Purpose
To examine exposure–response relationships between ionizing radiation and several mortality outcomes in a subgroup of 4,054 men of the German uranium miner cohort study, who worked between ...1946 and 1989 in milling facilities, but never underground or in open pit mines.
Methods
Mortality follow-up was from 1946 to 2008, accumulating 158,383 person-years at risk. Cumulative exposure to radon progeny in working level months (WLM) (mean = 8, max = 127), long-lived radionuclides from uranium ore dust in kBqh/m
3
(mean = 3.9, max = 132), external gamma radiation in mSv (mean = 26, max = 667) and silica dust was estimated by a comprehensive job–exposure matrix. Internal Poisson regression models were applied to estimate the linear excess relative risk (ERR) per unit of cumulative exposure.
Results
Overall, a total of 457, 717 and 111 deaths occurred from malignant cancer, cardiovascular diseases and non-malignant respiratory diseases, respectively. Uranium ore dust and silica dust were not associated with mortality from any of these disease groups. A statistically significant relationship between cumulative radon exposure and mortality from all cancers (ERR/100 WLM = 1.71;
p
= 0.02), primarily due to lung cancer (
n
= 159; ERR/100 WLM = 3.39;
p
= 0.05), was found. With respect to cumulative external gamma radiation, an excess of mortality of solid cancers (
n
= 434; ERR/Sv = 1.86;
p
= 0.06), primarily due to stomach cancer (
n
= 49, ERR/Sv = 10.0;
p
= 0.12), was present.
Conclusion
The present findings show an excess mortality from lung cancer due to radon exposure and from solid cancers due to external gamma radiation in uranium millers that was not statistically significant. Exposure to uranium was not associated with any cause of death, but absorbed organ doses were estimated to be low.
We investigate the possibility of acquiring information on the generalized parton distribution E and, through a model for E, also on the u-quark total angular momentum Ju by studying deeply virtual ...Compton scattering and hard exclusive ρ0 electroproduction on a transversely polarized hydrogen target at HERMES. It is found that a change in Ju from zero to 0.4 corresponds to a 4σ (2σ) difference in the calculated transverse target-spin asymmetry in deeply virtual Compton scattering (ρ0 electroproduction), where σ is the total experimental uncertainty.
Background: Caspase recruitment domain protein (CARD) 4 has been recently identified as an intracellular pattern recognition receptor that interacts with muropeptides found in common Gram‐negative ...bacteria. We therefore aimed to explore whether the previously observed inverse association between exposure to microbial products and asthma and allergies in childhood is modified by genetic variation in CARD4.
Methods: We genotyped 668 children mean age 9.3 (SD 1.5) years enrolled in the cross‐sectional ALEX study for seven haplotype tagging single nucleotide polymorphisms in CARD4. We studied the association of asthma, hay fever and allergen‐specific serum immunoglobulin E with exposure to a farming environment and with levels of endotoxin and muramic acid measured in house dust samples. We tested whether these associations differed between the genotypes of the polymorphisms under study.
Results: A strong protective effect of a farming environment on allergies was only found in children homozygous for the T allele in CARD4/−21596, but not in children carrying the minor allele (C). Among the former, farmers’ children had a significantly lower frequency of sensitization against pollen (5.8%), hay fever (1.7%) and atopic asthma symptoms (1.7%) compared with children not living on a farm (19.4%, 13.0% and 7.6%, P < 0.01, <0.01 and <0.05, respectively). Conversely, no significant difference in prevalence of these phenotypes by farming status was found among children with a C allele in CARD4/−21596 (14.3%, 7.1% and 8.0%vs 16.5%, 9.0% and 5.7%, respectively).
Conclusion: Polymorphisms in CARD4 significantly modify the protective effect of exposure to a farming environment.
Latitudinal shifts in tree species distributions are a potential impact of climate change on forest ecosystems. It has been hypothesized that some tree species may become extirpated as climate change ...effects may exceed their migration ability. The goal of this study was to compare tree species compositions in northern urban areas to tree compositions in forestland areas in the eastern U.S. as an indicator of the potential for urban trees to facilitate future forest tree species migration. Results indicated that a number of tree species native to eastern U.S. forests of southern latitudes are currently present in northern urban forests. The biomass density (Mg/ha) of urban tree species is typically less than half of forestland densities with the majority of urban tree species found in nearby (<100
km) forestland. Urban tree propagation is often facilitated by humans, whereas the necessary pollinators and agents of tree seed dispersal in forestlands may be lacking regardless of climate change. It is suggested that urban areas may serve divergent, dual roles as both a native tree seed source and refuge for a limited number of forestland tree species, but also a facilitator of non-native tree invasion.
Evaluation of functional status is difficult in neurological and neurosurgical early rehabilitation patients. The Early Rehabilitation Index (ERI) was introduced in Germany over 20 years ago, but ...since then validation studies are lacking. The ERI (range -325 to 0 points) includes highly relevant items including the necessity of intermittent mechanical ventilation or tracheostomy.
The present paper analyzed data from a German multi-center study, enrolling 754 neurological early rehabilitation patients. Together with ERI, Barthel Index (BI), Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), Glasgow Outcome Score Extended, Coma Remission Scale (CRS), Functional Ambulation Categories and length of stay were obtained.
ERI showed significant improvements from admission to discharge (p < 0.001). In addition, there were significant correlations of the ERI upon admission and at discharge with BI, CRS and GCS.
Evaluation of our study data suggest that the ERI may be used as a valid assessment instrument for neurological and neurosurgical early rehabilitation patients.
Prolonged weaning of patients with neurological or neurosurgery disorders is associated with specific characteristics, which are taken into account by the German Society for Neurorehabilitation ...(DGNR) in its own guideline. The current S2k guideline of the German Society for Pneumology and Respiratory Medicine is referred to explicitly with regard to definitions (e.g., weaning and weaning failure), weaning categories, pathophysiology of weaning failure, and general weaning strategies. In early neurological and neurosurgery rehabilitation, patients with central of respiratory regulation disturbances (e.g., cerebral stem lesions), swallowing disturbances (neurogenic dysphagia), neuromuscular problems (e.g., critical illness polyneuropathy, Guillain-Barre syndrome, paraplegia, Myasthenia gravis) and/or cognitive disturbances (e.g., disturbed consciousness and vigilance disorders, severe communication disorders), whose care during the weaning of ventilation requires, in addition to intensive medical competence, neurological or neurosurgical and neurorehabilitation expertise. In Germany, this competence is present in centers of early neurological and neurosurgery rehabilitation, as a hospital treatment. The guideline is based on a systematic search of guideline databases and MEDLINE. Consensus was established by means of a nominal group process and Delphi procedure moderated by the Association of the Scientific Medical Societies in Germany (AWMF). In the present guideline of the DGNR, the special structural and substantive characteristics of early neurological and neurosurgery rehabilitation and existing studies on weaning in early rehabilitation facilities are examined.Addressees of the guideline are neurologists, neurosurgeons, anesthesiologists, palliative physicians, speech therapists, intensive care staff, ergotherapists, physiotherapists, and neuropsychologists. In addition, this guideline is intended to provide information to specialists for physical medicine and rehabilitation (PMR), pneumologists, internists, respiratory therapists, the German Medical Service of Health Insurance Funds (MDK) and the German Association of Health Insurance Funds (MDS). The main goal of this guideline is to convey the current knowledge on the subject of "Prolonged weaning in early neurological and neurosurgery rehabilitation".
Power and bandwidth are scarce resources in dense wireless sensor networks and it is widely recognized that joint optimization of the operations of sensing, processing and communication can result in ...significant savings in the use of network resources. In this paper, a distributed joint source-channel communication architecture is proposed for energy-efficient estimation of sensor field data at a distant destination and the corresponding relationships between power, distortion, and latency are analyzed as a function of number of sensor nodes. The approach is applicable to a broad class of sensed signal fields and is based on distributed computation of appropriately chosen projections of sensor data at the destination - phase-coherent transmissions from the sensor nodes enable exploitation of the distributed beamforming gain for energy efficiency. Random projections are used when little or no prior knowledge is available about the signal field. Distinct features of the proposed scheme include: (1) processing and communication are combined into one distributed projection operation; (2) it virtually eliminates the need for in-network processing and communication; (3) given sufficient prior knowledge about the sensed data, consistent estimation is possible with increasing sensor density even with vanishing total network power; and (4) consistent signal estimation is possible with power and latency requirements growing at most sublinearly with the number of sensor nodes even when little or no prior knowledge about the sensed data is assumed at the sensor nodes.
Hard exclusive electroproduction of
ω
mesons is studied with the HERMES spectrometer at the DESY laboratory by scattering 27.6 GeV positron and electron beams off a transversely polarized hydrogen ...target. The amplitudes of five azimuthal modulations of the single-spin asymmetry of the cross section with respect to the transverse proton polarization are measured. They are determined in the entire kinematic region as well as for two bins in photon virtuality and momentum transfer to the nucleon. Also, a separation of asymmetry amplitudes into longitudinal and transverse components is done. These results are compared to a phenomenological model that includes the pion pole contribution. Within this model, the data favor a positive
π
ω
transition form factor.
The effects of two light intensities on the concentration of several flavonoids were investigated in the cotyledons of common buckwheat seedlings. The study was performed on four days old seedlings ...of cvs. Hruszowska, Panda, Kora and Red Corolla. One group of seedlings was grown under exposure to 180 ± 20 μmol · m−2 · s−1 photosynthetically active radiation, whereas the other group was exposed to 360 ± 20 μmol · m−2 · s−1. The experiment lasted 5 days. The results revealed that light intensity induces changes in the levels of flavonols and flavones. Increased light intensity contributed to a decrease in the concentrations of all flavone C-glucosides: orientin (luteolin-8-C-glucoside) and iso-orientin (luteolin-6-C-glucoside), and apigenin: vitexin (apigenin-8-C-glucoside) and iso-vitexin (apigenin-6-C-glucoside). Simultaneously, a substantial increase in the content of flavonols, i.e. quercetin O-glycosides, was found. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first evidence to demonstrate the contrary responses of plant flavonols and flavones to light intensity. The content of anthocyanin also increased under exposure to higher light intensity. Our results indicate that quercetin O-glycosides can play a similar role to anthocyanins in the cotyledons of common buckwheat seedlings. Results of correlation analysis indicate that the increase in flavonol and anthocyanin concentrations in response to higher light intensity is maintained through reduced accumulation of flavones and proanthocyanidins.
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