Abstract
Introduction
Sleep deprivation and circadian misalignment impairs human sensorimotor performance and reduces vigilant attention, which increases the potential for errors in occupations that ...require 24-hour operations. The psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) is the gold-standard measure for evaluating the impact of sleepiness on performance, however, it is not practical to administer in many operational environments, because it only provides a snapshot of performance and requires an individual to focus on the task for several minutes, multiple times over a work shift. As a result, passive, continuous monitoring of sleepiness is desirable for operational environments. The goal of the present study was to determine if complex oculomotor behavioral metrics track PVT performance during sleep deprivation.
Methods
Twelve healthy adults (mean age 24.8 ± 5.4 years; 6F) maintained a fixed schedule with 8.5 hours in bed for two weeks, during which they abstained from caffeine, alcohol, and other medications, followed by a ~24 hours constant routine laboratory stay. Participants completed the PVT and a radial step-ramp ocular tracking task hourly throughout the study. Twelve oculometrics were derived from smooth pursuit and saccadic eye movements collected through video-oculography and were compared to the PVT and Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) using linear regression and receiver operating characteristic curves.
Results
Nine oculometrics spanning pursuit, saccade, and directional motion processing performance correlated with the PVT and KSS (p < 0.05), including: (a) pursuit latency; (b) open-loop pursuit acceleration; (c) proportion smooth; (d) steady-state pursuit gain; (e) saccadic amplitude; (f) saccadic dispersion; (g) saccadic rate; (h) direction asymmetry; and (i) direction noise.
Conclusion
The oculometrics that we examined exhibited a distinct pattern that tracked PVT performance. Future studies should examine whether these metrics can be extracted through passive monitoring techniques.
Support
None
Abstract
Introduction
Waking from sleep is associated with reduced alertness due to sleep inertia. Light acutely improves alertness during sleep deprivation. In this study we assessed the influence ...of light on brain activity and connectivity after waking from slow wave sleep (SWS).
Methods
Twelve participants kept an actigraphy-confirmed stable sleep schedule with 8.5 hours for five nights and five hours for one night prior to an overnight laboratory visit. Participants completed two three-minute Karolinska Drowsiness Tests (KDT) before going to bed at their habitual bedtime. They were monitored continuously using high-density EEG (32-channel; Brain Products GmbH). Participants were woken twice and exposed to red light (0.01 melanopic-lux; control) or blue-enriched light (63.62 melanopic-lux) for one hour, in a randomized order, following at least five minutes of SWS. EEG artifact were removed algorithmically and the spectral composition of each electrode (i.e., fast fourier transform, FFT) and effective connectivity (i.e., partial directed coherence, PDC) between each electrode were estimated. A graphical analysis was conducted to extract features relevant to the facilitation of efficient communication between electrodes. All data were averaged within frequency bins of interest that correspond to delta (1-3Hz), theta (4-7Hz), alpha (8-12Hz), and beta (13-25Hz) bands and expressed relative to the pre-sleep baseline.
Results
Compared to the pre-sleep baseline, participants exposed to blue-enriched light experienced reduced theta and alpha activity; however, these results were not significantly different from the control. In contrast, the communication of frontal electrodes significantly increased across all frequency bands compared to the control, and this effect was most prominent in the alpha (t(11)=3.80, p=.005) and beta bands (t(11)=3.92, p=.004).
Conclusion
Exposure to blue-enriched light immediately after waking from SWS may accelerate the process of waking and help to improve alertness by facilitating communication between brain regions. Future analyses will explore the temporal persistence and granularity of the communicative properties associated with this response.
Support
Naval Postgraduate School Grant. NASA Airspace Operations and Safety Program, System-Wide Safety Project.
Patterned nanowire networks of photoluminescent highly crystalline ZnO nanowires (see Figure) have been produced via the vapor–liquid–solid mechanism using gold as catalyst. The diameters of the ...nanowires can be controlled by varying the thickness of the gold layer. The size of the wires has an influence on their emission characteristics (see also cover).
Osteoporosis is a major cause of morbidity and decreased quality of life in patients with chronic cholestatic liver disease. It is established that this osteoporosis results from decreased bone ...formation, but the mechanisms for the interaction between liver and bone remain elusive. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that an increase in the production of cellular fibronectins during liver disease may result in decreased osteoblast‐mediated mineralization and thus explain the decrease in bone formation. We performed a prospective cross‐sectional study in patients with primary biliary cirrhosis and matched controls, followed by experiments on human and mouse osteoblasts in culture and injections in mice in vivo. In patients with primary biliary cirrhosis, the oncofetal domain of fibronectin correlated significantly with the decrease in osteocalcin, a marker of bone formation (r = −0.57, p < 0.05). In vitro, amniotic fluid fibronectin (aFN) containing mainly the oncofetal domain and EIIIA domain resulted in decreased osteoblast‐mediated mineralization in human osteoblasts (69% decrease at 100 μg/ml; p < 0.01) and mouse osteoblasts (71% decrease; p < 0.05). Removing the EIIIA domain from aFN similarly suppressed mineralization by osteoblasts (78% decrease; p < 0.05). Injection of labeled aFN in mice showed that it infiltrates the bone, and its administration over 10 days resulted in decreased trabecular BMD (17% drop; p < 0.05), mineralizing surface (30% drop; p < 0.005), and number of osteoblasts (45% drop; p < 0.05). Increased production of a fibronectin isoform containing the oncofetal domain and its release in the circulation in patients with primary biliary cirrhosis is at least partially responsible for the decrease in bone formation seen in these patients. This establishes that a molecule that has thus far been viewed as an extracellular matrix protein exerts hormone‐like actions.
This paper presents an empirical study of the achievable data rates of network multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques including zero-forcing (ZF), zero-forcing dirty paper coding (ZF-DPC) ...and dirty paper coding (DPC) using actual 4-by-4 indoor wireless channel measurements at 3.5 GHz. Their performances are contrasted with those of conventional techniques, in which either the base stations are not coordinated (NC), or their interference is avoided using frequency division (FD) multiplexing. The measurements were taken in aisle-to-office and large unobstructed hall scenarios. The study of these results reveals that, at high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), DPC and ZF-DPC can yield more than a three-fold increase in attainable data rates when compared to NC and FD. The gains obtained using ZF are smaller, but still significant. At low SNRs the system is noise-(rather than interference-) limited, and only DPC exhibits gains. The evaluations in this paper also show that collaborative systems such as DPC can benefit from interference-prone environments to yield increased transmission capacity. With regard to the propagation channel, the classical log-normal plus Rayleigh/Ricean fading model, with parameters fitted to the scenario type, was found to be good at predicting the statistics of the achievable data rates of all the strategies considered.
The RD48 (ROSE) collaboration has succeeded to develop radiation hard silicon detectors, capable to withstand the harsh hadron fluences in the tracking areas of LHC experiments. In order to reach ...this objective, a defect engineering technique was employed resulting in the development of Oxygen enriched FZ silicon (DOFZ), ensuring the necessary O-enrichment of about 2×10
17 O/cm
3 in the normal detector processing. Systematic investigations have been carried out on various standard and oxygenated silicon diodes with neutron, proton and pion irradiation up to a fluence of 5×10
14
cm
−2 (1
MeV neutron equivalent). Major focus is on the changes of the effective doping concentration (depletion voltage). Other aspects (reverse current, charge collection) are covered too and the appreciable benefits obtained with DOFZ silicon in radiation tolerance for charged hadrons are outlined. The results are reliably described by the “Hamburg model”: its application to LHC experimental conditions is shown, demonstrating the superiority of the defect engineered silicon. Microscopic aspects of damage effects are also discussed, including differences due to charged and neutral hadron irradiation.
Recently, the homolog of yeast protein Sec63p was identified in dog pancreas microsomes. This pancreatic DnaJ‐like protein was shown to be an abundant protein, interacting with both the Sec61p ...complex and lumenal DnaK‐like proteins, such as BiP. The pancreatic endoplasmic reticulum contains a second DnaJ‐like membrane protein, which had been termed Mtj1p in mouse. Mtj1p is present in pancreatic microsomes at a lower concentration than Sec63p but has a higher affinity for BiP. In addition to a lumenal J‐domain, Mtj1p contains a single transmembrane domain and a cytosolic domain which is in close contact with translating ribosomes and appears to have the ability to modulate translation. The interaction with ribosomes involves a highly charged region within the cytosolic domain of Mtj1p. We propose that Mtj1p represents a novel type of co‐chaperone, mediating transmembrane recruitment of DnaK‐like chaperones to ribosomes and, possibly, transmembrane signaling between ribosomes and DnaK‐like chaperones of the endoplasmic reticulum.
The photoluminescence (PL) of InGaN/GaN quantum well (QW) structures is measured as a function of biaxial strain to study the dependence of the luminescence emission on the built‐in electric field. ...The direction and magnitude of the shift in luminescence energy with strain reveals an effective e–h separation in the well. We have used this method to evaluate the effective e–h separation in a number of structures with varying QW thickness and indium content. Our results show that the e–h separation increases with increasing QW thickness and with increasing indium content.
Recent results of radiation damage studies in silicon
Nuclear instruments and methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment/Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
04/1994
Journal Article
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