Contribution of thirdhand smoke to overall tobacco smoke exposure in pediatric patients: study protocol.

BackgroundThirdhand smoke (THS) is the persistent residue resulting from secondhand smoke (SHS) that accumulates in dust, objects, and on surfaces in homes where tobacco has been used, and is reemitted into air. Very little is known about the extent to which THS contributes to children's overall tobacco smoke exposure (OTS) levels, defined as their combined THS and SHS exposure. Even less is known about the effect of OTS and THS on children's health. This project will examine how different home smoking behaviors contribute to THS and OTS and if levels of THS are associated with respiratory illnesses in nonsmoking children.MethodsThis project leverages the experimental design from an ongoing pediatric emergency department-based tobacco cessation trial of caregivers who smoke and their children (NIHR01HD083354). At baseline and follow-up, we will collect urine and handwipe samples from children and samples of dust and air from the homes of smokers who smoke indoors, have smoking bans or who have quit smoking. These samples will be analyzed to examine to what extent THS pollution at home contributes to OTS exposure over and above SHS and to what extent THS continues to persist and contribute to OTS in homes of smokers who have quit or have smoking bans. Targeted and nontargeted chemical analyses of home dust samples will explore which types of THS pollutants are present in homes. Electronic medical record review will examine if THS and OTS levels are associated with child respiratory illness. Additionally, a repository of child and environmental samples will be created.DiscussionThe results of this study will be crucial to help close gaps in our understanding of the types, quantity, and clinical effects of OTS, THS exposure, and THS pollutants in a unique sample of tobacco smoke-exposed ill children and their homes. The potential impact of these findings is substantial, as currently the level of risk in OTS attributable to THS is unknown. This research has the potential to change how we protect children from OTS, by recognizing that SHS and THS exposure needs to be addressed separately and jointly as sources of pollution and exposure.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02531594 . Date of registration: August 24, 2015

Observational Evidence for Young Radio Galaxies are Triggered by Accretion Disk Instability

The bolometric luminosities and black hole (BH) masses are estimated by various methods for a sample of young radio galaxies with known ages. We find that the ages are positively correlated with the bolometric luminosities in these young radio galaxies, which is consistent with theoretical prediction based on radiation pressure instability of accretion disk in Czerny et al. The ages of young radio galaxies are also found to be consistent with the theoretical durations of outbursts in BH mass and accretion rate (in Eddington unit) plane, where the outbursts are assumed to be triggered by the radiation pressure instabilities. Our results provide the observational evidence for the radiation pressure instability, which causes limit-cycle behavior, as a physical mechanism that may be responsible for these short-lived young radio galaxies.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, accepted by ApJ Letter, emulateapj styl

Investigating a method to limit damage in Globigerina Limestone, a soft porous stone widely used in historic buildings

A programme of studies is ongoing to investigate the action of environmentally-friendly functionalized polycarboxylates as organic crystallization modifiers on salts on two types of Globigerina Limestone of Malta, to compare their action and behaviour. This was mainly done to verify the potential of such compounds to control, and therefore, limit damage on this locally unexplored territory. The main thrust of the research, at this stage, was to observe modifications to solution transport and salt crystal growth induced in two varieties of the stone by treating under controlled laboratory conditions; work under uncontrolled conditions has also commenced, but will not be discussed here. In this paper, indications of the modifications obtained are discussed, in the context of former trials, the fact that they are still under investigation and with a view on way forward. A discussion establishing a classification for damage limitation is postulated.peer-reviewe

Recurrent radio outbursts at the center of the NGC1407 galaxy group

We present deep Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) radio observations at 240, 330 and 610 MHz of the complex radio source at the center of the NGC1407 galaxy group. Previous GMRT observations at 240 MHz revealed faint, diffuse emission enclosing the central twin-jet radio galaxy. This has been interpreted as an indication of two possible radio outbursts occurring at different times. Both the inner double and diffuse component are detected in the new GMRT images at high levels of significance. Combining the GMRT observations with archival Very Large Array data at 1.4 and 4.9 GHz, we derive the total spectrum of both components. The inner double has a spectral index \alpha=0.7, typical for active, extended radio galaxies, whereas the spectrum of the large-scale emission is very steep, with \alpha=1.8 between 240 MHz and 1.4 GHz. The radiative age of the large-scale component is very long, ~300 Myr, compared to ~30 Myr estimated for the central double, confirming that the diffuse component was generated during a former cycle of activity of the central galaxy. The current activity have so far released an energy which is nearly one order of magnitude lower than that associated with the former outburst. The group X-ray emission in the Chandra and XMM-Newton images and extended radio emission show a similar swept-back morphology. We speculate that the two structures are both affected by the motion of the group core, perhaps due to the core sloshing in response to a recent encounter with the nearby elliptical galaxy NGC1400.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures and 5 tables. Accepted for publication in Ap

Effect of a Motivational Interviewing–Based Intervention on Initiation of Mental Health Treatment and Mental Health After an Emergency Department Visit Among Suicidal Adolescents

Abstract IMPORTANCE Emergency department (ED) visits present opportunities to identify and refer suicidal youth for outpatient mental health care, although this practice is not routine. OBJECTIVE To examine whether a motivational interviewing–based intervention increases linkage of adolescents to outpatient mental health services and reduces depression symptoms and suicidal ideation in adolescents seeking emergency care for non–mental health–related concerns who screen positive for suicide risk. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS In this randomized clinical trial, adolescents aged 12 to 17 years who screened positive on the Ask Suicide Screening Questions (ASQ) during a nonpsychiatric ED visit at 2 academic pediatric EDs in Ohio were recruited from April 2013 to July 2015. Intention-totreat analyses were performed from September 2018 to October 2019. INTERVENTIONS The Suicidal Teens Accessing Treatment After an Emergency Department Visit (STAT-ED) intervention included motivational interviewing to target family engagement, problem solving, referral assistance, and limited case management. The enhanced usual care (EUC) intervention consisted of brief mental health care consultation and referral. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Primary outcomes were mental health treatment initiation and attendance within 2 months of ED discharge and suicidal ideation (assessed by the Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire JR) and depression symptoms (assessed by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies– Depression scale) at 2 and 6 months. Exploratory outcomes included treatment initiation and attendance and suicide attempts at 6 months. RESULTS A total of 168 participants were randomized and 159 included in the intention-to-treat analyses (mean [SD] age, 15.0 [1.5] years; 126 [79.2%] female; and 80 [50.3%] white). Seventy-nine participants were randomized to receive the STAT-ED intervention and 80 to receive EUC. At 2 months, youth in the STAT-ED group had similar rates of mental health treatment initiation compared with youth in the EUC group as assessed by parent report (29 [50.9%] vs 22 [34.9%]; adjusted odds ratio [OR], 2.08; 95% CI, 0.97-4.45) and administrative data from mental health care agencies (19 [29.7%] vs 11 [19.3%]; adjusted OR, 1.77; 95% CI, 0.76-4.15). At 2 months, youth in the STAT-ED group and the EUC group had similar rates of treatment attendance (1 appointment: 6 [9.7%] vs 2 [3.6%]; adjusted OR, 2.97; 95% CI, 0.56-15.73; 2 appointments: 10 [16.1%] vs 7 [12.7%]; adjusted OR, 1.43; 95% CI, 0.50-4.11). There were no significant group × time differences in suicidal ideation (F = 0.28; P = .72) and depression symptoms (F = 0.49; P = .60) during the 6-month follow-up period. In exploratory analyses, at 6 months, STAT-ED participants had significantly higher rates of agencyreported mental health treatment initiation (adjusted OR, 2.48; 95% CI, 1.16-5.28) and more completed appointments (t99.7 = 2.58; P = .01). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE This study’s findings indicate that no differences were found on any primary outcome by study condition. However, STAT-ED was more efficacious than EUC at increasing mental health treatment initiation and attendance at 6 months. TRIAL REGISTRATION ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT01779414 JAMA Network Open. 2019;2(12):e1917941. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.1794

Comprehensive identification of essential Staphylococcus aureus genes using Transposon-Mediated Differential Hybridisation (TMDH).

BACKGROUND: In recent years there has been an increasing problem with Staphylococcus aureus strains that are resistant to treatment with existing antibiotics. An important starting point for the development of new antimicrobial drugs is the identification of "essential" genes that are important for bacterial survival and growth. RESULTS: We have developed a robust microarray and PCR-based method, Transposon-Mediated Differential Hybridisation (TMDH), that uses novel bioinformatics to identify transposon inserts in genome-wide libraries. Following a microarray-based screen, genes lacking transposon inserts are re-tested using a PCR and sequencing-based approach. We carried out a TMDH analysis of the S. aureus genome using a large random mariner transposon library of around a million mutants, and identified a total of 351 S. aureus genes important for survival and growth in culture. A comparison with the essential gene list experimentally derived for Bacillus subtilis highlighted interesting differences in both pathways and individual genes. CONCLUSION: We have determined the first comprehensive list of S. aureus essential genes. This should act as a useful starting point for the identification of potential targets for novel antimicrobial compounds. The TMDH methodology we have developed is generic and could be applied to identify essential genes in other bacterial pathogens.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

Dealing with the effects of sensor displacement in wearable activity recognition

Most wearable activity recognition systems assume a predefined sensor deployment that remains unchanged during runtime. However, this assumption does not reflect real-life conditions. During the normal use of such systems, users may place the sensors in a position different from the predefined sensor placement. Also, sensors may move from their original location to a different one, due to a loose attachment. Activity recognition systems trained on activity patterns characteristic of a given sensor deployment may likely fail due to sensor displacements. In this work, we innovatively explore the effects of sensor displacement induced by both the intentional misplacement of sensors and self-placement by the user. The effects of sensor displacement are analyzed for standard activity recognition techniques, as well as for an alternate robust sensor fusion method proposed in a previous work. While classical recognition models show little tolerance to sensor displacement, the proposed method is proven to have notable capabilities to assimilate the changes introduced in the sensor position due to self-placement and provides considerable improvements for large misplacements.This work was supported by the High Performance Computing (HPC)-Europa2 project funded by the European Commission-DG Research in the Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement No. 228398 and by the EU Marie Curie Network iCareNet under grant No. 264738. This work was also supported by the Spanish Comision Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CICYT) Project SAF2010-20558, Junta de Andalucia Project P09-TIC-175476 and the FPU Spanish grant, AP2009-2244

Fluidic gates simulated with lattice Boltzmann method under different Reynolds numbers

© 2018 Elsevier B.V. Fluidic devices use fluid as a medium for information transfer and computation. Boolean values are represented by the presence of fluid jets in the input and output channels. Velocity of a fluid is one of the parameters determining Reynolds number of the flow. Reynolds number is a parameter that characterizes the behaviour of the flow: laminar, transient or turbulent. Using lattice Boltzmann method we study the behaviour of fluidic gates for various Reynolds numbers. On the designs of AND and OR gates we show the fluidic gates remain functional even for low Reynolds numbers, like 100. The gates designed can be cascaded into functional logical circuits