Age as a determinant of nutritional status: A cross sectional study

Background Undenutrition is known to be prevalent and largely unrecognised in older patients; however, aberrations in indicators of nutritional status may simply reflect effects of age and/or functional disability. Objective The aim of this study was to measure the effect, if any of age on nutritional status in older patients. Design 445 randomly selected hospitalised patients consented to nutritional status assessment derived from anthropometric, haematological, and biochemical data within 72 hours of admission. Nutritional status was compared between those age < 75 years and those aged 75 years or more. Using multiple regression models, we measured the association between age and nutritional assessment variables after adjusting for disability, chronic illness, medications, smoking and tissue inflammation. Results Body weight, body mass index, mid-upper arm circumference, haemoglobin, serum albumin and plasma ascorbic acid were all significantly lower in people aged ≥ 75 years compared with those < 75 years of age. Although riboflavin (vitamin B2), 25OH VitD3, red-cell folate and vitamin B12 concentrations were lower in those aged ≥ 75 years, differences were not statistically significant. After adjusting for disability and co-morbidity in a multivariate analysis, age alone had a significant and independent effect on important anthropometric and biochemical nutritional assessment variables. Conclusion Increasing age is independently associated with poor nutritional status. This may partly explain the poor clinical outcome in older patients

Unbounded-error One-way Classical and Quantum Communication Complexity

This paper studies the gap between quantum one-way communication complexity $Q(f)$ and its classical counterpart $C(f)$, under the {\em unbounded-error} setting, i.e., it is enough that the success probability is strictly greater than 1/2. It is proved that for {\em any} (total or partial) Boolean function $f$, $Q(f)=\lceil C(f)/2 \rceil$, i.e., the former is always exactly one half as large as the latter. The result has an application to obtaining (again an exact) bound for the existence of $(m,n,p)$-QRAC which is the $n$-qubit random access coding that can recover any one of $m$ original bits with success probability $\geq p$. We can prove that $(m,n,>1/2)$-QRAC exists if and only if $m\leq 2^{2n}-1$. Previously, only the construction of QRAC using one qubit, the existence of $(O(n),n,>1/2)$-RAC, and the non-existence of $(2^{2n},n,>1/2)$-QRAC were known.Comment: 9 pages. To appear in Proc. ICALP 200

Attentional capture by entirely irrelevant distractors

Studies of attentional capture often question whether an irrelevant distractor will capture attention or be successfully ignored (e.g., Folk & Remington, 1998). Here we establish a new measure of attentional capture by distractors that are entirely irrelevant to the task in terms of visual appearance, meaning, and location (colourful cartoon figures presented in the periphery while subjects perform a central letter-search task). The presence of such a distractor significantly increased search RTs, suggesting it captured attention despite its task-irrelevance. Such attentional capture was found regardless of whether the search target was a singleton or not, and for both frequent and infrequent distractors, as well as for meaningful and meaningless distractor stimuli, although the cost was greater for infrequent and meaningful distractors. These results establish stimulus-driven capture by entirely irrelevant distractors and thus provide a demonstration of attentional capture that is more akin to distraction by irrelevant stimuli in daily life

Structural heterogeneity and permeability in faulted eolian sandstone: Implications for subsurface modeling of faults

We determined the structure and permeability variations of a 4 km-long normal fault by integrating surface mapping with data from five boreholes drilled through the fault (borehole to tens of meters scale). The Big Hole fault outcrops in the Jurassic Navajo Sandstone, central Utah. A total of 363.2 m of oriented drill core was recovered at two sites where fault displacement is 8 and 3-5 m. The main fault core is a narrow zone of intensely comminuted grains that is a maximum of 30 cm thick and is composed of low-porosity amalgamated deformation bands that have slip surfaces on one or both sides. Probe permeameter measurements showed a permeability decline from greater than 2000 to less than 0.1 md as the fault is approached. Whole-core analyses showed that fault core permeability is less than I md and individual deformation band permeability is about 1 md. Using these data, we calculated the bulk permeability of the fault zone. Calculated transverse permeability over length scales of 5-10 m is 30-40 md, approximately 1-4% the value of the host rock. An inverse power mean calculation (representing a fault array with complex geometry) yielded total fault-zone permeabilities of 7-57 md. The bulk fault-zone permeability is most sensitive to variations in fault core thickness, which exhibits the greatest variability of the fault components

Fractional Operators, Dirichlet Averages, and Splines

Fractional differential and integral operators, Dirichlet averages, and splines of complex order are three seemingly distinct mathematical subject areas addressing different questions and employing different methodologies. It is the purpose of this paper to show that there are deep and interesting relationships between these three areas. First a brief introduction to fractional differential and integral operators defined on Lizorkin spaces is presented and some of their main properties exhibited. This particular approach has the advantage that several definitions of fractional derivatives and integrals coincide. We then introduce Dirichlet averages and extend their definition to an infinite-dimensional setting that is needed to exhibit the relationships to splines of complex order. Finally, we focus on splines of complex order and, in particular, on cardinal B-splines of complex order. The fundamental connections to fractional derivatives and integrals as well as Dirichlet averages are presented

Origins of Bulk Viscosity at RHIC

A variety of physical phenomena can lead to viscous effects. Several sources of shear and bulk viscosity are reviewed with an emphasis on the bulk viscosity associated with chiral restoration and with chemical non-equilibrium. We show that in a mean-field treatment of the limiting case of a second order phase transition, the bulk viscosity peaks in a singularity at the critical point.Comment: submitted to PR

Distilling Non-Locality

Two parts of an entangled quantum state can have a correlation in their joint behavior under measurements that is unexplainable by shared classical information. Such correlations are called non-local and have proven to be an interesting resource for information processing. Since non-local correlations are more useful if they are stronger, it is natural to ask whether weak non-locality can be amplified. We give an affirmative answer by presenting the first protocol for distilling non-locality in the framework of generalized non-signaling theories. Our protocol works for both quantum and non-quantum correlations. This shows that in many contexts, the extent to which a single instance of a correlation can violate a CHSH inequality is not a good measure for the usefulness of non-locality. A more meaningful measure follows from our results.Comment: Revised abstract, introduction and conclusion. Accepted by PR

Radioisotopes Produced by Neutron Irradiation of Food

The use of neutrons for cargo interrogation has the potential to drastically improve threat detection. Previous research has focussed on the production of 24Na, based on the isotopes produced in pharmaceuticals and medical devices. For both the total acitivity and the ingestion dose we show that a variety of isotopes contribute and that 24Na is only dominant under certain conditions. The composition of the foods has a strong influence on the resulting activity and ingestion dose suggesting that the pharmaceuticals and medical devices considered initially are not a viable analogue for foodstuffs. There is an energy dependence to the isotopes produced due to the cross-sections of different reactions varying with neutron energy. We show that this results in different isotopes dominating the ingestion dose at different energies, which has not been considered in previous literature