Fatigue in Children and Adolescents with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy

Fatigue was recently reported to be the largest predictor of poor health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in children and adolescents with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). The objectives of this thesis were to describe fatigue from patients’ and parents’ perspectives and to explore associations of patient characteristics with fatigue in children and adolescents with DMD using a multicentre cross-sectional study design. Eligible patients and their parents were identified via the Canadian Neuromuscular Disease Registry and received mailed paper questionnaires. Children and adolescents with DMD experienced greater fatigue compared to healthy controls from published data. Fatigue was a significant issue in children and adolescents with DMD across all disease stages. Sleep disturbance symptoms, depressive symptoms and functional ability were associated with fatigue. Physical activity level was not associated with fatigue. These findings warrant future research aimed at understanding the determinants of fatigue and developing therapeutic strategies to reduce fatigue and improve HRQOL

Breaking Instance-Independent Symmetries In Exact Graph Coloring

Code optimization and high level synthesis can be posed as constraint satisfaction and optimization problems, such as graph coloring used in register allocation. Graph coloring is also used to model more traditional CSPs relevant to AI, such as planning, time-tabling and scheduling. Provably optimal solutions may be desirable for commercial and defense applications. Additionally, for applications such as register allocation and code optimization, naturally-occurring instances of graph coloring are often small and can be solved optimally. A recent wave of improvements in algorithms for Boolean satisfiability (SAT) and 0-1 Integer Linear Programming (ILP) suggests generic problem-reduction methods, rather than problem-specific heuristics, because (1) heuristics may be upset by new constraints, (2) heuristics tend to ignore structure, and (3) many relevant problems are provably inapproximable. Problem reductions often lead to highly symmetric SAT instances, and symmetries are known to slow down SAT solvers. In this work, we compare several avenues for symmetry breaking, in particular when certain kinds of symmetry are present in all generated instances. Our focus on reducing CSPs to SAT allows us to leverage recent dramatic improvement in SAT solvers and automatically benefit from future progress. We can use a variety of black-box SAT solvers without modifying their source code because our symmetry-breaking techniques are static, i.e., we detect symmetries and add symmetry breaking predicates (SBPs) during pre-processing. An important result of our work is that among the types of instance-independent SBPs we studied and their combinations, the simplest and least complete constructions are the most effective. Our experiments also clearly indicate that instance-independent symmetries should mostly be processed together with instance-specific symmetries rather than at the specification level, contrary to what has been suggested in the literature

Towards understanding phishing victims\u27 profile

Today it is known that the weakest link in the cyber security chain is the computer user. Social engineering attacks are commonly used to deceive computer users to perform actions that could leak private information. Such attacks psychologically manipulate the computer users to reveal his/her confidential information. Therefore, the computer user has been carefully studied by security researchers to understand the relationship between cyber security incidents and the victim background. In this paper, we present a breadth-first survey of recent studies that aim to understand the relationship between victims\u27 backgrounds and phishing attacks. We summarize the characteristics of the phishing victims, following a review of their demographic and personality traits. © 2012 IEEE

Optimization of energy consumption in cloud computing datacenters

Cloud computing has emerged as a practical paradigm for providing IT resources, infrastructure and services. This has led to the establishment of datacenters that have substantial energy demands for their operation. This work investigates the optimization of energy consumption in cloud datacenter using energy efficient allocation of tasks to resources. The work seeks to develop formal optimization models that minimize the energy consumption of computational resources and evaluates the use of existing optimization solvers in testing these models. Integer linear programming (ILP) techniques are used to model the scheduling problem. The objective is to minimize the total power consumed by the active and idle cores of the servers’ CPUs while meeting a set of constraints. Next, we use these models to carry out a detailed performance comparison between a selected set of Generic ILP and 0-1 Boolean satisfiability based solvers in solving the ILP formulations. Simulation results indicate that in some cases the developed models have saved up to 38% in energy consumption when compared to common techniques such as round robin. Furthermore, results also showed that generic ILP solvers had superior performance when compared to SAT-based ILP solvers especially as the number of tasks and resources grow in size

Classifying obstructive sleep apnea using smartphones

AbstractObstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a serious sleep disorder which is characterized by frequent obstruction of the upper airway, often resulting in oxygen desaturation. The serious negative impact of OSA on human health makes monitoring and diagnosing it a necessity. Currently, polysomnography is considered the gold standard for diagnosing OSA, which requires an expensive attended overnight stay at a hospital with considerable wiring between the human body and the system. In this paper, we implement a reliable, comfortable, inexpensive, and easily available portable device that allows users to apply the OSA test at home without the need for attended overnight tests. The design takes advantage of a smatrphone’s built-in sensors, pervasiveness, computational capabilities, and user-friendly interface to screen OSA. We use three main sensors to extract physiological signals from patients which are (1) an oximeter to measure the oxygen level, (2) a microphone to record the respiratory effort, and (3) an accelerometer to detect the body’s movement. Finally, we examine our system’s ability to screen the disease as compared to the gold standard by testing it on 15 samples. The results showed that 100% of patients were correctly identified as having the disease, and 85.7% of patients were correctly identified as not having the disease. These preliminary results demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed system when compared to the gold standard and emphasize the important role of smartphones in healthcare

Melt extrusion and spray drying for the preparation of risperidone-containing implants and microspheres from PLGA

In dieser Arbeit wurde die Eignung der Sprühtrocknung mittels des Mini-Sprühtrockners B-290 und der Schmelzextrusion mittels des Haake MiniLab™- und des Thermo Scientific™ Pharma 11-Extruders zur Herstellung von risperidonhaltigen PLGA-Implantaten bzw. Mikrosphären untersucht. Die hergestellten Implantate bzw. Mikrosphären wurden durch verschiedene mechanische, thermische, mikro- und spektroskopische Verfahren charakterisiert. In vitro-Freisetzung des Risperidons aus den hergestellten Implantaten bzw. Mikrosphären wurde intensiv untersucht. Die in vitro-Freisetzung hing vom Herstellungsprozess, vom Arzneistoff (physikochemische Eigenschaften, Partikelgröße, Gehalt und Verteilung in der Polymermatrix), vom Polymer (Zusammensetzung, Kettenlänge, Kettenende), vom Weichmacherzusatz sowie von der Partikelgröße und der damit verbundenen spezifischen Oberfläche der Implantate bzw. Mikrosphären ab. So zeigten die sprühgetrockneten Mikrosphären schnelle, diffusionsbasierte und mit hohem initialem Burst-Effekt verbundene Arzneistofffreisetzungen. Dagegen wiesen die Implantate bzw. Mikrosphären der Schmelzextrusion unterschiedliche Freisetzungsprofile auf, welche durch eine Kombination aus Diffusion und Erosion gesteuert waren. Schließlich wurde die Stabilität der hergestellten Produkte bei ihrer Lagerung bzw. ihrer Sterilisation mit den ionisierenden γ-Strahlen beobachtet. In dieser Arbeit wurde gezeigt, dass sich die verwendeten Herstellungsverfahren für die Herstellung von risperidonhaltigen PLGA-Implantaten bzw. Mikrosphären eignen.In this work, the suitability of spray drying using the B-290 Mini-spray dryer and hot melt extrusion using the Haake MiniLab ™ and Thermo Scientific ™ Pharma 11 extruders was investigated for the production of risperidone containing PLGA implants and microspheres. The manufactured implants and microspheres were characterized by various mechanical, thermal, micro- and spectroscopic methods. In vitro release of the risperidone from the implants microspheres was intensively investigated. The in vitro release depended on manufacturing process, drug (physicochemical properties, particle size, content and distribution in the polymer matrix), polymer (composition, chain length and chain end), addition of plasticizer, particle size and associated specific surface area of the implants or microspheres as well. The spray dried microspheres exhibited fast and diffusion-based drug releases associated with a high initial burst effect. In contrast to that, the implants and microspheres of hot melt extrusion exhibited different profiles of release, which were controlled by a combination of diffusion and erosion. Finally, the stability of the products produced was observed during their storage and their sterilization using the ionization γ-irradiation. In this work it was shown that the used manufacturing processes were suitable for the production of risperidone containing PLGA implants and microspheres

Fatigue in young people with Duchenne muscular dystrophy

AIM: To describe fatigue in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) from patients\u27 and parents\u27 perspectives and to explore risk factors for fatigue in children and adolescents with DMD. METHOD: A multicentre, cross-sectional study design was used. Seventy-one patients (all males; median age 12y, age range 5-17y) identified via the Canadian Neuromuscular Disease Registry, and their parents completed questionnaires. Subjective fatigue was assessed using the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory Multidimensional Fatigue Scale by child self-report and parent proxy-report. RESULTS: Patients with DMD across ages and disease stages experienced greater fatigue compared to typically developing controls from published data. Sleep disturbance symptoms were associated with greater fatigue by child self-report (ρ=-0.42; p=0.003) and parent proxy-report (ρ=-0.51; p INTERPRETATION: In paediatric DMD, sleep disturbance symptoms and depressive symptoms are potentially modifiable factors associated with fatigue, warranting additional investigation to facilitate the development of therapeutic strategies to reduce fatigue. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: Fatigue is a major issue in paediatric Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) across ages and disease stages. Sleep disturbance and depressive symptoms are significantly associated with fatigue in paediatric DMD

Teambuilding, Innovation And The Engineering Communication Interface

Recent engineering industry-based research has identified a number of skill deficiencies in graduating engineers. Emphasis on communication and teamwork informed by attributes of self management, problem solving and mutual accountability have been recognized as important needs by The Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET of the United States and are now required in undergraduate course material. The Engineering College at the American University of Sharjah has recognised this reality with the development of a course in language enhancement and professional communication centred on engineering multidisciplinary projects (EMDPs). This paper will outline four innovative practices that together inform this course; team-building, teamwork management, collaborative problem solving, resource management. Brief illustrative descriptions of: team-building through the use of the Belbin Team Role Inventory; management of teamwork development via planning and documentation; personnel and collaborative problem solving and interactive information sources hosted via a LibGuide will elaborate these innovative practices.