994 research outputs found
The effect of an exercise program on the health-quality of life in older adults
INTRODUCTION: An essential public health goal is to reduce
age-related disabilities in the elderly. The present study
aimed to investigate the effect of exercise program on
health-quality of life (HQL) in older adults.
METHODS: Subjects were sixty healthy adult volunteers
over the age of ïżœïżœ years. None of the subjects had any experience
in exercise programs but were physically active
and able to perform activities of daily living independently.
The subjects were randomly assigned into one of two
groups each with ïżœïżœ people: test (exercise) group and control
(no exercise) group. The test group was taken into a ïżœ -
week aerobic exercise program. The exercises included a ïżœ-
ïżœïżœ minute circulatory warm-up, a ïżœïżœ minute walking and a
ïżœ-ïżœïżœ minute stretching/cool-down period. The exercises
were performed three times per week under supervision of
an experienced instructor. No exercise program was prescribed
for the control group. Both groups were assessed
before and after the exercise program. The LEIPAD questionnaire
was used to measure HQL.
RESULTS: The results showed significant improvements in all
domains of the LEIPAD questionnaire whilst the level of HQL
did not change and none of the scores obtained by the
LEIPAD was significant. Measures of HQL improved with
exercise so that there were no HQL changes in the control
but significant changes were observed in the exercise group.
CONCLUSION: This study suggests that an exercise program
has resulted in a signific
Uncertainty-aware dynamic reliability analysis framework for complex systems
YesCritical technological systems exhibit complex dynamic characteristics such as time-dependent
behavior, functional dependencies among events, sequencing and priority of causes that may alter the effects
of failure. Dynamic fault trees (DFTs) have been used in the past to model the failure logic of such systems,
but the quantitative analysis of DFTs has assumed the existence of precise failure data and statistical
independence among events, which are unrealistic assumptions. In this paper, we propose an improved
approach to reliability analysis of dynamic systems, allowing for uncertain failure data and statistical and
stochastic dependencies among events. In the proposed framework, DFTs are used for dynamic failure
modeling. Quantitative evaluation of DFTs is performed by converting them into generalized stochastic Petri
nets. When failure data are unavailable, expert judgment and fuzzy set theory are used to obtain reasonable
estimates. The approach is demonstrated on a simplified model of a cardiac assist system.DEIS H2020 Project under Grant 732242
Discrepancy of target sites between clinician and cytopathological reports in head neck fine needle aspiration: Did I miss the target or did the clinician mistake the organ site?
The diagnostic accuracy of fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) of head and neck lesions is relatively high, but cytologic interpretation might be confusing if the sample is lacking typical cytologic features according to labeled site by physician. These errors may have an impact on pathology search engines, healthcare costs or even adverse outcomes. The cytology archive database of multiple institutions in southern Iran and Australia covering the period 2001â2011, were searched using keywords: salivary gland, head, neck, FNAC, and cytology. All the extracted reports were reviewed. The reports which showed discordance between the clinicianâs impression of the organ involved and subsequent fine needle biopsy request, and the eventual cytological diagnosis were selected. The cytological diagnosis was confirmed by histology or cell block, with assistance from imaging, clinical outcome, physical examination, molecular studies, or microbiological culture. The total number of 10,200 head and neck superficial FNAC were included in the study, from which 48 cases showed discordance between the clinicians request and the actual site of pathology. Apart from the histopathology, the imaging, clinical history, physical examination, immunohistochemical study, microbiologic culture and molecular testing helped to finalize the target organ of pathology in 23, 6, 7, 8, 2, and 1 cases respectively. The commonest discrepancies were for FNAC of âsalivary glandâ [total: 20 with actual final pathology in: bone (7), soft tissue (5), lymph node (3), odontogenic (3) and skin (2)], âlymph nodeâ [total: 12 with final pathology in: soft tissue (3), skin (3), bone (1) and brain (1)], âsoft tissueâ [total: 11 with final pathology in: bone (5), skin (2), salivary gland (1), and ocular region (1)] and âskinâ [total: 5 with final pathology in: lymph node (2), bone (1), soft tissue (1) and salivary gland (1)]. The primary physician requesting FNAC of head and neck lesions are incorrect in their clinical impression of the actual site in nearly 0.5 percent of cases, due to the overlapping clinical and imaging findings or possibly due to inadequate history taking or physical examination
Infrared ellipsometry study of the confined electrons in a high-mobility <i>Îł</i>-AlâOâ/SrTiOâ heterostructure
With infrared ellipsometry we studied the response of the confined electrons in Îł-AlâOâ/SrTiOâ (GAO/STO) heterostructures in which they originate predominantly from oxygen vacancies. From the analysis of a so-called Berreman mode, that develops near the highest longitudinal optical phonon mode of SrTiOâ, we derive the sheet carrier density, N s , the mobility, ÎŒ, and the depth profile of the carrier concentration. Notably, we find that N s and the shape of the depth profile are similar as in LaAlOâ/SrTiOâ (LAO/STO) heterostructures for which the itinerant carriers are believed to arise from a polar discontinuity. Despite an order of magnitude higher mobility in GAO/STO, as obtained from transport measurements, the derived mobility in the infrared range exhibits only a twofold increase. We interpret this finding in terms of the polaronic nature of the confined charge carriers in GAO/STO and LAO/STO which leads to a strong, frequency-dependent interaction with the STO phonons
A computational study of the heterogeneous synthesis of hydrazine on Co3Mo3N
Periodic and molecular density functional theory calculations have been applied to elucidate the associative mechanism for hydrazine and ammonia synthesis in the gas phase and hydrazine formation on Co3Mo3N. We find that there are two activation barriers for the associative gas phase mechanism with barriers of 730 and 658 kJ/mol, corresponding to a hydrogenation step from N2 to NNH2 and H2NNH2 to H3NNH3, respectively. The second step of the mechanism is barrierless and an important intermediate, NNH2, can also readily form on Co3Mo3N surfaces via the EleyâRideal chemisorption of H2 on a pre-adsorbed N2 at nitrogen vacancies. Based on this intermediate a new heterogeneous mechanism for hydrazine synthesis is studied. The highest relative barrier for this heterogeneous catalysed process is 213 kJ/mol for Co3Mo3N containing nitrogen vacancies, clearly pointing towards a low-energy process for the synthesis of hydrazine via a heterogeneous catalysis route
Semliki Forest virus strongly reduces mosquito host defence signaling
The Alphavirus genus within the Togaviridae family contains several important mosquito-borne arboviruses. Other than the antiviral activity of RNAi, relatively little is known about alphavirus interactions with insect cell defences. Here we show that Semliki Forest virus (SFV) infection of Aedes albopictus-derived U4.4 mosquito cells reduces cellular gene expression. Activation prior to SFV infection of pathways involving STAT/IMD, but not Toll signaling reduced subsequent virus gene expression and RNA levels. These pathways are therefore not only able to mediate protective responses against bacteria but also arboviruses. However, SFV infection of mosquito cells did not result in activation of any of these pathways and suppressed their subsequent activation by other stimuli
Electronic structures of free-standing nanowires made from indirect bandgap semiconductor gallium phosphide
We present a theoretical study of the electronic structures of freestanding
nanowires made from gallium phosphide (GaP)--a III-V semiconductor with an
indirect bulk bandgap. We consider [001]-oriented GaP nanowires with square and
rectangular cross sections, and [111]-oriented GaP nanowires with hexagonal
cross sections. Based on tight binding models, both the band structures and
wave functions of the nanowires are calculated. For the [001]-oriented GaP
nanowires, the bands show anti-crossing structures, while the bands of the
[111]-oriented nanowires display crossing structures. Two minima are observed
in the conduction bands, while the maximum of the valence bands is always at
the -point. Using double group theory, we analyze the symmetry
properties of the lowest conduction band states and highest valence band states
of GaP nanowires with different sizes and directions. The band state wave
functions of the lowest conduction bands and the highest valence bands of the
nanowires are evaluated by spatial probability distributions. For practical
use, we fit the confinement energies of the electrons and holes in the
nanowires to obtain an empirical formula.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figure
ST18 Enhances PV-IgG-Induced Loss of Keratinocyte Cohesion in Parallel to Increased ERK Activation
Pemphigus is an autoimmune blistering disease targeting the desmosomal proteins desmoglein (Dsg) 1 and Dsg3. Recently, a genetic variant of the Suppression of tumorigenicity 18 (ST18) promoter was reported to cause ST18 up-regulation, associated with pemphigus vulgaris (PV)-IgG-mediated increase in cytokine secretion and more prominent loss of keratinocyte cohesion. Here we tested the effects of PV-IgG and the pathogenic pemphigus mouse anti-Dsg3 antibody AK23 on cytokine secretion and ERK activity in human keratinocytes dependent on ST18 expression. Without ST18 overexpression, both PV-IgG and AK23 induced loss of keratinocyte cohesion which was accompanied by prominent fragmentation of Dsg3 immunostaining along cell borders. In contrast, release of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as IL-1α, IL-6, TNFα, and IFN-γ was not altered significantly in both HaCaT and primary NHEK cells. These experiments indicate that cytokine expression is not strictly required for loss of keratinocyte cohesion. Upon ST18 overexpression, fragmentation of cell monolayers increased significantly in response to autoantibody incubation. Furthermore, production of IL-1α and IL-6 was enhanced in some experiments but not in others whereas release of TNF-α dropped significantly upon PV-IgG application in both EV- and ST18-transfected HaCaT cells. Additionally, in NHEK, application of PV-IgG but not of AK23 significantly increased ERK activity. In contrast, ST18 overexpression in HaCaT cells augmented ERK activation in response to both c-IgG and AK23 but not PV-IgG. Because inhibition of ERK by U0126 abolished PV-IgG- and AK23-induced loss of cell cohesion in ST18-expressing cells, we conclude that autoantibody-induced ERK activation was relevant in this scenario. In summary, similar to the situation in PV patients carrying ST18 polymorphism, overexpression of ST18 enhanced keratinocyte susceptibility to autoantibody-induced loss of cell adhesion, which may be caused in part by enhanced ERK signaling
- âŠ