5,258 research outputs found
Assessment of the feasibility of an ultra-low power, wireless digital patch for the continuous ambulatory monitoring of vital signs.
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Vital signs are usually recorded at 4â8â
h intervals in hospital patients, and deterioration between measurements can have serious consequences. The primary study objective was to assess agreement between a new ultra-low power, wireless and wearable surveillance system for continuous ambulatory monitoring of vital signs and a widely used clinical vital signs monitor. The secondary objective was to examine the system's ability to automatically identify and reject invalid physiological data. SETTING: Single hospital centre. PARTICIPANTS: Heart and respiratory rate were recorded over 2â
h in 20 patients undergoing elective surgery and a second group of 41 patients with comorbid conditions, in the general ward. OUTCOME MEASURES: Primary outcome measures were limits of agreement and bias. The secondary outcome measure was proportion of data rejected. RESULTS: The digital patch provided reliable heart rate values in the majority of patients (about 80%) with normal sinus rhythm, and in the presence of abnormal ECG recordings (excluding aperiodic arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation). The mean difference between systems was less than ±1â
bpm in all patient groups studied. Although respiratory data were more frequently rejected as invalid because of the high sensitivity of impedance pneumography to motion artefacts, valid rates were reported for 50% of recordings with a mean difference of less than ±1â
brpm compared with the bedside monitor. Correlation between systems was statistically significant (p<0.0001) for heart and respiratory rate, apart from respiratory rate in patients with atrial fibrillation (p=0.02). CONCLUSIONS: Overall agreement between digital patch and clinical monitor was satisfactory, as was the efficacy of the system for automatic rejection of invalid data. Wireless monitoring technologies, such as the one tested, may offer clinical value when implemented as part of wider hospital systems that integrate and support existing clinical protocols and workflows
Comparison of engagement and emotional responses of older and younger adults interacting with 3D cultural heritage artefacts on personal devices
The availability of advanced software and less expensive hardware allows museums to preserve and share artefacts digitally. As a result, museums are frequently making their collections accessible online as interactive, 3D models. This could lead to the unique situation of viewing the digital artefact before the physical artefact. Experiencing artefacts digitally outside of the museum on personal devices may affect the user's ability to emotionally connect to the artefacts. This study examines how two target populations of young adults (18â21 years) and the elderly (65 years and older) responded to seeing cultural heritage artefacts in three different modalities: augmented reality on a tablet, 3D models on a laptop, and then physical artefacts. Specifically, the time spent, enjoyment, and emotional responses were analysed. Results revealed that regardless of age, the digital modalities were enjoyable and encouraged emotional responses. Seeing the physical artefacts after the digital ones did not lessen their enjoyment or emotions felt. These findings aim to provide an insight into the effectiveness of 3D artefacts viewed on personal devices and artefacts shown outside of the museum for encouraging emotional responses from older and younger people
The Term Structure of Systematic and Idiosyncratic Risk
We study the term structure of variance (total risk), systematic and idiosyncratic risk. Consistent with the expectations hypothesis, we find that, for the entire market, the slope of the term structure of variance is mainly informative about the path of future variance. Thus, there is little indication of a time-varying term premium. Turning the focus to individual stocks, we cannot reject the expectations hypothesis for the systematic variance, but we strongly reject it for idiosyncratic variance. Our results are robust to jumps and potential statistical biases
Modeling electrolytically top gated graphene
We investigate doping of a single-layer graphene in the presence of
electrolytic top gating. The interfacial phenomena is modeled using a modified
Poisson-Boltzmann equation for an aqueous solution of simple salt. We
demonstrate both the sensitivity of graphene's doping levels to the salt
concentration and the importance of quantum capacitance that arises due to the
smallness of the Debye screening length in the electrolyte.Comment: 7 pages, including 4 figures, submitted to Nanoscale Research Letters
for a special issue related to the NGC 2009 conference
(http://asdn.net/ngc2009/index.shtml
Matrix Models for Supersymmetric Chern-Simons Theories with an ADE Classification
We consider N=3 supersymmetric Chern-Simons (CS) theories that contain
product U(N) gauge groups and bifundamental matter fields. Using the matrix
model of Kapustin, Willett and Yaakov, we examine the Euclidean partition
function of these theories on an S^3 in the large N limit. We show that the
only such CS theories for which the long range forces between the eigenvalues
cancel have quivers which are in one-to-one correspondence with the simply
laced affine Dynkin diagrams. As the A_n series was studied in detail before,
in this paper we compute the partition function for the D_4 quiver. The D_4
example gives further evidence for a conjecture that the saddle point
eigenvalue distribution is determined by the distribution of gauge invariant
chiral operators. We also see that the partition function is invariant under a
generalized Seiberg duality for CS theories.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures; v2 refs added; v3 conventions in figure 3
altered, version to appear in JHE
Size rather than complexity of sexual ornaments prolongs male metamorphosis and explains sexual size dimorphism in sepsid flies
Male sexual ornaments often evolve rapidly and are thought to be costly, thus contributing to sexual size dimorphism. However, little is known about their developmental costs, and even less about costs associated with structural complexity. Here, we quantified the size and complexity of three morphologically elaborate sexually dimorphic male ornaments that starkly differ across sepsid fly species (Diptera: Sepsidae): (i) male forelegs range from being unmodified, like in most females, to being adorned with spines and large cuticular protrusions; (ii) the fourth abdominal sternites are either unmodified or are converted into complex de novo appendages; and (iii) male genital claspers range from small and simple to large and complex (e.g. bifurcated). We tracked the development of 18 sepsid species from egg to adult to determine larval feeding and pupal metamorphosis times of both sexes. We then statistically explored whether pupal and adult body size, ornament size and/or ornament complexity are correlated with sex-specific development times. Larval growth and foraging periods of male and female larvae did not differ, but the time spent in the pupal stage was ca 5% longer for sepsid males despite emerging 9% smaller than females on average. Surprisingly, we found no evidence that sexual trait complexity prolongs pupal development beyond some effects of trait size. Evolving more complex traits thus does not incur developmental costs at least in this system
Lowering the recommended maximal wall thickness threshold improves diagnostic sensitivity in Asians with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
BACKGROUND: Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is defined as left ventricular end-diastolic maximal wall thickness (WTMax) â„15.0 mm, without accounting for ethnicity, sex, and body size. It is well-established that Asians have smaller hearts than do Caucasians. OBJECTIVES: This study aims to examine the implications of this single absolute WTMax threshold on the diagnosis of HCM in Asians. METHODS: The study consisted of 360 healthy volunteers (male: n = 174; age: 50 ± 12 years) and 114 genetically characterized patients with HCM (male: n = 83; age: 52 ± 13 years; genotype-positive, n = 39). All participants underwent cardiovascular magnetic resonance. WTMax was measured semiautomatically at end-diastole according to the standard 16 myocardial segments. RESULTS: Healthy male volunteers had increased WTMax compared with that of female volunteers (8.4 ± 1.2 mm vs 6.6 ± 1.1 mm, respectively; P 15.0 mm (specificity of 100% and sensitivity of 51%). Lowering WTMax thresholds to 10.0 mm in female patients and 12.0 mm in male patients did not affect specificity (100%) but significantly improved sensitivity (84%). Despite lower left ventricular mass, female patients with HCM demonstrated more features of adverse cardiac remodeling than did male patients: increased myocardial fibrosis, higher asymmetric ratio, and disproportionately worse myocardial strain. CONCLUSIONS: The study highlights cautious application of guideline-recommended WTMax to diagnose HCM in Asians. Lowering WTMax to account for ethnicity and sex improves diagnostic sensitivity without compromising specificity
First-principles study of interstitial diffusion of oxygen in nickel chromium binary alloy
The first-principles calculations of the diffusion processes of oxygen in pure Ni and Ni-Cr binary alloy are conducted to understand the oxidation behavior of nickel base alloys. The cohesive energy, insertion energy of atomic oxygen, and vacancy formation energy in nickel are calculated and compared with experimental data. The activation energies of oxygen are also calculated. The results show agreement with previous work for the oxygen diffusion in pure nickel. However, the calculated activation energy for the diffusion of oxygen in Ni-Cr binary alloy showed lower values than that in nickel because of the limitations of the current calculation model.open3
A new parametric equation of state and quark stars
It is still a matter of debate to understand the equation of state of cold
supra-nuclear matter in compact stars because of unknown on-perturbative strong
interaction between quarks. Nevertheless, it is speculated from an
astrophysical view point that quark clusters could form in cold quark matter
due to strong coupling at realistic baryon densities. Although it is hard to
calculate this conjectured matter from first principles, one can expect the
inter-cluster interaction to share some general features to nucleon-nucleon
interaction. We adopt a two-Gaussian component soft-core potential with these
general features and show that quark clusters can form stable simple cubic
crystal structure if we assume Gaussian form wave function. With this
parameterizing, Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff equation is solved with reasonable
constrained parameter space to give mass-radius relation of crystalline solid
quark star. With baryon densities truncated at 2 times nuclear density at
surface and range of interaction fixed at 2fm we can reproduce similar
mass-radius relation to that obtained with bag model equations of state. The
maximum mass ranges from about 0.5 to 3 solar mass. Observed maximum pulsar
mass (about 2 solar mass) is then used to constrain parameters of this simple
interaction potential.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure
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