Constant angular velocity of the wrist during the lifting of a sphere.

The primary objective of the experiments was to investigate the wrist motion of a person while they were carrying out a prehensile task from a clinical hand function test. A sixcamera movement system was used to observe the wrist motion of 10 participants. A very light sphere and a heavy sphere were used in the experiments to study any mass effects. While seated at a table, a participant moved a sphere over a small obstacle using their dominant hand. The participants were observed to move their wrist at a constant angular velocity. This phenomenon has not been reported previously. Theoretically, the muscles of the wrist provide an impulse of force at the start of the rotation while the forearm maintains a constant vertical force on a sphere. Light–heavy mean differences for the velocities, absolute velocities, angles and times taken showed no significant differences (p¼0.05)

The impact of patients' chronic disease on family quality of life : an experience from 26 specialties

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have assessed family quality of life in individual disease areas and specialties. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of disease on family members of patients over a wide range of specialties and identify key impact areas. This information is essential in order to reveal the extent of this impact and to allow strategies to be developed to support the family members of patients with chronic disease. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 133 family members of mostly chronically ill patients from 26 medical specialties. Family members were invited to discuss all areas of their lives that had been affected by having an unwell relative. Thematic analysis was carried out using NVivo9® software. RESULTS: Most family members were female (61%), the partner or spouse of the patient (56%), or the parent (22%). Their mean age was 56.1 years (range: 21-85 years) and the mean duration of the patient's disease was 8.9 years (range: 1 month to 60 years). Ten key themes of family quality of life were identified from interviews. The median number of themes reported by family members was six (range: 1-10). The key themes included: emotional impact (mentioned by 92% of subjects), daily activities (91%), family relationships (69%), sleep and health (67%), holidays (62%), involvement in medical care and support given to family members (61%), work and study (52%), financial impact (51%), social life (37%), and time planning (14%). Relationships between the themes were identified. CONCLUSION: This large scale multi-specialty study has demonstrated the significant, yet similar, impact that illness can have on the quality of life of patients' family members. Family quality of life is a previously neglected area of health care which needs to be addressed in order to provide appropriate support for the patient and the family unit.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

The investigation of time dependent flame structure by ionization probes

Ionization probes were used to measure mean ionization current and frequency spectra, auto-correlations and cross-correlations in jet flames with variation in the initial Reynolds numbers and equivalence ratios. Special attention was paid to the transitional region between the burner exit plane and the plane of onset of turbulence

A Group-Based Yule Model for Bipartite Author-Paper Networks

This paper presents a novel model for author-paper networks, which is based on the assumption that authors are organized into groups and that, for each research topic, the number of papers published by a group is based on a success-breeds-success model. Collaboration between groups is modeled as random invitations from a group to an outside member. To analyze the model, a number of different metrics that can be obtained in author-paper networks were extracted. A simulation example shows that this model can effectively mimic the behavior of a real-world author-paper network, extracted from a collection of 900 journal papers in the field of complex networks.Comment: 13 pages (preprint format), 7 figure

In situ tropical peatland ire emission factors and their variability, as determined by field measurements in peninsula Malaysia

Fires in tropical peatlands account for >25% of estimated total greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and degradation. Despite significant global and regional impacts, our understanding of specific gaseous fire emission factors (EFs) from tropical peat burning is limited to a handful of studies. Furthermore, there is substantial variability in EFs between sampled fires and/or studies. For example, methane EFs vary by 91% between studies. Here we present new fire EFs for the tropical peatland ecosystem; the first EFs measured for Malaysian peatlands, and only the second comprehensive study of EFs in this crucial environment. During August 2015 (under El Niño conditions) and July 2016, we embarked on field campaigns to measure gaseous emissions at multiple peatland fires burning on deforested land in Southeast Pahang (2015) and oil palm plantations in North Selangor (2016), Peninsula Malaysia. Gaseous emissions were measured using open-path Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The IR spectra were used to retrieve mole fractions of 12 different gases present within the smoke (including carbon dioxide and methane), and these measurements used to calculate EFs. Peat samples were taken at each burn site for physicochemical analysis and to explore possible relationships between specific physicochemical properties and fire EFs. Here we present the first evidence to indicate that substrate bulk density affects methane fire EFs reported here. This novel explanation of interplume, within-biome variability, should be considered by those undertaking greenhouse gas accounting and haze forecasting in this region and is of importance to peatland management, particularly with respect to artificial compaction

Redox regulation of type-I inositol trisphosphate receptors in intact mammalian cells.

A sensitization of inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate receptor (IP3R)-mediated Ca2+ release is associated with oxidative stress in multiple cell types. These effects are thought to be mediated by alterations in the redox state of critical thiols in the IP3R, but this has not been directly demonstrated in intact cells. Here, we utilized a combination of gel-shift assays with MPEG-maleimides and LC-MS/MS to monitor the redox state of recombinant IP3R1 expressed in HEK293 cells. We found that under basal conditions, ∼5 of the 60 cysteines are oxidized in IP3R1. Cell treatment with 50 μm thimerosal altered gel shifts, indicating oxidation of ∼20 cysteines. By contrast, the shifts induced by 0.5 mm H2O2 or other oxidants were much smaller. Monitoring of biotin-maleimide attachment to IP3R1 by LC-MS/MS with 71% coverage of the receptor sequence revealed modification of two cytosolic (Cys-292 and Cys-1415) and two intraluminal cysteines (Cys-2496 and Cys-2533) under basal conditions. The thimerosal treatment modified an additional eleven cysteines, but only three (Cys-206, Cys-767, and Cys-1459) were consistently oxidized in multiple experiments. H2O2 also oxidized Cys-206 and additionally oxidized two residues not modified by thimerosal (Cys-214 and Cys-1397). Potentiation of IP3R channel function by oxidants was measured with cysteine variants transfected into a HEK293 IP3R triple-knockout cell line, indicating that the functionally relevant redox-sensitive cysteines are predominantly clustered within the N-terminal suppressor domain of IP3R. To our knowledge, this study is the first that has used proteomic methods to assess the redox state of individual thiols in IP3R in intact cells. © 2018 Joseph et al

The simulation of action disorganisation in complex activities of daily living

Action selection in everyday goal-directed tasks of moderate complexity is known to be subject to breakdown following extensive frontal brain injury. A model of action selection in such tasks is presented and used to explore three hypotheses concerning the origins of action disorganisation: that it is a consequence of reduced top-down excitation within a hierarchical action schema network coupled with increased bottom-up triggering of schemas from environmental sources, that it is a more general disturbance of schema activation modelled by excessive noise in the schema network, and that it results from a general disturbance of the triggering of schemas by object representations. Results suggest that the action disorganisation syndrome is best accounted for by a general disturbance to schema activation, while altering the balance between top-down and bottom-up activation provides an account of a related disorder - utilisation behaviour. It is further suggested that ideational apraxia (which may result from lesions to left temporoparietal areas and which has similar behavioural consequences to action disorganisation syndrome on tasks of moderate complexity) is a consequence of a generalised disturbance of the triggering of schemas by object representations. Several predictions regarding differences between action disorganisation syndrome and ideational apraxia that follow from this interpretation are detailed

The development and clinical evaluation of a 'traffic-light' design dermatology outpatient discharge information checklist

Background Although multiple factors influence discharge decisions, there is no structured guidance to assist clinicians in making informed decisions. A discharge information checklist might improve the appropriateness of dermatology clinicians’ discharge decisions. Objectives To generate consensus among dermatologists on the content of an outpatient discharge checklist, to create one and to seek clinicians’ opinions on its usefulness. Methods Seventeen consultant dermatologists from five National Health Service trusts completed a 72‐item Delphi questionnaire. A five‐point Likert scale was used to rate each item for importance in contributing to a high‐quality discharge decision. Eighteen clinicians completed a questionnaire evaluating checklist use. Results Consensus was determined when ≥ 75% of consultants rated an item ‘very important’ or ‘important’. There was strong inter‐rater reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0·958) and fair inter‐rater agreement (Fleiss kappa = 0·269). There were 26 consensus‐agreed items, condensed to 13 that formed the ‘traffic‐light’ checklist. These are disease‐related issues (diagnostic certainty, disease severity, treatment appropriateness, patient manageable in primary care, patient's benefit from follow‐up), patient empowerment issues (understanding diagnosis and treatment outcome, having a clear plan, treatment side‐effects, ability to self‐manage) and addressing concerns (patient concerns, easy reaccess to secondary care, whether patient and clinician are happy with the decision). Twelve clinicians (67%) found the checklist useful, 11 (61%) wanted to use it in future, 10 (56%) thought it was useful for training and three (17%) said it helped their thinking. Clinicians suggested its use for auditing and for training clinicians and administrators. Conclusions Items were identified to create an outpatient discharge information checklist, which demonstrated high acceptability

Power-law distributions from additive preferential redistributions

We introduce a non-growth model that generates the power-law distribution with the Zipf exponent. There are N elements, each of which is characterized by a quantity, and at each time step these quantities are redistributed through binary random interactions with a simple additive preferential rule, while the sum of quantities is conserved. The situation described by this model is similar to those of closed $N$-particle systems when conservative two-body collisions are only allowed. We obtain stationary distributions of these quantities both analytically and numerically while varying parameters of the model, and find that the model exhibits the scaling behavior for some parameter ranges. Unlike well-known growth models, this alternative mechanism generates the power-law distribution when the growth is not expected and the dynamics of the system is based on interactions between elements. This model can be applied to some examples such as personal wealths, city sizes, and the generation of scale-free networks when only rewiring is allowed.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures; Changed some expressions and notations; Added more explanations and changed the order of presentation in Sec.III while results are the sam

Punctuation effects in English and Esperanto texts

A statistical physics study of punctuation effects on sentence lengths is presented for written texts: {\it Alice in wonderland} and {\it Through a looking glass}. The translation of the first text into esperanto is also considered as a test for the role of punctuation in defining a style, and for contrasting natural and artificial, but written, languages. Several log-log plots of the sentence length-rank relationship are presented for the major punctuation marks. Different power laws are observed with characteristic exponents. The exponent can take a value much less than unity ($ca.$ 0.50 or 0.30) depending on how a sentence is defined. The texts are also mapped into time series based on the word frequencies. The quantitative differences between the original and translated texts are very minutes, at the exponent level. It is argued that sentences seem to be more reliable than word distributions in discussing an author style.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures (3x2+1), 60 reference