Chest pain without obstructive coronary artery disease: a case series report

Background: Ischaemic heart disease is a leading cause of mortality in women. Even in those without obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD), women with angina continue to have increased mortality. There are gender differences in prevalence of different pathophysiologies, including functional disorders such as microvascular and vasospastic angina. Case summary: We describe four cases of angina in women with no obstructive CAD, in whom coronary function testing was performed. These four patients were diagnosed with disorders of coronary vasomotion, including vasospastic angina and different endotypes of microvascular angina. Discussion: This case series highlights the different mechanisms of ischaemia in the absence of obstructive CAD. Patients with angina and no obstructive CAD classified by computed tomography coronary angiography may have myocardial ischaemia due to microvascular angina, vasospastic angina, or both. Conventional investigations risk under-diagnosing, and as a consequence under-treating, patients with these conditions. Coronary function testing, in the form of diagnostic guidewire-based tests and adjunctive acetylcholine provocation, has proven to be critical in the accurate diagnoses and appropriate management of these patients

United States Patent: COMPOSITION AND METHOD FOR INHIBITING PATHOGENS AND SPOILAGE ORGANISMS IN FOOD

The method of the invention uses live cells of non-fermenting and/or non-growing lactic acid bacteria to deliver bacteriocin into edible food substances to inhibit the growth of food spoilage and/or food-borne pathogenic organisms. The method of the invention may be used to inhibit growth of these organisms in raw food substances and finished food products after processing. The lactic acid bacteria within the food mixture are capable of producing bacteriocin in the desired microbial- inhibiting amounts under conditions of non-growth and non-fermentatio

Wind tunnel testing of a novel wingsuit design

A wingsuit is a special suit that is worn to allow the user to fly after jumping off of a high cliff. The wingsuit creates an airfoil shape by adding wings of material between the arms and the sides as well as a tail consisting of material between the legs. The wingsuit allows for the creation of lift and thus human flying. A new and novel wingsuit design is proposed based on the design of a delta wing aircraft. This new wingsuit has material leading from the side of the head and connecting to the top of the arms, extending the area of the forward wing. Using a mannequin in a wind tunnel, the aerodynamic performance of the new wingsuit will be measured and compared to that of the current wingsuit design. The results show that the redesigned wingsuit had a lower lift-to-drag ratio in most testing scenarios. The decrease in lift-to-drag ratio was due to the combination of an increased lift and a higher increased drag

Screening of charged singularities of random fields

Many types of point singularity have a topological index, or 'charge', associated with them. For example the phase of a complex field depending on two variables can either increase or decrease on making a clockwise circuit around a simple zero, enabling the zeros to be assigned charges of plus or minus one. In random fields we can define a correlation function for the charge-weighted density of singularities. In many types of random fields, this correlation function satisfies an identity which shows that the singularities 'screen' each other perfectly: a positive singularity is surrounded by an excess of concentration of negatives which exactly cancel its charge, and vice-versa. This paper gives a simple and widely applicable derivation of this result. A counterexample where screening is incomplete is also exhibited.Comment: 12 pages, no figures. Minor revision of manuscript submitted to J. Phys. A, August 200

Uniformity transition for ray intensities in random media

This paper analyses a model for the intensity of distribution for rays propagating without absorption in a random medium. The random medium is modelled as a dynamical map. After N iterations, the intensity is modelled as a sum S of N contributions from different trajectories, each of which is a product of N independent identically distributed random variables xk, representing successive focussing or de-focussing events. The number of ray trajectories reaching a given point is assumed to proliferate exponentially: N=ΛN, for some Λ>1. We investigate the probability distribution of S. We find a phase transition as parameters of the model are varied. There is a phase where the fluctuations of S are suppressed as N → ∞, and a phase where the S has large fluctuations, for which we provide a large deviation analysis

Algorithm XXX: SHEPPACK: Modified Shepard Algorithm for Interpolation of Scattered Multivariate Data

Scattered data interpolation problems arise in many applications. Shepard’s method for constructing a global interpolant by blending local interpolants using local-support weight functions usually creates reasonable approximations. SHEPPACK is a Fortran 95 package containing five versions of the modified Shepard algorithm: quadratic (Fortran 95 translations of Algorithms 660, 661, and 798), cubic (Fortran 95 translation of Algorithm 791), and linear variations of the original Shepard algorithm. An option to the linear Shepard code is a statistically robust fit, intended to be used when the data is known to contain outliers. SHEPPACK also includes a hybrid robust piecewise linear estimation algorithm RIPPLE (residual initiated polynomial-time piecewise linear estimation) intended for data from piecewise linear functions in arbitrary dimension m. The main goal of SHEPPACK is to provide users with a single consistent package containing most existing polynomial variations of Shepard’s algorithm. The algorithms target data of different dimensions. The linear Shepard algorithm, robust linear Shepard algorithm, and RIPPLE are the only algorithms in the package that are applicable to arbitrary dimensional data

The distribution of extremal points of Gaussian scalar fields

We consider the signed density of the extremal points of (two-dimensional) scalar fields with a Gaussian distribution. We assign a positive unit charge to the maxima and minima of the function and a negative one to its saddles. At first, we compute the average density for a field in half-space with Dirichlet boundary conditions. Then we calculate the charge-charge correlation function (without boundary). We apply the general results to random waves and random surfaces. Furthermore, we find a generating functional for the two-point function. Its Legendre transform is the integral over the scalar curvature of a 4-dimensional Riemannian manifold.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures, corrected published versio

Massive Ice Control on Permafrost Coast Erosion and Sensitivity

High overall rates of permafrost cliff retreat, coupled with spatial variability, have been accompanied by increased uncertainty over future landscape dynamics. We map long‐term (>80 years) retreat of the shoreline and photogrammetrically analyze historic aerial imagery to quantify the processes at a permafrost coast site with massive ground ice. Retreat rates have been relatively constant, but topographic changes show that subsidence is a potentially critical but often ignored component of coastal sensitivity, exceeding landward recession by over three times during the last 24 years. We calibrate novel passive seismic surveys along clear and variable exposures of massive ground ice and then spatially map key subsurface layers. Combining decadal patterns of volumetric change with new ground ice variation maps enables past trends to be interpreted, future volumetric geomorphic behavior to be better constrained, and improves the assessment of permafrost coast sensitivity and the release of carbon‐bearing material

Effective monitoring of permafrost coast erosion: Wide-scale storm impacts on outer islands in the Mackenzie Delta area.

Permafrost coasts are extensive in scale and complex in nature, resulting in particular challenges for understanding how they respond to both long-term shifts in climate and short-term extreme weather events. Taking examples from the Canadian Beaufort Sea coastline characterised by extensive areas of massive ground ice within slump and block failure complexes, we conduct a quantitative analysis of the practical performance of helicopter-based photogrammetry. The results demonstrate that large scale (>1 km2) surface models can be achieved at comparable accuracy to standard UAV surveys, but 36 times faster. Large scale models have greater potential for progressive alignment and contrast issues and so breaking down image sequences into coherent chunks has been found the most effective technique for accurate landscape reconstructions. The approach has subsequently been applied in a responsive acquisition immediately before and after a large storm event and during conditions (wind gusts >50 km hr-1) that would have prohibited UAV data acquisition. Trading lower resolution surface models for large scale coverage and more effective responsive monitoring, the helicopter-based data have been applied to assess storm driven-change across the exposed outer islands of the Mackenzie Delta area for the first time. These data show that the main storm impacts were concentrated on exposed North orientated permafrost cliff sections (particularly low cliffs, >20 m in height) where cliff recession was 43% of annual rates and in places up to 29% of the annual site-wide erosion volume was recorded in this single event. In contrast, the thaw-slump complexes remained relatively unaffected, debris flow fans were generally more resistant to storm erosion than the ice-rich cliffs, perhaps due to the relatively low amounts of precipitation that occurred. Therefore, the variability of permafrost coast erosion rates is controlled by interactions between both the forcing conditions and local response mechanisms. Helicopter-based photogrammetric surveys have the potential to effectively analyse these controls with greater spatial and temporal consistency across more representative scales and resolutions than has previously been achieved, improving the capacity to adequately constrain and ultimately project future Arctic coast sensitivity