This study introduces a flexible, adhesive-integrated electrode array that was developed to enable non-invasive monitoring of cervical nerve activity. The device uses silver-silver chloride as the ...electrode material of choice and combines it with an electrode array consisting of a customized biopotential data acquisition unit and integrated graphical user interface (GUI) for visualization of real-time monitoring. Preliminary testing demonstrated this electrode design can achieve a high signal to noise ratio during cervical neural recordings. To demonstrate the capability of the surface electrodes to detect changes in cervical neuronal activity, the cold-pressor test (CPT) and a timed respiratory challenge were employed as stressors to the autonomic nervous system. This sensor system recording, a new technique, was termed Cervical Electroneurography (CEN). By applying a custom spike sorting algorithm to the electrode measurements, neural activity was classified in two ways: (1) pre-to-post CPT, and (2) during a timed respiratory challenge. Unique to this work: (1) rostral to caudal channel position-specific (cephalad to caudal) firing patterns and (2) cross challenge biotype-specific change in average CEN firing, were observed with both CPT and the timed respiratory challenge. Future work is planned to develop an ambulatory CEN recording device that could provide immediate notification of autonomic nervous system activity changes that might indicate autonomic dysregulation in healthy subjects and clinical disease states.
A novel high-throughput strategy was developed to determine the calcium precipitation activity (CPA) of mineralization bacteria used for self-healing of concrete cracks. A bacterial strain designated ...as H4 with the highest CPA of 94.8 % was screened and identified as a
Bacillus
species based on 16S rDNA sequence and phylogenetic tree analysis. Furthermore, the effects of certain influential factors on the microbial calcium precipitation process of H4 were evaluated. The results showed that lactate and nitrate are the best carbon and nitrogen sources, with optimal concentrations of approximately 25 and 18 mM, respectively. The H4 strain is able to maintain a high CPA in the pH range of 9.5–11.0, and a suitable initial spore concentration is 4.0 × 10
7
spores/ml. Moreover, an ambient Ca
2+
concentration greater than 60 mM resulted in a serious adverse impact not only on the CPA but also on the growth of H4, suggesting that the maintenance of the Ca
2+
concentration at a low level is necessary for microbial self-healing of concrete cracks.
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•Anaerobic digestion for production of VFAs, biohydrogen and methane.•Specific bioreactor arrangements for VFAs, biohydrogen and methane.•Optimization of temperature, pH, OLR and ...retention time for each product.•Chemical additives and specific treatment process for individual AD product.
The anaerobic digestion process has been primarily utilized for methane containing biogas production over the past few years. However, the digestion process could also be optimized for producing volatile fatty acids (VFAs) and biohydrogen. This is the first review article that combines the optimization approaches for all three possible products from the anaerobic digestion. In this review study, the types and configurations of the bioreactor are discussed for each type of product. This is followed by a review on optimization of common process parameters (e.g. temperature, pH, retention time and organic loading rate) separately for the production of VFA, biohydrogen and methane. This review also includes additional parameters, treatment methods or special additives that wield a significant and positive effect on production rate and these products’ yield.
An analytical model has been developed for analyzing the radial vibration force in fractional-slot permanent-magnet machines. It is compared extensively by finite-element analyses and used to ...investigate the influence of the following: 1) stator slotting; 2) tangential field component; 3) radius in the air gap for computation; 4) load condition, etc. The major findings include the following: 1) even on an open circuit, the low harmonic component (e.g., the second for a 10-pole/12-slot machine) of the radial force exists due to the slotting effect, although the amplitude is relatively low, while the slotless analytical model cannot predict this phenomenon; 2) on a load, the slotless analytical model is accurate enough for the radial force analysis since the low-order harmonic component of the radial force is mainly due to the interaction between the magnet field and the armature-reaction field and is largely determined by the combination of the pole and slot numbers; 3) it is much more reliable to calculate the radial force in the middle of the air gap rather than close to the stator bore; and 4) the simple formula accounting only for the radial field component in the middle of the air gap is accurate enough for the radial force calculation.
The SPTpol Extended Cluster Survey Bleem, L. E.; Bocquet, S.; Stalder, B. ...
The Astrophysical journal. Supplement series,
03/2020, Letnik:
247, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
We describe the observations and resultant galaxy cluster catalog from the 2770 deg2 SPTpol Extended Cluster Survey (SPT-ECS). Clusters are identified via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect and ...confirmed with a combination of archival and targeted follow-up data, making particular use of data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES). With incomplete follow-up we have confirmed as clusters 244 of 266 candidates at a detection significance ≥ 5 and an additional 204 systems at 4 < < 5. The confirmed sample has a median mass of and a median redshift of z = 0.49, and we have identified 44 strong gravitational lenses in the sample thus far. Radio data are used to characterize contamination to the SZ signal; the median contamination for confirmed clusters is predicted to be ∼1% of the SZ signal at the > 4 threshold, and <4% of clusters have a predicted contamination >10% of their measured SZ flux. We associate SZ-selected clusters, from both SPT-ECS and the SPT-SZ survey, with clusters from the DES redMaPPer sample, and we find an offset distribution between the SZ center and central galaxy in general agreement with previous work, though with a larger fraction of clusters with significant offsets. Adopting a fixed Planck-like cosmology, we measure the optical richness-SZ mass ( ) relation and find it to be 28% shallower than that from a weak-lensing analysis of the DES data-a difference significant at the 4 level-with the relations intersecting at λ = 60. The SPT-ECS cluster sample will be particularly useful for studying the evolution of massive clusters and, in combination with DES lensing observations and the SPT-SZ cluster sample, will be an important component of future cosmological analyses.
Esophageal adenocarcinoma (EA) is an increasingly common cancer with poor survival. Barrett's esophagus (BE) is the main precursor to EA, and every year 0.12% to 0.5% of BE patients progress to EA. ...BE typically arises on a background of chronic gastroesophageal reflux (GERD), one of the risk factors for EA.
We used genome-wide association data to investigate the genetic architecture underlying GERD, BE, and EA. We applied a method to estimate the variance explained (array heritability, h(2)g) and the genetic correlation (rg) between GERD, BE, and EA by considering all single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) simultaneously. We also estimated the polygenic overlap between GERD, BE, and EA using a prediction approach. All tests were two-sided, except in the case of variance-explained estimation where one-sided tests were used.
We estimated a statistically significant genetic variance explained for BE (h(2)g = 35%; standard error SE = 6%; one-sided P = 1 × 10(-9)) and for EA (h(2)g = 25 %; SE = 5%; one-sided P = 2 × 10(-7)). The genetic correlation between BE and EA was found to be high (rg = 1.0; SE = 0.37). We also estimated a statistically significant polygenic overlap between BE and EA (one-sided P = 1 × 10(-6)), which suggests, together with the high genetic correlation, that shared genes underlie the development of BE and EA. Conversely, no statistically significant results were obtained for GERD.
We have demonstrated that risk to BE and EA is influenced by many germline genetic variants of small effect and that shared polygenic effects contribute to risk of these two diseases.
Universal brain signature of proficient reading Rueckl, Jay G.; Paz-Alonso, Pedro M.; Molfese, Peter J. ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
12/2015, Letnik:
112, Številka:
50
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
We propose and test a theoretical perspective in which a universal hallmark of successful literacy acquisition is the convergence of the speech and orthographic processing systems onto a common ...network of neural structures, regardless of how spoken words are represented orthographically in a writing system. During functional MRI, skilled adult readers of four distinct and highly contrasting languages, Spanish, English, Hebrew, and Chinese, performed an identical semantic categorization task to spoken and written words. Results from three complementary analytic approaches demonstrate limited language variation, with speech–print convergence emerging as a common brain signature of reading proficiency across the wide spectrum of selected languages, whether their writing system is alphabetic or logographic, whether it is opaque or transparent, and regardless of the phonological and morphological structure it represents.
Background. Seven persons in one family living in eastern China developed fever and thrombocytopenia during May 2007, but the initial investigation failed to identify an infectious etiology. In ...December 2009, a novel bunyavirus (designated severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome bunyavirus SFTSV) was identified as the cause of illness in patients with similar clinical manifestations in China. We reexamined this family cluster for SFTSV infection. Methods. We analyzed epidemiological and clinical data for the index patient and 6 secondary patients. We tested stored blood specimens from the 6 secondary patients using real time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), viral culture, genetic sequencing, micro-neutralization assay (MNA), and indirect immunofluorescence assay (IFA). Results. An 80-year-old woman with fever, leucopenia, and thrombocytopenia died on 27 April 2007. Between 3 and 7 May 2007, another 6 patients from her family were admitted to a local county hospital with fever and other similar symptoms. Serum specimens collected in 2007 from these 6 patients were positive for SFTS viral RNA through RT-PCR and for antibody to SFTSV through MNA and IFA. SFTSV was isolated from 1 preserved serum specimen. The only shared characteristic between secondary patients was personal contact with the index patient; none reported exposure to suspected animals or vectors. Conclusions. Clinical and laboratory evidence confirmed that the patients of fever and thrombocytopenia occurring in a family cluster in eastern China in 2007 were caused by a newly recognized bunyavirus, SFTSV. Epidemiological investigation strongly suggests that infection of secondary patients was transmitted to family members by personal contact.
ABSTRACT Detection of the cosmological neutral hydrogen signal from the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) and estimation of its basic physical parameters are principal scientific aims of many current ...low-frequency radio telescopes. Here we describe the Cosmological H i Power Spectrum Estimator (CHIPS), an algorithm developed and implemented with data from the Murchison Widefield Array, to compute the two-dimensional and spherically-averaged power spectrum of brightness temperature fluctuations. The principal motivations for CHIPS are the application of realistic instrumental and foreground models to form the optimal estimator, thereby maximizing the likelihood of unbiased signal estimation, and allowing a full covariant understanding of the outputs. CHIPS employs an inverse-covariance weighting of the data through the maximum likelihood estimator, thereby allowing use of the full parameter space for signal estimation ("foreground suppression"). We describe the motivation for the algorithm, implementation, application to real and simulated data, and early outputs. Upon application to a set of 3 hr of data, we set a 2 upper limit on the EoR dimensionless power at Mpc−1 of mK2 in the redshift range z = 6.2-6.6, consistent with previous estimates.
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