [1], the Generalized Point-Source-Synthesis-method (GPSS) has been developed to model the radiation, propagation and scattering of elastic waves as generated by ultrasonic transducers in these media [2]. The method accounts for the three-dimensionality and the vectorial character of anisotropic wave phenomena and is particularly useful in view of application-directed modeling at low computation times. A specifically interesting outcome is OPoSSM (‘Optimization by Point-Source-Synthesis-Modeling’), which allows optimized dimensioning and build-up of complex transducers according to their selected field of application. In this contribution, results are presented for austenitic weld material and fiber composites, covering echo dynamic curves — in comparison with experimental results — for commercial transducers. Furthermore, OPoSSM-results on optimized TR-array-probes are presented as well as snapshots of transducer-generated wavefronts, impressively illustrating the modeling of time-dependent rf-signals

New German Telecommunications Act, The

In the wake of the debate in Germany on how to weather the storms against the marketplace Germany (Unternehmensstandort Deutschland) the new German Telecommunications Act ( TA ) has been earmarked as a milestone. Its supporters hail the TA to spur competition in Germany\u27s telecommunications market, which they expect to have a turnover of over DM 100 billion (app. US $66 billion) by the year 2000.... This article seeks to summarize the salient features of the TA and to outline the perspectives for potential foreign investors in the German telecommunications market as to the regulatory environment such investor will face. For this purpose, it will briefly describe the process which led to the TA (2.), the applicability of the TA (3.), the Regulator to be established under the TA (4.), the licenses available under the TA (5.), the duties of the licensee (6.) and finally the rights of the licensee (7.). This article is not intended to and cannot provide a comprehensive summary of the TA. Instead it seeks to inform about and draw attention to only those issues which may be of primary interest to a potential investor and which are essential for understanding the regulatory framework for the telecommunications industry in Germany

International Sourcing, Product Complexity and Intellectual Property Rights

In this paper, we propose the technological complexity of a product and the level of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) protection to be the co-determinants of the mode through which multinational firms purchase their goods. We study the choice between intra-firm trade and outsourcing given heterogeneity at the product- (complexity), firm- (productivity) and country- (IPRs) level. Our findings suggest that the above three dimensions of heterogeneity are crucial for complex goods, where firms face a trade-off between higher marginal costs in the case of trade with an affiliate and higher imitation risks in the case of sourcing from an independent supplier. We test these predictions by combining data from a French firm-level survey on the mode choice for each transaction with a newly developed complexity measure at the product-level. Our fractional logit estimations confirm the proposition that although firms are generally reluctant to source highly complex goods from outside the firm’s boundaries, they do so when a strong IPR regime in the host country guarantees the protection of their technology

Sparse Relational Reasoning with Object-Centric Representations

We investigate the composability of soft-rules learned by relational neural architectures when operating over object-centric (slot-based) representations, under a variety of sparsity-inducing constraints. We find that increasing sparsity, especially on features, improves the performance of some models and leads to simpler relations. Additionally, we observe that object-centric representations can be detrimental when not all objects are fully captured; a failure mode to which CNNs are less prone. These findings demonstrate the trade-offs between interpretability and performance, even for models designed to tackle relational tasks.Comment: ICML 2022, DyNN Worksho

Moving from medical to health systems classifications of deaths : extending verbal autopsy to collect information on the circumstances of mortality

Acknowledgements The authors would also like to acknowledge the field staff at the MRC, SA/Wits Agincourt Unit, particularly Sizzy Ngobeni. The authors also acknowledge Drs Malin Eriksson and Edward Fottrell at Umeå Centre for Global Health Research *UCGHR) who contributed to the development of the SF-VA indicators, Dr Nawi Ng at UCGHR who advised on the cause of death categories, and Dr Kerstin Edin at UCGHR who provided comments on the manuscript categories, and Dr Kerstin Edin who provided comments on the manuscript. Funding A Health Systems Research Initiative Development Grant from the UK Department for International Development (DFID), Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Medical Research Council (MRC (and the Wellcome Trust (MR/N005597/1) funds the research presented in this paper. Support for the Agincourt HDSS including verbal autopsies was provided by The Wellcome Trust, UK (grants 058893/Z/99/A; 069683/Z/02/Z; 085477/Z/08/Z; 085477/B/08/Z), and the University of the Witwatersrand and Medical Research Council, South Africa.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Experimental Evaluation of Ultrasonic Simulation Techniques in Anisotropic Material

The high performance of the available computer technology provides the possibility to simulate the real life for ultrasonic inspections in terms of primary ultrasonic data like rf-time signals. For isotropic material codes like Generalized Point Source Synthesis (GPSS) or Elastodynamic Finite Integration Technique (EFIT) and the theoretical predictions correlate well with experimental results. Recently, the codes mentioned above have been extended to operate also in anisotropic material. In a first step the codes GPSS and EFIT have been expanded to work in materials of parallel oriented columnar grain structure with transversely isotropic symmetry. In order to verify these codes a set of experiments was carried out on weld metal pads and on welds of defined grain structure. Radiation, propagation, reflexion on boundaries and interaction of the sound field with defects for the modes “through transmission” and “pulse echo” were simulated and compared with the experiment

Recognition of cognitive impairment and depressive symptoms in older patients with heart failure

INTRODUCTION: Cognitive impairment and depression in patients with heart failure (HF) are common comorbidities and are associated with increased morbidity, readmissions and mortality. Timely recognition of cognitive impairment and depression is important for providing optimal care. The aim of our study was to determine if these disorders were recognised by clinicians and, secondly, if they were associated with hospital admissions and mortality within 6 months’ follow-up. METHODS: Patients (aged ≥65 years) diagnosed with HF were included from the cardiology outpatient clinic of Gelre Hospitals. Cognitive status was evaluated with the Montreal Cognitive Assessment test (score ≤22). Depressive symptoms were assessed with the Geriatric Depression Scale (score >5). Patient characteristics were collected from electronic patient files. The clinician was blinded to the tests and asked to assess cognitive status and mood. RESULTS: We included 157 patients. Their median age was 79 years (65–92); 98 (62%) were male. The majority had New York Heart Association functional class II. Cognitive impairment was present in 56 (36%) patients. Depressive symptoms were present in 21 (13%) patients. In 27 of 56 patients (48%) cognitive impairment was not recognised by clinicians. Depressive symptoms were not recognised in 11 of 21 patients (52%). During 6 months’ follow-up 24 (15%) patients were readmitted for HF-related reasons and 18 (11%) patients died. There was no difference in readmission and mortality rate between patients with or without cognitive impairment and patients with or without depressive symptoms. CONCLUSION: Cognitive impairment and depressive symptoms were infrequently recognised during outpatient clinic visits