The unitary evolution of a quantum system preserves its coherence, but interactions between the system and its environment result in decoherence, a process in which the quantum information stored in ...the system becomes degraded. A spin-polarized positively charged muon implanted in a fluoride crystal realizes such a coherent quantum system, and the entanglement of muon and nearest-neighbor fluorine nuclear spins gives rise to an oscillatory time dependence of the muon polarization that can be detected and measured. Here we show that the decohering effect of more distant nuclear spins can be modelled quantitatively, allowing a very detailed description of the decoherence processes coupling the muon-fluorine "system" with its "environment," and allowing us to track the system entropy as the quantum information degrades. These results show how to precisely quantify the spin relaxation of muons implanted into quantum entangled states in fluoride crystals.
There is an absence of national statistics for maternal obesity in the UK. This study is the first to describe a nationally representative maternal obesity research data set in England.
Retrospective ...epidemiological study of first trimester obesity.
Data from 34 maternity units were analysed, including 619 323 births between 1989 and 2007. Data analysis included trends in first trimester maternal body bass index status over time, and geographical distribution of maternal obesity. Population demographics including maternal age, parity, ethnic group, deprivation and employment were analysed to identify any maternal obesity-associated health inequalities. All demographics were tested for multicollinearity. Logistic regression analyses were adjusted for all demographics as confounders.
First trimester maternal obesity is significantly increasing over time, having more than doubled from 7.6% to 15.6% over 19 years (P<0.001), and shows geographic variation in incidence. There are also demographic health inequalities associated with maternal obesity, including increased odds of being obese with increasing age, parity, Black ethnic group and deprivation. There is also an association between morbid obesity and increased levels of unemployment.
The increase in maternal obesity has serious implications for the health of mothers, infants and service providers, yielding an additional 47 500 women per year requiring high dependency care in England. The demography of women most at risk of first trimester obesity highlights health inequalities associated with maternal obesity, which urgently needs to be addressed.
The applications of Western/immunoblotting (WB) techniques have reached multiple layers of the scientific community and are now considered routine procedures in the field of physiology. This is none ...more so than in relation to skeletal muscle physiology (i.e., resolving the mechanisms underpinning adaptations to exercise). Indeed, the inclusion of WB data is now considered an essential aspect of many such physiological publications to provide mechanistic insight into regulatory processes. Despite this popularity, and due to the ubiquitous and relatively inexpensive availability of WB equipment, the quality of WB in publications and subsequent analysis and interpretation of the data can be variable, perhaps resulting in spurious conclusions. This may be due to poor laboratory technique and/or lack of comprehension of the critical steps involved in WB and what quality control procedures should be in place to ensure robust data generation. The present review aims to provide a detailed description and critique of WB procedures and technicalities, from sample collection through preparation, blotting and detection, to analysis of the data collected. We aim to provide the reader with improved expertise to critically conduct, evaluate, and troubleshoot the WB process, to produce reproducible and reliable blots.
Extraction of bone contours from radiographs plays an important role in disease diagnosis, preoperative planning, and treatment analysis. We present a fully automatic method to accurately segment the ...proximal femur in anteroposterior pelvic radiographs. A number of candidate positions are produced by a global search with a detector. Each is then refined using a statistical shape model together with local detectors for each model point. Both global and local models use Random Forest regression to vote for the optimal positions, leading to robust and accurate results. The performance of the system is evaluated using a set of 839 images of mixed quality. We show that the local search significantly outperforms a range of alternative matching techniques, and that the fully automated system is able to achieve a mean point-to-curve error of less than 0.9 mm for 99% of all 839 images. To the best of our knowledge, this is the most accurate automatic method for segmenting the proximal femur in radiographs yet reported.
There have been rapid developments in model-based clustering of graphs, also known as block modelling, over the last ten years or so. We review different approaches and extensions proposed for ...different aspects in this area, such as the type of the graph, the clustering approach, the inference approach, and whether the number of groups is selected or estimated. We also review models that combine block modelling with topic modelling and/or longitudinal modelling, regarding how these models deal with multiple types of data. How different approaches cope with various issues will be summarised and compared, to facilitate the demand of practitioners for a concise overview of the current status of these areas of literature.
New approaches to define factors underlying the immunopathogenesis of pulmonary diseases including sarcoidosis and tuberculosis are needed to develop new treatments and biomarkers. Comparing the ...blood transcriptional response of tuberculosis to other similar pulmonary diseases will advance knowledge of disease pathways and help distinguish diseases with similar clinical presentations.
To determine the factors underlying the immunopathogenesis of the granulomatous diseases, sarcoidosis and tuberculosis, by comparing the blood transcriptional responses in these and other pulmonary diseases.
We compared whole blood genome-wide transcriptional profiles in pulmonary sarcoidosis, pulmonary tuberculosis, to community acquired pneumonia and primary lung cancer and healthy controls, before and after treatment, and in purified leucocyte populations.
An Interferon-inducible neutrophil-driven blood transcriptional signature was present in both sarcoidosis and tuberculosis, with a higher abundance and expression in tuberculosis. Heterogeneity of the sarcoidosis signature correlated significantly with disease activity. Transcriptional profiles in pneumonia and lung cancer revealed an over-abundance of inflammatory transcripts. After successful treatment the transcriptional activity in tuberculosis and pneumonia patients was significantly reduced. However the glucocorticoid-responsive sarcoidosis patients showed a significant increase in transcriptional activity. 144-blood transcripts were able to distinguish tuberculosis from other lung diseases and controls.
Tuberculosis and sarcoidosis revealed similar blood transcriptional profiles, dominated by interferon-inducible transcripts, while pneumonia and lung cancer showed distinct signatures, dominated by inflammatory genes. There were also significant differences between tuberculosis and sarcoidosis in the degree of their transcriptional activity, the heterogeneity of their profiles and their transcriptional response to treatment.
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