Spanning Trees and bootstrap reliability estimation in correlation based networks

We introduce a new technique to associate a spanning tree to the average linkage cluster analysis. We term this tree as the Average Linkage Minimum Spanning Tree. We also introduce a technique to associate a value of reliability to links of correlation based graphs by using bootstrap replicas of data. Both techniques are applied to the portfolio of the 300 most capitalized stocks traded at New York Stock Exchange during the time period 2001-2003. We show that the Average Linkage Minimum Spanning Tree recognizes economic sectors and sub-sectors as communities in the network slightly better than the Minimum Spanning Tree does. We also show that the average reliability of links in the Minimum Spanning Tree is slightly greater than the average reliability of links in the Average Linkage Minimum Spanning Tree.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figure

Pain Medication Management Processes Used by Oncology Outpatients and Family Caregivers Part I: Health Systems Contexts

Context—Oncology patients with persistent pain treated in outpatient settings and their family caregivers have significant responsibility for managing pain medications. However, little is known about their practical, day-to-day experiences with pain medication management. Objective—To describe day-to-day pain medication management from the perspectives of oncology outpatients and their family caregivers who participated in a randomized clinical trial of a psycho-educational intervention called the Pro-Self© Plus Pain Control Program. In this article, we focus on pain medication management by patients and family caregivers in the context of multiple, complex health systems. Methods—We qualitatively analyzed audio-recorded intervention sessions that included extensive dialogue between patients, family caregivers, and nurses about pain medication management during the 10-week intervention. Results—The health systems context for pain medication management included multiple complex systems for clinical care, reimbursement, and regulation of analgesic prescriptions. Pain medication management processes particularly relevant to this context were getting prescriptions and obtaining medications. Responsibilities that fell primarily to patients and family caregivers included facilitating communication and coordination among multiple clinicians, overcoming barriers to access, and serving as a final safety checkpoint. Significant effort was required of patients and family caregivers to insure safe and effective pain medication management. Conclusion—Health systems issues related to access to needed analgesics, medication safety in outpatient settings, and the effort expended by oncology patients and their family caregivers require more attention in future research and healthcare reform initiatives

Pain Medication Management Processes Used by Oncology Outpatients and Family Caregivers Part II: Home and Lifestyle Contexts

Context—Despite the increasing complexity of medication regimens for persistent cancer pain, little is known about how oncology outpatients and their family caregivers manage pain medications at home. Objectives—To describe the day-to-day management of pain medications from the perspectives of oncology outpatients and their family caregivers who participated in a randomized clinical trial (RCT) of a psycho-educational intervention called the Pro-Self © Plus Pain Control Program. In this article, we focus on pain medication management in the context of highly individualized home environments and lifestyles. Methods—This qualitative study was conducted as part of a RCT in which an embedded mixed methods research design was used. Audio-recorded dialogue among patients, family caregivers, and intervention nurses was analyzed using qualitative research methods. Results—Home and lifestyle contexts for managing pain medications included highly individualized home environments, work and recreational activities, personal routines, and family characteristics. Pain medication management processes particularly relevant in these contexts included understanding, organizing, storing, scheduling, remembering, and taking the medications. With the exception of their interactions with the intervention nurses, most study participants had little involvement with clinicians as they worked through these processes. Conclusion—Pain medication management is an ongoing multidimensional process, each step of which has to be mastered by patients and family caregivers when cancer treatment and supportive care is provided on an outpatient basis. Realistic patient- and family-centered skill-building interventions are needed to achieve effective and safe pain medication management in the contexts of individual home environments and lifestyles

Reply to Fischer et al

We welcome the correspondence from Fischer and colleagues regarding our recent paper on vocal learning in chimpanzee food grunts [1]. Fischer et al. make two challenges to our paper's conclusions, which we address here

Photoinduced intersubband transition in undoped HgCdTe multiple quantum wells

We present photoinduced intersubband absorption measurements in HgCdTe undoped quantum wells. The transition energies and the linewidths are well described by a full 8×8 k⋅p Kane model calculation. Also, based on this model we show that different in‐plane effective masses for the first and second electron subbands should be considered in order to properly fit the low energy side of the experimental spectra. The experimental results can be explained using the calculated intersubband oscillator strength with no exciton enhancement. © 1995 American Institute of Physics.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69671/2/APPLAB-66-22-2998-1.pd

Children and older adults exhibit distinct sub-optimal cost-benefit functions when preparing to move their eyes and hands

"© 2015 Gonzalez et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited"Numerous activities require an individual to respond quickly to the correct stimulus. The provision of advance information allows response priming but heightened responses can cause errors (responding too early or reacting to the wrong stimulus). Thus, a balance is required between the online cognitive mechanisms (inhibitory and anticipatory) used to prepare and execute a motor response at the appropriate time. We investigated the use of advance information in 71 participants across four different age groups: (i) children, (ii) young adults, (iii) middle-aged adults, and (iv) older adults. We implemented 'cued' and 'non-cued' conditions to assess age-related changes in saccadic and touch responses to targets in three movement conditions: (a) Eyes only; (b) Hands only; (c) Eyes and Hand. Children made less saccade errors compared to young adults, but they also exhibited longer response times in cued versus non-cued conditions. In contrast, older adults showed faster responses in cued conditions but exhibited more errors. The results indicate that young adults (18 -25 years) achieve an optimal balance between anticipation and execution. In contrast, children show benefits (few errors) and costs (slow responses) of good inhibition when preparing a motor response based on advance information; whilst older adults show the benefits and costs associated with a prospective response strategy (i.e., good anticipation)

Key advantages of the leverage points perspective to shape human-nature relations

This perspective paper synthesises the special issue 'Human-nature connectedness as a leverage point for sustainability transformation'. Based on the articles in this special issue, we aim to foster the operationalisation of the leverage points perspective to shape human-nature relations to enable sustainability transformations. Specifically, we draw on four key advantages of the leverage points perspective: (i) the explicit recognition of deep leverage points; (ii) the ability to examine the interactions between shallow and deep system changes; (iii) the combination of causal and teleological modes of research; and (iv) the ability to function as a methodological boundary object. The contributions to this special issue revealed three deep leverage points addressing paradigm shifts in research and beyond: relational thinking and values, stewardship philosophy and shifting the economic growth paradigm to focus on human well-being. We highlight interlinkages between leverage points to further strengthen the transformative potential of interventions that aim at triggering shifts in our understanding about human-nature relations. Further, we show a way to bridge causal and teleological approaches by envisioning desired futures. Lastly, we emphasise the potential of arts-based methodologies, including participatory, transdisciplinary research to foster sustainability transformation and how this can be combined within the leverage points perspective.Peer reviewe

Canakinumab in patients with COVID-19 and type 2 diabetes - A multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Patients with type 2 diabetes and obesity have chronic activation of the innate immune system possibly contributing to the higher risk of hyperinflammatory response to SARS-CoV2 and severe COVID-19 observed in this population. We tested whether interleukin-1β (IL-1β) blockade using canakinumab improves clinical outcome. METHODS: CanCovDia was a multicenter, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial to assess the efficacy of canakinumab plus standard-of-care compared with placebo plus standard-of-care in patients with type 2 diabetes and a BMI > 25 kg/m$^{2}$ hospitalised with SARS-CoV2 infection in seven tertiary-hospitals in Switzerland. Patients were randomly assigned 1:1 to a single intravenous dose of canakinumab (body weight adapted dose of 450-750 mg) or placebo. Canakinumab and placebo were compared based on an unmatched win-ratio approach based on length of survival, ventilation, ICU stay and hospitalization at day 29. This study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04510493. FINDINGS: Between October 17, 2020, and May 12, 2021, 116 patients were randomly assigned with 58 in each group. One participant dropped out in each group for the primary analysis. At the time of randomization, 85 patients (74·6 %) were treated with dexamethasone. The win-ratio of canakinumab vs placebo was 1·08 (95 % CI 0·69-1·69; p = 0·72). During four weeks, in the canakinumab vs placebo group 4 (7·0%) vs 7 (12·3%) participants died, 11 (20·0 %) vs 16 (28·1%) patients were on ICU, 12 (23·5 %) vs 11 (21·6%) were hospitalised for more than 3 weeks, respectively. Median ventilation time at four weeks in the canakinumab vs placebo group was 10 [IQR 6.0, 16.5] and 16 days [IQR 14.0, 23.0], respectively. There was no statistically significant difference in HbA1c after four weeks despite a lower number of anti-diabetes drug administered in patients treated with canakinumab. Finally, high-sensitive CRP and IL-6 was lowered by canakinumab. Serious adverse events were reported in 13 patients (11·4%) in each group. INTERPRETATION: In patients with type 2 diabetes who were hospitalised with COVID-19, treatment with canakinumab in addition to standard-of-care did not result in a statistically significant improvement of the primary composite outcome. Patients treated with canakinumab required significantly less anti-diabetes drugs to achieve similar glycaemic control. Canakinumab was associated with a prolonged reduction of systemic inflammation. FUNDING: Swiss National Science Foundation grant #198415 and University of Basel. Novartis supplied study medication

The Eighth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Data from SDSS-III

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) started a new phase in August 2008, with new instrumentation and new surveys focused on Galactic structure and chemical evolution, measurements of the baryon oscillation feature in the clustering of galaxies and the quasar Ly alpha forest, and a radial velocity search for planets around ~8000 stars. This paper describes the first data release of SDSS-III (and the eighth counting from the beginning of the SDSS). The release includes five-band imaging of roughly 5200 deg^2 in the Southern Galactic Cap, bringing the total footprint of the SDSS imaging to 14,555 deg^2, or over a third of the Celestial Sphere. All the imaging data have been reprocessed with an improved sky-subtraction algorithm and a final, self-consistent photometric recalibration and flat-field determination. This release also includes all data from the second phase of the Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Evolution (SEGUE-2), consisting of spectroscopy of approximately 118,000 stars at both high and low Galactic latitudes. All the more than half a million stellar spectra obtained with the SDSS spectrograph have been reprocessed through an improved stellar parameters pipeline, which has better determination of metallicity for high metallicity stars.Comment: Astrophysical Journal Supplements, in press (minor updates from submitted version

The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey of SDSS-III

The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) is designed to measure the scale of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) in the clustering of matter over a larger volume than the combined efforts of all previous spectroscopic surveys of large scale structure. BOSS uses 1.5 million luminous galaxies as faint as i=19.9 over 10,000 square degrees to measure BAO to redshifts z<0.7. Observations of neutral hydrogen in the Lyman alpha forest in more than 150,000 quasar spectra (g<22) will constrain BAO over the redshift range 2.15<z<3.5. Early results from BOSS include the first detection of the large-scale three-dimensional clustering of the Lyman alpha forest and a strong detection from the Data Release 9 data set of the BAO in the clustering of massive galaxies at an effective redshift z = 0.57. We project that BOSS will yield measurements of the angular diameter distance D_A to an accuracy of 1.0% at redshifts z=0.3 and z=0.57 and measurements of H(z) to 1.8% and 1.7% at the same redshifts. Forecasts for Lyman alpha forest constraints predict a measurement of an overall dilation factor that scales the highly degenerate D_A(z) and H^{-1}(z) parameters to an accuracy of 1.9% at z~2.5 when the survey is complete. Here, we provide an overview of the selection of spectroscopic targets, planning of observations, and analysis of data and data quality of BOSS.Comment: 49 pages, 16 figures, accepted by A