Although ruxolitinib contributes to immunomodulation and can lead to severe infections, it seems a feasible treatment strategy for patients with polycythemia vera and myelofibrosis after liver ...transplantation.
The massively parallel nature of biological information processing plays an important role for its superiority to human-engineered computing devices. In particular, it may hold the key to overcoming ...the von Neumann bottleneck that limits contemporary computer architectures. Physical-model neuromorphic devices seek to replicate not only this inherent parallelism, but also aspects of its microscopic dynamics in analog circuits emulating neurons and synapses. However, these machines require network models that are not only adept at solving particular tasks, but that can also cope with the inherent imperfections of analog substrates. We present a spiking network model that performs Bayesian inference through sampling on the BrainScaleS neuromorphic platform, where we use it for generative and discriminative computations on visual data. By illustrating its functionality on this platform, we implicitly demonstrate its robustness to various substrate-specific distortive effects, as well as its accelerated capability for computation. These results showcase the advantages of brain-inspired physical computation and provide important building blocks for large-scale neuromorphic applications.
The objective of this study was to compare psychosocial characteristics of children with asthma and children with bronchial hyperreactivity with those of normal children. A population-based study of ...2634 children (mean age, 10 years) was carried out. Pulmonary function tests of children were performed in children before and after cold air hyperventilation challenge to determine bronchial hyperreactivity. Parental assessment of children's behavior was evaluated with 15 questions about school/learning habits, level of activity, communication/affection, and sleeping patterns. A factor analysis was performed and the factor loading adjusted for confounders compared in the different groups.
Asthmatic children sleep less well than normal and hyperreactive children (
p < 0.001). Unexpectedly, however, all other single items did not differ significantly. As a result of the factorial analysis we obtained two factors. On the first factor, measuring school behavior and learning, there was a small difference between asthmatic and normal children, which could not be found on the second factor indicating activity and communication.
We conclude that psychosocial differences of asthmatic children are less remarkable than expected. As a result of the examination of the hyperreactive children it is likely that asthmatic children are influenced more by secondary psychosocial factors than by any primary effect of asthmatic disease.
The objective of this analysis was to determine the relationship between wheezing at different age groups in children and the prevalence of bronchial hyperreactivity at the age of 10. A ...population-based cross-sectional study was conducted in Leipzig and the region around Halle in Germany. Of 3105 10-year-old children, 2658 questionnaires (85.6%) were returned. In addition 2279 (73.4%) pulmonary function tests were performed before and after cold air challenge. 658 children (24.8%) had recurrent wheezing during their lifetime. In 579 children the individual time course could be evaluated (46 children with and 533 without a physician-confirmed diagnosis of asthma). Wheezing began most frequently in the 1st year of life (44.1% of all wheezing children) with the highest annual prevalence in the 3rd year (71.0% of all wheezing children). Wheezing which started in the first 2 years of life, had disappeared in most of the children by the age of 10. However, if wheezing began later than the 3rd year it was more persisting. Bronchial hyperreactivity measured after cold air challenge was higher in the group with recurrent wheezing (24.1%) than in the group without wheezing (18.8%, P = 0.004).
Wheezing is a very common symptom in childhood and only partly associated with later bronchial hyperreactivity. On the other hand, asthma is often not diagnosed despite bronchial hyperreactivity and many years of wheezing.
Cutting tool manufacturing by laser technology has developed quickly during the past fifteen years. Compared to conventional machining methods such as grinding or eroding, laser processing does not ...require any additional elements such as coolant, grinding wheels, erosion wire, discs, etc. If ultrashort laser pulses are used together with optimized laser parameters, heat input into the material can be negligible. Additionally, there are no processing forces or tool wear present during laser manufacturing. For these many reasons, autonomous production of metallic or diamond tools is feasible and highly interesting.
Abstract
Cutting tool manufacturing by laser technology has developed quickly during the past fifteen years. Compared to conventional machining methods such as grinding or eroding, laser processing ...does not require any additional elements such as coolant, grinding wheels, erosion wire, discs, etc. If ultrashort laser pulses are used together with optimized laser parameters, heat input into the material can be negligible. Additionally, there are no processing forces or tool wear present during laser manufacturing. For these many reasons, autonomous production of metallic or diamond tools is feasible and highly interesting.
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