Extracorporeal circulation causes release of neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL).

Extracorporeal circulation (ECC) used during cardiac surgery causes activation of several inflammatory systems. These events are not fully understood but are responsible for complications during the immediate postoperative period. Neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL), a member of the expanding lipocalin family, has recently been described as an inflammatory protein. In this study, the release of NGAL into the circulation in 41 patients undergoing heart surgery with ECC was evaluated. A 4- to 5-fold elevation of the concentration of NGAL in plasma was observed during the immediate postoperative course with a rapid elimination during the first postoperative day. Four patients undergoing lung surgery (without ECC) were also studied. The plasma concentration of NGAL only increased with a factor of 1.1-2.2 over the operation. We conclude that NGAL is released into the circulation during heart surgery, probably as a result of the inflammatory activation of leukocytes initiated by the extracorporeal circulation

Investigations of solutions of Einstein's field equations close to lambda-Taub-NUT

We present investigations of a class of solutions of Einstein's field equations close to the family of lambda-Taub-NUT spacetimes. The studies are done using a numerical code introduced by the author elsewhere. One of the main technical complication is due to the S3-topology of the Cauchy surfaces. Complementing these numerical results with heuristic arguments, we are able to yield some first insights into the strong cosmic censorship issue and the conjectures by Belinskii, Khalatnikov, and Lifschitz in this class of spacetimes. In particular, the current investigations suggest that strong cosmic censorship holds in this class. We further identify open issues in our current approach and point to future research projects.Comment: 24 pages, 12 figures, uses psfrag and hyperref; replaced with published version, only minor corrections of typos and reference

Emotions in context: examining pervasive affective sensing systems, applications, and analyses

Pervasive sensing has opened up new opportunities for measuring our feelings and understanding our behavior by monitoring our affective states while mobile. This review paper surveys pervasive affect sensing by examining and considering three major elements of affective pervasive systems, namely; “sensing”, “analysis”, and “application”. Sensing investigates the different sensing modalities that are used in existing real-time affective applications, Analysis explores different approaches to emotion recognition and visualization based on different types of collected data, and Application investigates different leading areas of affective applications. For each of the three aspects, the paper includes an extensive survey of the literature and finally outlines some of challenges and future research opportunities of affective sensing in the context of pervasive computing

Intermediate inflation and the slow-roll approximation

It is shown that spatially homogeneous solutions of the Einstein equations coupled to a nonlinear scalar field and other matter exhibit accelerated expansion at late times for a wide variety of potentials $V$. These potentials are strictly positive but tend to zero at infinity. They satisfy restrictions on $V'/V$ and $V''/V'$ related to the slow-roll approximation. These results generalize Wald's theorem for spacetimes with positive cosmological constant to those with accelerated expansion driven by potentials belonging to a large class.Comment: 19 pages, results unchanged, additional backgroun

Pressure-induced structural change in liquid GaIn eutectic alloy

Synchrotron x-ray diffraction reveals a pressure induced crystallization at about 3.4 GPa and apolymorphic transition near 10.3 GPa when compressed a liquid GaIn eutectic alloy up to ~13 GPa atroom temperature in a diamond anvil cell. Upon decompression, the high pressure crystalline phaseremains almost unchanged until it transforms to the liquid state at around 2.3 GPa. The ab initiomolecular dynamics calculations can reproduce the low pressure crystallization and give some hints onthe understanding of the transition between the liquid and the crystalline phase on the atomic level.The calculated pair correlation function g(r) shows a non-uniform contraction reflected by the differentcompressibility between the short (1st shell) and the intermediate (2nd to 4th shells). It is concludedthat the pressure-induced liquid-crystalline phase transformation likely arises from the changes in localatomic packing of the nearest neighbors as well as electronic structures at the transition pressure