Specifying real-time systems with interval logic

Science.gov (United States)

Rushby, John

1988-01-01

Pure temporal logic makes no reference to time. An interval temporal logic and an extension to that logic which includes real time constraints are described. The application of this logic by giving a specification for the well-known lift (elevator) example is demonstrated. It is shown how interval logic can be extended to include a notion of process. How the specification language and verification environment of EHDM could be enhanced to support this logic is described. A specification of the alternating bit protocol in this extended version of the specification language of EHDM is given.

Unpacking a time interval lengthens its perceived temporal distance

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Yang eLiu

2014-11-01

Full Text Available In quantity estimation, people often perceive that the whole is less than the sum of its parts. The current study investigated such an unpacking effect in temporal distance judgment. Our results showed that participants in the unpacked condition judged a given time interval longer than those in the packed condition, even the time interval was kept constant between the two conditions. Furthermore, this unpacking effect persists regardless of the unpacking ways we employed. Results suggest that unpacking a time interval may be a good strategy for lengthening its perceived temporal distance.

Traces of times past : Representations of temporal intervals in memory

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Taatgen, Niels; van Rijn, Hedderik

2011-01-01

Theories of time perception typically assume that some sort of memory represents time intervals. This memory component is typically underdeveloped in theories of time perception. Following earlier work that suggested that representations of different time intervals contaminate each other (Grondin,

Learned Interval Time Facilitates Associate Memory Retrieval

Science.gov (United States)

van de Ven, Vincent; Kochs, Sarah; Smulders, Fren; De Weerd, Peter

2017-01-01

The extent to which time is represented in memory remains underinvestigated. We designed a time paired associate task (TPAT) in which participants implicitly learned cue-time-target associations between cue-target pairs and specific cue-target intervals. During subsequent memory testing, participants showed increased accuracy of identifying…

Interval-Censored Time-to-Event Data Methods and Applications

CERN Document Server

Chen, Ding-Geng

2012-01-01

Interval-Censored Time-to-Event Data: Methods and Applications collects the most recent techniques, models, and computational tools for interval-censored time-to-event data. Top biostatisticians from academia, biopharmaceutical industries, and government agencies discuss how these advances are impacting clinical trials and biomedical research. Divided into three parts, the book begins with an overview of interval-censored data modeling, including nonparametric estimation, survival functions, regression analysis, multivariate data analysis, competing risks analysis, and other models for interva

Early diastolic time intervals during hypertensive pregnancy.

Science.gov (United States)

Spinelli, L; Ferro, G; Nappi, C; Farace, M J; Talarico, G; Cinquegrana, G; Condorelli, M

1987-10-01

Early diastolic time intervals have been assessed by means of the echopolycardiographic method in 17 pregnant women who developed hypertension during pregnancy (HP) and in 14 normal pregnant women (N). Systolic time intervals (STI), stroke volume (SV), ejection fraction (EF), and mean velocity of myocardial fiber shortening (VCF) were also evaluated. Recordings were performed in the left lateral decubitus (LLD) and then in the supine decubitus (SD). In LLD, isovolumic relaxation period (IRP) was prolonged in the hypertensive pregnant women compared with normal pregnant women (HP 51 +/- 12.5 ms, N 32.4 +/- 15 ms p less than 0.05), whereas time of the mitral valve maximum opening (DE) was not different in the groups. There was no difference in SV, EF, and mean VCF, whereas STI showed only a significant (p less than 0.05) lengthening of pre-ejection period (PEP) in HP. When the subjects shifted from the left lateral to the supine decubitus position, left ventricular ejection time index (LVETi) and SV decreased significantly (p less than 0.05) in both normotensive hypertensive pregnant women. IRP and PEP lengthened significantly (p less than 0.05) only in normals, whereas they were unchanged in HP. DE time did not vary in either group. In conclusion, hypertension superimposed on pregnancy induces lengthening of IRP, as well as of PEP, and minimizes the effects of the postural changes in preload on the above-mentioned time intervals.

Time interval between stroke onset and hospital arrival in acute ischemic stroke patients in Shanghai, China.

Science.gov (United States)

Fang, Jing; Yan, Weihong; Jiang, Guo-Xin; Li, Wei; Cheng, Qi

2011-02-01

To observe the time interval between stroke onset and hospital arrival (time-to-hospital) in acute ischemic stroke patients and analyze its putatively associated factors. During the period from November 1, 2006 to August 31, 2008, patients with acute ischemic stroke admitted consecutively to the Department of Neurology, Ninth Hospital, Shanghai, were enrolled in the study. Information of the patients was registered including the time-to-hospital, demographic data, history of stroke, season at attack, neurological symptom at onset, etc. Characteristics of the patients were analyzed and logistic regression analyses were conducted to identify factors associated with the time-to-hospital. There were 536 patients in the study, 290 (54.1%) males and 246 (45.9%) females. The median time-to-hospital was 8h (ranged from 0.1 to 300 h) for all patients. Within 3h after the onset of stroke, 162 patients (30.2%) arrived at our hospital; and within 6h, 278 patients (51.9%). Patients with a history of stroke, unconsciousness at onset, or a high NIHSS score at admission had significantly less time-to-hospital. The time interval between stroke onset and hospital arrival was importance of seeking immediate medical help after stroke onset of patients and their relatives could significantly influence their actions. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Timing of multiple overlapping intervals : How many clocks do we have?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van Rijn, Hedderik; Taatgen, Niels A.

2008-01-01

Humans perceive and reproduce short intervals of time (e.g. 1-60 s) relatively accurately, and are capable of timing multiple overlapping intervals if these intervals are presented in different modalities [e.g., Rousseau, L., & Rousseau, RL (1996). Stop-reaction time and the internal clock.

The Time Is Up: Compression of Visual Time Interval Estimations of Bimodal Aperiodic Patterns

Science.gov (United States)

Duarte, Fabiola; Lemus, Luis

2017-01-01

The ability to estimate time intervals subserves many of our behaviors and perceptual experiences. However, it is not clear how aperiodic (AP) stimuli affect our perception of time intervals across sensory modalities. To address this question, we evaluated the human capacity to discriminate between two acoustic (A), visual (V) or audiovisual (AV) time intervals of trains of scattered pulses. We first measured the periodicity of those stimuli and then sought for correlations with the accuracy and reaction times (RTs) of the subjects. We found that, for all time intervals tested in our experiment, the visual system consistently perceived AP stimuli as being shorter than the periodic (P) ones. In contrast, such a compression phenomenon was not apparent during auditory trials. Our conclusions are: first, the subjects exposed to P stimuli are more likely to measure their durations accurately. Second, perceptual time compression occurs for AP visual stimuli. Lastly, AV discriminations are determined by A dominance rather than by AV enhancement. PMID:28848406

Monitoring molecular interactions using photon arrival-time interval distribution analysis

Science.gov (United States)

Laurence, Ted A [Livermore, CA; Weiss, Shimon [Los Angels, CA

2009-10-06

A method for analyzing/monitoring the properties of species that are labeled with fluorophores. A detector is used to detect photons emitted from species that are labeled with one or more fluorophores and located in a confocal detection volume. The arrival time of each of the photons is determined. The interval of time between various photon pairs is then determined to provide photon pair intervals. The number of photons that have arrival times within the photon pair intervals is also determined. The photon pair intervals are then used in combination with the corresponding counts of intervening photons to analyze properties and interactions of the molecules including brightness, concentration, coincidence and transit time. The method can be used for analyzing single photon streams and multiple photon streams.

Association between prehospital time interval and short-term outcome in acute heart failure patients.

Science.gov (United States)

Takahashi, Masashi; Kohsaka, Shun; Miyata, Hiroaki; Yoshikawa, Tsutomu; Takagi, Atsutoshi; Harada, Kazumasa; Miyamoto, Takamichi; Sakai, Tetsuo; Nagao, Ken; Sato, Naoki; Takayama, Morimasa

2011-09-01

Acute heart failure (AHF) is one of the most frequently encountered cardiovascular conditions that can seriously affect the patient's prognosis. However, the importance of early triage and treatment initiation in the setting of AHF has not been recognized. The Tokyo Cardiac Care Unit Network Database prospectively collected information of emergency admissions to acute cardiac care facilities in 2005-2007 from 67 participating hospitals in the Tokyo metropolitan area. We analyzed records of 1,218 AHF patients transported to medical centers via emergency medical services (EMS). AHF was defined as rapid onset or change in the signs and symptoms of heart failure, resulting in the need for urgent therapy. Patients with acute coronary syndrome were excluded from this analysis. Logistic regression analysis was performed to calculate the risk-adjusted in-hospital mortality. A majority of the patients were elderly (76.1 ± 11.5 years old) and male (54.1%). The overall in-hospital mortality rate was 6.0%. The median time interval between symptom onset and EMS arrival (response time) was 64 minutes (interquartile range [IQR] 26-205 minutes), and that between EMS arrival and ER arrival (transportation time) was 27 minutes (IQR 9-78 minutes). The risk-adjusted mortality increased with transportation time, but did not correlate with the response time. Those who took >45 minutes to arrive at the medical centers were at a higher risk for in-hospital mortality (odds ratio 2.24, 95% confidence interval 1.17-4.31; P = .015). Transportation time correlated with risk-adjusted mortality, and steps should be taken to reduce the EMS transfer time to improve the outcome in AHF patients. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Detection of surface electromyography recording time interval without muscle fatigue effect for biceps brachii muscle during maximum voluntary contraction.

Science.gov (United States)

Soylu, Abdullah Ruhi; Arpinar-Avsar, Pinar

2010-08-01

The effects of fatigue on maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) parameters were examined by using force and surface electromyography (sEMG) signals of the biceps brachii muscles (BBM) of 12 subjects. The purpose of the study was to find the sEMG time interval of the MVC recordings which is not affected by the muscle fatigue. At least 10s of force and sEMG signals of BBM were recorded simultaneously during MVC. The subjects reached the maximum force level within 2s by slightly increasing the force, and then contracted the BBM maximally. The time index of each sEMG and force signal were labeled with respect to the time index of the maximum force (i.e. after the time normalization, each sEMG or force signal's 0s time index corresponds to maximum force point). Then, the first 8s of sEMG and force signals were divided into 0.5s intervals. Mean force, median frequency (MF) and integrated EMG (iEMG) values were calculated for each interval. Amplitude normalization was performed by dividing the force signals to their mean values of 0s time intervals (i.e. -0.25 to 0.25s). A similar amplitude normalization procedure was repeated for the iEMG and MF signals. Statistical analysis (Friedman test with Dunn's post hoc test) was performed on the time and amplitude normalized signals (MF, iEMG). Although the ANOVA results did not give statistically significant information about the onset of the muscle fatigue, linear regression (mean force vs. time) showed a decreasing slope (Pearson-r=0.9462, pfatigue starts after the 0s time interval as the muscles cannot attain their peak force levels. This implies that the most reliable interval for MVC calculation which is not affected by the muscle fatigue is from the onset of the EMG activity to the peak force time. Mean, SD, and range of this interval (excluding 2s gradual increase time) for 12 subjects were 2353, 1258ms and 536-4186ms, respectively. Exceeding this interval introduces estimation errors in the maximum amplitude calculations

Ratio-based lengths of intervals to improve fuzzy time series forecasting.

Science.gov (United States)

Huarng, Kunhuang; Yu, Tiffany Hui-Kuang

2006-04-01

The objective of this study is to explore ways of determining the useful lengths of intervals in fuzzy time series. It is suggested that ratios, instead of equal lengths of intervals, can more properly represent the intervals among observations. Ratio-based lengths of intervals are, therefore, proposed to improve fuzzy time series forecasting. Algebraic growth data, such as enrollments and the stock index, and exponential growth data, such as inventory demand, are chosen as the forecasting targets, before forecasting based on the various lengths of intervals is performed. Furthermore, sensitivity analyses are also carried out for various percentiles. The ratio-based lengths of intervals are found to outperform the effective lengths of intervals, as well as the arbitrary ones in regard to the different statistical measures. The empirical analysis suggests that the ratio-based lengths of intervals can also be used to improve fuzzy time series forecasting.

Time interval measurement between to emission: a systematics

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bizard, G.; Bougault, R.; Brou, R.; Colin, J.; Durand, D.; Genoux-Lubain, A.; Horn, D.; Kerambrun, A.; Laville, J.L.; Le Brun, C.; Lecolley, J.F.; Lopez, O.; Louvel, M.; Mahi, M.; Meslin, C.; Steckmeyer, J.C.; Tamain, B.; Wieloch, A.

1998-01-01

A systematic study of the evolution of intervals of fragment emission times as a function of the energy deposited in the compound system was performed. Several measurements, Ne at 60 MeV/u, Ar at 30 and 60 MeV/u and two measurements for Kr at 60 MeV/u (central and semi-peripheral collisions) are presented. In all the experiments the target was Au and the mass of the compounds system was around A = 200. The excitation energies per nucleon reached in the case of these heavy systems cover the range of 3 to 5.5 MeV/u. The method used to determine the emission time intervals is based on the correlation functions associated to the relative angle distributions. The gaps between the data and simulations allow to evaluate the emission times. A rapid decrease of these time intervals was observed when the excitation energy increased. This variation starts at 500 fm/c which corresponds to a sequential emission. This relatively long time which indicates a weak interaction between fragments, corresponds practically to the measurement threshold. The shortest intervals (about 50 fm/c) are associated to a spontaneous multifragmentation and were observed in the case of central collisions at Ar+Au and Kr+Au at 60 MeV/u. Two interpretations are possible. The multifragmentation process might be viewed as a sequential process of very short time-separation or else, one can separate two zones heaving in mind that the multifragmentation is predominant from 4,5 MeV/u excitation energy upwards. This question is still open and its study is under way at LPC. An answer could come from the study of the rupture process of an excited nucleus, notably by the determination of its life-time

Time interval measurement between two emissions: Ar + Au

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bizard, G.; Bougault, R.; Brou, R.; Buta, A.; Durand, D.; Genoux-Lubain, A.; Hamdani, T.; Horn, D.; Laville, J.L.; Le Brun, C.; Lecolley, J.F.; Louvel, M.; Peter, J.; Regimbart, R.; Steckmeyer, J.C.; Tamain, B.

1998-01-01

The Ar + Au system was studied at two bombarding energies, 30 and 60 A.MeV. The comparison of the distributions of fragment emission angles in central collisions was carried out by means of a simulation allowing the emission time interval variation. It was found that this interval depends on the bombarding energy (i.e. deposed excitation energy).For 30 A.MeV this interval is 500 fm/c (0.33 · 10 -23 s), while for 60 A.MeV it is so short that the multifragmentation concept can be used

Nonparametric Estimation of Interval Reliability for Discrete-Time Semi-Markov Systems

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Georgiadis, Stylianos; Limnios, Nikolaos

2016-01-01

In this article, we consider a repairable discrete-time semi-Markov system with finite state space. The measure of the interval reliability is given as the probability of the system being operational over a given finite-length time interval. A nonparametric estimator is proposed for the interval...

Foundation for a Time Interval Access Control Model

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Afinidad, Francis B; Levin, Timothy E; Irvine, Cynthia E; Nguyen, Thuy D

2005-01-01

A new model for representing temporal access control policies is introduced. In this model, temporal authorizations are represented by time attributes associated with both subjects and objects, and a time interval access graph...

Finite-Time Stability of Large-Scale Systems with Interval Time-Varying Delay in Interconnection

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

T. La-inchua

2017-01-01

Full Text Available We investigate finite-time stability of a class of nonlinear large-scale systems with interval time-varying delays in interconnection. Time-delay functions are continuous but not necessarily differentiable. Based on Lyapunov stability theory and new integral bounding technique, finite-time stability of large-scale systems with interval time-varying delays in interconnection is derived. The finite-time stability criteria are delays-dependent and are given in terms of linear matrix inequalities which can be solved by various available algorithms. Numerical examples are given to illustrate effectiveness of the proposed method.

Inactivation of the Medial-Prefrontal Cortex Impairs Interval Timing Precision, but Not Timing Accuracy or Scalar Timing in a Peak-Interval Procedure in Rats

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Catalin V. Buhusi

2018-06-01

Full Text Available Motor sequence learning, planning and execution of goal-directed behaviors, and decision making rely on accurate time estimation and production of durations in the seconds-to-minutes range. The pathways involved in planning and execution of goal-directed behaviors include cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical circuitry modulated by dopaminergic inputs. A critical feature of interval timing is its scalar property, by which the precision of timing is proportional to the timed duration. We examined the role of medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC in timing by evaluating the effect of its reversible inactivation on timing accuracy, timing precision and scalar timing. Rats were trained to time two durations in a peak-interval (PI procedure. Reversible mPFC inactivation using GABA agonist muscimol resulted in decreased timing precision, with no effect on timing accuracy and scalar timing. These results are partly at odds with studies suggesting that ramping prefrontal activity is crucial to timing but closely match simulations with the Striatal Beat Frequency (SBF model proposing that timing is coded by the coincidental activation of striatal neurons by cortical inputs. Computer simulations indicate that in SBF, gradual inactivation of cortical inputs results in a gradual decrease in timing precision with preservation of timing accuracy and scalar timing. Further studies are needed to differentiate between timing models based on coincidence detection and timing models based on ramping mPFC activity, and clarify whether mPFC is specifically involved in timing, or more generally involved in attention, working memory, or response selection/inhibition.

Hybrid integrated circuit for charge-to-time interval conversion

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Basiladze, S.G.; Dotsenko, Yu.Yu.; Man' yakov, P.K.; Fedorchenko, S.N. (Joint Inst. for Nuclear Research, Dubna (USSR))

The hybrid integrated circuit for charge-to time interval conversion with nanosecond input fast response is described. The circuit can be used in energy measuring channels, time-to-digital converters and in the modified variant in amplitude-to-digital converters. The converter described consists of a buffer amplifier, a linear transmission circuit, a direct current source and a unit of time interval separation. The buffer amplifier represents a current follower providing low input and high output resistances by the current feedback. It is concluded that the described converter excelled the QT100B circuit analogous to it in a number of parameters especially, in thermostability.

Robust K-Median and K-Means Clustering Algorithms for Incomplete Data

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Jinhua Li

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Incomplete data with missing feature values are prevalent in clustering problems. Traditional clustering methods first estimate the missing values by imputation and then apply the classical clustering algorithms for complete data, such as K-median and K-means. However, in practice, it is often hard to obtain accurate estimation of the missing values, which deteriorates the performance of clustering. To enhance the robustness of clustering algorithms, this paper represents the missing values by interval data and introduces the concept of robust cluster objective function. A minimax robust optimization (RO formulation is presented to provide clustering results, which are insensitive to estimation errors. To solve the proposed RO problem, we propose robust K-median and K-means clustering algorithms with low time and space complexity. Comparisons and analysis of experimental results on both artificially generated and real-world incomplete data sets validate the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.

Perception of short time scale intervals in a hypnotic virtuoso

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Noreika, Valdas; Falter, Christine M.; Arstila, Valtteri; Wearden, John H.; Kallio, Sakari

2012-01-01

Previous studies showed that hypnotized individuals underestimate temporal intervals in the range of several seconds to tens of minutes. However, no previous work has investigated whether duration perception is equally disorderly when shorter time intervals are probed. In this study, duration

Cardiac time intervals by tissue Doppler imaging M-mode echocardiography

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Biering-Sørensen, Tor

2016-01-01

for myocardial myocytes to achieve an LV pressure equal to that of aorta increases, resulting in a prolongation of the isovolumic contraction time (IVCT). Furthermore, the ability of myocardial myocytes to maintain the LV pressure decreases, resulting in reduction in the ejection time (ET). As LV diastolic...... of whether the LV is suffering from impaired systolic or diastolic function. A novel method of evaluating the cardiac time intervals has recently evolved. Using tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) M-mode through the mitral valve (MV) to estimate the cardiac time intervals may be an improved method reflecting global...

Across-province standardization and comparative analysis of time-to-care intervals for cancer

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nugent Zoann

2007-10-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background A set of consistent, standardized definitions of intervals and populations on which to report across provinces is needed to inform the Provincial/Territorial Deputy Ministries of Health on progress of the Ten-Year Plan to Strengthen Health Care. The objectives of this project were to: 1 identify a set of criteria and variables needed to create comparable measures of important time-to-cancer-care intervals that could be applied across provinces and 2 use the measures to compare time-to-care across participating provinces for lung and colorectal cancer patients diagnosed in 2004. Methods A broad-based group of stakeholders from each of the three participating cancer agencies was assembled to identify criteria for time-to-care intervals to standardize, evaluate possible intervals and their corresponding start and end time points, and finalize the selection of intervals to pursue. Inclusion/exclusion criteria were identified for the patient population and the selected time points to reduce potential selection bias. The provincial 2004 colorectal and lung cancer data were used to illustrate across-province comparisons for the selected time-to-care intervals. Results Criteria identified as critical for time-to-care intervals and corresponding start and end points were: 1 relevant to patients, 2 relevant to clinical care, 3 unequivocally defined, and 4 currently captured consistently across cancer agencies. Time from diagnosis to first radiation or chemotherapy treatment and the smaller components, time from diagnosis to first consult with an oncologist and time from first consult to first radiation or chemotherapy treatment, were the only intervals that met all four criteria. Timeliness of care for the intervals evaluated was similar between the provinces for lung cancer patients but significant differences were found for colorectal cancer patients. Conclusion We identified criteria important for selecting time-to-care intervals

Interval timing under a behavioral microscope: Dissociating motivational and timing processes in fixed-interval performance.

Science.gov (United States)

Daniels, Carter W; Sanabria, Federico

2017-03-01

The distribution of latencies and interresponse times (IRTs) of rats was compared between two fixed-interval (FI) schedules of food reinforcement (FI 30 s and FI 90 s), and between two levels of food deprivation. Computational modeling revealed that latencies and IRTs were well described by mixture probability distributions embodying two-state Markov chains. Analysis of these models revealed that only a subset of latencies is sensitive to the periodicity of reinforcement, and prefeeding only reduces the size of this subset. The distribution of IRTs suggests that behavior in FI schedules is organized in bouts that lengthen and ramp up in frequency with proximity to reinforcement. Prefeeding slowed down the lengthening of bouts and increased the time between bouts. When concatenated, latency and IRT models adequately reproduced sigmoidal FI response functions. These findings suggest that behavior in FI schedules fluctuates in and out of schedule control; an account of such fluctuation suggests that timing and motivation are dissociable components of FI performance. These mixture-distribution models also provide novel insights on the motivational, associative, and timing processes expressed in FI performance. These processes may be obscured, however, when performance in timing tasks is analyzed in terms of mean response rates.

Optimal time interval for induction of immunologic adaptive response

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ju Guizhi; Song Chunhua; Liu Shuzheng

1994-01-01

The optimal time interval between prior dose (D1) and challenge dose (D2) for the induction of immunologic adaptive response was investigated. Kunming mice were exposed to 75 mGy X-rays at a dose rate of 12.5 mGy/min. 3, 6, 12, 24 or 60 h after the prior irradiation the mice were challenged with a dose of 1.5 Gy at a dose rate of 0.33 Gy/min. 18h after D2, the mice were sacrificed for examination of immunological parameters. The results showed that with an interval of 6 h between D1 and D2, the adaptive response of the reaction of splenocytes to LPS was induced, and with an interval of 12 h the adaptive responses of spontaneous incorporation of 3 H-TdR into thymocytes and the reaction of splenocytes to Con A and LPS were induced with 75 mGy prior irradiation. The data suggested that the optimal time intervals between D1 and D2 for the induction of immunologic adaptive response were 6 h and 12 h with a D1 of 75 mGy and a D2 of 1.5 Gy. The mechanism of immunologic adaptation following low dose radiation is discussed

Variability of pudendal and median nerve sensory perception thresholds in healthy persons.

Science.gov (United States)

Quaghebeur, Jörgen; Wyndaele, Jean-Jacques

2015-04-01

Normative current perception thresholds (CPTs) are used for the evaluation of sensory function in a variety of diseases. To evaluate the reproducibility of CPT measurements with sinusoidal current in healthy volunteers. Neuroselective CPT evaluations of the median and pudendal nerve in healthy volunteers were repeated with 1 week interval (T1 and T2). In the study group (N = 41) no difference between genders for age (MW-U: P = 0.91) and BMI (t-test: P = 0.18) were found. No significant difference between T1 and T2 was found (Paired t-test: all P-values > 0.05), although the intraclass correlation for each person was low. The variability of measures for the pudendal nerve was: ICC 2 kHz: 0.41; 250 Hz: 0.30; 5 Hz: 0.38, and for the median nerve respectively: 0.58; 0.46; 0.40. Normal CPTs were shown for the pudendal nerve: 2 kHz: 51%; 250 Hz: 76%; 5 Hz: 71%, and median nerve respectively: 78%; 98%; 80%. The pudendal nerve showed more deviating values compared to the median nerve. Both nerves showed deviating values. CPT values with sinusoidal current assessed with 1 week interval, showed a weak intraclass correlation. This finding limits the use of CPT values with this current for longitudinal studies. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Cerebellar Roles in Self-Timing for Sub- and Supra-Second Intervals.

Science.gov (United States)

Ohmae, Shogo; Kunimatsu, Jun; Tanaka, Masaki

2017-03-29

Previous studies suggest that the cerebellum and basal ganglia are involved in sub-second and supra-second timing, respectively. To test this hypothesis at the cellular level, we examined the activity of single neurons in the cerebellar dentate nucleus in monkeys performing the oculomotor version of the self-timing task. Animals were trained to report the passage of time of 400, 600, 1200, or 2400 ms following a visual cue by making self-initiated memory-guided saccades. We found a sizeable preparatory neuronal activity before self-timed saccades across delay intervals, while the time course of activity correlated with the trial-by-trial variation of saccade latency in different ways depending on the length of the delay intervals. For the shorter delay intervals, the ramping up of neuronal firing rate started just after the visual cue and the rate of rise of neuronal activity correlated with saccade timing. In contrast, for the longest delay (2400 ms), the preparatory activity started late during the delay period, and its onset time correlated with self-timed saccade latency. Because electrical microstimulation applied to the recording sites during saccade preparation advanced self-timed but not reactive saccades, regardless of their directions, the signals in the cerebellum may have a causal role in self-timing. We suggest that the cerebellum may regulate timing in both sub-second and supra-second ranges, although its relative contribution might be greater for sub-second than for supra-second time intervals. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT How we decide the timing of self-initiated movement is a fundamental question. According to the prevailing hypothesis, the cerebellum plays a role in monitoring sub-second timing, whereas the basal ganglia are important for supra-second timing. To verify this, we explored neuronal signals in the monkey cerebellum while animals reported the passage of time in the range 400-2400 ms by making eye movements. Contrary to our expectations, we

Characterizing the continuously acquired cardiovascular time series during hemodialysis, using median hybrid filter preprocessing noise reduction.

Science.gov (United States)

Wilson, Scott; Bowyer, Andrea; Harrap, Stephen B

2015-01-01

The clinical characterization of cardiovascular dynamics during hemodialysis (HD) has important pathophysiological implications in terms of diagnostic, cardiovascular risk assessment, and treatment efficacy perspectives. Currently the diagnosis of significant intradialytic systolic blood pressure (SBP) changes among HD patients is imprecise and opportunistic, reliant upon the presence of hypotensive symptoms in conjunction with coincident but isolated noninvasive brachial cuff blood pressure (NIBP) readings. Considering hemodynamic variables as a time series makes a continuous recording approach more desirable than intermittent measures; however, in the clinical environment, the data signal is susceptible to corruption due to both impulsive and Gaussian-type noise. Signal preprocessing is an attractive solution to this problem. Prospectively collected continuous noninvasive SBP data over the short-break intradialytic period in ten patients was preprocessed using a novel median hybrid filter (MHF) algorithm and compared with 50 time-coincident pairs of intradialytic NIBP measures from routine HD practice. The median hybrid preprocessing technique for continuously acquired cardiovascular data yielded a dynamic regression without significant noise and artifact, suitable for high-level profiling of time-dependent SBP behavior. Signal accuracy is highly comparable with standard NIBP measurement, with the added clinical benefit of dynamic real-time hemodynamic information.

Effect of time interval between capecitabine intake and radiotherapy on local recurrence-free survival in preoperative chemoradiation for locally advanced rectal cancer

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kim, Yeon Joo; Kim, Jong Hoon; Yu, Chang Sik; Kim, Tae Won; Jang, Se Jin; Choi, Eun Kyung; Kim, Jin Cheon [Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul (Korea, Republic of); Choi, Won Sik [University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Gangneung (Korea, Republic of)

2017-06-15

The concentration of capecitabine peaks at 1–2 hours after administration. We therefore assumed that proper timing of capecitabine administration and radiotherapy would maximize radiosensitization and influence survival among patients with locally advanced rectal cancer. We retrospectively reviewed 223 patients with locally advanced rectal cancer who underwent preoperative chemoradiation, followed by surgery from January 2002 to May 2006. All patients underwent pelvic radiotherapy (50 Gy/25 fractions) and received capecitabine twice daily at 12-hour intervals (1,650 mg/m2/day). Patients were divided into two groups according to the time interval between capecitabine intake and radiotherapy. Patients who took capecitabine 1 hour before radiotherapy were classified as Group A (n = 109); all others were classified as Group B (n = 114). The median follow-up period was 72 months (range, 7 to 149 months). Although Group A had a significantly higher rate of good responses (44% vs. 25%; p = 0.005), the 5-year local recurrence-free survival rates of 93% in Group A and 97% in Group B did not differ significantly (p = 0.519). The 5-year disease-free survival and overall survival rates were also comparable between the groups. Despite the better pathological response in Group A, the time interval between capecitabine and radiotherapy administration did not have a significant effect on survivals. Further evaluations are needed to clarify the interaction of these treatment modalities.

Relationship between interval from surgery to radiotherapy and local recurrence rate in patients with endometrioid-type endometrial cancer: a retrospective mono-institutional Italian study.

Science.gov (United States)

Fabrini, Maria Grazia; Gadducci, Angiolo; Perrone, Franco; La Liscia, Concetta; Cosio, Stefania; Moda, Stefano; Guerrieri, Maria Elena; Grandinetti, Antonella; Greco, Carlo

2012-01-01

To assess the relationship between the timing of radiotherapy and the risk of local failure in patients with endometrioid-type endometrial cancer who had undergone surgery and adjuvant external pelvic radiotherapy (with or without brachytherapy), but not chemotherapy. One hundred and seventy seven patients were analyzed in this study. The median follow-up of the survivors was 72 months. Radiotherapy was delivered after a median time of 14.6 weeks from surgery and the median overall treatment time was 6.4 weeks. The tumor relapsed in 32 (18.1%) patients after a median time of 21 months. The local recurrence (vaginal or central pelvic) occurred in 11 patients. The local recurrence rate was associated with tumor grade (p=0.02), myometrial invasion (p=0.046), FIGO stage (p=0.003), pathological node status (p=0.037) and time interval from surgery to radiotherapy using 9 weeks as the cut-off value (p=0.046), but not with the overall treatment time. All the local relapses occurred in patients who received adjuvant irradiation after an interval from surgery >9 weeks. The time interval from surgery to radiotherapy might affect the local recurrence rate in patients not receiving chemotherapy. Every possible effort should be made to start radiotherapy within 9 weeks, when radiotherapy only is deemed necessary as adjuvant treatment.

Entrained rhythmic activities of neuronal ensembles as perceptual memory of time interval.

Science.gov (United States)

Sumbre, Germán; Muto, Akira; Baier, Herwig; Poo, Mu-ming

2008-11-06

The ability to process temporal information is fundamental to sensory perception, cognitive processing and motor behaviour of all living organisms, from amoebae to humans. Neural circuit mechanisms based on neuronal and synaptic properties have been shown to process temporal information over the range of tens of microseconds to hundreds of milliseconds. How neural circuits process temporal information in the range of seconds to minutes is much less understood. Studies of working memory in monkeys and rats have shown that neurons in the prefrontal cortex, the parietal cortex and the thalamus exhibit ramping activities that linearly correlate with the lapse of time until the end of a specific time interval of several seconds that the animal is trained to memorize. Many organisms can also memorize the time interval of rhythmic sensory stimuli in the timescale of seconds and can coordinate motor behaviour accordingly, for example, by keeping the rhythm after exposure to the beat of music. Here we report a form of rhythmic activity among specific neuronal ensembles in the zebrafish optic tectum, which retains the memory of the time interval (in the order of seconds) of repetitive sensory stimuli for a duration of up to approximately 20 s. After repetitive visual conditioning stimulation (CS) of zebrafish larvae, we observed rhythmic post-CS activities among specific tectal neuronal ensembles, with a regular interval that closely matched the CS. Visuomotor behaviour of the zebrafish larvae also showed regular post-CS repetitions at the entrained time interval that correlated with rhythmic neuronal ensemble activities in the tectum. Thus, rhythmic activities among specific neuronal ensembles may act as an adjustable 'metronome' for time intervals in the order of seconds, and serve as a mechanism for the short-term perceptual memory of rhythmic sensory experience.

Working time intervals and total work time on nursing positions in Poland

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Danuta Kunecka

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Background: For the last few years a topic of overwork on nursing posts has given rise to strong discussions. The author has set herself a goal of answering the question if it is a result of real overwork of this particular profession or rather commonly assumed frustration of this professional group. The aim of this paper is to conduct the analysis of working time on chosen nursing positions in relation to measures of time being used as intervals in the course of conducting standard professional activities during one working day. Material and Methods: Research material consisted of documentation of work time on chosen nursing workplaces, compiled between 2007–2012 within the framework of a nursing course at the Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin. As a method of measurement a photograph of a working day has been used. Measurements were performed in institutions located in 6 voivodeships in Poland. Results: Results suggest that only 6.5% of total of surveyed representatives of nurse profession spends proper amount of time (meaning: a time set by the applicable standards on work intervals during a working day. Conclusions: The scale of the phenomenon indicates excessive workload for nursing positions, which along with a longer period of time, longer working hours may cause decrease in efficiency of work and cause a drop in quality of provided services. Med Pr 2015;66,(2:165–172

Time-variant random interval natural frequency analysis of structures

Science.gov (United States)

Wu, Binhua; Wu, Di; Gao, Wei; Song, Chongmin

2018-02-01

This paper presents a new robust method namely, unified interval Chebyshev-based random perturbation method, to tackle hybrid random interval structural natural frequency problem. In the proposed approach, random perturbation method is implemented to furnish the statistical features (i.e., mean and standard deviation) and Chebyshev surrogate model strategy is incorporated to formulate the statistical information of natural frequency with regards to the interval inputs. The comprehensive analysis framework combines the superiority of both methods in a way that computational cost is dramatically reduced. This presented method is thus capable of investigating the day-to-day based time-variant natural frequency of structures accurately and efficiently under concrete intrinsic creep effect with probabilistic and interval uncertain variables. The extreme bounds of the mean and standard deviation of natural frequency are captured through the embedded optimization strategy within the analysis procedure. Three particularly motivated numerical examples with progressive relationship in perspective of both structure type and uncertainty variables are demonstrated to justify the computational applicability, accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method.

Interval Timing Deficits Assessed by Time Reproduction Dual Tasks as Cognitive Endophenotypes for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Science.gov (United States)

Hwang-Gu, Shoou-Lian; Gau, Susan Shur-Fen

2015-01-01

The literature has suggested timing processing as a potential endophenotype for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); however, whether the subjective internal clock speed presented by verbal estimation and limited attention capacity presented by time reproduction could be endophenotypes for ADHD is still unknown. We assessed 223 youths with DSM-IV ADHD (age range: 10-17 years), 105 unaffected siblings, and 84 typically developing (TD) youths using psychiatric interviews, intelligence tests, verbal estimation and time reproduction tasks (single task and simple and difficult dual tasks) at 5-second, 12-second, and 17-second intervals. We found that youths with ADHD tended to overestimate time in verbal estimation more than their unaffected siblings and TD youths, implying that fast subjective internal clock speed might be a characteristic of ADHD, rather than an endophenotype for ADHD. Youths with ADHD and their unaffected siblings were less precise in time reproduction dual tasks than TD youths. The magnitude of estimated errors in time reproduction was greater in youths with ADHD and their unaffected siblings than in TD youths, with an increased time interval at the 17-second interval and with increased task demands on both simple and difficult dual tasks versus the single task. Increased impaired time reproduction in dual tasks with increased intervals and task demands were shown in youths with ADHD and their unaffected siblings, suggesting that time reproduction deficits explained by limited attention capacity might be a useful endophenotype of ADHD. PMID:25992899

Investigations of timing during the schedule and reinforcement intervals with wheel-running reinforcement.

Science.gov (United States)

Belke, Terry W; Christie-Fougere, Melissa M

2006-11-01

Across two experiments, a peak procedure was used to assess the timing of the onset and offset of an opportunity to run as a reinforcer. The first experiment investigated the effect of reinforcer duration on temporal discrimination of the onset of the reinforcement interval. Three male Wistar rats were exposed to fixed-interval (FI) 30-s schedules of wheel-running reinforcement and the duration of the opportunity to run was varied across values of 15, 30, and 60s. Each session consisted of 50 reinforcers and 10 probe trials. Results showed that as reinforcer duration increased, the percentage of postreinforcement pauses longer than the 30-s schedule interval increased. On probe trials, peak response rates occurred near the time of reinforcer delivery and peak times varied with reinforcer duration. In a second experiment, seven female Long-Evans rats were exposed to FI 30-s schedules leading to 30-s opportunities to run. Timing of the onset and offset of the reinforcement period was assessed by probe trials during the schedule interval and during the reinforcement interval in separate conditions. The results provided evidence of timing of the onset, but not the offset of the wheel-running reinforcement period. Further research is required to assess if timing occurs during a wheel-running reinforcement period.

Infinite time interval backward stochastic differential equations with continuous coefficients.

Science.gov (United States)

Zong, Zhaojun; Hu, Feng

2016-01-01

In this paper, we study the existence theorem for [Formula: see text] [Formula: see text] solutions to a class of 1-dimensional infinite time interval backward stochastic differential equations (BSDEs) under the conditions that the coefficients are continuous and have linear growths. We also obtain the existence of a minimal solution. Furthermore, we study the existence and uniqueness theorem for [Formula: see text] [Formula: see text] solutions of infinite time interval BSDEs with non-uniformly Lipschitz coefficients. It should be pointed out that the assumptions of this result is weaker than that of Theorem 3.1 in Zong (Turkish J Math 37:704-718, 2013).

Functional Median Polish

KAUST Repository

Sun, Ying

2012-08-03

This article proposes functional median polish, an extension of univariate median polish, for one-way and two-way functional analysis of variance (ANOVA). The functional median polish estimates the functional grand effect and functional main factor effects based on functional medians in an additive functional ANOVA model assuming no interaction among factors. A functional rank test is used to assess whether the functional main factor effects are significant. The robustness of the functional median polish is demonstrated by comparing its performance with the traditional functional ANOVA fitted by means under different outlier models in simulation studies. The functional median polish is illustrated on various applications in climate science, including one-way and two-way ANOVA when functional data are either curves or images. Specifically, Canadian temperature data, U. S. precipitation observations and outputs of global and regional climate models are considered, which can facilitate the research on the close link between local climate and the occurrence or severity of some diseases and other threats to human health. © 2012 International Biometric Society.

[Estimation of the atrioventricular time interval by pulse Doppler in the normal fetal heart].

Science.gov (United States)

Hamela-Olkowska, Anita; Dangel, Joanna

2009-08-01

To assess normative values of the fetal atrioventricular (AV) time interval by pulse-wave Doppler methods on 5-chamber view. Fetal echocardiography exams were performed using Acuson Sequoia 512 in 140 singleton fetuses at 18 to 40 weeks of gestation with sinus rhythm and normal cardiac and extracardiac anatomy. Pulsed Doppler derived AV intervals were measured from left ventricular inflow/outflow view using transabdominal convex 3.5-6 MHz probe. The values of AV time interval ranged from 100 to 150 ms (mean 123 +/- 11.2). The AV interval was negatively correlated with the heart rhythm (page of gestation (p=0.007). However, in the same subgroup of the fetal heart rate there was no relation between AV intervals and gestational age. Therefore, the AV intervals showed only the heart rate dependence. The 95th percentiles of AV intervals according to FHR ranged from 135 to 148 ms. 1. The AV interval duration was negatively correlated with the heart rhythm. 2. Measurement of AV time interval is easy to perform and has a good reproducibility. It may be used for the fetal heart block screening in anti-Ro and anti-La positive pregnancies. 3. Normative values established in the study may help obstetricians in assessing fetal abnormalities of the AV conduction.

Optimizing Time Intervals of Meteorological Data Used with Atmospheric Dose Modeling at SRS

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Simpkins, A.A.

1999-01-01

Measured tritium oxide concentrations in air have been compared with calculated values using routine release Gaussian plume models for different time intervals of meteorological data. These comparisons determined an optimum time interval of meteorological data used with atmospheric dose models at the Savannah River Site (SRS). Meteorological data of varying time intervals (1-yr to 10-yr) were used for the comparison. Insignificant differences are seen in using a one-year database as opposed to a five-year database. Use of a ten-year database results in slightly more conservative results. For meteorological databases of length one to five years the mean ratio of predicted to measured tritium oxide concentrations is approximately 1.25 whereas for the ten-year meteorological database the ration is closer to 1.35. Currently at the Savannah River Site a meteorological database of five years duration is used for all dose models. This study suggests no substantially improved accuracy using meteorological files of shorter or longer time intervals

Development of Kinematic Graphs of Median Nerve during Active Finger Motion: Implications of Smartphone Use.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hoi-Chi Woo

Full Text Available Certain hand activities cause deformation and displacement of the median nerve at the carpal tunnel due to the gliding motion of tendons surrounding it. As smartphone usage escalates, this raises the public's concern whether hand activities while using smartphones can lead to median nerve problems.The aims of this study were to 1 develop kinematic graphs and 2 investigate the associated deformation and rotational information of median nerve in the carpal tunnel during hand activities.Dominant wrists of 30 young adults were examined with ultrasonography by placing a transducer transversely on their wrist crease. Ultrasound video clips were recorded when the subject performing 1 thumb opposition with the wrist in neutral position, 2 thumb opposition with the wrist in ulnar deviation and 3 pinch grip with the wrist in neutral position. Six still images that were separated by 0.2-second intervals were then captured from the ultrasound video for the determination of 1 cross-sectional area (CSA, 2 flattening ratio (FR, 3 rotational displacement (RD and 4 translational displacement (TD of median nerve in the carpal tunnel, and these collected information of deformation, rotational and displacement of median nerve were compared between 1 two successive time points during a single hand activity and 2 different hand motions at the same time point. Finally, kinematic graphs were constructed to demonstrate the mobility of median nerve during different hand activities.Performing different hand activities during this study led to a gradual reduction in CSA of the median nerve, with thumb opposition together with the wrist in ulnar deviation causing the greatest extent of deformation of the median nerve. Thumb opposition with the wrist in ulnar deviation also led to the largest extent of TD when compared to the other two hand activities of this study. Kinematic graphs showed that the motion pathways of median nerve during different hand activities were complex

Cardiac Time Intervals Measured by Tissue Doppler Imaging M-mode

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Biering-Sørensen, Tor; Møgelvang, Rasmus; Schnohr, Peter

2016-01-01

function was evaluated in 1915 participants by using both conventional echocardiography and tissue Doppler imaging (TDI). The cardiac time intervals, including the isovolumic relaxation time (IVRT), isovolumic contraction time (IVCT), and ejection time (ET), were obtained by TDI M-mode through the mitral......). Additionally, they displayed a significant dose-response relationship, between increasing severity of elevated blood pressure and increasing left ventricular mass index (P

The synaptic properties of cells define the hallmarks of interval timing in a recurrent neural network.

Science.gov (United States)

Pérez, Oswaldo; Merchant, Hugo

2018-04-03

Extensive research has described two key features of interval timing. The bias property is associated with accuracy and implies that time is overestimated for short intervals and underestimated for long intervals. The scalar property is linked to precision and states that the variability of interval estimates increases as a function of interval duration. The neural mechanisms behind these properties are not well understood. Here we implemented a recurrent neural network that mimics a cortical ensemble and includes cells that show paired-pulse facilitation and slow inhibitory synaptic currents. The network produces interval selective responses and reproduces both bias and scalar properties when a Bayesian decoder reads its activity. Notably, the interval-selectivity, timing accuracy, and precision of the network showed complex changes as a function of the decay time constants of the modeled synaptic properties and the level of background activity of the cells. These findings suggest that physiological values of the time constants for paired-pulse facilitation and GABAb, as well as the internal state of the network, determine the bias and scalar properties of interval timing. Significant Statement Timing is a fundamental element of complex behavior, including music and language. Temporal processing in a wide variety of contexts shows two primary features: time estimates exhibit a shift towards the mean (the bias property) and are more variable for longer intervals (the scalar property). We implemented a recurrent neural network that includes long-lasting synaptic currents, which can not only produce interval selective responses but also follow the bias and scalar properties. Interestingly, only physiological values of the time constants for paired-pulse facilitation and GABAb, as well as intermediate background activity within the network can reproduce the two key features of interval timing. Copyright © 2018 the authors.

Mean Square Exponential Stability of Stochastic Switched System with Interval Time-Varying Delays

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Manlika Rajchakit

2012-01-01

Full Text Available This paper is concerned with mean square exponential stability of switched stochastic system with interval time-varying delays. The time delay is any continuous function belonging to a given interval, but not necessary to be differentiable. By constructing a suitable augmented Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional combined with Leibniz-Newton’s formula, a switching rule for the mean square exponential stability of switched stochastic system with interval time-varying delays and new delay-dependent sufficient conditions for the mean square exponential stability of the switched stochastic system are first established in terms of LMIs. Numerical example is given to show the effectiveness of the obtained result.

Fault detection for discrete-time LPV systems using interval observers

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Zhi-Hui; Yang, Guang-Hong

2017-10-01

This paper is concerned with the fault detection (FD) problem for discrete-time linear parameter-varying systems subject to bounded disturbances. A parameter-dependent FD interval observer is designed based on parameter-dependent Lyapunov and slack matrices. The design method is presented by translating the parameter-dependent linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) into finite ones. In contrast to the existing results based on parameter-independent and diagonal Lyapunov matrices, the derived disturbance attenuation, fault sensitivity and nonnegative conditions lead to less conservative LMI characterisations. Furthermore, without the need to design the residual evaluation functions and thresholds, the residual intervals generated by the interval observers are used directly for FD decision. Finally, simulation results are presented for showing the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method.

New precession expressions, valid for long time intervals

Science.gov (United States)

Vondrák, J.; Capitaine, N.; Wallace, P.

2011-10-01

Context. The present IAU model of precession, like its predecessors, is given as a set of polynomial approximations of various precession parameters intended for high-accuracy applications over a limited time span. Earlier comparisons with numerical integrations have shown that this model is valid only for a few centuries around the basic epoch, J2000.0, while for more distant epochs it rapidly diverges from the numerical solution. In our preceding studies we also obtained preliminary developments for the precessional contribution to the motion of the equator: coordinates X,Y of the precessing pole and precession parameters ψA,ωA, suitable for use over long time intervals. Aims: The goal of the present paper is to obtain upgraded developments for various sets of precession angles that would fit modern observations near J2000.0 and at the same time fit numerical integration of the motions of solar system bodies on scales of several thousand centuries. Methods: We used the IAU 2006 solutions to represent the precession of the ecliptic and of the equator close to J2000.0 and, for more distant epochs, a numerical integration using the Mercury 6 package and solutions by Laskar et al. (1993, A&A, 270, 522) with upgraded initial conditions and constants to represent the ecliptic, and general precession and obliquity, respectively. From them, different precession parameters were calculated in the interval ± 200 millennia from J2000.0, and analytical expressions are found that provide a good fit for the whole interval. Results: Series for the various precessional parameters, comprising a cubic polynomial plus from 8 to 14 periodic terms, are derived that allow precession to be computed with an accuracy comparable to IAU 2006 around the central epoch J2000.0, a few arcseconds throughout the historical period, and a few tenths of a degree at the ends of the ± 200 millennia time span. Computer algorithms are provided that compute the ecliptic and mean equator poles and the

PERBANDINGAN TRANSFORMASI BOX-COX DAN REGRESI KUANTIL MEDIAN DALAM MENGATASI HETEROSKEDASTISITAS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

NI WAYAN YUNI CAHYANI

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Ordinary least square (OLS is a method that can be used to estimate the parameter in linear regression analysis. There are some assumption which should be satisfied on OLS, one of this assumption is homoscedasticity, that is the variance of error is constant. If variance of the error is unequal that so-called heteroscedasticity. The presence heteroscedasticity can cause estimation with OLS becomes inefficient. Therefore, heteroscedasticity shall be overcome. There are some method that can used to overcome heteroscedasticity, two among those are Box-Cox power transformation and median quantile regression. This research compared Box-Cox power transformation and median quantile regression to overcome heteroscedasticity. Applied Box-Cox power transformation on OLS result ????2point are greater, smaller RMSE point and confidencen interval more narrow, therefore can be concluded that applied of Box-Cox power transformation on OLS better of median quantile regression to overcome heteroscedasticity.

PERBANDINGAN TRANSFORMASI BOX-COX DAN REGRESI KUANTIL MEDIAN DALAM MENGATASI HETEROSKEDASTISITAS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

NI WAYAN YUNI CAHYANI

2015-03-01

Full Text Available Ordinary least square (OLS is a method that can be used to estimate the parameter in linear regression analysis. There are some assumption which should be satisfied on OLS, one of this assumption is homoscedasticity, that is the variance of error is constant. If variance of the error is unequal that so-called heteroscedasticity. The presence heteroscedasticity can cause estimation with OLS becomes inefficient. Therefore, heteroscedasticity shall be overcome. There are some method that can used to overcome heteroscedasticity, two among those are Box-Cox power transformation and median quantile regression. This research compared Box-Cox power transformation and median quantile regression to overcome heteroscedasticity. Applied Box-Cox power transformation on OLS result ????2point are greater, smaller RMSE point and confidencen interval more narrow, therefore can be concluded that applied of Box-Cox power transformation on OLS better of median quantile regression to overcome heteroscedasticity.

Cardiac Time Intervals by Tissue Doppler Imaging M-Mode

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Biering-Sørensen, Tor; Mogelvang, Rasmus; de Knegt, Martina Chantal

2016-01-01

PURPOSE: To define normal values of the cardiac time intervals obtained by tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) M-mode through the mitral valve (MV). Furthermore, to evaluate the association of the myocardial performance index (MPI) obtained by TDI M-mode (MPITDI) and the conventional method of obtaining...

Discriminator/time interval meter system evaluation report

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Condreva, K. J.

1976-04-12

The purpose of this report is to discuss the evaluation of a modular prototype Discriminator/Time Interval Meter data acquisition unit as a useful tool in a digital diagnostics system. The characteristics, operation and calibration of each of the hardware components are discussed in some detail. A discussion of the system calibration, operation, and data ingestion and reduction is also given. System test results to date are given and discussed. Finally, recommendations and conclusions concerning the capabilities of the Discriminator/T.I.M. system based on test and calibration results to date are given.

Discriminator/time interval meter system evaluation report

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Condreva, K.J.

1976-01-01

The purpose of this report is to discuss the evaluation of a modular prototype Discriminator/Time Interval Meter data acquisition unit as a useful tool in a digital diagnostics system. The characteristics, operation and calibration of each of the hardware components are discussed in some detail. A discussion of the system calibration, operation, and data ingestion and reduction is also given. System test results to date are given and discussed. Finally, recommendations and conclusions concerning the capabilities of the Discriminator/T.I.M. system based on test and calibration results to date are given

The 22nd Annual Precise Time and Time Interval (PTTI) Applications and Planning Meeting

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sydnor, R.L.

1990-05-01

Papers presented at the 22nd Annual Precise Time and Time Interval (PTTI) Applications and Planning Meeting are compiled. The following subject areas are covered: Rb, Cs, and H-based frequency standards and cryogenic and trapped-ion technology; satellite laser tracking networks, GLONASS timing, intercomparison of national time scales and international telecommunications; telecommunications, power distribution, platform positioning, and geophysical survey industries; military communications and navigation systems; and dissemination of precise time and frequency by means of GPS, GLONASS, MIL STAR, LORAN, and synchronous communication satellites

Probing interval timing with scalp-recorded electroencephalography (EEG).

Science.gov (United States)

Ng, Kwun Kei; Penney, Trevor B

2014-01-01

Humans, and other animals, are able to easily learn the durations of events and the temporal relationships among them in spite of the absence of a dedicated sensory organ for time. This chapter summarizes the investigation of timing and time perception using scalp-recorded electroencephalography (EEG), a non-invasive technique that measures brain electrical potentials on a millisecond time scale. Over the past several decades, much has been learned about interval timing through the examination of the characteristic features of averaged EEG signals (i.e., event-related potentials, ERPs) elicited in timing paradigms. For example, the mismatch negativity (MMN) and omission potential (OP) have been used to study implicit and explicit timing, respectively, the P300 has been used to investigate temporal memory updating, and the contingent negative variation (CNV) has been used as an index of temporal decision making. In sum, EEG measures provide biomarkers of temporal processing that allow researchers to probe the cognitive and neural substrates underlying time perception.

Frequency interval balanced truncation of discrete-time bilinear systems

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jazlan, Ahmad; Sreeram, Victor; Shaker, Hamid Reza

2016-01-01

This paper presents the development of a new model reduction method for discrete-time bilinear systems based on the balanced truncation framework. In many model reduction applications, it is advantageous to analyze the characteristics of the system with emphasis on particular frequency intervals...... are the solution to a pair of new generalized Lyapunov equations. The conditions for solvability of these new generalized Lyapunov equations are derived and a numerical solution method for solving these generalized Lyapunov equations is presented. Numerical examples which illustrate the usage of the new...... generalized frequency interval controllability and observability gramians as part of the balanced truncation framework are provided to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method....

Count-to-count time interval distribution analysis in a fast reactor

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Perez-Navarro Gomez, A.

1973-01-01

The most important kinetic parameters have been measured at the zero power fast reactor CORAL-I by means of the reactor noise analysis in the time domain, using measurements of the count-to-count time intervals. (Author) 69 refs

More consistent, yet less sensitive : Interval timing in autism spectrum disorders

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Falter, Christine M.; Noreika, Valdas; Wearden, John H.; Bailey, Anthony J.

2012-01-01

Even though phenomenological observations and anecdotal reports suggest atypical time processing in individuals with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), very few psychophysical studies have investigated interval timing, and the obtained results are contradictory. The present study aimed to clarify

Semiparametric regression analysis of failure time data with dependent interval censoring.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Chyong-Mei; Shen, Pao-Sheng

2017-09-20

Interval-censored failure-time data arise when subjects are examined or observed periodically such that the failure time of interest is not examined exactly but only known to be bracketed between two adjacent observation times. The commonly used approaches assume that the examination times and the failure time are independent or conditionally independent given covariates. In many practical applications, patients who are already in poor health or have a weak immune system before treatment usually tend to visit physicians more often after treatment than those with better health or immune system. In this situation, the visiting rate is positively correlated with the risk of failure due to the health status, which results in dependent interval-censored data. While some measurable factors affecting health status such as age, gender, and physical symptom can be included in the covariates, some health-related latent variables cannot be observed or measured. To deal with dependent interval censoring involving unobserved latent variable, we characterize the visiting/examination process as recurrent event process and propose a joint frailty model to account for the association of the failure time and visiting process. A shared gamma frailty is incorporated into the Cox model and proportional intensity model for the failure time and visiting process, respectively, in a multiplicative way. We propose a semiparametric maximum likelihood approach for estimating model parameters and show the asymptotic properties, including consistency and weak convergence. Extensive simulation studies are conducted and a data set of bladder cancer is analyzed for illustrative purposes. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Robust stability analysis of uncertain stochastic neural networks with interval time-varying delay

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Feng Wei; Yang, Simon X.; Fu Wei; Wu Haixia

2009-01-01

This paper addresses the stability analysis problem for uncertain stochastic neural networks with interval time-varying delays. The parameter uncertainties are assumed to be norm bounded, and the delay factor is assumed to be time-varying and belong to a given interval, which means that the lower and upper bounds of interval time-varying delays are available. A sufficient condition is derived such that for all admissible uncertainties, the considered neural network is robustly, globally, asymptotically stable in the mean square. Some stability criteria are formulated by means of the feasibility of a linear matrix inequality (LMI), which can be effectively solved by some standard numerical packages. Finally, numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed criteria.

Characterizing the continuously acquired cardiovascular time series during hemodialysis, using median hybrid filter preprocessing noise reduction

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wilson S

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Scott Wilson,1,2 Andrea Bowyer,3 Stephen B Harrap4 1Department of Renal Medicine, The Alfred Hospital, 2Baker IDI, Melbourne, 3Department of Anaesthesia, Royal Melbourne Hospital, 4University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia Abstract: The clinical characterization of cardiovascular dynamics during hemodialysis (HD has important pathophysiological implications in terms of diagnostic, cardiovascular risk assessment, and treatment efficacy perspectives. Currently the diagnosis of significant intradialytic systolic blood pressure (SBP changes among HD patients is imprecise and opportunistic, reliant upon the presence of hypotensive symptoms in conjunction with coincident but isolated noninvasive brachial cuff blood pressure (NIBP readings. Considering hemodynamic variables as a time series makes a continuous recording approach more desirable than intermittent measures; however, in the clinical environment, the data signal is susceptible to corruption due to both impulsive and Gaussian-type noise. Signal preprocessing is an attractive solution to this problem. Prospectively collected continuous noninvasive SBP data over the short-break intradialytic period in ten patients was preprocessed using a novel median hybrid filter (MHF algorithm and compared with 50 time-coincident pairs of intradialytic NIBP measures from routine HD practice. The median hybrid preprocessing technique for continuously acquired cardiovascular data yielded a dynamic regression without significant noise and artifact, suitable for high-level profiling of time-dependent SBP behavior. Signal accuracy is highly comparable with standard NIBP measurement, with the added clinical benefit of dynamic real-time hemodynamic information. Keywords: continuous monitoring, blood pressure

Internal representations of temporal statistics and feedback calibrate motor-sensory interval timing.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Luigi Acerbi

Full Text Available Humans have been shown to adapt to the temporal statistics of timing tasks so as to optimize the accuracy of their responses, in agreement with the predictions of Bayesian integration. This suggests that they build an internal representation of both the experimentally imposed distribution of time intervals (the prior and of the error (the loss function. The responses of a Bayesian ideal observer depend crucially on these internal representations, which have only been previously studied for simple distributions. To study the nature of these representations we asked subjects to reproduce time intervals drawn from underlying temporal distributions of varying complexity, from uniform to highly skewed or bimodal while also varying the error mapping that determined the performance feedback. Interval reproduction times were affected by both the distribution and feedback, in good agreement with a performance-optimizing Bayesian observer and actor model. Bayesian model comparison highlighted that subjects were integrating the provided feedback and represented the experimental distribution with a smoothed approximation. A nonparametric reconstruction of the subjective priors from the data shows that they are generally in agreement with the true distributions up to third-order moments, but with systematically heavier tails. In particular, higher-order statistical features (kurtosis, multimodality seem much harder to acquire. Our findings suggest that humans have only minor constraints on learning lower-order statistical properties of unimodal (including peaked and skewed distributions of time intervals under the guidance of corrective feedback, and that their behavior is well explained by Bayesian decision theory.

An Intervention to Reduce the Time Interval Between Hospital Entry and Emergency Coronary Angiography in Patients with ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction.

Science.gov (United States)

Karkabi, Basheer; Jaffe, Ronen; Halon, David A; Merdler, Amnon; Khader, Nader; Rubinshtein, Ronen; Goldstein, Jacob; Zafrir, Barak; Zissman, Keren; Ben-Dov, Nissan; Gabrielly, Michael; Fuks, Alex; Shiran, Avinoam; Adawi, Salim; Hellman, Yaron; Shahla, Johny; Halabi, Salim; Flugelman, Moshe Y; Cohen, Shai; Bergman, Irina; Kassem, Sameer; Shapira, Chen

2017-09-01

Outcomes of patients with acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) are strongly correlated to the time interval from hospital entry to primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI). Current guidelines recommend a door to balloon time of < 90 minutes. To reduce the time from hospital admission to PPCI and to increase the proportion of patients treated within 90 minutes. In March 2013 the authors launched a seven-component intervention program:  Direct patient evacuation by out-of-hospital emergency medical services to the coronary intensive care unit or catheterization laboratory Education program for the emergency department staff Dissemination of information regarding the urgency of the PPCI decision Activation of the catheterization team by a single phone call Reimbursement for transportation costs to on-call staff who use their own cars Improvement in the quality of medical records Investigation of failed cases and feedback. During the 14 months prior to the intervention, initiation of catheterization occurred within 90 minutes of hospital arrival in 88/133 patients(65%); during the 18 months following the start of the intervention, the rate was 181/200 (90%) (P < 0.01). The respective mean/median times to treatment were 126/67 minutes and 52/47 minutes (P < 0.01). Intervention also resulted in shortening of the time interval from hospital entry to PPCI on nights and weekends. Following implementation of a comprehensive intervention, the time from hospital admission to PPCI of STEMI patients shortened significantly, as did the proportion of patients treated within 90 minutes of hospital arrival.

The importance of time interval to development of second tumor in metachronous bilateral wilms' tumor

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Paulino, Arnold C.; Thakkar, Bharat; Henderson, William G.

1997-01-01

Purpose: To determine whether the time interval to development of second tumor is a prognostic factor for overall survival in children with metachronous bilateral Wilms' tumor and to give a recommendation regarding screening of the contralateral kidney in patients with Wilms' tumor. Materials and Management: A literature search using MEDLINE was performed of manuscripts in the English language from 1950-1996 and identified 108 children with metachronous bilateral Wilms' tumor. Children were classified according to time interval to development of a contralateral Wilms' tumor ( 78 mos (2), 78 - < 84 mos (1), 84 - < 90 mos (0), 90 - < 96 mos (1), ≥ 96 mos (0). Analysis of overall survival in patients with a time interval of < 18 months and ≥ 18 months showed a 10 year survival of 39.6% and 55.2%, respectively (p = 0.024, log-rank test). Conclusions: Children with metachronous bilateral Wilms' tumor who develop a contralateral tumor at a time interval of ≥ 18 months from the initial Wilms' tumor had a better overall survival than children with a time interval of < 18 months. Screening by abdominal ultrasound of the contralateral kidney for more than 5 years after initial diagnosis of Wilms' tumor may not be necessary since 102/106 (96.2%) of children had a time interval to second tumor of < 60 months

Procedure prediction from symbolic Electronic Health Records via time intervals analytics.

Science.gov (United States)

Moskovitch, Robert; Polubriaginof, Fernanda; Weiss, Aviram; Ryan, Patrick; Tatonetti, Nicholas

2017-11-01

Prediction of medical events, such as clinical procedures, is essential for preventing disease, understanding disease mechanism, and increasing patient quality of care. Although longitudinal clinical data from Electronic Health Records provides opportunities to develop predictive models, the use of these data faces significant challenges. Primarily, while the data are longitudinal and represent thousands of conceptual events having duration, they are also sparse, complicating the application of traditional analysis approaches. Furthermore, the framework presented here takes advantage of the events duration and gaps. International standards for electronic healthcare data represent data elements, such as procedures, conditions, and drug exposures, using eras, or time intervals. Such eras contain both an event and a duration and enable the application of time intervals mining - a relatively new subfield of data mining. In this study, we present Maitreya, a framework for time intervals analytics in longitudinal clinical data. Maitreya discovers frequent time intervals related patterns (TIRPs), which we use as prognostic markers for modelling clinical events. We introduce three novel TIRP metrics that are normalized versions of the horizontal-support, that represents the number of TIRP instances per patient. We evaluate Maitreya on 28 frequent and clinically important procedures, using the three novel TIRP representation metrics in comparison to no temporal representation and previous TIRPs metrics. We also evaluate the epsilon value that makes Allen's relations more flexible with several settings of 30, 60, 90 and 180days in comparison to the default zero. For twenty-two of these procedures, the use of temporal patterns as predictors was superior to non-temporal features, and the use of the vertically normalized horizontal support metric to represent TIRPs as features was most effective. The use of the epsilon value with thirty days was slightly better than the zero

Opposite Distortions in Interval Timing Perception for Visual and Auditory Stimuli with Temporal Modulations.

Science.gov (United States)

Yuasa, Kenichi; Yotsumoto, Yuko

2015-01-01

When an object is presented visually and moves or flickers, the perception of its duration tends to be overestimated. Such an overestimation is called time dilation. Perceived time can also be distorted when a stimulus is presented aurally as an auditory flutter, but the mechanisms and their relationship to visual processing remains unclear. In the present study, we measured interval timing perception while modulating the temporal characteristics of visual and auditory stimuli, and investigated whether the interval times of visually and aurally presented objects shared a common mechanism. In these experiments, participants compared the durations of flickering or fluttering stimuli to standard stimuli, which were presented continuously. Perceived durations for auditory flutters were underestimated, while perceived durations of visual flickers were overestimated. When auditory flutters and visual flickers were presented simultaneously, these distortion effects were cancelled out. When auditory flutters were presented with a constantly presented visual stimulus, the interval timing perception of the visual stimulus was affected by the auditory flutters. These results indicate that interval timing perception is governed by independent mechanisms for visual and auditory processing, and that there are some interactions between the two processing systems.

Changes in crash risk following re-timing of traffic signal change intervals.

Science.gov (United States)

Retting, Richard A; Chapline, Janella F; Williams, Allan F

2002-03-01

More than I million motor vehicle crashes occur annually at signalized intersections in the USA. The principal method used to prevent crashes associated with routine changes in signal indications is employment of a traffic signal change interval--a brief yellow and all-red period that follows the green indication. No universal practice exists for selecting the duration of change intervals, and little is known about the influence of the duration of the change interval on crash risk. The purpose of this study was to estimate potential crash effects of modifying the duration of traffic signal change intervals to conform with values associated with a proposed recommended practice published by the Institute of Transportation Engineers. A sample of 122 intersections was identified and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Of 51 eligible experimental sites, 40 (78%) needed signal timing changes. For the 3-year period following implementation of signal timing changes, there was an 8% reduction in reportable crashes at experimental sites relative to those occurring at control sites (P = 0.08). For injury crashes, a 12% reduction at experimental sites relative to those occurring at control sites was found (P = 0.03). Pedestrian and bicycle crashes at experimental sites decreased 37% (P = 0.03) relative to controls. Given these results and the relatively low cost of re-timing traffic signals, modifying the duration of traffic signal change intervals to conform with values associated with the Institute of Transportation Engineers' proposed recommended practice should be strongly considered by transportation agencies to reduce the frequency of urban motor vehicle crashes.

Statistical properties of the deviations of f 0 F 2 from monthly medians

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Y. Tulunay

2002-06-01

Full Text Available The deviations of hourly f 0 F 2 from monthly medians for 20 stations in Europe during the period 1958-1998 are studied. Spectral analysis is used to show that, both for original data (for each hour and for the deviations from monthly medians, the deterministic components are the harmonics of 11 years (solar cycle, 1 year and its harmonics, 27 days and 12 h 50.49 m (2nd harmonic of lunar rotation period L 2 periodicities. Using histograms for one year samples, it is shown that the deviations from monthly medians are nearly zero mean (mean < 0.5 and approximately Gaussian (relative difference range between %10 to %20 and their standard deviations are larger for daylight hours (in the range 5-7. It is shown that the amplitude distribution of the positive and negative deviations is nearly symmetrical at night hours, but asymmetrical for day hours. The positive and negative deviations are then studied separately and it is observed that the positive deviations are nearly independent of R12 except for high latitudes, but negative deviations are modulated by R12 . The 90% confidence interval for negative deviations for each station and each hour is computed as a linear model in terms of R12. After correction for local time, it is shown that for all hours the confidence intervals increase with latitude but decrease above 60N. Long-term trend analysis showed that there is an increase in the amplitude of positive deviations from monthly means irrespective of the solar conditions. Using spectral analysis it is also shown that the seasonal dependency of negative deviations is more accentuated than the seasonal dependency of positive deviations especially at low latitudes. In certain stations, it is also observed that the 4th harmonic of 1 year corresponding to a periodicity of 3 months, which is missing in f 0 F 2 data, appears in the spectra of negative variations.

Quantification of transuranic elements by time interval correlation spectroscopy of the detected neutrons

Science.gov (United States)

Baeten; Bruggeman; Paepen; Carchon

2000-03-01

The non-destructive quantification of transuranic elements in nuclear waste management or in safeguards verifications is commonly performed by passive neutron assay techniques. To minimise the number of unknown sample-dependent parameters, Neutron Multiplicity Counting (NMC) is applied. We developed a new NMC-technique, called Time Interval Correlation Spectroscopy (TICS), which is based on the measurement of Rossi-alpha time interval distributions. Compared to other NMC-techniques, TICS offers several advantages.

Embodiment and the origin of interval timing: kinematic and electromyographic data.

Science.gov (United States)

Addyman, Caspar; Rocha, Sinead; Fautrelle, Lilian; French, Robert M; Thomas, Elizabeth; Mareschal, Denis

2017-03-01

Recent evidence suggests that interval timing (the judgment of durations lasting from approximately 500 ms. to a few minutes) is closely coupled to the action control system. We used surface electromyography (EMG) and motion capture technology to explore the emergence of this coupling in 4-, 6-, and 8-month-olds. We engaged infants in an active and socially relevant arm-raising task with seven cycles and response period. In one condition, cycles were slow (every 4 s); in another, they were fast (every 2 s). In the slow condition, we found evidence of time-locked sub-threshold EMG activity even in the absence of any observed overt motor responses at all three ages. This study shows that EMGs can be a more sensitive measure of interval timing in early development than overt behavior.

Beat-to-beat systolic time-interval measurement from heart sounds and ECG

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Paiva, R P; Carvalho, P; Couceiro, R; Henriques, J; Antunes, M; Quintal, I; Muehlsteff, J

2012-01-01

Systolic time intervals are highly correlated to fundamental cardiac functions. Several studies have shown that these measurements have significant diagnostic and prognostic value in heart failure condition and are adequate for long-term patient follow-up and disease management. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of using heart sound (HS) to accurately measure the opening and closing moments of the aortic heart valve. These moments are crucial to define the main systolic timings of the heart cycle, i.e. pre-ejection period (PEP) and left ventricular ejection time (LVET). We introduce an algorithm for automatic extraction of PEP and LVET using HS and electrocardiogram. PEP is estimated with a Bayesian approach using the signal's instantaneous amplitude and patient-specific time intervals between atrio-ventricular valve closure and aortic valve opening. As for LVET, since the aortic valve closure corresponds to the start of the S2 HS component, we base LVET estimation on the detection of the S2 onset. A comparative assessment of the main systolic time intervals is performed using synchronous signal acquisitions of the current gold standard in cardiac time-interval measurement, i.e. echocardiography, and HS. The algorithms were evaluated on a healthy population, as well as on a group of subjects with different cardiovascular diseases (CVD). In the healthy group, from a set of 942 heartbeats, the proposed algorithm achieved 7.66 ± 5.92 ms absolute PEP estimation error. For LVET, the absolute estimation error was 11.39 ± 8.98 ms. For the CVD population, 404 beats were used, leading to 11.86 ± 8.30 and 17.51 ± 17.21 ms absolute PEP and LVET errors, respectively. The results achieved in this study suggest that HS can be used to accurately estimate LVET and PEP. (paper)

Allegheny County Median Age at Death

Data.gov (United States)

Allegheny County / City of Pittsburgh / Western PA Regional Data Center — The median age at death is calculated for each municipality in Allegheny County. Data is based on the decedent's residence at the time of death, not the location...

Time interval measurement between two emissions: Kr + Au

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Aboufirassi, M; Bougault, R.; Brou, R.; Colin, J.; Durand, D.; Genoux-Lubain, A.; Horn, D.; Laville, J.L.; Le Brun, C.; Lecolley, J.F.; Lefebvres, F.; Lopez, O.; Louvel, M.; Mahi, M.; Steckmeyer, J.C.; Tamain, B.

1998-01-01

To indicate the method allowing the determination of the emission intervals, the results obtained with the Kr + Au system at 43 and 60 A.MeV are presented. The experiments were performed with the NAUTILUS exclusive detectors. Central collisions were selected by means of a relative velocity criterion to reject the events containing a forward emitted fragment. For the two bombardment energies the data analysis shows that the formation of a compound of mass around A = 200. By comparing the fragment dynamical variables with simulations one can conclude about the simultaneity of the compound deexcitation processes. It was found that a 5 MeV/A is able to reproduce the characteristics of the detected fragments. Also, it was found that to reproduce the dynamical characteristics of the fragments issued from central collisions it was not necessary to superimpose a radial collective energy upon the Coulomb and thermal motion. The distribution of the relative angles between detected fragments is used here as a chronometer. For simultaneous ruptures the small relative angles are forbidden by the Coulomb repulsion, while for sequential processes this interdiction is the more lifted the longer the interval between the two emissions is. For the system discussed here the comparison between simulation and data has been carried out for the extreme cases, i.e. for a vanishing and infinite time interval between the two emissions, respectively. More sophisticated simulations to describe angular distributions between the emitted fragments were also developed

Systolic time intervals vs invasive predictors of fluid responsiveness after coronary artery bypass surgery(dagger)

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Smorenberg, A.; Lust, E.J.; Beishuizen, A.; Meijer, J.H.; Verdaasdonk, R.M.; Groeneveld, A.B.J.

2013-01-01

OBJECTIVES: Haemodynamic parameters for predicting fluid responsiveness in intensive care patients are invasive, technically challenging or not universally applicable. We compared the initial systolic time interval (ISTI), a non-invasive measure of the time interval between the electrical and

Characterization of Cardiac Time Intervals in Healthy Bonnet Macaques (Macaca radiata) by Using an Electronic Stethoscope

Science.gov (United States)

Kamran, Haroon; Salciccioli, Louis; Pushilin, Sergei; Kumar, Paraag; Carter, John; Kuo, John; Novotney, Carol; Lazar, Jason M

2011-01-01

Nonhuman primates are used frequently in cardiovascular research. Cardiac time intervals derived by phonocardiography have long been used to assess left ventricular function. Electronic stethoscopes are simple low-cost systems that display heart sound signals. We assessed the use of an electronic stethoscope to measure cardiac time intervals in 48 healthy bonnet macaques (age, 8 ± 5 y) based on recorded heart sounds. Technically adequate recordings were obtained from all animals and required 1.5 ± 1.3 min. The following cardiac time intervals were determined by simultaneously recording acoustic and single-lead electrocardiographic data: electromechanical activation time (QS1), electromechanical systole (QS2), the time interval between the first and second heart sounds (S1S2), and the time interval between the second and first sounds (S2S1). QS2 was correlated with heart rate, mean arterial pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and left ventricular ejection time determined by using echocardiography. S1S2 correlated with heart rate, mean arterial pressure, diastolic blood pressure, left ventricular ejection time, and age. S2S1 correlated with heart rate, mean arterial pressure, diastolic blood pressure, systolic blood pressure, and left ventricular ejection time. QS1 did not correlate with any anthropometric or echocardiographic parameter. The relation S1S2/S2S1 correlated with systolic blood pressure. On multivariate analyses, heart rate was the only independent predictor of QS2, S1S2, and S2S1. In conclusion, determination of cardiac time intervals is feasible and reproducible by using an electrical stethoscope in nonhuman primates. Heart rate is a major determinant of QS2, S1S2, and S2S1 but not QS1; regression equations for reference values for cardiac time intervals in bonnet macaques are provided. PMID:21439218

Median nail dystrophy involving the thumb nail

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rahulkrishna Kota

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Median canaliform dystrophy of Heller is a rare entity characterized by a midline or a paramedian ridge or split and canal formation in nail plate of one or both the thumb nails. It is an acquired condition resulting from a temporary defect in the matrix that interferes with nail formation. Habitual picking of the nail base may be responsible for some cases. Histopathology classically shows parakeratosis, accumulation of melanin within and between the nail bed keratinocytes. Treatment of median nail dystrophy includes injectable triamcinalone acetonide, topical 0.1% tacrolimus, and tazarotene 0.05%, which is many a times challenging for a dermatologist. Psychiatric opinion should be taken when associated with the depressive, obsessive-compulsive, or impulse-control disorder. We report a case of 19-year-old male diagnosed as median nail dystrophy.

Large window median filtering on Clip7

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Mathews, K N

1983-07-01

Median filtering has been found to be a useful operation to perform on images in order to reduce random noise while preserving edges of objects. However, in some cases, as the resolution of the image increases, so too does the required window size of the filter. For parallel array processors, this leads to problems when dealing with the large amount of data involved. That is to say that there tend to be problems over slow access of data from pixels over a large neighbourhood, lack of available storage of this data during the operation and long computational times for finding the median. An algorithm for finding the median, designed for use on byte wide architecture parallel array processors is presented together with its implementation on Clip7, a scanning array of such processors. 6 references.

The time interval distribution of sand–dust storms in theory: testing with observational data for Yanchi, China

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Liu, Guoliang; Zhang, Feng; Hao, Lizhen

2012-01-01

We previously introduced a time record model for use in studying the duration of sand–dust storms. In the model, X is the normalized wind speed and Xr is the normalized wind speed threshold for the sand–dust storm. X is represented by a random signal with a normal Gaussian distribution. The storms occur when X ≥ Xr. From this model, the time interval distribution of N = Aexp(−bt) can be deduced, wherein N is the number of time intervals with length greater than t, A and b are constants, and b is related to Xr. In this study, sand–dust storm data recorded in spring at the Yanchi meteorological station in China were analysed to verify whether the time interval distribution of the sand–dust storms agrees with the above time interval distribution. We found that the distribution of the time interval between successive sand–dust storms in April agrees well with the above exponential equation. However, the interval distribution for the sand–dust storm data for the entire spring period displayed a better fit to the Weibull equation and depended on the variation of the sand–dust storm threshold wind speed. (paper)

Design of time interval generator based on hybrid counting method

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yao, Yuan; Wang, Zhaoqi; Lu, Houbing; Chen, Lian; Jin, Ge

2016-01-01

Time Interval Generators (TIGs) are frequently used for the characterizations or timing operations of instruments in particle physics experiments. Though some “off-the-shelf” TIGs can be employed, the necessity of a custom test system or control system makes the TIGs, being implemented in a programmable device desirable. Nowadays, the feasibility of using Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) to implement particle physics instrumentation has been validated in the design of Time-to-Digital Converters (TDCs) for precise time measurement. The FPGA-TDC technique is based on the architectures of Tapped Delay Line (TDL), whose delay cells are down to few tens of picosecond. In this case, FPGA-based TIGs with high delay step are preferable allowing the implementation of customized particle physics instrumentations and other utilities on the same FPGA device. A hybrid counting method for designing TIGs with both high resolution and wide range is presented in this paper. The combination of two different counting methods realizing an integratable TIG is described in detail. A specially designed multiplexer for tap selection is emphatically introduced. The special structure of the multiplexer is devised for minimizing the different additional delays caused by the unpredictable routings from different taps to the output. A Kintex-7 FPGA is used for the hybrid counting-based implementation of a TIG, providing a resolution up to 11 ps and an interval range up to 8 s.

Design of time interval generator based on hybrid counting method

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Yao, Yuan [State Key Laboratory of Particle Detection and Electronics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026 (China); Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031 (China); Wang, Zhaoqi [State Key Laboratory of Particle Detection and Electronics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026 (China); Lu, Houbing [State Key Laboratory of Particle Detection and Electronics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026 (China); Hefei Electronic Engineering Institute, Hefei 230037 (China); Chen, Lian [State Key Laboratory of Particle Detection and Electronics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026 (China); Jin, Ge, E-mail: goldjin@ustc.edu.cn [State Key Laboratory of Particle Detection and Electronics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026 (China)

2016-10-01

Time Interval Generators (TIGs) are frequently used for the characterizations or timing operations of instruments in particle physics experiments. Though some “off-the-shelf” TIGs can be employed, the necessity of a custom test system or control system makes the TIGs, being implemented in a programmable device desirable. Nowadays, the feasibility of using Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) to implement particle physics instrumentation has been validated in the design of Time-to-Digital Converters (TDCs) for precise time measurement. The FPGA-TDC technique is based on the architectures of Tapped Delay Line (TDL), whose delay cells are down to few tens of picosecond. In this case, FPGA-based TIGs with high delay step are preferable allowing the implementation of customized particle physics instrumentations and other utilities on the same FPGA device. A hybrid counting method for designing TIGs with both high resolution and wide range is presented in this paper. The combination of two different counting methods realizing an integratable TIG is described in detail. A specially designed multiplexer for tap selection is emphatically introduced. The special structure of the multiplexer is devised for minimizing the different additional delays caused by the unpredictable routings from different taps to the output. A Kintex-7 FPGA is used for the hybrid counting-based implementation of a TIG, providing a resolution up to 11 ps and an interval range up to 8 s.

Contemporary management of median arcuate ligament syndrome provides early symptom improvement

Science.gov (United States)

Columbo, Jesse A.; Trus, Thadeus; Nolan, Brian; Goodney, Philip; Rzucidlo, Eva; Powell, Richard; Walsh, Daniel; Stone, David

2017-01-01

Objective Optimal diagnosis and management of median arcuate ligament (MAL) syndrome (MALS) remains unclear in contemporary practice. The advent and evolution of laparoscopic and endovascular techniques has redirected management toward a less invasive therapeutic algorithm. This study examined our contemporary outcomes of patients treated for MALS. Methods All patients treated for MALS at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center from 2000 to 2013 were retrospectively reviewed. Demographics and comorbidities were recorded. Freedom from symptoms and freedom from reintervention were the primary end points. Return to work or school was assessed. Follow-up by clinic visits and telephone allowed quantitative comparisons among the patients. Results During the study interval, 21 patients (24% male), with a median age of 42 years, were treated for MALS. All patients complained of abdominal pain in the presence of a celiac stenosis, 16 (76%) also reported weight loss at the time of presentation, and 57% had a concomitant psychiatric history. Diagnostic imaging most commonly used included duplex ultrasound (81%), computed tomography angiography (66%), angiography (57%), and magnetic resonance angiography (5%). Fourteen patients (67%) underwent multiple diagnostic studies. All patients underwent initial laparoscopic MAL release. Seven patients (33%) underwent subsequent celiac stent placement in the setting of recurrent or unresolved symptoms with persistent celiac stenosis at a mean interval of 49 days. Two patients required surgical bypass after an endovascular intervention failed. The 6-month freedom from symptoms was 75% and freedom from reintervention was 64%. Eighteen patients (81%) reported early symptom improvement and weight gain, and 66% were able to return to work. Conclusions A multidisciplinary treatment approach using initial laparoscopic release and subsequent stent placement and bypass surgery provides symptom improvement in most patients treated for MALS. The

Dimensional Stability of Two Polyvinyl Siloxane Impression Materials in Different Time Intervals

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Aalaei Sh

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Statement of the Problem: Dental prosthesis is usually made indirectly; there- fore dimensional stability of the impression material is very important. Every few years, new impression materials with different manufacturers’ claims regarding their better properties are introduced to the dental markets which require more research to evaluate their true dimensional changes. Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate dimensional stability of additional silicone impression material (Panasil® and Affinis® in different time intervals. Materials and Methods: In this experimental study, using two additional silicones (Panasil® and Affinis®, we made sixty impressions of standard die in similar conditions of 23 °C and 59% relative humidity by a special tray. The die included three horizontal and two vertical lines that were parallel. The vertical line crossed the horizontal ones at a point that served as reference for measurement. All impressions were poured with high strength dental stone. The dimensions were measured by stereo-microscope by two examiners in three interval storage times (1, 24 and 168 hours.The data were statistically analyzed using t-test and ANOVA. Results: All of the stone casts were larger than the standard die. Dimensional changes of Panasil and Affinis were 0.07%, 0.24%, 0.27% and 0.02%, 0.07%, 0.16% after 1, 24 and 168 hours, respectively. Dimensional change for two impression materials wasn’t significant in the interval time, expect for Panasil after one week (p = 0.004. Conclusions: According to the limitations of this study, Affinis impressions were dimensionally more stable than Panasil ones, but it was not significant. Dimensional change of Panasil impression showed a statistically significant difference after one week. Dimensional changes of both impression materials were based on ADA standard limitation in all time intervals (< 0.5%; therefore, dimensional stability of this impression was accepted at least

Automatic, time-interval traffic counts for recreation area management planning

Science.gov (United States)

D. L. Erickson; C. J. Liu; H. K. Cordell

1980-01-01

Automatic, time-interval recorders were used to count directional vehicular traffic on a multiple entry/exit road network in the Red River Gorge Geological Area, Daniel Boone National Forest. Hourly counts of entering and exiting traffic differed according to recorder location, but an aggregated distribution showed a delayed peak in exiting traffic thought to be...

Estimation of sojourn time in chronic disease screening without data on interval cases.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, T H; Kuo, H S; Yen, M F; Lai, M S; Tabar, L; Duffy, S W

2000-03-01

Estimation of the sojourn time on the preclinical detectable period in disease screening or transition rates for the natural history of chronic disease usually rely on interval cases (diagnosed between screens). However, to ascertain such cases might be difficult in developing countries due to incomplete registration systems and difficulties in follow-up. To overcome this problem, we propose three Markov models to estimate parameters without using interval cases. A three-state Markov model, a five-state Markov model related to regional lymph node spread, and a five-state Markov model pertaining to tumor size are applied to data on breast cancer screening in female relatives of breast cancer cases in Taiwan. Results based on a three-state Markov model give mean sojourn time (MST) 1.90 (95% CI: 1.18-4.86) years for this high-risk group. Validation of these models on the basis of data on breast cancer screening in the age groups 50-59 and 60-69 years from the Swedish Two-County Trial shows the estimates from a three-state Markov model that does not use interval cases are very close to those from previous Markov models taking interval cancers into account. For the five-state Markov model, a reparameterized procedure using auxiliary information on clinically detected cancers is performed to estimate relevant parameters. A good fit of internal and external validation demonstrates the feasibility of using these models to estimate parameters that have previously required interval cancers. This method can be applied to other screening data in which there are no data on interval cases.

Sosiaalisen median mahdollisuudet Tilastokeskukselle

OpenAIRE

Vesterinen, Anu

2011-01-01

Tämän opinnäytetyön aiheena oli sosiaalisen median mahdollisuudet Tilastokeskuksen viestinnässä. Työn tavoitteena oli kartoittaa sosiaalisen median käyttöön liittyviä mahdollisuuksia ja haasteita sekä selvittää siihen liittyviä odotuksia Tilastokeskuksen henkilöstön keskuudessa. Työn teoriaosuudessa tarkasteltiin sosiaalista mediaa käsitteenä ja esiteltiin sosiaalisen median käyttöä organisaation ulkoisen viestinnän välineenä. Opinnäytetyössä selvitettiin teoriatietoon pohjautuen sekä ca...

Efficient Scalable Median Filtering Using Histogram-Based Operations.

Science.gov (United States)

Green, Oded

2018-05-01

Median filtering is a smoothing technique for noise removal in images. While there are various implementations of median filtering for a single-core CPU, there are few implementations for accelerators and multi-core systems. Many parallel implementations of median filtering use a sorting algorithm for rearranging the values within a filtering window and taking the median of the sorted value. While using sorting algorithms allows for simple parallel implementations, the cost of the sorting becomes prohibitive as the filtering windows grow. This makes such algorithms, sequential and parallel alike, inefficient. In this work, we introduce the first software parallel median filtering that is non-sorting-based. The new algorithm uses efficient histogram-based operations. These reduce the computational requirements of the new algorithm while also accessing the image fewer times. We show an implementation of our algorithm for both the CPU and NVIDIA's CUDA supported graphics processing unit (GPU). The new algorithm is compared with several other leading CPU and GPU implementations. The CPU implementation has near perfect linear scaling with a speedup on a quad-core system. The GPU implementation is several orders of magnitude faster than the other GPU implementations for mid-size median filters. For small kernels, and , comparison-based approaches are preferable as fewer operations are required. Lastly, the new algorithm is open-source and can be found in the OpenCV library.

Sosiaalisen median markkinointistrategia

OpenAIRE

Tran, Jenny

2017-01-01

Insinöörityön tavoitteena oli suunnitella toimeksiantajayritykselle sopiva sosiaalisen median markkinointistrategia ja avustaa sen toteutuksessa sekä tuottaen sisältöä sovittuihin kanaviin. Pyrkimyksenä oli myös kouluttaa yrityksen henkilökuntaa käyttämään sosiaalista mediaa yleisellä tasolla ja markkinoinnissa tutustuttamalla heidät sosiaalisen median erilaisiin kanaviin ja mainostyökaluihin. Opinnäytetyössä keskityttiin tutkimaan Facebookissa toimivaa markkinointia ja siinä toimivia mai...

HIV intertest interval among MSM in King County, Washington.

Science.gov (United States)

Katz, David A; Dombrowski, Julia C; Swanson, Fred; Buskin, Susan E; Golden, Matthew R; Stekler, Joanne D

2013-02-01

The authors examined temporal trends and correlates of HIV testing frequency among men who have sex with men (MSM) in King County, Washington. The authors evaluated data from MSM testing for HIV at the Public Health-Seattle & King County (PHSKC) STD Clinic and Gay City Health Project (GCHP) and testing history data from MSM in PHSKC HIV surveillance. The intertest interval (ITI) was defined as the number of days between the last negative HIV test and the current testing visit or first positive test. Correlates of the log(10)-transformed ITI were determined using generalised estimating equations linear regression. Between 2003 and 2010, the median ITI among MSM seeking HIV testing at the STD Clinic and GCHP were 215 (IQR: 124-409) and 257 (IQR: 148-503) days, respectively. In multivariate analyses, younger age, having only male partners and reporting ≥10 male sex partners in the last year were associated with shorter ITIs at both testing sites (pGCHP attendees, having a regular healthcare provider, seeking a test as part of a regular schedule and inhaled nitrite use in the last year were also associated with shorter ITIs (pGCHP (median 359 vs 255 days, p=0.02). Although MSM in King County appear to be testing at frequent intervals, further efforts are needed to reduce the time that HIV-infected persons are unaware of their status.

Evaluation of SAMe-TT2R2 Score on Predicting Success With Extended-Interval Warfarin Monitoring.

Science.gov (United States)

Hwang, Andrew Y; Carris, Nicholas W; Dietrich, Eric A; Gums, John G; Smith, Steven M

2018-06-01

In patients with stable international normalized ratios, 12-week extended-interval warfarin monitoring can be considered; however, predictors of success with this strategy are unknown. The previously validated SAMe-TT 2 R 2 score (considering sex, age, medical history, treatment, tobacco, and race) predicts anticoagulation control during standard follow-up (every 4 weeks), with lower scores associated with greater time in therapeutic range. To evaluate the ability of the SAMe-TT 2 R 2 score in predicting success with extended-interval warfarin follow-up in patients with previously stable warfarin doses. In this post hoc analysis of a single-arm feasibility study, baseline SAMe-TT 2 R 2 scores were calculated for patients with ≥1 extended-interval follow-up visit. The primary analysis assessed achieved weeks of extended-interval follow-up according to baseline SAMe-TT 2 R 2 scores. A total of 47 patients receiving chronic anticoagulation completed a median of 36 weeks of extended-interval follow-up. The median baseline SAMe-TT 2 R 2 score was 1 (range 0-5). Lower SAMe-TT 2 R 2 scores appeared to be associated with greater duration of extended-interval follow-up achieved, though the differences between scores were not statistically significant. No individual variable of the SAMe-TT 2 R 2 score was associated with achieved weeks of extended-interval follow-up. Analysis of additional patient factors found that longer duration (≥24 weeks) of prior stable treatment was significantly associated with greater weeks of extended-interval follow-up completed ( P = 0.04). Conclusion and Relevance: This pilot study provides limited evidence that the SAMe-TT 2 R 2 score predicts success with extended-interval warfarin follow-up but requires confirmation in a larger study. Further research is also necessary to establish additional predictors of successful extended-interval warfarin follow-up.

Infant rats can learn time intervals before the maturation of the striatum: evidence from odor fear conditioning

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Julie eBoulanger Bertolus

2014-05-01

Full Text Available Interval timing refers to the ability to perceive, estimate and discriminate durations in the range of seconds to minutes. Very little is currently known about the ontogeny of interval timing throughout development. On the other hand, even though the neural circuit sustaining interval timing is a matter of debate, the striatum has been suggested to be an important component of the system and its maturation occurs around the third post-natal week in rats. The global aim of the present study was to investigate interval timing abilities at an age for which striatum is not yet mature. We used odor fear conditioning, as it can be applied to very young animals. In odor fear conditioning, an odor is presented to the animal and a mild footshock is delivered after a fixed interval. Adult rats have been shown to learn the temporal relationships between the odor and the shock after a few associations. The first aim of the present study was to assess the activity of the striatum during odor fear conditioning using 2-Deoxyglucose autoradiography during development in rats. The data showed that although fear learning was displayed at all tested ages, activation of the striatum was observed in adults but not in juvenile animals. Next, we assessed the presence of evidence of interval timing in ages before and after the inclusion of the striatum into the fear conditioning circuit. We used an experimental setup allowing the simultaneous recording of freezing and respiration that have been demonstrated to be sensitive to interval timing in adult rats. This enabled the detection of duration-related temporal patterns for freezing and/or respiration curves in infants as young as 12 days post-natal during odor-fear conditioning. This suggests that infants are able to encode time durations as well as and as quickly as adults while their striatum is not yet functional. Alternative networks possibly sustaining interval timing in infant rats are discussed.

Interval Between Hysterectomy and Start of Radiation Treatment Is Predictive of Recurrence in Patients With Endometrial Carcinoma

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Cattaneo, Richard [Department of Radiation Oncology, Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, Michigan (United States); Hanna, Rabbie K. [Division of Gynecologic Oncology, Department of Women' s Health Services, Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, Michigan (United States); Jacobsen, Gordon [Public Health Science, Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, Michigan (United States); Elshaikh, Mohamed A., E-mail: melshai1@hfhs.org [Department of Radiation Oncology, Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, Michigan (United States)

2014-03-15

Purpose: Adjuvant radiation therapy (RT) has been shown to improve local control in patients with endometrial carcinoma. We analyzed the impact of the time interval between hysterectomy and RT initiation in patients with endometrial carcinoma. Methods and Materials: In this institutional review board-approved study, we identified 308 patients with endometrial carcinoma who received adjuvant RT after hysterectomy. All patients had undergone hysterectomy, oophorectomy, and pelvic and para-aortic lymph node evaluation from 1988 to 2010. Patients' demographics, pathologic features, and treatments were compared. The time interval between hysterectomy and the start of RT was calculated. The effects of time interval on recurrence-free (RFS), disease-specific (DSS), and overall survival (OS) were calculated. Following univariate analysis, multivariate modeling was performed. Results: The median age and follow-up for the study cohort was 65 years and 72 months, respectively. Eighty-five percent of the patients had endometrioid carcinoma. RT was delivered with high-dose-rate brachytherapy alone (29%), pelvic RT alone (20%), or both (51%). Median time interval to start RT was 42 days (range, 21-130 days). A total of 269 patients (74%) started their RT <9 weeks after undergoing hysterectomy (group 1) and 26% started ≥9 weeks after surgery (group 2). There were a total of 43 recurrences. Tumor recurrence was significantly associated with treatment delay of ≥9 weeks, with 5-year RFS of 90% for group 1 compared to only 39% for group 2 (P<.001). On multivariate analysis, RT delay of ≥9 weeks (P<.001), presence of lymphovascular space involvement (P=.001), and higher International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics grade (P=.012) were independent predictors of recurrence. In addition, RT delay of ≥9 weeks was an independent significant predictor for worse DSS and OS (P=.001 and P=.01, respectively). Conclusions: Delay in administering adjuvant RT after

Dead-time corrections on long-interval measurements of short-lived activities

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Irfan, M.

1977-01-01

A method has been proposed to make correction for counting losses due to dead time where the counting interval is comparable to or larger than the half-life of the activity under investigation. Counts due to background and any long-lived activity present in the source have been taken into consideration. The method is, under certain circumstances, capable of providing a valuable check on the accuracy of the dead time of the counting system. (Auth.)

Robust stability analysis for Markovian jumping interval neural networks with discrete and distributed time-varying delays

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Balasubramaniam, P.; Lakshmanan, S.; Manivannan, A.

2012-01-01

Highlights: ► Robust stability analysis for Markovian jumping interval neural networks is considered. ► Both linear fractional and interval uncertainties are considered. ► A new LKF is constructed with triple integral terms. ► MATLAB LMI control toolbox is used to validate theoretical results. ► Numerical examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. - Abstract: This paper investigates robust stability analysis for Markovian jumping interval neural networks with discrete and distributed time-varying delays. The parameter uncertainties are assumed to be bounded in given compact sets. The delay is assumed to be time-varying and belong to a given interval, which means that the lower and upper bounds of interval time-varying delays are available. Based on the new Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional (LKF), some inequality techniques and stochastic stability theory, new delay-dependent stability criteria have been obtained in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Finally, two numerical examples are given to illustrate the less conservative and effectiveness of our theoretical results.

A comparison of systolic time intervals measured by impedance cardiography and carotid pulse tracing

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mehlsen, J; Bonde, J; Rehling, Michael

1990-01-01

The purpose of this study was to compare the systolic time intervals (STI) obtained by impedance cardiography and by the conventional carotid technique. This comparison was done with respect to: 1) correlations between variables obtained by the two methods, 2) ability to reflect drug-induced chan......The purpose of this study was to compare the systolic time intervals (STI) obtained by impedance cardiography and by the conventional carotid technique. This comparison was done with respect to: 1) correlations between variables obtained by the two methods, 2) ability to reflect drug...

Regression analysis of case K interval-censored failure time data in the presence of informative censoring.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Peijie; Zhao, Hui; Sun, Jianguo

2016-12-01

Interval-censored failure time data occur in many fields such as demography, economics, medical research, and reliability and many inference procedures on them have been developed (Sun, 2006; Chen, Sun, and Peace, 2012). However, most of the existing approaches assume that the mechanism that yields interval censoring is independent of the failure time of interest and it is clear that this may not be true in practice (Zhang et al., 2007; Ma, Hu, and Sun, 2015). In this article, we consider regression analysis of case K interval-censored failure time data when the censoring mechanism may be related to the failure time of interest. For the problem, an estimated sieve maximum-likelihood approach is proposed for the data arising from the proportional hazards frailty model and for estimation, a two-step procedure is presented. In the addition, the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimators of regression parameters are established and an extensive simulation study suggests that the method works well. Finally, we apply the method to a set of real interval-censored data that motivated this study. © 2016, The International Biometric Society.

Thrombosed persistent median artery causing carpal tunnel syndrome associated with bifurcated median nerve: A case report

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Salter, M.; Sinha, N. R.; Szmigielski, W.

2011-01-01

Background: Carpal tunnel syndrome is a sporadically occurring abnormality due to compression of median nerve. It is exceedingly rare for it to be caused by thrombosis of persistent median artery. Case Report: A forty two year old female was referred for ultrasound examination due to ongoing wrist pain, not relived by pain killers and mild paraesthesia on the radial side of the hand. High resolution ultrasound and Doppler revealed a thrombosed persistent median artery and associated bifurcated median nerve. The thrombus resolved on treatment with anticoagulants. Conclusions: Ultrasound examination of the wrist when done for patients with carpal tunnel syndrome should preferably include looking for persistent median artery and its patency. (authors)

Pre-hospital care time intervals among victims of road traffic injuries in Iran. A cross-sectional study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bigdeli Maryam

2010-07-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Road traffic injuries (RTIs are a major public health problem, requiring concerted efforts both for their prevention and a reduction of their consequences. Timely arrival of the Emergency Medical Service (EMS at the crash scene followed by speedy victim transportation by trained personnel may reduce the RTIs' consequences. The first 60 minutes after injury occurrence - referred to as the "golden hour"- are vital for the saving of lives. The present study was designed to estimate the average of various time intervals occurring during the pre-hospital care process and to examine the differences between these time intervals as regards RTIs on urban and interurban roads. Method A retrospective cross-sectional study was designed and various time intervals in relation to pre-hospital care of RTIs identified in the ambulance dispatch centre in Urmia, Iran from 20 March 2005 to 20 March 2007. All cases which resulted in ambulance dispatches were reviewed and those that had complete data on time intervals were analyzed. Results In total, the cases of 2027 RTI victims were analysed. Of these, 61.5 % of the subjects were injured in city areas. The mean response time for city locations was 5.0 minutes, compared with 10.6 minutes for interurban road locations. The mean on-scene time on the interurban roads was longer than on city roads (9.2 vs. 6.1 minutes, p Conclusion The response, transport and total time intervals among EMS responding to RTI incidents were longer for interurban roads, compared to the city areas. More research should take place on needs-to and access-for EMS on city and interurban roads. The notification interval seems to be a hidden part of the post-crash events and indirectly affects the "golden hour" for victim management and it needs to be measured through the establishment of the surveillance systems.

[Processing acoustically presented time intervals of seconds duration: an expression of the phonological loop of the working memory?].

Science.gov (United States)

Grube, D

1996-01-01

Working memory has been proposed to contribute to the processing of time, rhythm and music; the question which component of working memory is involved is under discussion. The present study tests the hypothesis that the phonological loop component (Baddeley, 1986) is involved in the processing of auditorily presented time intervals of a few seconds' duration. Typical effects well known with short-term retention of verbal material could be replicated with short-term retention of temporal intervals: The immediate reproduction of time intervals was impaired under conditions of background music and articulatory suppression. Neither the accuracy nor the speed of responses in a (non-phonological) mental rotation task were diminished under these conditions. Processing of auditorily presented time intervals seems to be constrained by the capacity of the phonological loop: The immediate serial recall of sequences of time intervals was shown to be related to the immediate serial recall of words (memory span). The results confirm the notion that working memory resources, and especially the phonological loop component, underlie the processing of auditorily presented temporal information with a duration of a few seconds.

A new variable interval schedule with constant hazard rate and finite time range.

Science.gov (United States)

Bugallo, Mehdi; Machado, Armando; Vasconcelos, Marco

2018-05-27

We propose a new variable interval (VI) schedule that achieves constant probability of reinforcement in time while using a bounded range of intervals. By sampling each trial duration from a uniform distribution ranging from 0 to 2 T seconds, and then applying a reinforcement rule that depends linearly on trial duration, the schedule alternates reinforced and unreinforced trials, each less than 2 T seconds, while preserving a constant hazard function. © 2018 Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.

Properties of Asymmetric Detrended Fluctuation Analysis in the time series of RR intervals

Science.gov (United States)

Piskorski, J.; Kosmider, M.; Mieszkowski, D.; Krauze, T.; Wykretowicz, A.; Guzik, P.

2018-02-01

Heart rate asymmetry is a phenomenon by which the accelerations and decelerations of heart rate behave differently, and this difference is consistent and unidirectional, i.e. in most of the analyzed recordings the inequalities have the same directions. So far, it has been established for variance and runs based types of descriptors of RR intervals time series. In this paper we apply the newly developed method of Asymmetric Detrended Fluctuation Analysis, which so far has mainly been used with economic time series, to the set of 420 stationary 30 min time series of RR intervals from young, healthy individuals aged between 20 and 40. This asymmetric approach introduces separate scaling exponents for rising and falling trends. We systematically study the presence of asymmetry in both global and local versions of this method. In this study global means "applying to the whole time series" and local means "applying to windows jumping along the recording". It is found that the correlation structure of the fluctuations left over after detrending in physiological time series shows strong asymmetric features in both magnitude, with α+ physiological data after shuffling or with a group of symmetric synthetic time series.

Method to measure autonomic control of cardiac function using time interval parameters from impedance cardiography

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Meijer, Jan H; Boesveldt, Sanne; Elbertse, Eskeline; Berendse, H W

2008-01-01

The time difference between the electrocardiogram and impedance cardiogram can be considered as a measure for the time delay between the electrical and mechanical activities of the heart. This time interval, characterized by the pre-ejection period (PEP), is related to the sympathetic autonomous nervous control of cardiac activity. PEP, however, is difficult to measure in practice. Therefore, a novel parameter, the initial systolic time interval (ISTI), is introduced to provide a more practical measure. The use of ISTI instead of PEP was evaluated in three groups: young healthy subjects, patients with Parkinson's disease, and a group of elderly, healthy subjects of comparable age. PEP and ISTI were studied under two conditions: at rest and after an exercise stimulus. Under both conditions, PEP and ISTI behaved largely similarly in the three groups and were significantly correlated. It is concluded that ISTI can be used as a substitute for PEP and, therefore, to evaluate autonomic neuropathy both in clinical and extramural settings. Measurement of ISTI can also be used to non-invasively monitor the electromechanical cardiac time interval, and the associated autonomic activity, under physiological circumstances

Corticostriatal field potentials are modulated at delta and theta frequencies during interval-timing task in rodents

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eric B Emmons

2016-04-01

Full Text Available Organizing movements in time is a critical and highly conserved feature of mammalian behavior. Temporal control of action requires corticostriatal networks. We investigate these networks in rodents using a two-interval timing task while recording local field potentials in medial frontal cortex or dorsomedial striatum. Consistent with prior work, we found cue-triggered delta (1-4 Hz and theta activity (4-8 Hz primarily in rodent medial frontal cortex. We observed delta activity across temporal intervals in medial frontal cortex and dorsomedial striatum. Rewarded responses were associated with increased delta activity in medial frontal cortex. Activity in theta bands in medial frontal cortex and delta bands in the striatum was linked with the timing of responses. These data suggest both delta and theta activity in frontostriatal networks are modulated during interval timing and that activity in these bands may be involved in the temporal control of action.

A comparison of freeway median crash frequency, severity, and barrier strike outcomes by median barrier type.

Science.gov (United States)

Russo, Brendan J; Savolainen, Peter T

2018-08-01

Median-crossover crashes are among the most hazardous events that can occur on freeways, often resulting in severe or fatal injuries. The primary countermeasure to reduce the occurrence of such crashes is the installation of a median barrier. When installation of a median barrier is warranted, transportation agencies are faced with the decision among various alternatives including concrete barriers, beam guardrail, or high-tension cable barriers. Each barrier type differs in terms of its deflection characteristics upon impact, the required installation and maintenance costs, and the roadway characteristics (e.g., median width) where installation would be feasible. This study involved an investigation of barrier performance through an in-depth analysis of crash frequency and severity data from freeway segments where high-tension cable, thrie-beam, and concrete median barriers were installed. A comprehensive manual review of crash reports was conducted to identify crashes in which a vehicle left the roadway and encroached into the median. This review also involved an examination of crash outcomes when a barrier strike occurred, which included vehicle containment, penetration, or re-direction onto the travel lanes. The manual review of crash reports provided critical supplementary information through narratives and diagrams not normally available through standard fields on police crash report forms. Statistical models were estimated to identify factors that affect the frequency, severity, and outcomes of median-related crashes, with particular emphases on differences between segments with varying median barrier types. Several roadway-, traffic-, and environmental-related characteristics were found to affect these metrics, with results varying across the different barrier types. The results of this study provide transportation agencies with important guidance as to the in-service performance of various types of median barrier. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights

Pre-hospital care time intervals among victims of road traffic injuries in Iran. A cross-sectional study.

Science.gov (United States)

Bigdeli, Maryam; Khorasani-Zavareh, Davoud; Mohammadi, Reza

2010-07-09

Road traffic injuries (RTIs) are a major public health problem, requiring concerted efforts both for their prevention and a reduction of their consequences. Timely arrival of the Emergency Medical Service (EMS) at the crash scene followed by speedy victim transportation by trained personnel may reduce the RTIs' consequences. The first 60 minutes after injury occurrence--referred to as the "golden hour"--are vital for the saving of lives. The present study was designed to estimate the average of various time intervals occurring during the pre-hospital care process and to examine the differences between these time intervals as regards RTIs on urban and interurban roads. A retrospective cross-sectional study was designed and various time intervals in relation to pre-hospital care of RTIs identified in the ambulance dispatch centre in Urmia, Iran from 20 March 2005 to 20 March 2007. All cases which resulted in ambulance dispatches were reviewed and those that had complete data on time intervals were analyzed. In total, the cases of 2027 RTI victims were analysed. Of these, 61.5% of the subjects were injured in city areas. The mean response time for city locations was 5.0 minutes, compared with 10.6 minutes for interurban road locations. The mean on-scene time on the interurban roads was longer than on city roads (9.2 vs. 6.1 minutes, p transport times from the scene to the hospital were also significantly longer for interurban incidents (17.1 vs. 6.3 minutes, p transport and total time intervals among EMS responding to RTI incidents were longer for interurban roads, compared to the city areas. More research should take place on needs-to and access-for EMS on city and interurban roads. The notification interval seems to be a hidden part of the post-crash events and indirectly affects the "golden hour" for victim management and it needs to be measured through the establishment of the surveillance systems.

Robust stability of interval bidirectional associative memory neural network with time delays.

Science.gov (United States)

Liao, Xiaofeng; Wong, Kwok-wo

2004-04-01

In this paper, the conventional bidirectional associative memory (BAM) neural network with signal transmission delay is intervalized in order to study the bounded effect of deviations in network parameters and external perturbations. The resultant model is referred to as a novel interval dynamic BAM (IDBAM) model. By combining a number of different Lyapunov functionals with the Razumikhin technique, some sufficient conditions for the existence of unique equilibrium and robust stability are derived. These results are fairly general and can be verified easily. To go further, we extend our investigation to the time-varying delay case. Some robust stability criteria for BAM with perturbations of time-varying delays are derived. Besides, our approach for the analysis allows us to consider several different types of activation functions, including piecewise linear sigmoids with bounded activations as well as the usual C1-smooth sigmoids. We believe that the results obtained have leading significance in the design and application of BAM neural networks.

Self-produced Time Intervals Are Perceived as More Variable and/or Shorter Depending on Temporal Context in Subsecond and Suprasecond Ranges

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Keita eMitani

2016-06-01

Full Text Available The processing of time intervals is fundamental for sensorimotor and cognitive functions. Perceptual and motor timing are often performed concurrently (e.g., playing a musical instrument. Although previous studies have shown the influence of body movements on time perception, how we perceive self-produced time intervals has remained unclear. Furthermore, it has been suggested that the timing mechanisms are distinct for the sub- and suprasecond ranges. Here, we compared perceptual performances for self-produced and passively presented time intervals in random contexts (i.e., multiple target intervals presented in a session across the sub- and suprasecond ranges (Experiment 1 and within the sub- (Experiment 2 and suprasecond (Experiment 3 ranges, and in a constant context (i.e., a single target interval presented in a session in the sub- and suprasecond ranges (Experiment 4. We show that self-produced time intervals were perceived as shorter and more variable across the sub- and suprasecond ranges and within the suprasecond range but not within the subsecond range in a random context. In a constant context, the self-produced time intervals were perceived as more variable in the suprasecond range but not in the subsecond range. The impairing effects indicate that motor timing interferes with perceptual timing. The dependence of impairment on temporal contexts suggests multiple timing mechanisms for the subsecond and suprasecond ranges. In addition, violation of the scalar property (i.e., a constant variability to target interval ratio was observed between the sub- and suprasecond ranges. The violation was clearer for motor timing than for perceptual timing. This suggests that the multiple timing mechanisms for the sub- and suprasecond ranges overlap more for perception than for motor. Moreover, the central tendency effect (i.e., where shorter base intervals are overestimated and longer base intervals are underestimated disappeared with subsecond

Sosiaalisen median riskit yritysmaailmassa

OpenAIRE

Kilpinen, Joni

2015-01-01

Sosiaalisen median palveluista on kirjoitettu lukuisia kirjoja ja artikkeleita, joissa niitä ylistetään varsinkin yritysnäkökulmasta. Vaikka sosiaalinen media on muuttanut olennaisesti tapaa, jolla keskustella, mainostaa, etsiä ja jakaa tietoa, piilee sen palveluiden käytössä kuitenkin erilaisia uhkakuvia. Yritykset ja asiantuntijat pelkäävät sosiaalisen median avoimuuden aiheuttavan suuria tietoturvariskejä. Lisäksi asiantuntijat ovat varoitelleet sosiaalisessa mediassa olevista haittaohjelm...

GPU Accelerated Vector Median Filter

Science.gov (United States)

Aras, Rifat; Shen, Yuzhong

2011-01-01

Noise reduction is an important step for most image processing tasks. For three channel color images, a widely used technique is vector median filter in which color values of pixels are treated as 3-component vectors. Vector median filters are computationally expensive; for a window size of n x n, each of the n(sup 2) vectors has to be compared with other n(sup 2) - 1 vectors in distances. General purpose computation on graphics processing units (GPUs) is the paradigm of utilizing high-performance many-core GPU architectures for computation tasks that are normally handled by CPUs. In this work. NVIDIA's Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) paradigm is used to accelerate vector median filtering. which has to the best of our knowledge never been done before. The performance of GPU accelerated vector median filter is compared to that of the CPU and MPI-based versions for different image and window sizes, Initial findings of the study showed 100x improvement of performance of vector median filter implementation on GPUs over CPU implementations and further speed-up is expected after more extensive optimizations of the GPU algorithm .

Discrete time interval measurement system: fundamentals, resolution and errors in the measurement of angular vibrations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gómez de León, F C; Meroño Pérez, P A

2010-01-01

The traditional method for measuring the velocity and the angular vibration in the shaft of rotating machines using incremental encoders is based on counting the pulses at given time intervals. This method is generically called the time interval measurement system (TIMS). A variant of this method that we have developed in this work consists of measuring the corresponding time of each pulse from the encoder and sampling the signal by means of an A/D converter as if it were an analog signal, that is to say, in discrete time. For this reason, we have denominated this method as the discrete time interval measurement system (DTIMS). This measurement system provides a substantial improvement in the precision and frequency resolution compared with the traditional method of counting pulses. In addition, this method permits modification of the width of some pulses in order to obtain a mark-phase on every lap. This paper explains the theoretical fundamentals of the DTIMS and its application for measuring the angular vibrations of rotating machines. It also displays the required relationship between the sampling rate of the signal, the number of pulses of the encoder and the rotating velocity in order to obtain the required resolution and to delimit the methodological errors in the measurement

Risk prediction of cardiovascular death based on the QTc interval

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielsen, Jonas B; Graff, Claus; Rasmussen, Peter V

2014-01-01

electrocardiograms from 173 529 primary care patients aged 50-90 years were collected during 2001-11. The Framingham formula was used for heart rate-correction of the QT interval. Data on medication, comorbidity, and outcomes were retrieved from administrative registries. During a median follow-up period of 6......AIMS: Using a large, contemporary primary care population we aimed to provide absolute long-term risks of cardiovascular death (CVD) based on the QTc interval and to test whether the QTc interval is of value in risk prediction of CVD on an individual level. METHODS AND RESULTS: Digital...

Tonic and Phasic Dopamine Fluctuations as Reflected in Beta-power Predict Interval Timing Behavior

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kononowicz, Tadeusz; van Rijn, Hedderik

It has been repeatedly shown that dopamine impacts interval timing in humans and animals (for a review, see Coull, Cheng, & Meck, 2012). Particularly, administration of dopamine agonists or antagonists speeds-up or slows down internal passage of time, respectively (Meck, 1996). This co-variations in

Switching non-local median filter

Science.gov (United States)

Matsuoka, Jyohei; Koga, Takanori; Suetake, Noriaki; Uchino, Eiji

2015-06-01

This paper describes a novel image filtering method for removal of random-valued impulse noise superimposed on grayscale images. Generally, it is well known that switching-type median filters are effective for impulse noise removal. In this paper, we propose a more sophisticated switching-type impulse noise removal method in terms of detail-preserving performance. Specifically, the noise detector of the proposed method finds out noise-corrupted pixels by focusing attention on the difference between the value of a pixel of interest (POI) and the median of its neighboring pixel values, and on the POI's isolation tendency from the surrounding pixels. Furthermore, the removal of the detected noise is performed by the newly proposed median filter based on non-local processing, which has superior detail-preservation capability compared to the conventional median filter. The effectiveness and the validity of the proposed method are verified by some experiments using natural grayscale images.

Determination and identification of naturally occurring decay series using milli-second order pulse time interval analysis (TIA)

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hashimoto, T.; Sanada, Y.; Uezu, Y.

2003-01-01

A delayed coincidence method, called a time interval analysis (TIA) method, has been successfully applied to selective determination of the correlated α-α decay events in millisecond order life-time. A main decay process applicable to TIA-treatment is 220 Rn → 216 Po(T 1/2 :145ms) → {Th-series}. The TIA is fundamentally based on the difference of time interval distribution between non-correlated decay events and other events such as background or random events when they were compiled the time interval data within a fixed time (for example, a tenth of concerned half lives). The sensitivity of the TIA-analysis due to correlated α-α decay events could be subsequently improved in respect of background elimination using the pulse shape discrimination technique (PSD with PERALS counter) to reject β/γ-pulses, purging of nitrogen gas into extra scintillator, and applying solvent extraction of Ra. (author)

Usability of a new multiple high-speed pulse time data registration, processing and real-time display system for pulse time interval analysis

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yawata, Takashi; Sakaue, Hisanobu; Hashimoto, Tetsuo; Itou, Shigeki

2006-01-01

A new high-speed multiple pulse time data registration, processing and real-time display system for time interval analysis (TIA) was developed for counting either β-α or α-α correlated decay-events. The TIA method has been so far limited to selective extraction of successive α-α decay events within the milli-second time scale owing to the use of original electronic hardware. In the present pulse-processing system, three different high-speed α/β(γ) pulses could be fed quickly to original 32 bit PCI board (ZN-HTS2) within 1 μs. This original PCI board is consisting of a timing-control IC (HTS-A) and 28 bit counting IC (HTS-B). All channel and pulse time data were stored to FIFO RAM, followed to transfer into temporary CPU RAM (32 MB) by DMA. Both data registration (into main RAM (200 MB)) and calculation of pulse time intervals together with real-time TIA-distribution display simultaneously processed using two sophisticate softwares. The present system has proven to succeed for the real-time display of TIA distribution spectrum even when 1.6x10 5 cps pulses from pulse generator were given to the system. By using this new system combined with liquid scintillation counting (LSC) apparatus, both a natural micro-second order β-α correlated decay-events and a milli-second order α-α correlated decay-event could be selectively extracted from the mixture of natural radionuclides. (author)

The impact of ultra-brief chest compression-only CPR video training on responsiveness, compression rate, and hands-off time interval among bystanders in a shopping mall.

Science.gov (United States)

Panchal, Ashish R; Meziab, Omar; Stolz, Uwe; Anderson, Wes; Bartlett, Mitchell; Spaite, Daniel W; Bobrow, Bentley J; Kern, Karl B

2014-09-01

Recent studies have demonstrated higher-quality chest compressions (CCs) following a 60 s ultra-brief video (UBV) on compression-only CPR (CO-CPR). However, the effectiveness of UBVs as a CPR-teaching tool for lay bystanders in public venues remains unknown. Determine whether an UBV is effective in teaching laypersons CO-CPR in a public setting and if viewing leads to superior responsiveness and CPR skills. Adult lay bystanders were enrolled in a public shopping mall and randomized to: (1) Control (CTR): sat idle for 60 s; (2) UBV: watched a 60 s UBV on CO-CPR. Subjects were read a scenario detailing a sudden collapse in the mall and asked to do what they "thought was best" on a mannequin. Performance measures were recorded for 2 min: responsiveness (time to call 911 and first CCs) and CPR quality [CC depth, rate, hands-off interval (time without CC after first CC)]. One hundred subjects were enrolled. Demographics were similar between groups. UBV subjects called 911 more frequently (percent difference: 31%) and initiated CCs sooner in the arrest scenario (median difference (MD): 5 s). UBV cohort had increased CC rate (MD: 19 cpm) and decreased hands-off interval (MD: 27 s). There was no difference in CC depth. Bystanders with UBV training in a shopping mall had significantly improved responsiveness, CC rate, and decreased hands-off interval. Given the short length of training, UBV may have potential as a ubiquitous intervention for public venues to help improve bystander reaction to arrest and CO-CPR performance. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.

Efficient Estimation for Diffusions Sampled at High Frequency Over a Fixed Time Interval

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jakobsen, Nina Munkholt; Sørensen, Michael

Parametric estimation for diffusion processes is considered for high frequency observations over a fixed time interval. The processes solve stochastic differential equations with an unknown parameter in the diffusion coefficient. We find easily verified conditions on approximate martingale...

Optimization of Allowed Outage Time and Surveillance Test Intervals

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Al-Dheeb, Mujahed; Kang, Sunkoo; Kim, Jonghyun [KEPCO international nuclear graduate school, Ulsan (Korea, Republic of)

2015-10-15

The primary purpose of surveillance testing is to assure that the components of standby safety systems will be operable when they are needed in an accident. By testing these components, failures can be detected that may have occurred since the last test or the time when the equipment was last known to be operational. The probability a system or system component performs a specified function or mission under given conditions at a prescribed time is called availability (A). Unavailability (U) as a risk measure is just the complementary probability to A(t). The increase of U means the risk is increased as well. D and T have an important impact on components, or systems, unavailability. The extension of D impacts the maintenance duration distributions for at-power operations, making them longer. This, in turn, increases the unavailability due to maintenance in the systems analysis. As for T, overly-frequent surveillances can result in high system unavailability. This is because the system may be taken out of service often due to the surveillance itself and due to the repair of test-caused failures of the component. The test-caused failures include those incurred by wear and tear of the component due to the surveillances. On the other hand, as the surveillance interval increases, the component's unavailability will grow because of increased occurrences of time-dependent random failures. In that situation, the component cannot be relied upon, and accordingly the system unavailability will increase. Thus, there should be an optimal component surveillance interval in terms of the corresponding system availability. This paper aims at finding the optimal T and D which result in minimum unavailability which in turn reduces the risk. Applying the methodology in section 2 to find the values of optimal T and D for two components, i.e., safety injection pump (SIP) and turbine driven aux feedwater pump (TDAFP). Section 4 is addressing interaction between D and T. In general

Optimization of Allowed Outage Time and Surveillance Test Intervals

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Al-Dheeb, Mujahed; Kang, Sunkoo; Kim, Jonghyun

2015-01-01

The primary purpose of surveillance testing is to assure that the components of standby safety systems will be operable when they are needed in an accident. By testing these components, failures can be detected that may have occurred since the last test or the time when the equipment was last known to be operational. The probability a system or system component performs a specified function or mission under given conditions at a prescribed time is called availability (A). Unavailability (U) as a risk measure is just the complementary probability to A(t). The increase of U means the risk is increased as well. D and T have an important impact on components, or systems, unavailability. The extension of D impacts the maintenance duration distributions for at-power operations, making them longer. This, in turn, increases the unavailability due to maintenance in the systems analysis. As for T, overly-frequent surveillances can result in high system unavailability. This is because the system may be taken out of service often due to the surveillance itself and due to the repair of test-caused failures of the component. The test-caused failures include those incurred by wear and tear of the component due to the surveillances. On the other hand, as the surveillance interval increases, the component's unavailability will grow because of increased occurrences of time-dependent random failures. In that situation, the component cannot be relied upon, and accordingly the system unavailability will increase. Thus, there should be an optimal component surveillance interval in terms of the corresponding system availability. This paper aims at finding the optimal T and D which result in minimum unavailability which in turn reduces the risk. Applying the methodology in section 2 to find the values of optimal T and D for two components, i.e., safety injection pump (SIP) and turbine driven aux feedwater pump (TDAFP). Section 4 is addressing interaction between D and T. In general

Functional Median Polish

KAUST Repository

Sun, Ying; Genton, Marc G.

2012-01-01

polish is demonstrated by comparing its performance with the traditional functional ANOVA fitted by means under different outlier models in simulation studies. The functional median polish is illustrated on various applications in climate science

Five Roots Pattern of Median Nerve Formation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Konstantinos Natsis

2016-04-01

Full Text Available An unusual combination of median nerve’s variations has been encountered in a male cadaver during routine educational dissection. In particular, the median nerve was formed by five roots; three roots originated from the lateral cord of the brachial plexus joined individually the median nerve’s medial root. The latter (fourth root was united with the lateral (fifth root of the median nerve forming the median nerve distally in the upper arm and not the axilla as usually. In addition, the median nerve was situated medial to the brachial artery. We review comprehensively the relevant variants, their embryologic development and their potential clinical applications.

Electric power demand forecasting using interval time series. A comparison between VAR and iMLP

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Garcia-Ascanio, Carolina; Mate, Carlos

2010-01-01

Electric power demand forecasts play an essential role in the electric industry, as they provide the basis for making decisions in power system planning and operation. A great variety of mathematical methods have been used for demand forecasting. The development and improvement of appropriate mathematical tools will lead to more accurate demand forecasting techniques. In order to forecast the monthly electric power demand per hour in Spain for 2 years, this paper presents a comparison between a new forecasting approach considering vector autoregressive (VAR) forecasting models applied to interval time series (ITS) and the iMLP, the multi-layer perceptron model adapted to interval data. In the proposed comparison, for the VAR approach two models are fitted per every hour, one composed of the centre (mid-point) and radius (half-range), and another one of the lower and upper bounds according to the interval representation assumed by the ITS in the learning set. In the case of the iMLP, only the model composed of the centre and radius is fitted. The other interval representation composed of the lower and upper bounds is obtained from the linear combination of the two. This novel approach, obtaining two bivariate models each hour, makes possible to establish, for different periods in the day, which interval representation is more accurate. Furthermore, the comparison between two different techniques adapted to interval time series allows us to determine the efficiency of these models in forecasting electric power demand. It is important to note that the iMLP technique has been selected for the comparison, as it has shown its accuracy in forecasting daily electricity price intervals. This work shows the ITS forecasting methods as a potential tool that will lead to a reduction in risk when making power system planning and operational decisions. (author)

Assessing cardiac preload by the Initial Systolic Time Interval obtained from impedance cardiography

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jan H Meijer

2010-01-01

Full Text Available The Initial Systolic Time Interval (ISTI, obtained from the electrocardiogram (ECG and impedance cardiogram (ICG, is considered to be a measure for the time delay between the electrical and mechanical activity of the heart and reflects an early active period of the cardiac cycle. The clinical relevance of this time interval is subject of study. This paper presents preliminary results of a pilot study investigating the use of ISTI in evaluating and predicting the circulatory response to fluid administration in patients after coronary artery bypass graft surgery, by comparing ISTI with cardiac output (CO responsiveness. Also the use of the pulse transit time (PTT, earlier recommended for this purpose, is investigated. The results show an inverse relationship between ISTI and CO at all moments of fluid administration and also an inverse relationship between the changes ΔISTI and ΔCO before and after full fluid administration. No relationships between PTT and CO or ΔPTT and ΔCO were found. It is concluded that ISTI is dependent upon preload, and that ISTI has the potential to be used as a clinical parameter assessing preload.

Evaluation of downmotion time interval molten materials to core catcher during core disruptive accidents postulated in LMFR

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Voronov, S.A.; Kiryushin, A.I.; Kuzavkov, N.G.; Vlasichev, G.N.

1994-01-01

Hypothetical core disruptive accidents are postulated to clear potential of a reactor plant to withstand extreme conditions and to generate measures for management and mitigation of accidents consequence. In Russian advanced reactors there is a core catcher below the diagrid to prevent vessel bottom melting and to localize fuel debris. In this paper the calculation technique and estimation of relocation time of molten fuel and materials are presented in the case of core disruptive accidents postulated for LMFR reactor. To evaluate minimum interval of fuel relocation time the calculations for different initial data are provided. Large mass of materials between the core and the catcher in LMFR reactor hinders molten materials relocation toward the vessel bottom. That condition increases the time interval of reaching core catcher by molten fuel. Computations performed allowed to evaluate the minimum molten materials relocation time from the core to the core catcher. This time interval is in a range of 3.5-5.5 hours. (author)

RISMA: A Rule-based Interval State Machine Algorithm for Alerts Generation, Performance Analysis and Monitoring Real-Time Data Processing

Science.gov (United States)

Laban, Shaban; El-Desouky, Aly

2013-04-01

The monitoring of real-time systems is a challenging and complicated process. So, there is a continuous need to improve the monitoring process through the use of new intelligent techniques and algorithms for detecting exceptions, anomalous behaviours and generating the necessary alerts during the workflow monitoring of such systems. The interval-based or period-based theorems have been discussed, analysed, and used by many researches in Artificial Intelligence (AI), philosophy, and linguistics. As explained by Allen, there are 13 relations between any two intervals. Also, there have also been many studies of interval-based temporal reasoning and logics over the past decades. Interval-based theorems can be used for monitoring real-time interval-based data processing. However, increasing the number of processed intervals makes the implementation of such theorems a complex and time consuming process as the relationships between such intervals are increasing exponentially. To overcome the previous problem, this paper presents a Rule-based Interval State Machine Algorithm (RISMA) for processing, monitoring, and analysing the behaviour of interval-based data, received from real-time sensors. The proposed intelligent algorithm uses the Interval State Machine (ISM) approach to model any number of interval-based data into well-defined states as well as inferring them. An interval-based state transition model and methodology are presented to identify the relationships between the different states of the proposed algorithm. By using such model, the unlimited number of relationships between similar large numbers of intervals can be reduced to only 18 direct relationships using the proposed well-defined states. For testing the proposed algorithm, necessary inference rules and code have been designed and applied to the continuous data received in near real-time from the stations of International Monitoring System (IMS) by the International Data Centre (IDC) of the Preparatory

Robust L2-L∞ Filtering of Time-Delay Jump Systems with Respect to the Finite-Time Interval

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shuping He

2011-01-01

Full Text Available This paper studied the problem of stochastic finite-time boundedness and disturbance attenuation for a class of linear time-delayed systems with Markov jumping parameters. Sufficient conditions are provided to solve this problem. The L2-L∞ filters are, respectively, designed for time-delayed Markov jump linear systems with/without uncertain parameters such that the resulting filtering error dynamic system is stochastically finite-time bounded and has the finite-time interval disturbance attenuation γ for all admissible uncertainties, time delays, and unknown disturbances. By using stochastic Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional approach, it is shown that the filter designing problem is in terms of the solutions of a set of coupled linear matrix inequalities. Simulation examples are included to demonstrate the potential of the proposed results.

Entyvio lengthen dose-interval study: lengthening vedolizumab dose interval and the risk of clinical relapse in inflammatory bowel disease.

Science.gov (United States)

Chan, Webber; Lynch, Nicole; Bampton, Peter; Chang, Jeff; Chung, Alvin; Florin, Timothy; Hetzel, David J; Jakobovits, Simon; Moore, Gregory; Pavli, Paul; Radford-Smith, Graham; Thin, Lena; Baraty, Brandon; Haifer, Craig; Yau, Yunki; Leong, Rupert W L

2018-07-01

Vedolizumab (VDZ), an α4β7 anti-integrin antibody, is efficacious in the induction and maintenance of remission in ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD). In the GEMINI long-term safety study, enrolled patients received 4-weekly VDZ. Upon completion, patients were switched to 8-weekly VDZ in Australia. The clinical success rate of treatment de-escalation for patients in remission on VDZ has not been described previously. To determine the proportion of patients who relapsed after switching from 4 to 8-weekly VDZ, the mean time to relapse, and the recapture rate when switching back to 8-weekly dosing. This was a retrospective, observational, multicenter study of patients previously recruited into GEMINI long-term safety in Australia. Data on the demographics and biochemical findings were collected. There were 34 patients [23 men, mean age 49.1 (±13.1) years] and their mean disease duration was 17.6 (±8.5) years. The mean 4-weekly VDZ infusion duration was 286.5 (±48.8) weeks. A total of five (15%) patients relapsed on dose-interval increase (4/17 UC, 1/17 CD) at a median duration from dose interval lengthening to flare of 14 weeks (interquartile range=6-25). Eighty percent (4/5) of patients re-entered remission following dose-interval decrease back to 4-weekly. No clinical predictors of relapse could be determined because of the small cohort size. The risk of patients relapsing when switching from 4 to 8-weekly VDZ ∼15% and is similar between CD and UC. Dose-interval decrease recaptures 80% of patients who relapsed. Therapeutic drug monitoring of VDZ may be of clinical relevance.

Improved Criteria on Delay-Dependent Stability for Discrete-Time Neural Networks with Interval Time-Varying Delays

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

O. M. Kwon

2012-01-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this paper is to investigate the delay-dependent stability analysis for discrete-time neural networks with interval time-varying delays. Based on Lyapunov method, improved delay-dependent criteria for the stability of the networks are derived in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs by constructing a suitable Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional and utilizing reciprocally convex approach. Also, a new activation condition which has not been considered in the literature is proposed and utilized for derivation of stability criteria. Two numerical examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Detection of abnormal item based on time intervals for recommender systems.

Science.gov (United States)

Gao, Min; Yuan, Quan; Ling, Bin; Xiong, Qingyu

2014-01-01

With the rapid development of e-business, personalized recommendation has become core competence for enterprises to gain profits and improve customer satisfaction. Although collaborative filtering is the most successful approach for building a recommender system, it suffers from "shilling" attacks. In recent years, the research on shilling attacks has been greatly improved. However, the approaches suffer from serious problem in attack model dependency and high computational cost. To solve the problem, an approach for the detection of abnormal item is proposed in this paper. In the paper, two common features of all attack models are analyzed at first. A revised bottom-up discretized approach is then proposed based on time intervals and the features for the detection. The distributions of ratings in different time intervals are compared to detect anomaly based on the calculation of chi square distribution (χ(2)). We evaluated our approach on four types of items which are defined according to the life cycles of these items. The experimental results show that the proposed approach achieves a high detection rate with low computational cost when the number of attack profiles is more than 15. It improves the efficiency in shilling attacks detection by narrowing down the suspicious users.

Detection of Abnormal Item Based on Time Intervals for Recommender Systems

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Min Gao

2014-01-01

Full Text Available With the rapid development of e-business, personalized recommendation has become core competence for enterprises to gain profits and improve customer satisfaction. Although collaborative filtering is the most successful approach for building a recommender system, it suffers from “shilling” attacks. In recent years, the research on shilling attacks has been greatly improved. However, the approaches suffer from serious problem in attack model dependency and high computational cost. To solve the problem, an approach for the detection of abnormal item is proposed in this paper. In the paper, two common features of all attack models are analyzed at first. A revised bottom-up discretized approach is then proposed based on time intervals and the features for the detection. The distributions of ratings in different time intervals are compared to detect anomaly based on the calculation of chi square distribution (χ2. We evaluated our approach on four types of items which are defined according to the life cycles of these items. The experimental results show that the proposed approach achieves a high detection rate with low computational cost when the number of attack profiles is more than 15. It improves the efficiency in shilling attacks detection by narrowing down the suspicious users.

A new criterion for global robust stability of interval neural networks with discrete time delays

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Li Chuandong; Chen Jinyu; Huang Tingwen

2007-01-01

This paper further studies global robust stability of a class of interval neural networks with discrete time delays. By introducing an equivalent transformation of interval matrices, a new criterion on global robust stability is established. In comparison with the results reported in the literature, the proposed approach leads to results with less restrictive conditions. Numerical examples are also worked through to illustrate our results

Quantifying uncertainty on sediment loads using bootstrap confidence intervals

Science.gov (United States)

Slaets, Johanna I. F.; Piepho, Hans-Peter; Schmitter, Petra; Hilger, Thomas; Cadisch, Georg

2017-01-01

Load estimates are more informative than constituent concentrations alone, as they allow quantification of on- and off-site impacts of environmental processes concerning pollutants, nutrients and sediment, such as soil fertility loss, reservoir sedimentation and irrigation channel siltation. While statistical models used to predict constituent concentrations have been developed considerably over the last few years, measures of uncertainty on constituent loads are rarely reported. Loads are the product of two predictions, constituent concentration and discharge, integrated over a time period, which does not make it straightforward to produce a standard error or a confidence interval. In this paper, a linear mixed model is used to estimate sediment concentrations. A bootstrap method is then developed that accounts for the uncertainty in the concentration and discharge predictions, allowing temporal correlation in the constituent data, and can be used when data transformations are required. The method was tested for a small watershed in Northwest Vietnam for the period 2010-2011. The results showed that confidence intervals were asymmetric, with the highest uncertainty in the upper limit, and that a load of 6262 Mg year-1 had a 95 % confidence interval of (4331, 12 267) in 2010 and a load of 5543 Mg an interval of (3593, 8975) in 2011. Additionally, the approach demonstrated that direct estimates from the data were biased downwards compared to bootstrap median estimates. These results imply that constituent loads predicted from regression-type water quality models could frequently be underestimating sediment yields and their environmental impact.

The Perforation-Operation time Interval; An Important Mortality Indicator in Peptic Ulcer Perforation.

Science.gov (United States)

Surapaneni, Sushama; S, Rajkumar; Reddy A, Vijaya Bhaskar

2013-05-01

To find out the significance of the Perforation-Operation Interval (POI) with respect to an early prognosis, in patients with peritonitis which is caused by peptic ulcer perforation. Case series. Place and Duration of the Study: Department of General Surgery, Konaseema Institute of Medical Sciences and RF Amalapuram, Andhra Pradesh, India from 2008-2011. This study included 150 patients with generalized peritonitis, who were diagnosed to have Perforated Peptic Ulcers (PPUs). The diagnosis of the PPUs was established on the basis of the history , the clinical examination and the radiological findings. The perforation-operation interval was calculated from the time of onset of the symptoms like severe abdominal pain or vomiting till the time the patient was operated. Out of the 150 patients 134 were males and 16 were females, with a male : female ratio of 9:1. Their ages ranged between 25-70 years. Out of the 150 patients, 65 patients (43.3%) presented within 24 hours of the onset of severe abdominal pain (Group A), 27 patients (18%) presented between 24-48 hours of the onset of severe abdominal pain (Group B) and 58 patients (38.6%) presented after 48 hours. There was no mortality in Group A and the morbidity was more in Group B and Group C. There were 15 deaths in Group C. The problem of peptic ulcer perforation with its complication, can be decreased by decreasing the perforation -operation time interval, which as per our study, appeared to be the single most important mortality and morbidity indicator in peptic ulcer perforation.

Influence of median surgeon operative duration on adverse outcomes in bariatric surgery.

Science.gov (United States)

Reames, Bradley N; Bacal, Daniel; Krell, Robert W; Birkmeyer, John D; Birkmeyer, Nancy J O; Finks, Jonathan F

2015-01-01

Evidence suggests that prolonged operative time adversely affects surgical outcomes. However, whether faster surgeons have better outcomes is unclear, as a surgeon׳s speed could reflect skill and efficiency, but may alternatively reflect haste. This study evaluates whether median surgeon operative time is associated with adverse surgical outcomes after laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass. We performed a retrospective cohort study using statewide clinical registry data from the years 2006 to 2012. Surgeons were ranked by their median operative time and grouped into terciles. Multivariable logistic regression with robust standard errors was used to evaluate the influence of median surgeon operative time on 30-day surgical outcomes, adjusting for patient and surgeon characteristics, trainee involvement, concurrent procedures, and the complex interaction between these variables. A total of 16,344 patients underwent surgery during the study period. Compared to surgeons in the fastest tercile, slow surgeons required 53 additional minutes to complete a gastric bypass procedure (median [interquartile range] 139 [133-150] versus 86 [69-91], Ppatient characteristic only, slow surgeons had significantly higher adjusted rates of any complication, prolonged length of stay, emergency department visits or readmissions, and venous thromboembolism (VTE). After further adjustment for surgeon characteristics, resident involvement, and the interaction between these variables, slow surgeons had higher rates of any complication (10.5% versus 7.1%, P=.039), prolonged length of stay (14.0% versus 4.4%, P=.002), and VTE (0.39% versus .22%, P<.001). Median surgeon operative duration is independently associated with adjusted rates of certain adverse outcomes after laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass. Improving surgeon efficiency while operating may reduce operative time and improve the safety of bariatric surgery. Copyright © 2015 American Society for Bariatric Surgery. Published by

Nonparametric estimation in an "illness-death" model when all transition times are interval censored

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Frydman, Halina; Gerds, Thomas; Grøn, Randi

2013-01-01

We develop nonparametric maximum likelihood estimation for the parameters of an irreversible Markov chain on states {0,1,2} from the observations with interval censored times of 0 → 1, 0 → 2 and 1 → 2 transitions. The distinguishing aspect of the data is that, in addition to all transition times ...

CMOS direct time interval measurement of long-lived luminescence lifetimes.

Science.gov (United States)

Yao, Lei; Yung, Ka Yi; Cheung, Maurice C; Chodavarapu, Vamsy P; Bright, Frank V

2011-01-01

We describe a Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) Direct Time Interval Measurement (DTIM) Integrated Circuit (IC) to detect the decay (fall) time of the luminescence emission when analyte-sensitive luminophores are excited with an optical pulse. The CMOS DTIM IC includes 14 × 14 phototransistor array, transimpedance amplifier, regulated gain amplifier, fall time detector, and time-to-digital convertor. We examined the DTIM system to measure the emission lifetime of oxygen-sensitive luminophores tris(4,7-diphenyl-1, 10-phenanthroline) ruthenium(II) ([Ru(dpp)(3)](2+)) encapsulated in sol-gel derived xerogel thin-films. The DTIM system fabricated using TSMC 0.35 μm process functions to detect lifetimes from 4 μs to 14.4 μs but can be tuned to detect longer lifetimes. The system provides 8-bit digital output proportional to lifetimes and consumes 4.5 mW of power with 3.3 V DC supply. The CMOS system provides a useful platform for the development of reliable, robust, and miniaturized optical chemical sensors.

Impact of keyboard typing on the morphological changes of the median nerve.

Science.gov (United States)

Yeap Loh, Ping; Liang Yeoh, Wen; Nakashima, Hiroki; Muraki, Satoshi

2017-09-28

The primary objective was to investigate the effects of continuous typing on median nerve changes at the carpal tunnel region at two different keyboard slopes (0° and 20°). The secondary objective was to investigate the differences in wrist kinematics and the changes in wrist anthropometric measurements when typing at the two different keyboard slopes. Fifteen healthy right-handed young men were recruited. A randomized sequence of the conditions (control, typing I, and typing II) was assigned to each participant. Wrist anthropometric measurements, wrist kinematics data collection and ultrasound examination to the median nerve was performed at designated time block. Typing activity and time block do not cause significant changes to the wrist anthropometric measurements. The wrist measurements remained similar across all the time blocks in the three conditions. Subsequently, the wrist extensions and ulnar deviations were significantly higher in both the typing I and typing II conditions than in the control condition for both wrists (ptyping I and typing II conditions after the typing task than before the typing task. The MNCSA significantly decreased in the recovery phase after the typing task. This study demonstrated the immediate changes in the median nerve after continuous keyboard typing. Changes in the median nerve were greater during typing using a keyboard tilted at 20° than during typing using a keyboard tilted at 0°. The main findings suggest wrist posture near to neutral position caused lower changes of the median nerve.

Investigation of extended blinks and interblink intervals in subjects with and without dry eye

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rodriguez JD

2013-02-01

Full Text Available John D Rodriguez,1 George W Ousler III,1 Patrick R Johnston,1 Keith Lane,1 Mark B Abelson1,21Ora, Inc, Andover, MA, 2Schepens Eye Research Institute and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USABackground: The purpose of this study was to investigate the occurrence and duration of extended blinks ≥ 70 msec and their associated interblink intervals in normal subjects and in subjects with mild to moderate dry eye.Methods: This single-center, prospective, double-blind study included 11 subjects with dry eye and eight subjects with normal eyes. Extended blinks were defined as lid closure in at least two successive video frames (≥ 70 msec. Digital video imaging of each subject's eyes was recorded while the subject viewed a 10-minute documentary. The subjects did not know that blink was the outcome being measured. Following capture, the videos were manually analyzed in a masked fashion for the occurrence of extended blinks. The length of the interblink interval (ie, time between blinks before and after these extended blinks (the interblink interval ratio was calculated, as well as differences in lid contact times.Results: The dry eye group had a median extended blink duration which was 2.53 times longer than that of the normal group. For subjects with dry eye, interblink intervals post-extended blink were significantly longer than interblink intervals pre-extended blink (P < 0.001. Interblink intervals did not lengthen significantly in normal subjects. In both groups, the duration of the extended blink was significantly (P = 0.001 and positively correlated with interblink interval ratio (post-extended to pre-extended blink interblink interval, such that for each doubling of extended blink duration, the interblink interval ratio increased by 10%. Blinks longer than one second in duration occurred almost exclusively in subjects with dry eye.Conclusion: This study reports three central findings: blink duration tended to be longer in subjects with dry

Comparison of equilibrium radionuclide and contrast angiographic measurements of left ventricular peak ejection and filling rates and their time intervals

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Sugrue, D.D.; Dickie, S.; Newman, H.; Myers, M.J.; Lavender, J.P.; McKenna, W.J. (Royal Postgraduate Medical School, London (UK))

1984-10-01

A comparison has been made of the equilibrium radionuclide and contrast angiographic estimates of normalized peak rates of ejection (PER) and filling (PFR) and their time intervals in twenty-one patients with cardiac disorders. Contrast angiographic and radionuclide measurements of left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), PER and PFR correlated well but time intervals correlated poorly. Mean values for radionuclide LVEF, PER and PFR were significantly lower and radionuclide time intervals were significantly longer compared to contrast angiography measurements.

An integrated theory of prospective time interval estimation : The role of cognition, attention, and learning

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Taatgen, Niels A.; van Rijn, Hedderik; Anderson, John

A theory of prospective time perception is introduced and incorporated as a module in an integrated theory of cognition, thereby extending existing theories and allowing predictions about attention and learning. First, a time perception module is established by fitting existing datasets (interval

Heuristic algorithms for the minmax regret flow-shop problem with interval processing times.

Science.gov (United States)

Ćwik, Michał; Józefczyk, Jerzy

2018-01-01

An uncertain version of the permutation flow-shop with unlimited buffers and the makespan as a criterion is considered. The investigated parametric uncertainty is represented by given interval-valued processing times. The maximum regret is used for the evaluation of uncertainty. Consequently, the minmax regret discrete optimization problem is solved. Due to its high complexity, two relaxations are applied to simplify the optimization procedure. First of all, a greedy procedure is used for calculating the criterion's value, as such calculation is NP-hard problem itself. Moreover, the lower bound is used instead of solving the internal deterministic flow-shop. The constructive heuristic algorithm is applied for the relaxed optimization problem. The algorithm is compared with previously elaborated other heuristic algorithms basing on the evolutionary and the middle interval approaches. The conducted computational experiments showed the advantage of the constructive heuristic algorithm with regards to both the criterion and the time of computations. The Wilcoxon paired-rank statistical test confirmed this conclusion.

Online evolution reconstruction from a single measurement record with random time intervals for quantum communication

Science.gov (United States)

Zhou, Hua; Su, Yang; Wang, Rong; Zhu, Yong; Shen, Huiping; Pu, Tao; Wu, Chuanxin; Zhao, Jiyong; Zhang, Baofu; Xu, Zhiyong

2017-10-01

Online reconstruction of a time-variant quantum state from the encoding/decoding results of quantum communication is addressed by developing a method of evolution reconstruction from a single measurement record with random time intervals. A time-variant two-dimensional state is reconstructed on the basis of recovering its expectation value functions of three nonorthogonal projectors from a random single measurement record, which is composed from the discarded qubits of the six-state protocol. The simulated results prove that our method is robust to typical metro quantum channels. Our work extends the Fourier-based method of evolution reconstruction from the version for a regular single measurement record with equal time intervals to a unified one, which can be applied to arbitrary single measurement records. The proposed protocol of evolution reconstruction runs concurrently with the one of quantum communication, which can facilitate the online quantum tomography.

Neutron generation time of the reactor 'crocus' by an interval distribution method for counts collected by two detectors

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Haldy, P.-A.; Chikouche, M.

1975-01-01

The distribution is considered of time intervals between a count in one neutron detector and the consequent event registered in a second one. A 'four interval' probability generating function was derived by means of which the expression for the distribution of the time intervals, lasting from triggering detection in the first detector to subsequent count in the second, one could be obtained. The experimental work was conducted in the zero thermal power reactor Crocus, using a neutron source provided by spontaneous fission, a BF 3 counter for the first detector and an He 3 detector for the second instrument. (U.K.)

Permasalahan P-Hub Median Dengan Lintasan Terpendek

OpenAIRE

Pasaribu, Raja David

2013-01-01

Hub are facilities that serve as sorting, switching, and transhipment in a transportation network. P-hub median problem is a discrete case location allocation problem which all hub is fully connected. In this paper will be intoduced Mixed Integrer Linear Programming (MILP) formulation models of cost for p-hub median problem allocation for uncapacitaced single allocation p-hub median(USApHMP). In this paper also introduced Floyd-Warshall shortest path algorithm to solve p-hub median problems a...

Multivariate interval-censored survival data

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hougaard, Philip

2014-01-01

Interval censoring means that an event time is only known to lie in an interval (L,R], with L the last examination time before the event, and R the first after. In the univariate case, parametric models are easily fitted, whereas for non-parametric models, the mass is placed on some intervals, de...

Predicting restoration of kidney function during CRRT-free intervals

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Heise Daniel

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Renal failure is common in critically ill patients and frequently requires continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT. CRRT is discontinued at regular intervals for routine changes of the disposable equipment or for replacing clogged filter membrane assemblies. The present study was conducted to determine if the necessity to continue CRRT could be predicted during the CRRT-free period. Materials and methods In the period from 2003 to 2006, 605 patients were treated with CRRT in our ICU. A total of 222 patients with 448 CRRT-free intervals had complete data sets and were used for analysis. Of the total CRRT-free periods, 225 served as an evaluation group. Twenty-nine parameters with an assumed influence on kidney function were analyzed with regard to their potential to predict the restoration of kidney function during the CRRT-free interval. Using univariate analysis and logistic regression, a prospective index was developed and validated in the remaining 223 CRRT-free periods to establish its prognostic strength. Results Only three parameters showed an independent influence on the restoration of kidney function during CRRT-free intervals: the number of previous CRRT cycles (medians in the two outcome groups: 1 vs. 2, the "Sequential Organ Failure Assessment"-score (means in the two outcome groups: 8.3 vs. 9.2 and urinary output after the cessation of CRRT (medians in two outcome groups: 66 ml/h vs. 10 ml/h. The prognostic index, which was calculated from these three variables, showed a satisfactory potential to predict the kidney function during the CRRT-free intervals; Receiver operating characteristic (ROC analysis revealed an area under the curve of 0.798. Conclusion Restoration of kidney function during CRRT-free periods can be predicted with an index calculated from three variables. Prospective trials in other hospitals must clarify whether our results are generally transferable to other patient populations.

Median Filtering Methods for Non-volcanic Tremor Detection

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Damiao, L. G.; Nadeau, R. M.; Dreger, D. S.; Luna, B.; Zhang, H.

2016-12-01

Various properties of median filtering over time and space are used to address challenges posed by the Non-volcanic tremor detection problem. As part of a "Big-Data" effort to characterize the spatial and temporal distribution of ambient tremor throughout the Northern San Andreas Fault system, continuous seismic data from multiple seismic networks with contrasting operational characteristics and distributed over a variety of regions are being used. Automated median filtering methods that are flexible enough to work consistently with these data are required. Tremor is characterized by a low-amplitude, long-duration signal-train whose shape is coherent at multiple stations distributed over a large area. There are no consistent phase arrivals or mechanisms in a given tremor's signal and even the durations and shapes among different tremors vary considerably. A myriad of masquerading noise, anthropogenic and natural-event signals must also be discriminated in order to obtain accurate tremor detections. We present here results of the median methods applied to data from four regions of the San Andreas Fault system in northern California (Geysers Geothermal Field, Napa, Bitterwater and Parkfield) to illustrate the ability of the methods to detect tremor under diverse conditions.

Theoretical implications of quantitative properties of interval timing and probability estimation in mouse and rat.

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Kheifets, Aaron; Freestone, David; Gallistel, C R

2017-07-01

In three experiments with mice ( Mus musculus ) and rats (Rattus norvigicus), we used a switch paradigm to measure quantitative properties of the interval-timing mechanism. We found that: 1) Rodents adjusted the precision of their timed switches in response to changes in the interval between the short and long feed latencies (the temporal goalposts). 2) The variability in the timing of the switch response was reduced or unchanged in the face of large trial-to-trial random variability in the short and long feed latencies. 3) The adjustment in the distribution of switch latencies in response to changes in the relative frequency of short and long trials was sensitive to the asymmetry in the Kullback-Leibler divergence. The three results suggest that durations are represented with adjustable precision, that they are timed by multiple timers, and that there is a trial-by-trial (episodic) record of feed latencies in memory. © 2017 Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.

An analyzer for pulse-interval times to study high-order effects in the processing of nuclear detector signals

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Denecke, B.; Jonge, S. de

1998-01-01

An electronic device to measure interval time density distributions of subsequent pulses in nuclear detectors and their electronics is described. The device has a pair-pulse resolution of 10 ns and 25 ns for 3 subsequent input signals. The conversion range is 4096 channels and the lowest channel width is 10 ns. Counter dead times, single and in series were studied and compared with the statistical model. True count rates were obtained from an exponential fit through the interval-time distribution

An Integrated Theory of Prospective Time Interval Estimation: The Role of Cognition, Attention, and Learning

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Taatgen, Niels A.; van Rijn, Hedderik; Anderson, John

2007-01-01

A theory of prospective time perception is introduced and incorporated as a module in an integrated theory of cognition, thereby extending existing theories and allowing predictions about attention and learning. First, a time perception module is established by fitting existing datasets (interval estimation and bisection and impact of secondary…

Interval stability for complex systems

Science.gov (United States)

Klinshov, Vladimir V.; Kirillov, Sergey; Kurths, Jürgen; Nekorkin, Vladimir I.

2018-04-01

Stability of dynamical systems against strong perturbations is an important problem of nonlinear dynamics relevant to many applications in various areas. Here, we develop a novel concept of interval stability, referring to the behavior of the perturbed system during a finite time interval. Based on this concept, we suggest new measures of stability, namely interval basin stability (IBS) and interval stability threshold (IST). IBS characterizes the likelihood that the perturbed system returns to the stable regime (attractor) in a given time. IST provides the minimal magnitude of the perturbation capable to disrupt the stable regime for a given interval of time. The suggested measures provide important information about the system susceptibility to external perturbations which may be useful for practical applications. Moreover, from a theoretical viewpoint the interval stability measures are shown to bridge the gap between linear and asymptotic stability. We also suggest numerical algorithms for quantification of the interval stability characteristics and demonstrate their potential for several dynamical systems of various nature, such as power grids and neural networks.

The Ultrasonographic Findings of Bifid Median Nerve

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Park, Hee Jin; Park, Noh Hyuck; Joh, Joon Hee; Lee, Sung Moon

2009-01-01

We wanted to evaluate the ultrasonographic findings of bifid median nerve and its clinical significance. We retrospectively reviewed five cases (three men and two women, mean age: 54 years) of incidentally found bifid median nerve from 264 cases of clinically suspected carpal-tunnel syndrome that were seen at our hospital during last 6 years. Doppler sonography was performed in all five cases and MR angiography was done in one case for detecting a persistent median artery. The difference (ΔCSA) between the sum of the cross-sectional areas of the bifid median nerve at the pisiform level (CSA2) and the cross-sectional area proximal to the bifurcation(CSA1) was calculated. The incidence of a bifid median nerve was 1.9%. All the patients presented with a tingling sensation on a hand and two patients had nocturnal pain. All the cases showed bifurcation of the nerve bundle proximal to the carpal tunnel. The margins appeared relatively smooth and each bundle showed a characteristic fascicular pattern. A persistent median artery was noted between the bundles in four cases. ΔCSA was more than 2 mm 2 in four cases. Bifid median nerve with a persistent median artery is a relatively rare normal variance and these are very important findings before performing surgical intervention to avoid potential nerve injury and massive bleeding. We highly suggest that radiologists should understand the anatomical characteristics of this anomaly and make efforts to detect it

Global Robust Stability of Switched Interval Neural Networks with Discrete and Distributed Time-Varying Delays of Neural Type

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Huaiqin Wu

2012-01-01

Full Text Available By combing the theories of the switched systems and the interval neural networks, the mathematics model of the switched interval neural networks with discrete and distributed time-varying delays of neural type is presented. A set of the interval parameter uncertainty neural networks with discrete and distributed time-varying delays of neural type are used as the individual subsystem, and an arbitrary switching rule is assumed to coordinate the switching between these networks. By applying the augmented Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional approach and linear matrix inequality (LMI techniques, a delay-dependent criterion is achieved to ensure to such switched interval neural networks to be globally asymptotically robustly stable in terms of LMIs. The unknown gain matrix is determined by solving this delay-dependent LMIs. Finally, an illustrative example is given to demonstrate the validity of the theoretical results.

Time-resolved magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) at 3.0 Tesla for evaluation of hemodynamic characteristics of vascular malformations: description of distinct subgroups

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hammer, Simone; Fellner, Claudia; Wohlgemuth, Walter A. [University Hospital Regensburg, Department of Radiology, Regensburg (Germany); Uller, Wibke [Boston Children' s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Division of Vascular and Interventional Radiology, Boston, MA (United States); University Hospital Regensburg, Department of Radiology, Regensburg (Germany); Manger, Florentine [University Hospital Wuerzburg, Department of Nuclear Medicine, Wuerzburg (Germany); Zeman, Florian [University Hospital Regensburg, Center for Clinical Trials, Regensburg (Germany)

2017-01-15

Quantitative evaluation of hemodynamic characteristics of arteriovenous and venous malformations using time-resolved magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) at 3.0 Tesla. Time-resolved MRA with interleaved stochastic trajectories (TWIST) at 3.0 Tesla was studied in 83 consecutive patients with venous malformations (VM) and arteriovenous malformations (AVM). Enhancement characteristics were calculated as percentage increase of signal intensity above baseline over time. Maximum percentage signal intensity increase (signal{sub max}), time intervals between onset of arterial enhancement and lesion enhancement (t{sub onset}), and time intervals between beginning of lesion enhancement and maximum percentage of lesion enhancement (t{sub max}) were analyzed. All AVMs showed a high-flow hemodynamic pattern. Two significantly different (p < 0.001) types of venous malformations emerged: VMs with arteriovenous fistulas (AVF) (median signal{sub max} 737 %, IQR [interquartile range] = 511 - 1182 %; median t{sub onset} 5 s, IQR = 5 - 10 s; median t{sub max} 35 s, IQR = 26 - 40 s) and without AVFs (median signal{sub max} 284 %, IQR = 177-432 %; median t{sub onset} 23 s, IQR = 15 - 30 s; median t{sub max} 60 s, IQR = 55 - 75 s). Quantitative evaluation of time-resolved MRA at 3.0 Tesla provides hemodynamic characterization of vascular malformations. VMs can be subclassified into two hemodynamic subgroups due to presence or absence of AVFs. (orig.)

Two-sorted Point-Interval Temporal Logics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Balbiani, Philippe; Goranko, Valentin; Sciavicco, Guido

2011-01-01

There are two natural and well-studied approaches to temporal ontology and reasoning: point-based and interval-based. Usually, interval-based temporal reasoning deals with points as particular, duration-less intervals. Here we develop explicitly two-sorted point-interval temporal logical framework...... whereby time instants (points) and time periods (intervals) are considered on a par, and the perspective can shift between them within the formal discourse. We focus on fragments involving only modal operators that correspond to the inter-sort relations between points and intervals. We analyze...

Comparative evaluation of nickel discharge from brackets in artificial saliva at different time intervals.

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Jithesh, C; Venkataramana, V; Penumatsa, Narendravarma; Reddy, S N; Poornima, K Y; Rajasigamani, K

2015-08-01

To determine and compare the potential difference of nickel release from three different orthodontic brackets, in different artificial pH, in different time intervals. Twenty-seven samples of three different orthodontic brackets were selected and grouped as 1, 2, and 3. Each group was divided into three subgroups depending on the type of orthodontic brackets, salivary pH and the time interval. The Nickel release from each subgroup were analyzed by using inductively coupled plasma-Atomic Emission Spectrophotometer (Perkin Elmer, Optima 2100 DV, USA) model. Quantitative analysis of nickel was performed three times, and the mean value was used as result. ANOVA (F-test) was used to test the significant difference among the groups at 0.05 level of significance (P brackets have the highest at all 4.2 pH except in 120 h. The study result shows that the nickel release from the recycled stainless steel brackets is highest. Metal slot ceramic bracket release significantly less nickel. So, recycled stainless steel brackets should not be used for nickel allergic patients. Metal slot ceramic brackets are advisable.

Hospital cost analysis of a prospective, randomized trial of early vs interval appendectomy for perforated appendicitis in children.

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Myers, Adrianne L; Williams, Regan F; Giles, Kim; Waters, Teresa M; Eubanks, James W; Hixson, S Douglas; Huang, Eunice Y; Langham, Max R; Blakely, Martin L

2012-04-01

The methods of surgical care for children with perforated appendicitis are controversial. Some surgeons prefer early appendectomy; others prefer initial nonoperative management followed by interval appendectomy. Determining which of these two therapies is most cost-effective was the goal of this study. We conducted a prospective, randomized trial in children with a preoperative diagnosis of perforated appendicitis. Patients were randomized to early or interval appendectomy. Overall hospital costs were extracted from the hospital's internal cost accounting system and the two treatment groups were compared using an intention-to-treat analysis. Nonparametric data were reported as median ± standard deviation (or range) and compared using a Wilcoxon rank sum test. One hundred thirty-one patients were randomized to either early (n = 64) or interval (n = 67) appendectomy. Hospital charges and costs were significantly lower in patients randomized to early appendectomy. Total median hospital costs were $17,450 (range $7,020 to $55,993) for patients treated with early appendectomy vs $22,518 (range $4,722 to $135,338) for those in the interval appendectomy group. Median hospital costs more than doubled in patients who experienced an adverse event ($15,245 vs $35,391, p < 0.0001). Unplanned readmissions also increased costs significantly and were more frequent in patients randomized to interval appendectomy. In a prospective randomized trial, hospital charges and costs were significantly lower for early appendectomy when compared with interval appendectomy. The increased costs were related primarily to the significant increase in adverse events, including unplanned readmissions, seen in the interval appendectomy group. Copyright © 2012. Published by Elsevier Inc.

A network of spiking neurons that can represent interval timing: mean field analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Gavornik, Jeffrey P; Shouval, Harel Z

2011-04-01

Despite the vital importance of our ability to accurately process and encode temporal information, the underlying neural mechanisms are largely unknown. We have previously described a theoretical framework that explains how temporal representations, similar to those reported in the visual cortex, can form in locally recurrent cortical networks as a function of reward modulated synaptic plasticity. This framework allows networks of both linear and spiking neurons to learn the temporal interval between a stimulus and paired reward signal presented during training. Here we use a mean field approach to analyze the dynamics of non-linear stochastic spiking neurons in a network trained to encode specific time intervals. This analysis explains how recurrent excitatory feedback allows a network structure to encode temporal representations.

Testing the gravity p-median model empirically

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Kenneth Carling

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Regarding the location of a facility, the presumption in the widely used p-median model is that the customer opts for the shortest route to the nearest facility. However, this assumption is problematic on free markets since the customer is presumed to gravitate to a facility by the distance to and the attractiveness of it. The recently introduced gravity p-median model offers an extension to the p-median model that account for this. The model is therefore potentially interesting, although it has not yet been implemented and tested empirically. In this paper, we have implemented the model in an empirical problem of locating vehicle inspections, locksmiths, and retail stores of vehicle spare-parts for the purpose of investigating its superiority to the p-median model. We found, however, the gravity p-median model to be of limited use for the problem of locating facilities as it either gives solutions similar to the p-median model, or it gives unstable solutions due to a non-concave objective function.

Contrasting Perspectives of Anesthesiologists and Gastroenterologists on the Optimal Time Interval between Bowel Preparation and Endoscopic Sedation

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Deepak Agrawal

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Background. The optimal time interval between the last ingestion of bowel prep and sedation for colonoscopy remains controversial, despite guidelines that sedation can be administered 2 hours after consumption of clear liquids. Objective. To determine current practice patterns among anesthesiologists and gastroenterologists regarding the optimal time interval for sedation after last ingestion of bowel prep and to understand the rationale underlying their beliefs. Design. Questionnaire survey of anesthesiologists and gastroenterologists in the USA. The questions were focused on the preferred time interval of endoscopy after a polyethylene glycol based preparation in routine cases and select conditions. Results. Responses were received from 109 anesthesiologists and 112 gastroenterologists. 96% of anesthesiologists recommended waiting longer than 2 hours until sedation, in contrast to only 26% of gastroenterologists. The main reason for waiting >2 hours was that PEG was not considered a clear liquid. Most anesthesiologists, but not gastroenterologists, waited longer in patients with history of diabetes or reflux. Conclusions. Anesthesiologists and gastroenterologists do not agree on the optimal interval for sedation after last drink of bowel prep. Most anesthesiologists prefer to wait longer than the recommended 2 hours for clear liquids. The data suggest a need for clearer guidelines on this issue.

Switching non-local vector median filter

Science.gov (United States)

Matsuoka, Jyohei; Koga, Takanori; Suetake, Noriaki; Uchino, Eiji

2016-04-01

This paper describes a novel image filtering method that removes random-valued impulse noise superimposed on a natural color image. In impulse noise removal, it is essential to employ a switching-type filtering method, as used in the well-known switching median filter, to preserve the detail of an original image with good quality. In color image filtering, it is generally preferable to deal with the red (R), green (G), and blue (B) components of each pixel of a color image as elements of a vectorized signal, as in the well-known vector median filter, rather than as component-wise signals to prevent a color shift after filtering. By taking these fundamentals into consideration, we propose a switching-type vector median filter with non-local processing that mainly consists of a noise detector and a noise removal filter. Concretely, we propose a noise detector that proactively detects noise-corrupted pixels by focusing attention on the isolation tendencies of pixels of interest not in an input image but in difference images between RGB components. Furthermore, as the noise removal filter, we propose an extended version of the non-local median filter, we proposed previously for grayscale image processing, named the non-local vector median filter, which is designed for color image processing. The proposed method realizes a superior balance between the preservation of detail and impulse noise removal by proactive noise detection and non-local switching vector median filtering, respectively. The effectiveness and validity of the proposed method are verified in a series of experiments using natural color images.

Prognostic value of cardiac time intervals measured by tissue Doppler imaging M-mode in the general population

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Biering-Sørensen, Tor; Mogelvang, Rasmus; Jensen, Jan Skov

2015-01-01

: In a large prospective community-based study, cardiac function was evaluated in 1915 participants by both conventional echocardiography and TDI. The cardiac time intervals, including the isovolumic relaxation time (IVRT), isovolumic contraction time (IVCT) and ejection time (ET), were obtained by TDI M...

Social Security: a financial appraisal for the median voter.

Science.gov (United States)

Galasso, V

Several explanations have been proposed for why voters continue to support unfunded social security systems. Browning (1975) suggests that the extremely large unfunded pension systems of most democracies depend on the existence of a voting majority composed of middle-aged and older people who fail to fully internalize the cost of financing the system. In fact, when voting, economically rational workers consider only their current and future contributions to the system and their expected pension benefits--not their past contributions, which they regard as sunk costs. If, for a majority of voters, the expected continuation return from social security exceeds the return from alternative assets, an unfunded social security system is politically sustainable. This article explores the validity of Browning's proposition by quantifying the returns that U.S. voters in presidential elections from 1964 to 1996 have obtained, or expect to obtain, from Social Security. Did "investments" in Social Security outperform alternative forms of investment, such as mutual funds or pension funds, for a majority of the voters? What can be expected for the future? The U.S. Social Security system redistributes income within age cohorts on the basis of sex, income, and marital status. To account for some of these features, the median voter is represented by a family unit whose members--a husband who accounts for 70 percent of household earnings and a wife who accounts for 30 percent--make joint economic and voting decisions. Thus, retirement and survival benefits paid out to the spouse of an insured worker can be included in the calculation of Social Security returns. Interval estimates of voters' family incomes from the U.S. Census Bureau were used to obtain the median voter's household earnings. The median voter's age is derived from the ages of those who voted in presidential elections, not from the ages of the entire electorate. The median voter's contributions to Social Security are the

The delayed reproduction of long time intervals defined by innocuous thermal sensation.

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Khoshnejad, Mina; Martinu, Kristina; Grondin, Simon; Rainville, Pierre

2016-04-01

The presence of discrete events during an interval to be estimated generally causes a dilation of perceived duration (event-filling effect). Here, we investigated this phenomenon in the thermal modality using multi-seconds (19 s) innocuous cool stimuli that were either constant (continuous interval) or fluctuating to create three discrete sensory events (segmented interval). Moreover, we introduced a delay following stimulus offset, before the reproduction phase, to allow for a direct comparison with our recent study showing an underestimation of duration in a delayed reproduction task of heat pain sensations (Khoshnejad et al. in Pain 155:581-590, 2014. doi: 10.1016/j.pain.2013.12.015 ). The event-filling effect was tested by comparing the delayed reproduction of the segmented and the continuous stimuli in experimental conditions asking participants to (1) reproduce the dynamics of the sensation (i.e., changes in sensory intensity over time) or (2) reproduce only the interval duration (i.e., sensation onset-to-offset). A perceptual (control) condition required participants to report changes in sensation concurrently with the stimulus. Results of the dynamic task confirmed the underestimation of duration in the delayed reproduction task, but this effect was only found with the continuous and not with the segmented stimulus. This implies that the dilation of duration produced by segmentation might compensate for the underestimation of duration in this delayed reproduction task. However, this temporal dilation effect was only observed when participants were required to attend and reproduce the dynamics of sensation. These results suggest that the event-filling effect can be observed in the thermal sensory modality and that attention directed toward changes in sensory intensity might contribute to this effect.

Determining diabetic retinopathy screening interval based on time from no retinopathy to laser therapy.

Science.gov (United States)

Hughes, Daniel; Nair, Sunil; Harvey, John N

2017-12-01

Objectives To determine the necessary screening interval for retinopathy in diabetic patients with no retinopathy based on time to laser therapy and to assess long-term visual outcome following screening. Methods In a population-based community screening programme in North Wales, 2917 patients were followed until death or for approximately 12 years. At screening, 2493 had no retinopathy; 424 had mostly minor degrees of non-proliferative retinopathy. Data on timing of first laser therapy and visual outcome following screening were obtained from local hospitals and ophthalmology units. Results Survival analysis showed that very few of the no retinopathy at screening group required laser therapy in the early years compared with the non-proliferative retinopathy group ( p retinopathy at screening group required laser therapy, and at three years 0.2% (cumulative), lower rates of treatment than have been suggested by analyses of sight-threatening retinopathy determined photographically. At follow-up (mean 7.8 ± 4.6 years), mild to moderate visual impairment in one or both eyes due to diabetic retinopathy was more common in those with retinopathy at screening (26% vs. 5%, p diabetes occurred in only 1 in 1000. Conclusions Optimum screening intervals should be determined from time to active treatment. Based on requirement for laser therapy, the screening interval for diabetic patients with no retinopathy can be extended to two to three years. Patients who attend for retinal screening and treatment who have no or non-proliferative retinopathy now have a very low risk of eventual blindness from diabetes.

Time to treatment as a quality metric in lung cancer: Staging studies, time to treatment, and patient survival

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gomez, Daniel R.; Liao, Kai-Ping; Swisher, Stephen G.; Blumenschein, George R.; Erasmus, Jeremy J.; Buchholz, Thomas A.; Giordano, Sharon H.; Smith, Benjamin D.

2015-01-01

Purpose: Prompt staging and treatment are crucial for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). We determined if predictors of treatment delay after diagnosis were associated with prognosis. Materials and methods: Medicare claims from 28,732 patients diagnosed with NSCLC in 2004–2007 were used to establish the diagnosis-to-treatment interval (ideally ⩽35 days) and identify staging studies during that interval. Factors associated with delay were identified with multivariate logistic regression, and associations between delay and survival by stage were tested with Cox proportional hazard regression. Results: Median diagnosis-to-treatment interval was 27 days. Receipt of PET was associated with delays (57.4% of patients with PET delayed [n = 6646/11,583] versus 22.8% of those without [n = 3908/17,149]; adjusted OR = 4.48, 95% CI 4.23–4.74, p < 0.001). Median diagnosis-to-PET interval was 15 days; PET-to-clinic, 5 days; and clinic-to-treatment, 12 days. Diagnosis-to-treatment intervals <35 days were associated with improved survival for patients with localized disease and those with distant disease surviving ⩾1 year but not for patients with distant disease surviving <1 year. Conclusion: Delays between diagnosing and treating NSCLC are common and associated with use of PET for staging. Reducing time to treatment may improve survival for patients with manageable disease at diagnosis

Confidence intervals for the lognormal probability distribution

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Smith, D.L.; Naberejnev, D.G.

2004-01-01

The present communication addresses the topic of symmetric confidence intervals for the lognormal probability distribution. This distribution is frequently utilized to characterize inherently positive, continuous random variables that are selected to represent many physical quantities in applied nuclear science and technology. The basic formalism is outlined herein and a conjured numerical example is provided for illustration. It is demonstrated that when the uncertainty reflected in a lognormal probability distribution is large, the use of a confidence interval provides much more useful information about the variable used to represent a particular physical quantity than can be had by adhering to the notion that the mean value and standard deviation of the distribution ought to be interpreted as best value and corresponding error, respectively. Furthermore, it is shown that if the uncertainty is very large a disturbing anomaly can arise when one insists on interpreting the mean value and standard deviation as the best value and corresponding error, respectively. Reliance on using the mode and median as alternative parameters to represent the best available knowledge of a variable with large uncertainties is also shown to entail limitations. Finally, a realistic physical example involving the decay of radioactivity over a time period that spans many half-lives is presented and analyzed to further illustrate the concepts discussed in this communication

H∞ state estimation of generalised neural networks with interval time-varying delays

Science.gov (United States)

Saravanakumar, R.; Syed Ali, M.; Cao, Jinde; Huang, He

2016-12-01

This paper focuses on studying the H∞ state estimation of generalised neural networks with interval time-varying delays. The integral terms in the time derivative of the Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional are handled by the Jensen's inequality, reciprocally convex combination approach and a new Wirtinger-based double integral inequality. A delay-dependent criterion is derived under which the estimation error system is globally asymptotically stable with H∞ performance. The proposed conditions are represented by linear matrix inequalities. Optimal H∞ norm bounds are obtained easily by solving convex problems in terms of linear matrix inequalities. The advantage of employing the proposed inequalities is illustrated by numerical examples.

Hospital process intervals, not EMS time intervals, are the most important predictors of rapid reperfusion in EMS Patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction.

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Clark, Carol Lynn; Berman, Aaron D; McHugh, Ann; Roe, Edward Jedd; Boura, Judith; Swor, Robert A

2012-01-01

To assess the relationship of emergency medical services (EMS) intervals and internal hospital intervals to the rapid reperfusion of patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). We performed a secondary analysis of a prospectively collected database of STEMI patients transported to a large academic community hospital between January 1, 2004, and December 31, 2009. EMS and hospital data intervals included EMS scene time, transport time, hospital arrival to myocardial infarction (MI) team activation (D2Page), page to catheterization laboratory arrival (P2Lab), and catheterization laboratory arrival to reperfusion (L2B). We used two outcomes: EMS scene arrival to reperfusion (S2B) ≤90 minutes and hospital arrival to reperfusion (D2B) ≤90 minutes. Means and proportions are reported. Pearson chi-square and multivariate regression were used for analysis. During the study period, we included 313 EMS-transported STEMI patients with 298 (95.2%) MI team activations. Of these STEMI patients, 295 (94.2%) were taken to the cardiac catheterization laboratory and 244 (78.0%) underwent percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). For the patients who underwent PCI, 127 (52.5%) had prehospital EMS activation, 202 (82.8%) had D2B ≤90 minutes, and 72 (39%) had S2B ≤90 minutes. In a multivariate analysis, hospital processes EMS activation (OR 7.1, 95% CI 2.7, 18.4], Page to Lab [6.7, 95% CI 2.3, 19.2] and Lab arrival to Reperfusion [18.5, 95% CI 6.1, 55.6]) were the most important predictors of Scene to Balloon ≤ 90 minutes. EMS scene and transport intervals also had a modest association with rapid reperfusion (OR 0.85, 95% CI 0.78, 0.93 and OR 0.89, 95% CI 0.83, 0.95, respectively). In a secondary analysis, Hospital processes (Door to Page [OR 44.8, 95% CI 8.6, 234.4], Page 2 Lab [OR 5.4, 95% CI 1.9, 15.3], and Lab arrival to Reperfusion [OR 14.6 95% CI 2.5, 84.3]), but not EMS scene and transport intervals were the most important predictors D2B ≤90

Range Selection and Median

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jørgensen, Allan Grønlund; Larsen, Kasper Green

2011-01-01

and several natural special cases thereof. The rst special case is known as range median, which arises when k is xed to b(j 􀀀 i + 1)=2c. The second case, denoted prex selection, arises when i is xed to 0. Finally, we also consider the bounded rank prex selection problem and the xed rank range......Range selection is the problem of preprocessing an input array A of n unique integers, such that given a query (i; j; k), one can report the k'th smallest integer in the subarray A[i];A[i+1]; : : : ;A[j]. In this paper we consider static data structures in the word-RAM for range selection...... selection problem. In the former, data structures must support prex selection queries under the assumption that k for some value n given at construction time, while in the latter, data structures must support range selection queries where k is xed beforehand for all queries. We prove cell probe lower bounds...

Perceptual inequality between two neighboring time intervals defined by sound markers: correspondence between neurophysiological and psychological data

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Takako eMitsudo

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Brain activity related to time estimation processes in humans was analyzed using a perceptual phenomenon called auditory temporal assimilation. In a typical stimulus condition, two neighboring time intervals (T1 and T2 in this order are perceived as equal even when the physical lengths of these time intervals are considerably different. Our previous event-related potential (ERP study demonstrated that a slow negative component (SNCt appears in the right-frontal brain area (around the F8 electrode after T2, which is associated with judgment of the equality/inequality of T1 and T2. In the present study, we conducted two ERP experiments to further confirm the robustness of the SNCt. The stimulus patterns consisted of two neighboring time intervals marked by three successive tone bursts. Thirteen participants only listened to the patterns in the first session, and judged the equality/inequality of T1 and T2 in the next session. Behavioral data showed typical temporal assimilation. The ERP data revealed that three components (N1; contingent negative variation, CNV; and SNCt emerged related to the temporal judgment. The N1 appeared in the central area, and its peak latencies corresponded to the physical timing of each marker onset. The CNV component appeared in the frontal area during T2 presentation, and its amplitude increased as a function of T1. The SNCt appeared in the right-frontal area after the presentation of T1 and T2, and its magnitude was larger for the temporal patterns causing perceptual inequality. The SNCt was also correlated with the perceptual equality/inequality of the same stimulus pattern, and continued up to about 400 ms after the end of T2. These results suggest that the SNCt can be a signature of equality/inequality judgment, which derives from the comparison of the two neighboring time intervals.

Diagnostic Efficiency of MR Imaging of the Knee. Relationship to time Interval between MR and Arthroscopy

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Barrera, M. C.; Recondo, J. A.; Aperribay, M.; Gervas, C.; Fernandez, E.; Alustiza, J. M.

2003-01-01

To evaluate the efficiency of magnetic resonance (MR) in the diagnosis of knee lesions and how the results are influenced by the time interval between MR and arthroscopy. 248 knees studied by MR were retrospectively analyzed, as well as those which also underwent arthroscopy. Arthroscopy was considered to be the gold standard, MR diagnostic capacity was evaluated for both meniscal and cruciate ligament lesions. Sensitivity, specificity and Kappa index were calculated for the set of all knees included in the study (248), for those in which the time between MR and arthroscopy was less than or equal to three months (134) and for those in which the time between both procedures was less than or equal to one month. Sensitivity, specificity and Kappa index of the MR had global values of 96.5%, 70% and 71%, respectively. When the interval between MR and arthroscopy was less than or equal to three months, sensitivity, specificity and Kappa index were 95.5%, 75% and 72%, respectively. When it was less than or equal to one month, sensitivity was 100%, specificity was 87.5% and Kappa index was 91%. MR is an excellent tool for the diagnosis of knee lesions. Higher MR values of sensitivity, specificity and Kappa index are obtained when the time interval between both procedures is kept to a minimum. (Author) 11 refs

Median Nerve Conduction in Healthy Nigerians: Normative Data

African Journals Online (AJOL)

of median nerve disease using multiple studies, and rendering ... Aim: To develop normative values for motor and sensory median nerve ..... Table 5: Comparison of median motor nerve conduction study parameters to studies elsewhere. Study.

Time Interval to Initiation of Contraceptive Methods Following ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

2018-01-30

Jan 30, 2018 ... interval between a woman's last childbirth and the initiation of contraception. Materials and ..... DF=Degree of freedom; χ2=Chi‑square test ..... practice of modern contraception among single women in a rural and urban ...

Impact of Vestibular Lesions on Allocentric Navigation and Interval Timing: The Role of Self-Initiated Motion in Spatial-Temporal Integration

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Dallal, N. L.; Yin, B.; Nekovářová, Tereza; Stuchlík, Aleš; Meck, W. H.

2015-01-01

Roč. 3, 3-4 (2015), s. 269-305 ISSN 2213-445X R&D Projects: GA MŠk(CZ) LH14053 Institutional support: RVO:67985823 Keywords : peak-interval procedure * interval timing * radial-arm maze * magnitude representation * dorsolateral striatum * self-initiated movement * hippocampus * cerebellum * time perception * allocentric navigation Subject RIV: FH - Neurology

An experimental evaluation of electrical skin conductivity changes in postmortem interval and its assessment for time of death estimation.

Science.gov (United States)

Cantürk, İsmail; Karabiber, Fethullah; Çelik, Safa; Şahin, M Feyzi; Yağmur, Fatih; Kara, Sadık

2016-02-01

In forensic medicine, estimation of the time of death (ToD) is one of the most important and challenging medico-legal problems. Despite the partial accomplishments in ToD estimations to date, the error margin of ToD estimation is still too large. In this study, electrical conductivity changes were experimentally investigated in the postmortem interval in human cases. Electrical conductivity measurements give some promising clues about the postmortem interval. A living human has a natural electrical conductivity; in the postmortem interval, intracellular fluids gradually leak out of cells. These leaked fluids combine with extra-cellular fluids in tissues and since both fluids are electrolytic, intracellular fluids help increase conductivity. Thus, the level of electrical conductivity is expected to increase with increased time after death. In this study, electrical conductivity tests were applied for six hours. The electrical conductivity of the cases exponentially increased during the tested time period, indicating a positive relationship between electrical conductivity and the postmortem interval. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Relationships between the Brook Street Terrane and Median Tectonic Zone (Median Batholith) : evidence from Jurassic conglomerates

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tulloch, A.J.; Kimbrough, D.L.; Landis, C.A.; Mortimer, N.; Johnston, M.R.

1999-01-01

U-Pb zircon ages of 237-180 Ma and c. 280 Ma of seven granitoid clasts from the Rainy River Conglomerate which lies within the eastern Median Tectonic Zone (Median Batholith) in Nelson, and the Barretts Formation of the Brook Street Terrane in Southland, constrain the depositional ages of both units to be no older than c. 180-200 Ma (Early Jurassic). The minimum age of the Rainy River Conglomerate is constrained by the 147 +2 -1 Ma (Latest Jurassic) emplacement age of the One Mile Gabbronorite (new name: previously western Buller Diorite). The ages and chemistry of five of the granitoid clasts are broadly compatible with derivation from rocks that are now represented by Triassic plutons of the Median Tectonic Zone (Median Batholith), although ages as young as 180 Ma are slightly outside the range of the latter as currently exposed in New Zealand. The age (273-290 Ma, 237 +/- 3 Ma) and chemistry of the other two clasts (one each from Rainy River Conglomerate and Barretts Formation) suggest derivation from the Brook Street Terrane. Similarity in stratigraphic age, depositional characteristics, granitoid clast ages and composition between Rainy River Conglomerate and Barretts Formation suggests that they are broadly correlative and collectively overlapped a combined Brook Street Terrane - Median Batholith (MTZ) before the Late Jurassic (147 +2 -1 Ma). Sedimentary overlap may also have continued across to Middle Jurassic conglomeratic strata in the Murihiku Terrane to the east of the Brook Street Terrane. A U-Pb zircon age of 261 +/- 2 Ma is reported for Pourakino Trondhjemite of the Brook Street Terrane. (author). 56 refs., 10 figs., 4 tabs

Median and ulnar neuropathies in university guitarists.

Science.gov (United States)

Kennedy, Rachel H; Hutcherson, Kimberly J; Kain, Jennifer B; Phillips, Alicia L; Halle, John S; Greathouse, David G

2006-02-01

Descriptive study. To determine the presence of median and ulnar neuropathies in both upper extremities of university guitarists. Peripheral nerve entrapment syndromes of the upper extremities are well documented in musicians. Guitarists and plucked-string musicians are at risk for entrapment neuropathies in the upper extremities and are prone to mild neurologic deficits. Twenty-four volunteer male and female guitarists (age range, 18-26 years) were recruited from the Belmont University School of Music and the Vanderbilt University Blair School of Music. Individuals were excluded if they were pregnant or had a history of recent upper extremity or neck injury. Subjects completed a history form, were interviewed, and underwent a physical examination. Nerve conduction status of the median and ulnar nerves of both upper extremities was obtained by performing motor, sensory, and F-wave (central) nerve conduction studies. Descriptive statistics of the nerve conduction study variables were computed using Microsoft Excel. Six subjects had positive findings on provocative testing of the median and ulnar nerves. Otherwise, these guitarists had normal upper extremity neural and musculoskeletal function based on the history and physical examinations. When comparing the subjects' nerve conduction study values with a chart of normal nerve conduction studies values, 2 subjects had prolonged distal motor latencies (DMLs) of the left median nerve of 4.3 and 4.7 milliseconds (normal, DMLs are compatible with median neuropathy at or distal to the wrist. Otherwise, all electrophysiological variables were within normal limits for motor, sensory, and F-wave (central) values. However, comparison studies of median and ulnar motor latencies in the same hand demonstrated prolonged differences of greater than 1.0 milliseconds that affected the median nerve in 2 additional subjects, and identified contralateral limb involvement in a subject with a prolonged distal latency. The other 20

Bayesian median regression for temporal gene expression data

Science.gov (United States)

Yu, Keming; Vinciotti, Veronica; Liu, Xiaohui; 't Hoen, Peter A. C.

2007-09-01

Most of the existing methods for the identification of biologically interesting genes in a temporal expression profiling dataset do not fully exploit the temporal ordering in the dataset and are based on normality assumptions for the gene expression. In this paper, we introduce a Bayesian median regression model to detect genes whose temporal profile is significantly different across a number of biological conditions. The regression model is defined by a polynomial function where both time and condition effects as well as interactions between the two are included. MCMC-based inference returns the posterior distribution of the polynomial coefficients. From this a simple Bayes factor test is proposed to test for significance. The estimation of the median rather than the mean, and within a Bayesian framework, increases the robustness of the method compared to a Hotelling T2-test previously suggested. This is shown on simulated data and on muscular dystrophy gene expression data.

Experimental uncertainty estimation and statistics for data having interval uncertainty.

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kreinovich, Vladik (Applied Biomathematics, Setauket, New York); Oberkampf, William Louis (Applied Biomathematics, Setauket, New York); Ginzburg, Lev (Applied Biomathematics, Setauket, New York); Ferson, Scott (Applied Biomathematics, Setauket, New York); Hajagos, Janos (Applied Biomathematics, Setauket, New York)

2007-05-01

This report addresses the characterization of measurements that include epistemic uncertainties in the form of intervals. It reviews the application of basic descriptive statistics to data sets which contain intervals rather than exclusively point estimates. It describes algorithms to compute various means, the median and other percentiles, variance, interquartile range, moments, confidence limits, and other important statistics and summarizes the computability of these statistics as a function of sample size and characteristics of the intervals in the data (degree of overlap, size and regularity of widths, etc.). It also reviews the prospects for analyzing such data sets with the methods of inferential statistics such as outlier detection and regressions. The report explores the tradeoff between measurement precision and sample size in statistical results that are sensitive to both. It also argues that an approach based on interval statistics could be a reasonable alternative to current standard methods for evaluating, expressing and propagating measurement uncertainties.

Is high-intensity interval training a time-efficient exercise strategy to improve health and fitness?

Science.gov (United States)

Gillen, Jenna B; Gibala, Martin J

2014-03-01

Growing research suggests that high-intensity interval training (HIIT) is a time-efficient exercise strategy to improve cardiorespiratory and metabolic health. "All out" HIIT models such as Wingate-type exercise are particularly effective, but this type of training may not be safe, tolerable or practical for many individuals. Recent studies, however, have revealed the potential for other models of HIIT, which may be more feasible but are still time-efficient, to stimulate adaptations similar to more demanding low-volume HIIT models and high-volume endurance-type training. As little as 3 HIIT sessions per week, involving ≤10 min of intense exercise within a time commitment of ≤30 min per session, including warm-up, recovery between intervals and cool down, has been shown to improve aerobic capacity, skeletal muscle oxidative capacity, exercise tolerance and markers of disease risk after only a few weeks in both healthy individuals and people with cardiometabolic disorders. Additional research is warranted, as studies conducted have been relatively short-term, with a limited number of measurements performed on small groups of subjects. However, given that "lack of time" remains one of the most commonly cited barriers to regular exercise participation, low-volume HIIT is a time-efficient exercise strategy that warrants consideration by health practitioners and fitness professionals.

Time course and predictors of median nerve conduction after carpal tunnel release.

Science.gov (United States)

Rotman, Mitchell B; Enkvetchakul, Bobby V; Megerian, J Thomas; Gozani, Shai N

2004-05-01

To identify predictors of outcome and of electrophysiologic recovery in patients with carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) treated by endoscopic carpal tunnel release using a nerve conduction testing system (NC-Stat; NEUROMetrix, Inc, Waltham, MA). Validity of the automated nerve conduction testing system was shown by comparing presurgical distal motor latencies (DMLs) against a reference obtained by referral to an electromyography laboratory. The DML was evaluated in 48 patients with CTS. Measurements were obtained within 1 hour of surgery and at 2 weeks, 6 weeks, 3 months, and 6 months after carpal tunnel release. Presurgical and postsurgical DMLs were then compared and correlated with variables and possible predictors of outcome including age, body mass index, gender, and presurgical DMLs. The automated nerve conduction testing system DMLs matched those of reference electromyography/nerve conduction study values with high correlation. Sensitivity of the automated nerve conduction testing system when compared with a standardized CTS case definition was 89%, with a specificity of 95%. A significant correlation was found between the DML before release and the DML 1 hour after release. Moreover, maximal postsurgical DML improvement was highly dependent on the presurgical DML, with no improvement shown for the 6-ms group. Among the clinical variables of age, gender, and body mass index only age was mildly predictive of postrelease DML changes at 6 months. No other correlations between clinical variables and postsurgical DMLs were significant. In addition the predictive value of age was lost when combined with the presurgical DML in a multivariate analysis. Postsurgical changes in the median nerve DML were highly dependent on the prerelease latency. The sensitivity and specificity of a nerve conduction monitoring system in detecting and aiding in the diagnosis of CTS is useful in the long-term management of patients with CTS and can aid in determining the level of improvement

Simple estimation procedures for regression analysis of interval-censored failure time data under the proportional hazards model.

Science.gov (United States)

Sun, Jianguo; Feng, Yanqin; Zhao, Hui

2015-01-01

Interval-censored failure time data occur in many fields including epidemiological and medical studies as well as financial and sociological studies, and many authors have investigated their analysis (Sun, The statistical analysis of interval-censored failure time data, 2006; Zhang, Stat Modeling 9:321-343, 2009). In particular, a number of procedures have been developed for regression analysis of interval-censored data arising from the proportional hazards model (Finkelstein, Biometrics 42:845-854, 1986; Huang, Ann Stat 24:540-568, 1996; Pan, Biometrics 56:199-203, 2000). For most of these procedures, however, one drawback is that they involve estimation of both regression parameters and baseline cumulative hazard function. In this paper, we propose two simple estimation approaches that do not need estimation of the baseline cumulative hazard function. The asymptotic properties of the resulting estimates are given, and an extensive simulation study is conducted and indicates that they work well for practical situations.

An Efficient Format for Nearly Constant-Time Access to Arbitrary Time Intervals in Large Trace Files

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Anthony Chan

2008-01-01

Full Text Available A powerful method to aid in understanding the performance of parallel applications uses log or trace files containing time-stamped events and states (pairs of events. These trace files can be very large, often hundreds or even thousands of megabytes. Because of the cost of accessing and displaying such files, other methods are often used that reduce the size of the tracefiles at the cost of sacrificing detail or other information. This paper describes a hierarchical trace file format that provides for display of an arbitrary time window in a time independent of the total size of the file and roughly proportional to the number of events within the time window. This format eliminates the need to sacrifice data to achieve a smaller trace file size (since storage is inexpensive, it is necessary only to make efficient use of bandwidth to that storage. The format can be used to organize a trace file or to create a separate file of annotations that may be used with conventional trace files. We present an analysis of the time to access all of the events relevant to an interval of time and we describe experiments demonstrating the performance of this file format.

Poststimulation time interval-dependent effects of motor cortex anodal tDCS on reaction-time task performance.

Science.gov (United States)

Molero-Chamizo, Andrés; Alameda Bailén, José R; Garrido Béjar, Tamara; García López, Macarena; Jaén Rodríguez, Inmaculada; Gutiérrez Lérida, Carolina; Pérez Panal, Silvia; González Ángel, Gloria; Lemus Corchero, Laura; Ruiz Vega, María J; Nitsche, Michael A; Rivera-Urbina, Guadalupe N

2018-02-01

Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) induces long-term potentiation-like plasticity, which is associated with long-lasting effects on different cognitive, emotional, and motor performances. Specifically, tDCS applied over the motor cortex is considered to improve reaction time in simple and complex tasks. The timing of tDCS relative to task performance could determine the efficacy of tDCS to modulate performance. The aim of this study was to compare the effects of a single session of anodal tDCS (1.5 mA, for 15 min) applied over the left primary motor cortex (M1) versus sham stimulation on performance of a go/no-go simple reaction-time task carried out at three different time points after tDCS-namely, 0, 30, or 60 min after stimulation. Performance zero min after anodal tDCS was improved during the whole course of the task. Performance 30 min after anodal tDCS was improved only in the last block of the reaction-time task. Performance 60 min after anodal tDCS was not significantly different throughout the entire task. These findings suggest that the motor cortex excitability changes induced by tDCS can improve motor responses, and these effects critically depend on the time interval between stimulation and task performance.

Donation return time at fixed and mobile donation sites

Science.gov (United States)

Carey, Patricia M.; High, Patrick M.; Schlumpf, Karen S.; Johnson, Bryce R.; Mast, Alan E.; Rios, Jorge A.; Simon, Toby L.; Wilkinson, Susan L.

2013-01-01

BACKGROUND This study investigated the effect of blood donation environment, fixed or mobile with differing sponsor types, on donation return time. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS Data from 2006 through 2009 at six US blood centers participating in the Retrovirus Epidemiology Donor Study-II (REDS-II) were used for analysis. Descriptive statistics stratified by whole blood (WB), plateletpheresis (PP), and double red blood cell (R2) donations were obtained for fixed and mobile locations, including median number of donations and median interdonation interval. A survival analysis estimated median return time at fixed and mobile sites, while controlling for censored return times, demographics, blood center, and mandatory recovery times. RESULTS Two-thirds (67.9%) of WB donations were made at mobile sites, 97.4% of PP donations were made at fixed sites, and R2 donations were equally distributed between fixed and mobile locations. For donations at fixed sites only or alternating between fixed and mobile sites, the highest median numbers of donations were nine and eight, respectively, and the shortest model-adjusted median return times (controlling for mandatory eligibility times of 56 and 112 days) were 36 and 30 days for WB and R2 donations, respectively. For PP donations, the shortest model-adjusted median return time was 23 days at a fixed location and the longest was 693 days at community locations. CONCLUSION WB, PP, and R2 donors with the shortest time between donations were associated with fixed locations and those alternating between fixed and mobile locations, even after controlling for differing mandatory recovery times for the different blood donation procedures. PMID:21745215

Separate patient serum sodium medians from males and females provide independent information on analytical bias.

Science.gov (United States)

Hansen, Steen Ingemann; Petersen, Per Hyltoft; Lund, Flemming; Fraser, Callum G; Sölétormos, György

2017-10-26

During monitoring of monthly medians of results from patients undertaken to assess analytical stability in routine laboratory performance, the medians for serum sodium for male and female patients were found to be significantly related. Daily, weekly and monthly patient medians of serum sodium for both male and female patients were calculated from results obtained on samples from the population >18 years on three analysers in the hospital laboratory. The half-range of medians was applied as an estimate of the maximum bias. Further, the ratios between the two medians were calculated. The medians of both genders demonstrated dispersions over time, but they were closely connected in like patterns, which were confirmed by the half-range of the ratios of medians for males and females that varied from 0.36% for daily, 0.14% for weekly and 0.036% for monthly ratios over all instruments. The tight relationship between the gender medians for serum sodium is only possible when raw laboratory data are used for calculation. The two patient medians can be used to confirm both and are useful as independent estimates of analytical bias during constant calibration periods. In contrast to the gender combined median, the estimate of analytical bias can be confirmed further by calculation of the ratios of medians for males and females.

Improving Delay-Range-Dependent Stability Condition for Systems with Interval Time-Varying Delay

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wei Qian

2013-01-01

Full Text Available This paper discusses the delay-range-dependent stability for systems with interval time-varying delay. Through defining the new Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional and estimating the derivative of the LKF by introducing new vectors, using free matrices and reciprocally convex approach, the new delay-range-dependent stability conditions are obtained. Two well-known examples are given to illustrate the less conservatism of the proposed theoretical results.

Time Interval to Initiation of Contraceptive Methods Following ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Objectives: The objectives of the study were to determine factors affecting the interval between a woman's last childbirth and the initiation of contraception. Materials and Methods: This was a retrospective study. Family planning clinic records of the Barau Dikko Teaching Hospital Kaduna from January 2000 to March 2014 ...

Model for the respiratory modulation of the heart beat-to-beat time interval series

Science.gov (United States)

Capurro, Alberto; Diambra, Luis; Malta, C. P.

2005-09-01

In this study we present a model for the respiratory modulation of the heart beat-to-beat interval series. The model consists of a set of differential equations used to simulate the membrane potential of a single rabbit sinoatrial node cell, excited with a periodic input signal with added correlated noise. This signal, which simulates the input from the autonomous nervous system to the sinoatrial node, was included in the pacemaker equations as a modulation of the iNaK current pump and the potassium current iK. We focus at modeling the heart beat-to-beat time interval series from normal subjects during meditation of the Kundalini Yoga and Chi techniques. The analysis of the experimental data indicates that while the embedding of pre-meditation and control cases have a roughly circular shape, it acquires a polygonal shape during meditation, triangular for the Kundalini Yoga data and quadrangular in the case of Chi data. The model was used to assess the waveshape of the respiratory signals needed to reproduce the trajectory of the experimental data in the phase space. The embedding of the Chi data could be reproduced using a periodic signal obtained by smoothing a square wave. In the case of Kundalini Yoga data, the embedding was reproduced with a periodic signal obtained by smoothing a triangular wave having a rising branch of longer duration than the decreasing branch. Our study provides an estimation of the respiratory signal using only the heart beat-to-beat time interval series.

Time interval between infective endocarditis first symptoms and diagnosis: relationship to infective endocarditis characteristics, microorganisms and prognosis.

Science.gov (United States)

N'Guyen, Yohan; Duval, Xavier; Revest, Matthieu; Saada, Matthieu; Erpelding, Marie-Line; Selton-Suty, Christine; Bouchiat, Coralie; Delahaye, François; Chirouze, Catherine; Alla, François; Strady, Christophe; Hoen, Bruno

2017-03-01

To analyze the characteristics and outcome of infective endocarditis (IE) according to the time interval between IE first symptoms and diagnosis. Among the IE cases of a French population-based epidemiological survey, patients having early-diagnosed IE (diagnosis of IE within 1 month of first symptoms) were compared with those having late-diagnosed IE (diagnosis of IE more than 1 month after first symptoms). Among the 486 definite-IE, 124 (25%) had late-diagnosed IE whereas others had early-diagnosed IE. Early-diagnosed IE were independently associated with female gender (OR = 1.8; 95% CI [1.0-3.0]), prosthetic valve (OR= 2.6; 95% CI [1.4-5.0]) and staphylococci as causative pathogen (OR = 3.7; 95% CI [2.2-6.2]). Cardiac surgery theoretical indication rates were not different between early and late-diagnosed IE (56.3% vs 58.9%), whereas valve surgery performance was lower in early-diagnosed IE (41% vs 53%; p = .03). In-hospital mortality rates were higher in early-diagnosed IE than in late-diagnosed IE (25.1% vs 16.1%; p endocarditis, which time interval between first symptoms and diagnosis was less than one month, were mainly due to Staphylococcus aureus in France. Staphylococcus aureus infective endocarditis were associated with septic shock, transient ischemic attack or stroke and higher mortality rates than infective endocarditis due to other bacteria or infective endocarditis, which time interval between first symptoms and diagnosis was more than one month. Infective endocarditis, which time interval between first symptoms and diagnosis was more than one month, were accounting for one quarter of all infective endocarditis in our study and were associated with vertebral osteomyelitis and a higher rate of cardiac surgery performed for hemodynamic indication than other infective endocarditis.

Effects of varied doses of psilocybin on time interval reproduction in human subjects.

Science.gov (United States)

Wackermann, Jirí; Wittmann, Marc; Hasler, Felix; Vollenweider, Franz X

2008-04-11

Action of a hallucinogenic substance, psilocybin, on internal time representation was investigated in two double-blind, placebo-controlled studies: Experiment 1 with 12 subjects and graded doses, and Experiment 2 with 9 subjects and a very low dose. The task consisted in repeated reproductions of time intervals in the range from 1.5 to 5s. The effects were assessed by parameter kappa of the 'dual klepsydra' model of internal time representation, fitted to individual response data and intra-individually normalized with respect to initial values. The estimates kappa were in the same order of magnitude as in earlier studies. In both experiments, kappa was significantly increased by psilocybin at 90 min from the drug intake, indicating a higher loss rate of the internal duration representation. These findings are tentatively linked to qualitative alterations of subjective time in altered states of consciousness.

MEDIAN: Wireless broadband LAN for multimedia applications

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Vliet, P.J. van

1998-01-01

MEDIAN is one of the projects in the mobile domain of the Advanced Communications Technologies and Services (ACTS) programme of the European Commission. The main obiective of the MEDIAN project is to evaluate and implement a high speed Wireless Customer Premises / Local Area Network (WCPN/WLAN)

Postprandial oxidative losses of dietary leucine depend on the time interval between consecutive meals

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Myszkowska-Ryciak, J.; Keller, J.S.; Bujko, J.; Stankiewicz-Ciupa, J.; Koopmanschap, R.E.; Schreurs, V.V.A.M.

2015-01-01

Postprandial oxidative losses of egg white-bound [1-¹³C]-leucine were studied as ¹³C recovery in the breath of rats in relation to different time intervals between two meals. Male Wistar rats (n = 48; 68.3 ±5.9 g) divided into 4 groups (n = 12) were fed two meals a day (9:00

On Preliminary Test Estimator for Median

OpenAIRE

Okazaki, Takeo; 岡崎, 威生

1990-01-01

The purpose of the present paper is to discuss about estimation of median with a preliminary test. Two procedures are presented, one uses Median test and the other uses Wilcoxon two-sample test for the preliminary test. Sections 3 and 4 give mathematical formulations of such properties, including mean square errors with one specified case. Section 5 discusses their optimal significance levels of the preliminary test and proposes their numerical values by Monte Carlo method. In addition to mea...

Effect of a data buffer on the recorded distribution of time intervals for random events

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Barton, J C [Polytechnic of North London (UK)

1976-03-15

The use of a data buffer enables the distribution of the time intervals between events to be studied for times less than the recording system dead-time but the usual negative exponential distribution for random events has to be modified. The theory for this effect is developed for an n-stage buffer followed by an asynchronous recorder. Results are evaluated for the values of n from 1 to 5. In the language of queueing theory the system studied is of type M/D/1/n+1, i.e. with constant service time and a finite number of places.

Effect of insertion method and postinsertion time interval prior to force application on the removal torque of orthodontic miniscrews.

Science.gov (United States)

Sharifi, Maryam; Ghassemi, Amirreza; Bayani, Shahin

2015-01-01

Success of orthodontic miniscrews in providing stable anchorage is dependent on their stability. The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of insertion method and postinsertion time interval on the removal torque of miniscrews as an indicator of their stability. Seventy-two miniscrews (Jeil Medical) were inserted into the femoral bones of three male German Shepherd dogs and assigned to nine groups of eight miniscrews. Three insertion methods, including hand-driven, motor-driven with 5.0-Ncm insertion torque, and motor-driven with 20.0-Ncm insertion torque, were tested. Three time intervals of 0, 2, and 6 weeks between miniscrew insertion and removal were tested as well. Removal torque values were measured in newton centimeters by a removal torque tester (IMADA). Data were analyzed by one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by the Bonferroni post hoc test at a .05 level of significance. A miniscrew survival rate of 93% was observed in this study. The highest mean value of removal torque among the three postinsertion intervals (2.4 ± 0.59 Ncm) was obtained immediately after miniscrew insertion with a statistically significant difference from the other two time intervals (P torque values were obtained immediately after insertion.

Evaluation of the Trail Making Test and interval timing as measures of cognition in healthy adults: comparisons by age, education, and gender.

Science.gov (United States)

Płotek, Włodzimierz; Łyskawa, Wojciech; Kluzik, Anna; Grześkowiak, Małgorzata; Podlewski, Roland; Żaba, Zbigniew; Drobnik, Leon

2014-02-03

Human cognitive functioning can be assessed using different methods of testing. Age, level of education, and gender may influence the results of cognitive tests. The well-known Trail Making Test (TMT), which is often used to measure the frontal lobe function, and the experimental test of Interval Timing (IT) were compared. The methods used in IT included reproduction of auditory and visual stimuli, with the subsequent production of the time intervals of 1-, 2-, 5-, and 7-seconds durations with no pattern. Subjects included 64 healthy adult volunteers aged 18-63 (33 women, 31 men). Comparisons were made based on age, education, and gender. TMT was performed quickly and was influenced by age, education, and gender. All reproduced visual and produced intervals were shortened and the reproduction of auditory stimuli was more complex. Age, education, and gender have more pronounced impact on the cognitive test than on the interval timing test. The reproduction of the short auditory stimuli was more accurate in comparison to other modalities used in the IT test. The interval timing, when compared to the TMT, offers an interesting possibility of testing. Further studies are necessary to confirm the initial observation.

Measurement of the ecological flow of the Acaponeta river, Nayarit, comparing different time intervals

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Guadalupe de la Lanza Espino

2012-07-01

Full Text Available The diverse management of river water in Mexico has been unequal due to the different anthropological activities, and it is associated with inter-annual changes in the climate and runoff patterns, leading to a loss of the ecosystem integrity. However, nowadays there are different methods to assess the water volume that is necessary to conserve the environment, among which are hydrological methods, such as those applied here, that are based on information on water volumes recorded over decades, which are not always available in the country. For this reason, this study compares runoff records for different time ranges: minimum of 10 years, medium of 20 years, and more than 50 years, to quantify the environmental flow. These time intervals provided similar results, which mean that not only for the Acaponeta river, but possibly for others lotic systems as well, a 10-year interval may be used satisfactorily. In this river, the runoff water that must be kept for environmental purposes is: for 10 years 70.1%, for 20 years 78.1% and for >50 years 68.8%, with an average of 72.3% of the total water volume or of the average annual runoff.

A comparison between brachial and echocardiographic systolic time intervals.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ho-Ming Su

Full Text Available Systolic time interval (STI is an established noninvasive technique for the assessment of cardiac function. Brachial STIs can be automatically determined by an ankle-brachial index (ABI-form device. The aims of this study are to evaluate whether the STIs measured from ABI-form device can represent those measured from echocardiography and to compare the diagnostic values of brachial and echocardiographic STIs in the prediction of left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF <50%. A total of 849 patients were included in the study. Brachial pre-ejection period (bPEP and brachial ejection time (bET were measured using an ABI-form device and pre-ejection period (PEP and ejection time (ET were measured from echocardiography. Agreement was assessed by correlation coefficient and Bland-Altman plot. Brachial STIs had a significant correlation with echocardiographic STIs (r = 0.644, P<0.001 for bPEP and PEP; r  = 0.850, P<0.001 for bET and ET; r = 0.708, P<0.001 for bPEP/bET and PEP/ET. The disagreement between brachial and echocardiographic STIs (brachial STIs minus echocardiographic STIs was 28.55 ms for bPEP and PEP, -4.15 ms for bET and ET and -0.11 for bPEP/bET and PEP/ET. The areas under the curve for bPEP/bET and PEP/ET in the prediction of LVEF <50% were 0.771 and 0.765, respectively. Brachial STIs were good alternatives to STIs obtained from echocardiography and also helpful in prediction of LVEF <50%. Brachial STIs automatically obtained from an ABI-form device may be helpful for evaluation of left ventricular systolic dysfunction.

Time interval measurement between to emission: a systematics; Mesure de l`intervalle de temps entre deux emissions: une systematique

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Bizard, G.; Bougault, R.; Brou, R.; Colin, J.; Durand, D.; Genoux-Lubain, A.; Horn, D.; Kerambrun, A.; Laville, J.L.; Le Brun, C.; Lecolley, J.F.; Lopez, O.; Louvel, M.; Mahi, M.; Meslin, C.; Steckmeyer, J.C.; Tamain, B.; Wieloch, A. [Lab. de Physique Corpusculaire, Caen Univ., 14 (France); LPC (Caen) - CRN (Strasbourg) Collaboration

1998-04-01

A systematic study of the evolution of intervals of fragment emission times as a function of the energy deposited in the compound system was performed. Several measurements, Ne at 60 MeV/u, Ar at 30 and 60 MeV/u and two measurements for Kr at 60 MeV/u (central and semi-peripheral collisions) are presented. In all the experiments the target was Au and the mass of the compounds system was around A = 200. The excitation energies per nucleon reached in the case of these heavy systems cover the range of 3 to 5.5 MeV/u. The method used to determine the emission time intervals is based on the correlation functions associated to the relative angle distributions. The gaps between the data and simulations allow to evaluate the emission times. A rapid decrease of these time intervals was observed when the excitation energy increased. This variation starts at 500 fm/c which corresponds to a sequential emission. This relatively long time which indicates a weak interaction between fragments, corresponds practically to the measurement threshold. The shortest intervals (about 50 fm/c) are associated to a spontaneous multifragmentation and were observed in the case of central collisions at Ar+Au and Kr+Au at 60 MeV/u. Two interpretations are possible. The multifragmentation process might be viewed as a sequential process of very short time-separation or else, one can separate two zones heaving in mind that the multifragmentation is predominant from 4,5 MeV/u excitation energy upwards. This question is still open and its study is under way at LPC. An answer could come from the study of the rupture process of an excited nucleus, notably by the determination of its life-time

Cardiac time intervals and the association with 2D-speckle-tracking, tissue Doppler and conventional echocardiography

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Biering-Sørensen, Tor; Jensen, Jan Skov; Andersen, Henrik Ullits

2016-01-01

Cardiac time intervals (CTI) are prognostic above and beyond conventional echocardiographic measures. The explanation may be that CTI contain information about both systolic and diastolic measures; this is, however, unknown. The relationship between the CTI and systolic and diastolic function...

Using hemoglobin A1C as a predicting model for time interval from pre-diabetes progressing to diabetes.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Chen-Ling Huang

Full Text Available The early identification of subjects at high risk for diabetes is essential, thus, random rather than fasting plasma glucose is more useful. We aim to evaluate the time interval between pre-diabetes to diabetes with anti-diabetic drugs by using HbA1C as a diagnostic tool, and predicting it using a mathematic model.We used the Taipei Medical University Affiliated Hospital Patient Profile Database (AHPPD from January-2007 to June-2011. The patients who progressed and were prescribed anti-diabetic drugs were selected from AHPPD. The mathematical model used to predict the time interval of HbA1C value ranged from 5.7% to 6.5% for diabetes progression.We predicted an average overall time interval for all participants in between 5.7% to 6.5% during a total of 907 days (standard error, 103 days. For each group found among 5.7% to 6.5% we determined 1169.3 days for the low risk group (i.e. 3.2 years, 1080.5 days (i.e. 2.96 years for the increased risk group and 729.4 days (i.e. 1.99 years for the diabetes group. This indicates the patients will take an average of 2.49 years to reach 6.5%.This prediction model is very useful to help prioritize the diagnosis at an early stage for targeting individuals with risk of diabetes. Using patients' HbA1C before anti-diabetes drugs are used we predicted the time interval from pre-diabetes progression to diabetes is 2.49 years without any influence of age and gender. Additional studies are needed to support this model for a long term prediction.

Identifying causes of laboratory turnaround time delay in the emergency department.

Science.gov (United States)

Jalili, Mohammad; Shalileh, Keivan; Mojtahed, Ali; Mojtahed, Mohammad; Moradi-Lakeh, Maziar

2012-12-01

Laboratory turnaround time (TAT) is an important determinant of patient stay and quality of care. Our objective is to evaluate laboratory TAT in our emergency department (ED) and to generate a simple model for identifying the primary causes for delay. We measured TATs of hemoglobin, potassium, and prothrombin time tests requested in the ED of a tertiary-care, metropolitan hospital during a consecutive one-week period. The time of different steps (physician order, nurse registration, blood-draw, specimen dispatch from the ED, specimen arrival at the laboratory, and result availability) in the test turnaround process were recorded and the intervals between these steps (order processing, specimen collection, ED waiting, transit, and within-laboratory time) and total TAT were calculated. Median TATs for hemoglobin and potassium were compared with those of the 1990 Q-Probes Study (25 min for hemoglobin and 36 min for potassium) and its recommended goals (45 min for 90% of tests). Intervals were compared according to the proportion of TAT they comprised. Median TATs (170 min for 132 hemoglobin tests, 225 min for 172 potassium tests, and 195.5 min for 128 prothrombin tests) were drastically longer than Q-Probes reported and recommended TATs. The longest intervals were ED waiting time and order processing.  Laboratory TAT varies among institutions, and data are sparse in developing countries. In our ED, actions to reduce ED waiting time and order processing are top priorities. We recommend utilization of this model by other institutions in settings with limited resources to identify their own priorities for reducing laboratory TAT.

Perceptions of Time and Long Time Intervals

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Drottz-Sjoeberg, Britt-Marie

2006-01-01

There are certainly many perspectives presented in the literature on time and time perception. This contribution has focused on perceptions of the time frames related to risk and danger of radiation from a planned Swedish repository for spent nuclear fuel. Respondents from two municipalities judged SSI's reviews of the entrepreneur's plans and work of high importance, and more important the closer to our time the estimate was given. Similarly were the consequences of potential leakage from a repository perceived as more serious the closer it would be to our time. Judgements of risks related to the storage of spent nuclear fuel were moderately large on the used measurement scales. Experts are experts because they have more knowledge, and in this context they underlined e.g. the importance of reviews of the radiation situation of time periods up to 100,000 years. It was of interest to note that 55% of the respondents from the municipalities did not believe that the future repository would leak radioactivity. They were much more pessimistic with respect to world politics, i.e. a new world war. However, with respect to the seriousness of the consequences given a leakage from the repository, the public group consistently gave high risk estimates, often significantly higher than those of the expert group. The underestimations of time estimates, as seen in the tasks of pinpointing historic events, provide examples of the difficulty of making estimations involving long times. Similar results showed that thinking of 'the future' most often involved about 30 years. On average, people reported memories of about 2.5 generations back in time, and emotional relationships stretching approximately 2.5 generations into the future; 94% of the responses, with respect to how many future generations one had an emotional relationship, were given in the range of 1-5 generations. Similarly, Svenson and Nilsson found the opinion that the current generations' general responsibility for

Dual pathology proximal median nerve compression of the forearm.

LENUS (Irish Health Repository)

Murphy, Siun M

2013-12-01

We report an unusual case of synchronous pathology in the forearm- the coexistence of a large lipoma of the median nerve together with an osteochondroma of the proximal ulna, giving rise to a dual proximal median nerve compression. Proximal median nerve compression neuropathies in the forearm are uncommon compared to the prevalence of distal compression neuropathies (eg Carpal Tunnel Syndrome). Both neural fibrolipomas (Refs. 1,2) and osteochondromas of the proximal ulna (Ref. 3) in isolation are rare but well documented. Unlike that of a distal compression, a proximal compression of the median nerve will often have a definite cause. Neural fibrolipoma, also called fibrolipomatous hamartoma are rare, slow-growing, benign tumours of peripheral nerves, most often occurring in the median nerve of younger patients. To our knowledge, this is the first report of such dual pathology in the same forearm, giving rise to a severe proximal compression of the median nerve. In this case, the nerve was being pushed anteriorly by the osteochondroma, and was being compressed from within by the intraneural lipoma. This unusual case highlights the advantage of preoperative imaging as part of the workup of proximal median nerve compression.

Deficits in Interval Timing Measured by the Dual-Task Paradigm among Children and Adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Science.gov (United States)

Hwang, Shoou-Lian; Gau, Susan Shur-Fen; Hsu, Wen-Yau; Wu, Yu-Yu

2010-01-01

Background: The underlying mechanism of time perception deficit in long time intervals in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is still unclear. This study used the time reproduction dual task to explore the role of the attentional resource in time perception deficits among children and adolescents with ADHD. Methods: Participants…

Continuous-time interval model identification of blood glucose dynamics for type 1 diabetes

Science.gov (United States)

Kirchsteiger, Harald; Johansson, Rolf; Renard, Eric; del Re, Luigi

2014-07-01

While good physiological models of the glucose metabolism in type 1 diabetic patients are well known, their parameterisation is difficult. The high intra-patient variability observed is a further major obstacle. This holds for data-based models too, so that no good patient-specific models are available. Against this background, this paper proposes the use of interval models to cover the different metabolic conditions. The control-oriented models contain a carbohydrate and insulin sensitivity factor to be used for insulin bolus calculators directly. Available clinical measurements were sampled on an irregular schedule which prompts the use of continuous-time identification, also for the direct estimation of the clinically interpretable factors mentioned above. An identification method is derived and applied to real data from 28 diabetic patients. Model estimation was done on a clinical data-set, whereas validation results shown were done on an out-of-clinic, everyday life data-set. The results show that the interval model approach allows a much more regular estimation of the parameters and avoids physiologically incompatible parameter estimates.

Proceedings of Annual Precise Time and Time Interval (PTTI) Applications and Planning Meeting (23rd) held in Pasadena, California on December 3-5, 1991

Science.gov (United States)

1991-12-05

Between Two Western European Time Laboratories and VNIIFTRI ............. 341 P Daly, University of Leeds, N.B. Koshelyaevsky, VNIIFTRI , and W Lewandowski...equipped with GPS time receivers and contributing to TAI. The last GPS antenna position determined by the BIPM is installed near Moscow in the VNIIFTRI : it...Leeds and VNIIFTRI ", accepted in Proc. 23rd Annual Precise Time and Time Interval (PTTI) Applications and Planning Meeting, 1991. 15. W. Lewandowski and

Electrical PR Interval Variation Predicts New Occurrence of Atrial Fibrillation in Patients With Frequent Premature Atrial Contractions.

Science.gov (United States)

Chun, Kwang Jin; Hwang, Jin Kyung; Park, Seung-Jung; On, Young Keun; Kim, June Soo; Park, Kyoung-Min

2016-04-01

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is associated with the autonomic nervous system (ANS), and fluctuation of autonomic tone is more prominent in patients with AF. As autonomic tone affects the heart rate (HR), and there is an inverse relationship between HR and PR interval, PR interval variation could be greater in patients with AF than in those without AF. The purpose of this study was to investigate the correlation between PR interval variation and new-onset AF in patients with frequent PACs.We retrospectively enrolled 207 patients with frequent PACs who underwent electrocardiographs at least 4 times during the follow-up period. The PR variation was calculated by subtracting the minimum PR interval from the maximum PR interval. The outcomes were new occurrence of AF and all-cause mortality during the follow-up period.During a median follow-up of 8.3 years, 24 patients (11.6%) developed new-onset AF. Univariate analysis showed that prolonged PR interval (PR interval > 200 ms, P = 0.021), long PR variation (PR variation > 36.5 ms, P = 0.018), and PR variation (P = 0.004) as a continuous variable were associated with an increased risk of AF. Cox regression analysis showed that prolonged PR interval (hazard ratio = 3.321, 95% CI 1.064-10.362, P = 0.039) and PR variation (hazard ratio = 1.013, 95% CI 1.002-1.024, P = 0.022) were independent predictors for new-onset AF. However, PR variation and prolonged PR interval were not associated with all-cause mortality (P = 0.465 and 0.774, respectively).PR interval variation and prolonged PR interval are independent risk factors for new-onset AF in patients with frequent PACs. However we were unable to determine a cut-off value of PR interval variation for new-onset AF.

Portfolio optimization using median-variance approach

Science.gov (United States)

Wan Mohd, Wan Rosanisah; Mohamad, Daud; Mohamed, Zulkifli

2013-04-01

Optimization models have been applied in many decision-making problems particularly in portfolio selection. Since the introduction of Markowitz's theory of portfolio selection, various approaches based on mathematical programming have been introduced such as mean-variance, mean-absolute deviation, mean-variance-skewness and conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) mainly to maximize return and minimize risk. However most of the approaches assume that the distribution of data is normal and this is not generally true. As an alternative, in this paper, we employ the median-variance approach to improve the portfolio optimization. This approach has successfully catered both types of normal and non-normal distribution of data. With this actual representation, we analyze and compare the rate of return and risk between the mean-variance and the median-variance based portfolio which consist of 30 stocks from Bursa Malaysia. The results in this study show that the median-variance approach is capable to produce a lower risk for each return earning as compared to the mean-variance approach.

Perceptions of Time and Long Time Intervals

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Drottz-Sjoeberg, Britt-Marie [Norwegian Univ. of Science and Technology, Trondheim (Norway). Dept. of Psychology

2006-09-15

There are certainly many perspectives presented in the literature on time and time perception. This contribution has focused on perceptions of the time frames related to risk and danger of radiation from a planned Swedish repository for spent nuclear fuel. Respondents from two municipalities judged SSI's reviews of the entrepreneur's plans and work of high importance, and more important the closer to our time the estimate was given. Similarly were the consequences of potential leakage from a repository perceived as more serious the closer it would be to our time. Judgements of risks related to the storage of spent nuclear fuel were moderately large on the used measurement scales. Experts are experts because they have more knowledge, and in this context they underlined e.g. the importance of reviews of the radiation situation of time periods up to 100,000 years. It was of interest to note that 55% of the respondents from the municipalities did not believe that the future repository would leak radioactivity. They were much more pessimistic with respect to world politics, i.e. a new world war. However, with respect to the seriousness of the consequences given a leakage from the repository, the public group consistently gave high risk estimates, often significantly higher than those of the expert group. The underestimations of time estimates, as seen in the tasks of pinpointing historic events, provide examples of the difficulty of making estimations involving long times. Similar results showed that thinking of 'the future' most often involved about 30 years. On average, people reported memories of about 2.5 generations back in time, and emotional relationships stretching approximately 2.5 generations into the future; 94% of the responses, with respect to how many future generations one had an emotional relationship, were given in the range of 1-5 generations. Similarly, Svenson and Nilsson found the opinion that the current generations

Regularization of DT-MR images using a successive Fermat median filtering method.

Science.gov (United States)

Kwon, Kiwoon; Kim, Dongyoun; Kim, Sunghee; Park, Insung; Jeong, Jaewon; Kim, Taehwan; Hong, Cheolpyo; Han, Bongsoo

2008-05-21

Tractography using diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DT-MRI) is a method to determine the architecture of axonal fibers in the central nervous system by computing the direction of greatest diffusion in the white matter of the brain. To reduce the noise in DT-MRI measurements, a tensor-valued median filter, which is reported to be denoising and structure preserving in the tractography, is applied. In this paper, we proposed the successive Fermat (SF) method, successively using Fermat point theory for a triangle contained in the two-dimensional plane, as a median filtering method. We discussed the error analysis and numerical study about the SF method for phantom and experimental data. By considering the computing time and the image quality aspects of the numerical study simultaneously, we showed that the SF method is much more efficient than the simple median (SM) and gradient descents (GD) methods.

Regularization of DT-MR images using a successive Fermat median filtering method

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kwon, Kiwoon; Kim, Dongyoun; Kim, Sunghee; Park, Insung; Jeong, Jaewon; Kim, Taehwan; Hong, Cheolpyo; Han, Bongsoo

2008-01-01

Tractography using diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DT-MRI) is a method to determine the architecture of axonal fibers in the central nervous system by computing the direction of greatest diffusion in the white matter of the brain. To reduce the noise in DT-MRI measurements, a tensor-valued median filter, which is reported to be denoising and structure preserving in the tractography, is applied. In this paper, we proposed the successive Fermat (SF) method, successively using Fermat point theory for a triangle contained in the two-dimensional plane, as a median filtering method. We discussed the error analysis and numerical study about the SF method for phantom and experimental data. By considering the computing time and the image quality aspects of the numerical study simultaneously, we showed that the SF method is much more efficient than the simple median (SM) and gradient descents (GD) methods

Regularization of DT-MR images using a successive Fermat median filtering method

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kwon, Kiwoon; Kim, Dongyoun; Kim, Sunghee; Park, Insung; Jeong, Jaewon; Kim, Taehwan [Department of Biomedical Engineering, Yonsei University, Wonju, 220-710 (Korea, Republic of); Hong, Cheolpyo; Han, Bongsoo [Department of Radiological Science, Yonsei University, Wonju, 220-710 (Korea, Republic of)], E-mail: bshan@yonsei.ac.kr

2008-05-21

Tractography using diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DT-MRI) is a method to determine the architecture of axonal fibers in the central nervous system by computing the direction of greatest diffusion in the white matter of the brain. To reduce the noise in DT-MRI measurements, a tensor-valued median filter, which is reported to be denoising and structure preserving in the tractography, is applied. In this paper, we proposed the successive Fermat (SF) method, successively using Fermat point theory for a triangle contained in the two-dimensional plane, as a median filtering method. We discussed the error analysis and numerical study about the SF method for phantom and experimental data. By considering the computing time and the image quality aspects of the numerical study simultaneously, we showed that the SF method is much more efficient than the simple median (SM) and gradient descents (GD) methods.

Rapid determination of long-lived artificial alpha radionuclides using time interval analysis

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Uezu, Yasuhiro; Koarashi, Jun; Sanada, Yukihisa; Hashimoto, Tetsuo

2003-01-01

It is important to monitor long lived alpha radionuclides as plutonium ( 238 Pu, 239+240 Pu) in the field of working area and environment of nuclear fuel cycle facilities, because it is well known that potential risks of cancer-causing from alpha radiation is higher than gamma radiations. Thus, these monitoring are required high sensitivity, high resolution and rapid determination in order to measure a very low-level concentration of plutonium isotopes. In such high sensitive monitoring, natural radionuclides, including radon ( 222 Rn or 220 Rn) and their progenies, should be eliminated as low as possible. In this situation, a sophisticated discrimination method between Pu and progenies of 222 Rn or 220 Rn using time interval analysis (TIA), which was able to subtract short-lived radionuclides using the time interval distributions calculation of successive alpha and beta decay events within millisecond or microsecond orders, was designed and developed. In this system, alpha rays from 214 Po, 216 Po and 212 Po are extractable. TIA measuring system composes of Silicon Surface Barrier Detector (SSD), an amplifier, an Analog to Digital Converter (ADC), a Multi-Channel Analyzer (MCA), a high-resolution timer (TIMER), a multi-parameter collector and a personal computer. In ADC, incidental alpha and beta pulses are sent to the MCA and the TIMER simultaneously. Pulses from them are synthesized by the multi-parameter collector. After measurement, natural radionuclides are subtracted. Airborne particles were collected on membrane filter for 60 minutes at 100 L/min. Small Pu particles were added on the surface of it. Alpha and beta rays were measured and natural radionuclides were subtracted within 5 times of 145 msec. by TIA. As a result of it, the hidden Pu in natural background could be recognized clearly. The lower limit of determination of 239 Pu is calculated as 6x10 -9 Bq/cm 3 . This level is satisfied with the derived air concentration (DAC) of 239 Pu (8x10 -9 Bq/cm 3

Papillary carcinoma in median aberrant thyroid (ectopic) - case report.

Science.gov (United States)

Hebbar K, Ashwin; K, Shashidhar; Deshmane, Vijaya Laxmi; Kumar, Veerendra; Arjunan, Ravi

2014-06-01

Median ectopic thyroid may be encountered anywhere from the foramen caecum to the diaphragm. Non lingual median aberrant thyroid (incomplete descent) usually found in the infrahyoid region and malignant transformation in this ectopic thyroid tissue is very rare. We report an extremely rare case of papillary carcinoma in non lingual median aberrant thyroid in a 25-year-old female. The differentiation between a carcinoma arising in the median ectopic thyroid tissue and a metastatic papillary carcinoma from an occult primary in the main thyroid gland is also discussed.

Time interval between cover crop termination and planting influences corn seedling disease, plant growth, and yield

Science.gov (United States)

Experiments were established in controlled and field environment to evaluate the effect of time intervals between cereal rye cover crop termination and corn planting on corn seedling disease, corn growth, and grain yield in 2014 and 2015. Rye termination dates ranged from 25 days before planting (DB...

Robust median estimator in logisitc regression

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Hobza, T.; Pardo, L.; Vajda, Igor

2008-01-01

Roč. 138, č. 12 (2008), s. 3822-3840 ISSN 0378-3758 R&D Projects: GA MŠk 1M0572 Grant - others:Instituto Nacional de Estadistica (ES) MPO FI - IM3/136; GA MŠk(CZ) MTM 2006-06872 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z10750506 Keywords : Logistic regression * Median * Robustness * Consistency and asymptotic normality * Morgenthaler * Bianco and Yohai * Croux and Hasellbroeck Subject RIV: BB - Applied Statistics, Operational Research Impact factor: 0.679, year: 2008 http://library.utia.cas.cz/separaty/2008/SI/vajda-robust%20median%20estimator%20in%20logistic%20regression.pdf

Complete Blood Count Reference Intervals for Healthy Han Chinese Adults

Science.gov (United States)

Mu, Runqing; Guo, Wei; Qiao, Rui; Chen, Wenxiang; Jiang, Hong; Ma, Yueyun; Shang, Hong

2015-01-01

Background Complete blood count (CBC) reference intervals are important to diagnose diseases, screen blood donors, and assess overall health. However, current reference intervals established by older instruments and technologies and those from American and European populations are not suitable for Chinese samples due to ethnic, dietary, and lifestyle differences. The aim of this multicenter collaborative study was to establish CBC reference intervals for healthy Han Chinese adults. Methods A total of 4,642 healthy individuals (2,136 males and 2,506 females) were recruited from six clinical centers in China (Shenyang, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, and Xi’an). Blood samples collected in K2EDTA anticoagulant tubes were analyzed. Analysis of variance was performed to determine differences in consensus intervals according to the use of data from the combined sample and selected samples. Results Median and mean platelet counts from the Chengdu center were significantly lower than those from other centers. Red blood cell count (RBC), hemoglobin (HGB), and hematocrit (HCT) values were higher in males than in females at all ages. Other CBC parameters showed no significant instrument-, region-, age-, or sex-dependent difference. Thalassemia carriers were found to affect the lower or upper limit of different RBC profiles. Conclusion We were able to establish consensus intervals for CBC parameters in healthy Han Chinese adults. RBC, HGB, and HCT intervals were established for each sex. The reference interval for platelets for the Chengdu center should be established independently. PMID:25769040

Dual pathology proximal median nerve compression of the forearm.

Science.gov (United States)

Murphy, Siun M; Browne, Katherine; Tuite, David J; O'Shaughnessy, Michael

2013-12-01

We report an unusual case of synchronous pathology in the forearm- the coexistence of a large lipoma of the median nerve together with an osteochondroma of the proximal ulna, giving rise to a dual proximal median nerve compression. Proximal median nerve compression neuropathies in the forearm are uncommon compared to the prevalence of distal compression neuropathies (eg Carpal Tunnel Syndrome). Both neural fibrolipomas (Refs. 1,2) and osteochondromas of the proximal ulna (Ref. 3) in isolation are rare but well documented. Unlike that of a distal compression, a proximal compression of the median nerve will often have a definite cause. Neural fibrolipoma, also called fibrolipomatous hamartoma are rare, slow-growing, benign tumours of peripheral nerves, most often occurring in the median nerve of younger patients. To our knowledge, this is the first report of such dual pathology in the same forearm, giving rise to a severe proximal compression of the median nerve. In this case, the nerve was being pushed anteriorly by the osteochondroma, and was being compressed from within by the intraneural lipoma. This unusual case highlights the advantage of preoperative imaging as part of the workup of proximal median nerve compression. Copyright © 2013 British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

On solving wave equations on fixed bounded intervals involving Robin boundary conditions with time-dependent coefficients

Science.gov (United States)

van Horssen, Wim T.; Wang, Yandong; Cao, Guohua

2018-06-01

In this paper, it is shown how characteristic coordinates, or equivalently how the well-known formula of d'Alembert, can be used to solve initial-boundary value problems for wave equations on fixed, bounded intervals involving Robin type of boundary conditions with time-dependent coefficients. A Robin boundary condition is a condition that specifies a linear combination of the dependent variable and its first order space-derivative on a boundary of the interval. Analytical methods, such as the method of separation of variables (SOV) or the Laplace transform method, are not applicable to those types of problems. The obtained analytical results by applying the proposed method, are in complete agreement with those obtained by using the numerical, finite difference method. For problems with time-independent coefficients in the Robin boundary condition(s), the results of the proposed method also completely agree with those as for instance obtained by the method of separation of variables, or by the finite difference method.

Interval selection with machine-dependent intervals

OpenAIRE

Bohmova K.; Disser Y.; Mihalak M.; Widmayer P.

2013-01-01

We study an offline interval scheduling problem where every job has exactly one associated interval on every machine. To schedule a set of jobs, exactly one of the intervals associated with each job must be selected, and the intervals selected on the same machine must not intersect.We show that deciding whether all jobs can be scheduled is NP-complete already in various simple cases. In particular, by showing the NP-completeness for the case when all the intervals associated with the same job...

Sosiaalisen median markkinoinnin vuosikello Weecos Oy:lle

OpenAIRE

Heinämäki, Lotta; Huuskonen, Leena

2015-01-01

Opinnäytetyön tarkoitus oli luoda kokonaisvaltainen ja selkeä suunnitelma Weecos Oy:n markkinointitoimenpiteille valituissa sosiaalisen median kanavissa. Weecos on vuonna 2012 perustettu ekologisia yrityksiä yhteen keräävä verkkokauppa-alusta. Pienestä koostaan johtuen se ei ole pystynyt toteuttamaan sosiaalisen median markkinointia toivomallaan tavalla ja markkinoinnin suunnittelu ja toteutus on ollut epäsäännöllistä. Markkinointisuunnitelman tavoitteena oli helpottaa yrityksen markkinoi...

33 CFR 150.503 - What are the time interval requirements for maintenance on survival craft falls?

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 33 Navigation and Navigable Waters 2 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false What are the time interval requirements for maintenance on survival craft falls? 150.503 Section 150.503 Navigation and Navigable Waters... maintenance on survival craft falls? (a) Each fall used in a launching device for survival craft or rescue...

Time to diagnosis and treatment for cancer patients in the Netherlands: Room for improvement?

Science.gov (United States)

Helsper, Charles C W; van Erp, Nicole N F; Peeters, Petra P H M; de Wit, Niek N J

2017-12-01

Reducing the duration of the diagnostic cancer care pathway is intensively pursued. The aim of this study was to chart the diagnostic pathway for the five most common cancers in the Netherlands. A retrospective cohort study using cancer patients' anonymised primary care data (free text and coded) linked to the Netherlands Cancer Registry. We determined the median duration of the following: 1. Primary care intervals (IPCs): the first cancer-related general practitioner consultation to referral, 2. Referral intervals (IRs): referral to diagnosis, 3. Treatment intervals (ITs): diagnosis to treatment and the overarching intervals, 4. Diagnostic intervals (IDs): IPC and IR combined and 5. Health care intervals (IHCs): IPC, IR and IT combined. For 465, 309, 197, 237 and 149 patients diagnosed with breast-, colorectal-, lung-, prostate cancer and melanoma, respectively; median IPC, IR and ID durations were shortest for breast cancer and melanoma (ID duration 7 and 21 days, respectively), intermediate for lung- and colon cancer (ID duration 49 and 54 days) and the longest for prostate cancer (ID duration 137 days). For all cancers, the duration of intervals increased steeply for the 10-25% with longest durations. For colorectal cancer, increasing ID durations showed increasing proportions of time attributable to primary care (IPC). Approximately 10-25% of cancer patients show substantially long duration of diagnostic intervals. Reducing primary care delay seems particularly relevant for colorectal cancer. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Individual Case Analysis of Postmortem Interval Time on Brain Tissue Preservation.

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Jeffrey A Blair

Full Text Available At autopsy, the time that has elapsed since the time of death is routinely documented and noted as the postmortem interval (PMI. The PMI of human tissue samples is a parameter often reported in research studies and comparable PMI is preferred when comparing different populations, i.e., disease versus control patients. In theory, a short PMI may alleviate non-experimental protein denaturation, enzyme activity, and other chemical changes such as the pH, which could affect protein and nucleic acid integrity. Previous studies have compared PMI en masse by looking at many different individual cases each with one unique PMI, which may be affected by individual variance. To overcome this obstacle, in this study human hippocampal segments from the same individuals were sampled at different time points after autopsy creating a series of PMIs for each case. Frozen and fixed tissue was then examined by Western blot, RT-PCR, and immunohistochemistry to evaluate the effect of extended PMI on proteins, nucleic acids, and tissue morphology. In our results, immunostaining profiles for most proteins remained unchanged even after PMI of over 50 h, yet by Western blot distinctive degradation patterns were observed in different protein species. Finally, RNA integrity was lower after extended PMI; however, RNA preservation was variable among cases suggesting antemortem factors may play a larger role than PMI in protein and nucleic acid integrity.

Program-level and contextual-level determinants of low-median CD4+ cell count in cohorts of persons initiating ART in eight sub-Saharan African countries.

Science.gov (United States)

Nash, Denis; Wu, Yingfeng; Elul, Batya; Hoos, David; El Sadr, Wafaa

2011-07-31

In sub-Saharan Africa, many patients initiate antiretroviral therapy (ART) at CD4 cell counts much lower than those recommended in national guidelines. We examined program-level and contextual-level factors associated with low median CD4 cell count at ART initiation in populations initiating ART. Multilevel analysis of aggregate and program-level service delivery data. We examined data on 1690 cohorts of patients initiating ART during 2004-2008 in eight sub-Saharan African countries. Cohorts with median CD4 less than 111 cells/μl (the lowest quartile) were classified as having low median CD4 cell count at ART initiation. Cohort information was combined with time-updated program-level data and subnational contextual-level data, and analyzed using multilevel models. The 1690 cohorts had median CD4 cell count of 136 cells/μl and included 121,504 patients initiating ART at 267 clinics. Program-level factors associated with low cohort median CD4 cell count included urban setting [adjusted odds ratio (AOR) 2.1; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.3-3.3], lower provider-to-patient ratio (AOR 2.2; 95% CI 1.3-4.0), no PMTCT program (AOR 3.6; 95% CI 1.0-12.8), outreach services for ART patients only vs. both pre-ART and ART patients (AOR 2.4; 95% CI 1.5-3.9), fewer vs. more adherence support services (AOR 1.6; 95% CI 1.0-2.5), and smaller cohort size (AOR 2.5; 95% CI 1.4-4.5). Contextual-level factors associated with low cohort median CD4 cell count included initiating ART in areas where a lower proportion of the population heard of AIDS, tested for HIV recently, and a higher proportion believed 'limiting themselves to one HIV-uninfected sexual partner reduces HIV risk'. Determinants of CD4 cell count at ART initiation in populations initiating ART operate at multiple levels. Structural interventions targeting points upstream from ART initiation along the continuum from infection to diagnosis to care engagement are needed.

Dependency of magnetocardiographically determined fetal cardiac time intervals on gestational age, gender and postnatal biometrics in healthy pregnancies

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Geue Daniel

2004-04-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Magnetocardiography enables the precise determination of fetal cardiac time intervals (CTI as early as the second trimester of pregnancy. It has been shown that fetal CTI change in course of gestation. The aim of this work was to investigate the dependency of fetal CTI on gestational age, gender and postnatal biometric data in a substantial sample of subjects during normal pregnancy. Methods A total of 230 fetal magnetocardiograms were obtained in 47 healthy fetuses between the 15th and 42nd week of gestation. In each recording, after subtraction of the maternal cardiac artifact and the identification of fetal beats, fetal PQRST courses were signal averaged. On the basis of therein detected wave onsets and ends, the following CTI were determined: P wave, PR interval, PQ interval, QRS complex, ST segment, T wave, QT and QTc interval. Using regression analysis, the dependency of the CTI were examined with respect to gestational age, gender and postnatal biometric data. Results Atrioventricular conduction and ventricular depolarization times could be determined dependably whereas the T wave was often difficult to detect. Linear and nonlinear regression analysis established strong dependency on age for the P wave and QRS complex (r2 = 0.67, p r2 = 0.66, p r2 = 0.21, p r2 = 0.13, p st week onward (p Conclusion We conclude that 1 from approximately the 18th week to term, fetal CTI which quantify depolarization times can be reliably determined using magnetocardiography, 2 the P wave and QRS complex duration show a high dependency on age which to a large part reflects fetal growth and 3 fetal gender plays a role in QRS complex duration in the third trimester. Fetal development is thus in part reflected in the CTI and may be useful in the identification of intrauterine growth retardation.

Synchronization of Markovian jumping stochastic complex networks with distributed time delays and probabilistic interval discrete time-varying delays

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Li Hongjie; Yue Dong

2010-01-01

The paper investigates the synchronization stability problem for a class of complex dynamical networks with Markovian jumping parameters and mixed time delays. The complex networks consist of m modes and the networks switch from one mode to another according to a Markovian chain with known transition probability. The mixed time delays are composed of discrete and distributed delays, the discrete time delay is assumed to be random and its probability distribution is known a priori. In terms of the probability distribution of the delays, the new type of system model with probability-distribution-dependent parameter matrices is proposed. Based on the stochastic analysis techniques and the properties of the Kronecker product, delay-dependent synchronization stability criteria in the mean square are derived in the form of linear matrix inequalities which can be readily solved by using the LMI toolbox in MATLAB, the solvability of derived conditions depends on not only the size of the delay, but also the probability of the delay-taking values in some intervals. Finally, a numerical example is given to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.

Reasoning about real-time systems with temporal interval logic constraints on multi-state automata

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Gabrielian, Armen

1991-01-01

Models of real-time systems using a single paradigm often turn out to be inadequate, whether the paradigm is based on states, rules, event sequences, or logic. A model-based approach to reasoning about real-time systems is presented in which a temporal interval logic called TIL is employed to define constraints on a new type of high level automata. The combination, called hierarchical multi-state (HMS) machines, can be used to model formally a real-time system, a dynamic set of requirements, the environment, heuristic knowledge about planning-related problem solving, and the computational states of the reasoning mechanism. In this framework, mathematical techniques were developed for: (1) proving the correctness of a representation; (2) planning of concurrent tasks to achieve goals; and (3) scheduling of plans to satisfy complex temporal constraints. HMS machines allow reasoning about a real-time system from a model of how truth arises instead of merely depending of what is true in a system.

A study on assessment methodology of surveillance test interval and allowed outage time

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Che, Moo Seong; Cheong, Chang Hyeon; Lee, Byeong Cheol

1996-07-01

The objectives of this study is the development of methodology by which assessing the optimizes Surveillance Test Interval(STI) and Allowed Outage Time(AOT) using PSA method that can supplement the current deterministic methods and the improvement of Korea nuclear power plants safety. In the first year of this study, the survey about the assessment methodologies, modeling and results performed by domestic and international researches is performed as the basic step before developing the assessment methodology of this study. The assessment methodology that supplement the revealed problems in many other studies is presented and the application of new methodology into the example system assures the feasibility of this method

A study on assessment methodology of surveillance test interval and allowed outage time

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Che, Moo Seong; Cheong, Chang Hyeon; Lee, Byeong Cheol [Seoul Nationl Univ., Seoul (Korea, Republic of)] (and others)

1996-07-15

The objectives of this study is the development of methodology by which assessing the optimizes Surveillance Test Interval(STI) and Allowed Outage Time(AOT) using PSA method that can supplement the current deterministic methods and the improvement of Korea nuclear power plants safety. In the first year of this study, the survey about the assessment methodologies, modeling and results performed by domestic and international researches is performed as the basic step before developing the assessment methodology of this study. The assessment methodology that supplement the revealed problems in many other studies is presented and the application of new methodology into the example system assures the feasibility of this method.

Recall intervals and time used for examination and prevention by dentists in child dental care in Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden in 1996 and 2014

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wang, N J; Petersen, P E; Sveinsdóttir, E G

2018-01-01

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the present study was to explore intervals between regular dental examination and the time dentists spent for examination and preventive dental care of children in 1996 and 2014. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS: In Denmark, Norway and Sweden, random samples of dentists working...... examinations in three of the four countries in 2014 than in 1996. CONCLUSIONS: This study of trends in dental care delivered by dentists during recent decades showed moves towards extended recall intervals and preventive care individualized according to caries risk. In addition, extending intervals could...... dentists used ample time delivering preventive care to children. Dentists reported spending significantly more time providing preventive care for caries risk children than for other children both in 1996 and 2014. Concurrent with extended intervals, dentists reported spending longer performing routine...

Multiple-step fault estimation for interval type-II T-S fuzzy system of hypersonic vehicle with time-varying elevator faults

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Jin Wang

2017-03-01

Full Text Available This article proposes a multiple-step fault estimation algorithm for hypersonic flight vehicles that uses an interval type-II Takagi–Sugeno fuzzy model. An interval type-II Takagi–Sugeno fuzzy model is developed to approximate the nonlinear dynamic system and handle the parameter uncertainties of hypersonic firstly. Then, a multiple-step time-varying additive fault estimation algorithm is designed to estimate time-varying additive elevator fault of hypersonic flight vehicles. Finally, the simulation is conducted in both aspects of modeling and fault estimation; the validity and availability of such method are verified by a series of the comparison of numerical simulation results.

Regularization of DT-MRI Using 3D Median Filtering Methods

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Soondong Kwon

2014-01-01

Full Text Available DT-MRI (diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging tractography is a method to determine the architecture of axonal fibers in the central nervous system by computing the direction of the principal eigenvectors obtained from tensor matrix, which is different from the conventional isotropic MRI. Tractography based on DT-MRI is known to need many computations and is highly sensitive to noise. Hence, adequate regularization methods, such as image processing techniques, are in demand. Among many regularization methods we are interested in the median filtering method. In this paper, we extended two-dimensional median filters already developed to three-dimensional median filters. We compared four median filtering methods which are two-dimensional simple median method (SM2D, two-dimensional successive Fermat method (SF2D, three-dimensional simple median method (SM3D, and three-dimensional successive Fermat method (SF3D. Three kinds of synthetic data with different altitude angles from axial slices and one kind of human data from MR scanner are considered for numerical implementation by the four filtering methods.

Safety performance evaluation of cable median barriers on freeways in Florida.

Science.gov (United States)

Alluri, Priyanka; Haleem, Kirolos; Gan, Albert; Mauthner, John

2016-07-03

This article aims to evaluate the safety performance of cable median barriers on freeways in Florida. The safety performance evaluation was based on the percentages of barrier and median crossovers by vehicle type, crash severity, and cable median barrier type (Trinity Cable Safety System [CASS] and Gibraltar system). Twenty-three locations with cable median barriers totaling about 101 miles were identified. Police reports of 6,524 crashes from years 2005-2010 at these locations were reviewed to verify and obtain detailed crash information. A total of 549 crashes were determined to be barrier related (i.e., crashes involving vehicles hitting the cable median barrier) and were reviewed in further detail to identify crossover crashes and the manner in which the vehicles crossed the barriers; that is, by either overriding, underriding, or penetrating the barriers. Overall, 2.6% of vehicles that hit the cable median barrier crossed the median and traversed into the opposite travel lane. Overall, 98.1% of cars and 95.5% of light trucks that hit the barrier were prevented from crossing the median. In other words, 1.9% of cars and 4.5% of light trucks that hit the barrier had crossed the median and encroached on the opposite travel lanes. There is no significant difference in the performance of cable median barrier for cars versus light trucks in terms of crossover crashes. In terms of severity, overrides were more severe compared to underrides and penetrations. The statistics showed that the CASS and Gibraltar systems performed similarly in terms of crossover crashes. However, the Gibraltar system experienced a higher proportion of penetrations compared to the CASS system. The CASS system resulted in a slightly higher percentage of moderate and minor injury crashes compared to the Gibraltar system. Cable median barriers are successful in preventing median crossover crashes; 97.4% of the cable median barrier crashes were prevented from crossing over the median. Of all of

Performance evaluation of cable median barrier systems in Texas.

Science.gov (United States)

2009-08-01

Since 2003, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has embarked on an aggressive campaign to install : median barriers to prevent cross-median crashes on freeway facilities statewide. In the few years prior to 2003, : virtually all fatalities...

Interval between onset of psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis comparing the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink with a hospital-based cohort.

Science.gov (United States)

Tillett, William; Charlton, Rachel; Nightingale, Alison; Snowball, Julia; Green, Amelia; Smith, Catherine; Shaddick, Gavin; McHugh, Neil

2017-12-01

To describe the time interval between the onset of psoriasis and PsA in the UK primary care setting and compare with a large, well-classified secondary care cohort. Patients with PsA and/or psoriasis were identified in the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD). The secondary care cohort comprised patients from the Bath PsA longitudinal observational cohort study. For incident PsA patients in the CPRD who also had a record of psoriasis, the time interval between PsA diagnosis and first psoriasis record was calculated. Comparisons were made with the time interval between diagnoses in the Bath cohort. There were 5272 eligible PsA patients in the CPRD and 815 in the Bath cohort. In both cohorts, the majority of patients (82.3 and 61.3%, respectively) had psoriasis before their PsA diagnosis or within the same calendar year (10.5 and 23.8%), with only a minority receiving their PsA diagnosis first (7.1 and 14.8%). Excluding those who presented with arthritis before psoriasis, the median time between diagnoses was 8 years [interquartile range (IQR) 2-15] in the CPRD and 7 years (IQR 0-20) in the Bath cohort. In the CPRD, 60.1 and 75.1% received their PsA diagnosis within 10 and 15 years of their psoriasis diagnosis, respectively; this was comparable with 57.2 and 67.7% in the Bath cohort. A similar distribution for the time interval between psoriasis and arthritis was observed in the CPRD and secondary care cohort. These data can inform screening strategies and support the validity of data from each cohort. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society for Rheumatology. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com

Assessment of time interval between tramadol intake and seizure and second drug-induced attack

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Bahareh Abbasi

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Background: Tramadol is a synthetic drug which is prescribed in moderate and severe pain. Tramadol overdose can induce severe complications such as consciousness impairment and convulsions. This study was done to determine the convulsions incidence after tramadol use until one week after hospital discharge. Methods: This prospective study was done in tramadol overdose patients without uncontrolled epilepsy and head injury history. All cases admitted in Loghman and Rasol Akram Hospitals, Tehran, Iran from 1, April 2011 to 1, April 2012 were included and observed for at least 12 hours. Time interval between tramadol intake and first seizure were record. Then, patients with second drug-induced seizure were recognized and log time between the first and second seizure was analyzed. The patients were transferred to the intensive care unit (ICU if clinical worsening status observed. One week after hospital discharge, telephone follow-up was conducted. Results: A total of 150 patients with a history of tramadol induced seizures (141 men, 9 women, age: 23.23±5.94 years were enrolled in this study. Convulsion was seen in 104 patients (69.3%. In 8 out of 104 patients (7.6% two or more convulsion was seen. Time interval between tramadol use and the onset of the first and second seizure were 0.93±0.17 and 2.5±0.75 hours, respectively. Tramadol induced seizures are more likely to occur in males and patients with a history of drug abuse. Finally, one hundred forty nine patients (99.3% were discharged with good condition and the only one patient died from tramadol overdose. Conclusion: The results of the study showed tramadol induced seizure most frequently occurred within the first 4 hours of tramadol intake. The chance of experiencing a second seizure exists in the susceptible population. Thus, 4 hours after drug intake is the best time for patients to be hospital discharged.

Delay-Dependent Stability Criterion for Bidirectional Associative Memory Neural Networks with Interval Time-Varying Delays

Science.gov (United States)

Park, Ju H.; Kwon, O. M.

In the letter, the global asymptotic stability of bidirectional associative memory (BAM) neural networks with delays is investigated. The delay is assumed to be time-varying and belongs to a given interval. A novel stability criterion for the stability is presented based on the Lyapunov method. The criterion is represented in terms of linear matrix inequality (LMI), which can be solved easily by various optimization algorithms. Two numerical examples are illustrated to show the effectiveness of our new result.

Factors affecting timing of closure and non-reversal of temporary ileostomies.

Science.gov (United States)

Sier, M F; van Gelder, L; Ubbink, D T; Bemelman, W A; Oostenbroek, R J

2015-09-01

Although stoma closure is considered a simple surgical intervention, the interval between construction and reversal is often prolonged, and some ileostomies may never be reversed. We evaluated possible predictors for non-reversal and prolonged interval between construction and reversal. In a cohort study of ileostomy patients treated in a large teaching hospital, we collected data from the surgical complication and enterostomal therapists' registries between January 2001 and December 2011. Parameters responsible for morbidity, mortality, length of stay and time interval between construction and reversal were analysed. Of 485 intentionally temporary ileostomies, 359 were reversed after a median of 5.6 months (IQR 3.8-8.9 months), while 126 (26%) remained permanent. End ileostomy and intra-abdominal abscess independently delayed reversal. Age, end ileostomy, higher body mass index and preoperative radiotherapy were independent factors for non-reversal. Median duration of hospitalisation for reversal was 7.0 days (5-13 days). Morbidity and mortality were 31 and 0.9%, respectively. In 20 patients (5.5%), re-ileostomy was necessary. A substantial number of ileostomies that are intended to be temporary will never be reversed. If reversed, the interval between construction and reversal is longer than anticipated, while morbidity after reversal and duration of hospitalisation are considerable. Besides a temporary ileostomy, there are two other options: no diversion or a permanent colostomy. Shared decision-making is to be preferred in these situations.

Study of recurrent branch of median nerve (Thenar's muscular branch in relation to the flexor retinaculum and median in 64 hands (32 Men

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Amirsadri R

1998-07-01

Full Text Available Variation of recurred branch of median nerve in relation to the median and flexor retinaculum are significant for both hand surgeons and specialists always. In this study, 64 cadaver hands (32 men have been dissected. The median nerve was identified at the proximal edge of the flexor retinaculum, and in order to expose carpal tunnel the ligament was divided, and the above subjects were studied. The results are: 1 The relation of recurrent nerve to the flexor retinaculum was classified into 4 types: A In (53.1% of subjects, this branch arises from the median after the flexor retinaculum. B In (31.3% of subjects, it arises from the median in the carpal tunnel and the moves around the lower edge of flexor retinaculum and enters the thenar region. C In (14.1% of subjects, it arises from the median in the carpal tunnel and pierces the flexor retinaculum. D In (1.56% of subjects it arises, in the carpal tunnel and it divides into two subbranches here. One follows pattern A and the other pattern C. 2 In this step, the relation of the recurrent branch to the median nerve was studied. The results show that inspite of this image even though most often the recurrent branch arises from the lateral side of median, in (68.75% of subjects it arises from it's anterior surface. The MC Nemar test reveals that there is no relation between manifestation of mentioned patterns with right or left hands.

Influence of surgery-radiotherapy interval on recurrence in breast-conserving treatment of small breast cancer

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fourquet, A.; Dreyfus, H.; Maher, M.; Gozy, M.; Campana, F.; Vilcoq, J. R.; Colombani, H.

1995-01-01

Purpose: To retrospectively evaluate the possible influence of surgery-radiotherapy interval (SRI) on breast recurrence in patients (pts.) with small breast cancers who had a breast-conserving treatment. Materials and Methods: Between January 1981 and December 1988, of 2012 pts. with stage I-II breast cancers treated with wide excision, axillary node dissection and breast irradiation, 1839 (91%) did not received adjuvant chemotherapy and were included in this study. Median age was 51 yrs. [23-88]. Mean tumor size was 2.1 cm [0.5-5]. Median tumor bed irradiation dose was 65 Gy [50-90]. The median SRI was 32 days [5-137]. Pts. were distributed among three SRI groups: 56 days (61 pts). Breast recurrence risk and survival were determined by Kaplan-Meier estimates. The following prognostic factors were evaluated for their possible influence on breast recurrence: age, tumor size, node involvement, estrogen receptor levels, Bloom and Richardson grading (SBR). Therapeutic factors were also analyzed: place of surgery (inside or outside the institution), breast and tumor bed radiation dose, and SRI as a time-dependent variable. A multivariate analysis of breast recurrence risk was performed to adjust for the various confounding factors. A prognostic index was established and the influence of SRI on recurrence was determined within the various prognostic groups. Results: Median follow-up for living pts. was 78 months [3-158]. Breast recurrence rate at 7 years was 11 % [10-13]. The 7-year survival rate was 89 % [88-91]. The 7-year breast recurrence risks in the three SRI groups were 12 %, 9 %, and 18%, respectively (p=0.045). The relative risk (RR) of breast failure was significantly lower in the 35-56 days SRI group compared with the 56 days) were also associated with a higher risk of recurrence, though not statistically significant because of the small numbers. The effect of SRI was time-dependent, i. e. influencing early recurrences and disappearing after 5 years. It was

Optimal Data Interval for Estimating Advertising Response

OpenAIRE

Gerard J. Tellis; Philip Hans Franses

2006-01-01

The abundance of highly disaggregate data (e.g., at five-second intervals) raises the question of the optimal data interval to estimate advertising carryover. The literature assumes that (1) the optimal data interval is the interpurchase time, (2) too disaggregate data causes a disaggregation bias, and (3) recovery of true parameters requires assumption of the underlying advertising process. In contrast, we show that (1) the optimal data interval is what we call , (2) too disaggregate data do...

Radiographic anatomy and barium sulfate contrast transit time of the gastrointestinal tract of bearded dragons (Pogona vitticeps).

Science.gov (United States)

Grosset, Claire; Daniaux, Lise; Guzman, David Sanchez-Migallon; Weber, Ernest Scott; Zwingenberger, Allison; Paul-Murphy, Joanne

2014-01-01

The positive contrast gastrointestinal study is a common non-invasive diagnostic technique that does not require anesthesia and enables good visualization of the digestive tract. Radiographic anatomy and reference intervals for gastrointestinal contrast transit time in inland bearded dragons (Pogona vitticeps) were established using seven animals administered 15 ml/kg of a 35% w/v suspension of barium by esophageal gavage. Dorso-ventral and lateral radiographic views were performed at 0, 15, 30 min, 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 12 h, and then every 12 h up to 96 h after barium administration. Gastric emptying was complete at a median time of 10 h (range 4-24 h). Median jejunum and small intestinal emptying times were 1 h (range 30 min-2 h) and 29 h (range 24-48 h), respectively. Median transit time for cecum was 10 h (range 8-12 h). Median time for contrast to reach the colon was 31 h (range 12-72 h) after administration. Results were compared to those obtained in other reptilian species. This technique appeared safe in fasted bearded dragons and would be clinically applicable in other lizard species.

The interblink interval in normal and dry eye subjects

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Johnston PR

2013-02-01

Full Text Available Patrick R Johnston,1 John Rodriguez,1 Keith J Lane,1 George Ousler,1 Mark B Abelson1,21Ora, Inc, Andover, MA, USA; 2Schepens Eye Research Institute and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USAPurpose: Our aim was to extend the concept of blink patterns from average interblink interval (IBI to other aspects of the distribution of IBI. We hypothesized that this more comprehensive approach would better discriminate between normal and dry eye subjects.Methods: Blinks were captured over 10 minutes for ten normal and ten dry eye subjects while viewing a standardized televised documentary. Fifty-five blinks were analyzed for each of the 20 subjects. Means, standard deviations, and autocorrelation coefficients were calculated utilizing a single random effects model fit to all data points and a diagnostic model was subsequently fit to predict probability of a subject having dry eye based on these parameters.Results: Mean IBI was 5.97 seconds for normal versus 2.56 seconds for dry eye subjects (ratio: 2.33, P = 0.004. IBI variability was 1.56 times higher in normal subjects (P < 0.001, and the autocorrelation was 1.79 times higher in normal subjects (P = 0.044. With regard to the diagnostic power of these measures, mean IBI was the best dry eye versus normal classifier using receiver operating characteristics (0.85 area under curve (AUC, followed by the standard deviation (0.75 AUC, and lastly, the autocorrelation (0.63 AUC. All three predictors combined had an AUC of 0.89. Based on this analysis, cutoffs of ≤3.05 seconds for median IBI, and ≤0.73 for the coefficient of variation were chosen to classify dry eye subjects.Conclusion: (1 IBI was significantly shorter for dry eye patients performing a visual task compared to normals; (2 there was a greater variability of interblink intervals in normal subjects; and (3 these parameters were useful as diagnostic predictors of dry eye disease. The results of this pilot study merit investigation of IBI

Effect of the time interval between fusion and activation on epigenetic reprogramming and development of bovine somatic cell nuclear transfer embryos.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Jun; Wang, Yongsheng; Su, Jianmin; Wang, Lijun; Li, Ruizhe; Li, Qian; Wu, Yongyan; Hua, Song; Quan, Fusheng; Guo, Zekun; Zhang, Yong

2013-04-01

Previous studies have shown that the time interval between fusion and activation (FA interval) play an important role in nuclear remodeling and in vitro development of somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) embryos. However, the effects of FA interval on the epigenetic reprogramming and in vivo developmental competence of SCNT embryos remain unknown. In the present study, the effects of different FA intervals (0 h, 2 h, and 4 h) on the epigenetic reprogramming and developmental competence of bovine SCNT embryos were assessed. The results demonstrated that H3 lysine 9 (H3K9ac) levels decreased rapidly after fusion in all three groups. H3K9ac was practically undetectable 2 h after fusion in the 2-h and 4-h FA interval groups. However, H3K9ac was still evidently detectable in the 0-h FA interval group. The H3K9ac levels increased 10 h after fusion in all three groups, but were higher in the 2-h and 4-h FA interval groups than that in the 0-h FA interval group. The methylation levels of the satellite I region in day-7 blastocysts derived from the 2-h or 4-h FA interval groups was similar to that of in vitro fertilization blastocysts and is significantly lower than that of the 0-h FA interval group. SCNT embryos derived from 2-h FA interval group showed higher developmental competence than those from the 0-h and 4-h FA interval groups in terms of cleavage rate, blastocyst formation rate, apoptosis index, and pregnancy and calving rates. Hence, the FA interval is an important factor influencing the epigenetic reprogramming and developmental competence of bovine SCNT embryos.

Adaptive Changes After 2 Weeks of 10-s Sprint Interval Training With Various Recovery Times

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Robert A. Olek

2018-04-01

Full Text Available Purpose: The aim of this study was to compare the effect of applying two different rest recovery times in a 10-s sprint interval training session on aerobic and anaerobic capacities as well as skeletal muscle enzyme activities.Methods: Fourteen physically active but not highly trained male subjects (mean maximal oxygen uptake 50.5 ± 1.0 mlO2·kg−1·min−1 participated in the study. The training protocol involved a series of 10-s sprints separated by either 1-min (SIT10:1 or 4-min (SIT10:4 of recovery. The number of sprints progressed from four to six over six sessions separated by 1–2 days rest. Pre and post intervention anthropometric measurements, assessment of aerobic, anaerobic capacity and muscle biopsy were performed. In the muscle samples maximal activities of citrate synthase (CS, 3-hydroxyacylCoA dehydrogenase (HADH, carnitine palmitoyl-transferase (CPT, malate dehydrogenase (MDH, and its mitochondrial form (mMDH, as well as lactate dehydrogenase (LDH were determined. Analysis of variance was performed to determine changes between conditions.Results: Maximal oxygen uptake improved significantly in both training groups, by 13.6% in SIT10:1 and 11.9% in SIT10:4, with no difference between groups. Wingate anaerobic test results indicated main effect of time for total work, peak power output and mean power output, which increased significantly and similarly in both groups. Significant differences between training groups were observed for end power output, which increased by 10.8% in SIT10:1, but remained unchanged in SIT10:4. Both training protocols induced similar increase in CS activity (main effect of time p < 0.05, but no other enzymes.Conclusion: Sprint interval training protocols induce metabolic adaptation over a short period of time, and the reduced recovery between bouts may attenuate fatigue during maximal exercise.

A theoretical analysis of the median LMF adaptive algorithm

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bysted, Tommy Kristensen; Rusu, C.

1999-01-01

Higher order adaptive algorithms are sensitive to impulse interference. In the case of the LMF (Least Mean Fourth), an easy and effective way to reduce this is to median filter the instantaneous gradient of the LMF algorithm. Although previous published simulations have indicated that this reduces...... the speed of convergence, no analytical studies have yet been made to prove this. In order to enhance the usability, this paper presents a convergence and steady-state analysis of the median LMF adaptive algorithm. As expected this proves that the median LMF has a slower convergence and a lower steady...

Time interval between maternal electrocardiogram and venous Doppler waves in normal pregnancy and preeclampsia: a pilot study.

Science.gov (United States)

Tomsin, K; Mesens, T; Molenberghs, G; Peeters, L; Gyselaers, W

2012-12-01

To evaluate the time interval between maternal electrocardiogram (ECG) and venous Doppler waves at different stages of uncomplicated pregnancy (UP) and in preeclampsia (PE). Cross-sectional pilot study in 40 uncomplicated singleton pregnancies, categorized in four groups of ten according to gestational age: 10 - 14 weeks (UP1), 18 - 23 weeks (UP2), 28 - 33 weeks (UP3) and ≥ 37 weeks (UP4) of gestation. A fifth group of ten women with PE was also included. A Doppler flow examination at the level of renal interlobar veins (RIV) and hepatic veins (HV) was performed according to a standard protocol, in association with a maternal ECG. The time interval between the ECG P-wave and the corresponding A-deflection of the venous Doppler waves was measured (PA), and expressed relative to the duration of the cardiac cycle (RR), and labeled PA/RR. In hepatic veins, the PA/RR is longer in UP 4 than in UP 1 (0.48 ± 0.15 versus 0.29 ± 0.09, p ≤ 0.001). When all UP groups were compared, the PA/RR increased gradually with gestational age. In PE, the HV PA/RR is shorter than in UP 3 (0.25 ± 0.09 versus 0.42 ± 0.14, p advanced gestational stages are consistent with known features of maternal cardiovascular adaptation. Shorter values in preeclampsia are consistent with maternal cardiovascular maladaptation mechanisms. Our pilot study invites more research of the relevance of the time interval between maternal ECG and venous Doppler waves as a new parameter for studying the gestational cardiovascular (patho)physiology of the maternal venous compartment by duplex sonography. © Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.

The Precision of Effect Size Estimation From Published Psychological Research: Surveying Confidence Intervals.

Science.gov (United States)

Brand, Andrew; Bradley, Michael T

2016-02-01

Confidence interval ( CI) widths were calculated for reported Cohen's d standardized effect sizes and examined in two automated surveys of published psychological literature. The first survey reviewed 1,902 articles from Psychological Science. The second survey reviewed a total of 5,169 articles from across the following four APA journals: Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, and Developmental Psychology. The median CI width for d was greater than 1 in both surveys. Hence, CI widths were, as Cohen (1994) speculated, embarrassingly large. Additional exploratory analyses revealed that CI widths varied across psychological research areas and that CI widths were not discernably decreasing over time. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed along with ways of reducing the CI widths and thus improving precision of effect size estimation.

Association between time to disease progression end points and overall survival in patients with neuroendocrine tumors

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Singh S

2014-08-01

Full Text Available Simron Singh,1 Xufang Wang,2 Calvin HL Law1 1Sunnybrook Odette Cancer Center, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; 2Novartis Oncology, Florham Park, NJ, USA Abstract: Overall survival can be difficult to determine for slowly progressing malignancies, such as neuroendocrine tumors. We investigated whether time to disease progression is positively associated with overall survival in patients with such tumors. A literature review identified 22 clinical trials in patients with neuroendocrine tumors that reported survival probabilities for both time to disease progression (progression-free survival and time to progression and overall survival. Associations between median time to disease progression and median overall survival and between treatment effects on time to disease progression and treatment effects on overall survival were analyzed using weighted least-squares regression. Median time to disease progression was significantly associated with median overall survival (coefficient 0.595; P=0.022. In the seven randomized studies identified, the risk reduction for time to disease progression was positively associated with the risk reduction for overall survival (coefficient on −ln[HR] 0.151; 95% confidence interval −0.843, 1.145; P=0.713. The significant association between median time to disease progression and median overall survival supports the assertion that time to disease progression is an alternative end point to overall survival in patients with neuroendocrine tumors. An apparent albeit not significant trend correlates treatment effects on time to disease progression and treatment effects on overall survival. Informal surveys of physicians’ perceptions are consistent with these concepts, although additional randomized trials are needed. Keywords: neuroendocrine tumors, progression-free survival, disease progression, mortality

Effect of Interval to Definitive Breast Surgery on Clinical Presentation and Survival in Early-Stage Invasive Breast Cancer

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Vujovic, Olga; Yu, Edward; Cherian, Anil; Perera, Francisco; Dar, A. Rashid; Stitt, Larry; Hammond, A.

2009-01-01

Purpose: To examine the effect of clinical presentation and interval to breast surgery on local recurrence and survival in early-stage breast cancer. Methods and Materials: The data from 397 patients with Stage T1-T2N0 breast carcinoma treated with conservative surgery and breast radiotherapy between 1985 and 1992 were reviewed at the London Regional Cancer Program. The clinical presentation consisted of a mammogram finding or a palpable lump. The intervals from clinical presentation to definitive breast surgery used for analysis were 0-4, >4-12, and >12 weeks. The Kaplan-Meier estimates of the time to local recurrence, disease-free survival, and cause-specific survival were determined for the three groups. Cox regression analysis was used to evaluate the effect of clinical presentation and interval to definitive surgery on survival. Results: The median follow-up was 11.2 years. No statistically significant difference was found in local recurrence as a function of the interval to definitive surgery (p = .424). A significant difference was noted in disease-free survival (p = .040) and cause-specific survival (p = .006) with an interval of >12 weeks to definitive breast surgery. However, the interval to definitive surgery was dependent on the presentation for cause-specific survival, with a substantial effect for patients with a mammographic presentation and a negligible effect for patients with a lump presentation (interaction p = .041). Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that an interval of >12 weeks to breast surgery might be associated with decreased survival for patients with a mammographic presentation, but it appeared to have no effect on survival for patients presenting with a palpable breast lump.

The Investigation of Median Frequency Changes in Paraspinal Muscles Following Fatigue

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Saeed Talebian

2009-10-01

Conclusion: Median frequency shift toward low values following fatigue in global and local paraspinal muscles was seen. However, median frequency values for the local stabilizer muscle were higher than median frequency values for the global muscles.

Intraneural synovial sarcoma of the median nerve

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rahul Kasukurthi

2010-06-01

Full Text Available Synovial sarcomas are soft-tissue malignancies with a poor prognosis and propensity for distant metastases. Although originally believed to arise from the synovium, these tumors have been found to occur anywhere in the body. We report a rare case of synovial sarcoma arising from the median nerve. To our knowledge, this is the twelfth reported case of intraneural synovial sarcoma, and only the fourth arising from the median nerve. Because the diagnosis may not be apparent until after pathological examination of the surgical speci­men, synovial sarcoma should be kept in mind when dealing with what may seem like a benign nerve tumor.

Cranial irradiation in patients with brain metastasis. A retrospective study of timing

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ampil, F.L.; Burton, G.V.; Mills, G.M.

1999-01-01

A retrospective study was conducted to determine the importance of the interval between diagnosis of brain metastasis (BRM) and cranial irradiation (CI). The charts of 92 patients with a known diagnosis of cancer and suspected BRM as shown on radioimaging studies were reviewed retrospectively. The median interval between diagnosis and the onset of CI for BRM was five days; one group of 48 individuals received CI within an interval of five days, and another group of 44 patients after an interval of five days. Symptom palliation, objective responses to CI and survival were evaluated in both groups. Neither symptomatic and objective responses to treatment nor overall survival differed significantly between the patient groups. These observations suggest that while CI is beneficial to most patients with BRM, its timing after the diagnosis of BRM may not seriously affect patient outcome. (author)

Intraperitoneal chemotherapy for advanced ovarian and peritoneal cancers in patients following interval debulking surgery or primary cytoreductive surgery: Tom Baker Cancer Centre experience from 2006 to 2009.

Science.gov (United States)

Nelson, Gregory; Lucero, Carlos Aspe; Chu, Pamela; Nation, Jill; Ghatage, Prafull

2010-03-01

To describe our experience with cisplatin- and paclitaxel-based IP chemotherapy in patients treated initially with either neoadjuvant chemotherapy and interval debulking surgery (IDS) or primary cytoreductive surgery (PCRS). We performed a retrospective review of the records of 67 patients (38 IDS, 29 PCRS) enrolled in the intraperitoneal (IP) chemotherapy program at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre between 2006 and 2009. Information pertaining to patient demographics, IP chemotherapy toxicity, and catheter complications was extracted, and the median time to recurrence was calculated. Most patients in the study were aged 50 to 70 years and had a diagnosis of stage III serous ovarian cancer. Overall, 295/393 IP cycles (75%) were successfully administered. The proportion of patients completing six cycles of chemotherapy in the IDS and PCRS groups was 53% and 59%, respectively. Frequent (> 25%) Grade 1 to 2 chemotherapy toxicities included fatigue, peripheral neuropathy, and nausea. Catheter complications were observed in 34% of patients (23/67). The recurrence rates for patients completing four or more cycles of IP chemotherapy in the IDS and PCRS groups were 58% and 35%, respectively, with the median time to recurrence approximately one year. Although IP chemotherapy is well tolerated in both IDS and PCRS patients, the median time to recurrence is shorter than expected.

Socioeconomic position and the primary care interval

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Vedsted, Anders

2018-01-01

to the easiness to interpret the symptoms of the underlying cancer. Methods. We conducted a population-based cohort study using survey data on time intervals linked at an individually level to routine collected data on demographics from Danish registries. Using logistic regression we estimated the odds......Introduction. Diagnostic delays affect cancer survival negatively. Thus, the time interval from symptomatic presentation to a GP until referral to secondary care (i.e. primary care interval (PCI)), should be as short as possible. Lower socioeconomic position seems associated with poorer cancer...... younger than 45 years of age and older than 54 years of age had longer primary care interval than patients aged ‘45-54’ years. No other associations for SEP characteristics were observed. The findings may imply that GPs are referring patients regardless of SEP, although some room for improvement prevails...

Initial Systolic Time Interval (ISTI) as a Predictor of Intradialytic Hypotension (IDH)

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Biesheuvel, J D; Verdaasdonk, R M; Meijer, JH; Vervloet, M G

2013-01-01

In haemodialysis treatment the clearance and volume control by the kidneys of a patient are partially replaced by intermittent haemodialysis. Because this artificial process is performed on a limited time scale, unphysiological imbalances in the fluid compartments of the body occur, that can lead to intradialytic hypotensions (IDH). An IDH endangers the efficacy of the haemodialysis session and is associated with dismal clinical endpoints, including mortality. A diagnostic method that predicts the occurrence of these drops in blood pressure could facilitate timely measures for the prevention of IDH. The present study investigates whether the Initial Systolic Time Interval (ISTI) can provide such a diagnostic method. The ISTI is defined as the time difference between the R-peak in the electrocardiogram (ECG) and the C-wave in the impedance cardiogram (ICG) and is considered to be a non-invasive assessment of the time delay between the electrical and mechanical activity of the heart. This time delay has previously been found to depend on autonomic nervous function as well as preload of the heart. Therefore, it can be expected that ISTI may predict an imminent IDH caused by a low circulating blood volume. This ongoing observational clinical study investigates the relationship between changes in ISTI and subsequent drops in blood pressure during haemodialysis. A registration of a complicated dialysis showed a significant correlation between a drop in blood pressure, a decrease in relative blood volume and a substantial increase in ISTI. An uncomplicated dialysis, in which also a considerable amount of fluid was removed, showed no correlations. Both, blood pressure and ISTI remained stable. In conclusion, the preliminary results of the present study show a substantial response of ISTI to haemodynamic instability, indicating an application in optimization and individualisation of the dialysis process.

Decoupling of modeling and measuring interval in groundwater time series analysis based on response characteristics

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Berendrecht, W.L.; Heemink, A.W.; Geer, F.C. van; Gehrels, J.C.

2003-01-01

A state-space representation of the transfer function-noise (TFN) model allows the choice of a modeling (input) interval that is smaller than the measuring interval of the output variable. Since in geohydrological applications the interval of the available input series (precipitation excess) is

Median and ulnar neuropathies in U.S. Army Medical Command Band members.

Science.gov (United States)

Shaffer, Scott W; Koreerat, Nicholas R; Gordon, Lindsay B; Santillo, Douglas R; Moore, Josef H; Greathouse, David G

2013-12-01

Musicians have been reported as having a high prevalence of upper-extremity musculoskeletal disorders, including carpal tunnel syndrome. The purpose of this study was to determine the presence of median and ulnar neuropathies in U.S. Army Medical Command (MEDCOM) Band members at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Thirty-five MEDCOM Band members (30 males, 5 females) volunteered to participate. There were 33 right-handed musicians, and the mean length of time in the MEDCOM Band was 12.2 yrs (range, 1-30 yrs). Subjects completed a history form, were interviewed, and underwent a physical examination of the cervical spine and bilateral upper extremities. Nerve conduction studies of the bilateral median and ulnar nerves were performed. Electrophysiological variables served as the reference standard for median and ulnar neuropathy and included distal sensory latencies, distal motor latencies, amplitudes, conduction velocities, and comparison study latencies. Ten of the 35 subjects (29%) presented with abnormal electrophysiologic values suggestive of an upper extremity mononeuropathy. Nine of the subjects had abnormal median nerve electrophysiologic values at or distal to the wrist; 2 had bilateral abnormal values. One had an abnormal ulnar nerve electrophysiologic assessment at the elbow. Nine of these 10 subjects had clinical examination findings consistent with the electrophysiological findings. The prevalence of mononeuropathies in this sample of band members is similar to that found in previous research involving civilian musicians (20-36%) and far exceeds that reported in the general population. Prospective research investigating screening, examination items, and injury prevention measures in musicians appears to be warranted.

Cold intolerance following median and ulnar nerve injuries : prognosis and predictors

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ruijs, A.C.J; Jaquet, J-B.; van Riel, W. G.; Daanen, H. A M; Hovius, S.E.R.

This study describes the predictors for cold intolerance and the relationship to sensory recovery after median and ulnar nerve injuries. The study population consisted of 107 patients 2 to 10 years after median, ulnar or combined median and ulnar nerve injuries. Patients were asked to fill out the

Cold intolerance following median and ulnar nerve injuries : prognosis and predictors

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ruijs, A.C.J.; Jaquet, J.B.; Riel, W.G. van; Daanen, H.A.M.; Hovius, S.E.R.

2007-01-01

This study describes the predictors for cold intolerance and the relationship to sensory recovery after median and ulnar nerve injuries. The study population consisted of 107 patients 2 to 10 years after median, ulnar or combined median and ulnar nerve injuries. Patients were asked to fill out the

Robust non-local median filter

Science.gov (United States)

Matsuoka, Jyohei; Koga, Takanori; Suetake, Noriaki; Uchino, Eiji

2017-04-01

This paper describes a novel image filter with superior performance on detail-preserving removal of random-valued impulse noise superimposed on natural gray-scale images. The non-local means filter is in the limelight as a way of Gaussian noise removal with superior performance on detail preservation. By referring the fundamental concept of the non-local means, we had proposed a non-local median filter as a specialized way for random-valued impulse noise removal so far. In the non-local processing, the output of a filter is calculated from pixels in blocks which are similar to the block centered at a pixel of interest. As a result, aggressive noise removal is conducted without destroying the detailed structures in an original image. However, the performance of non-local processing decreases enormously in the case of high noise occurrence probability. A cause of this problem is that the superimposed noise disturbs accurate calculation of the similarity between the blocks. To cope with this problem, we propose an improved non-local median filter which is robust to the high level of corruption by introducing a new similarity measure considering possibility of being the original signal. The effectiveness and validity of the proposed method are verified in a series of experiments using natural gray-scale images.

Usefulness of ultrasound assessment of median nerve mobility in carpal tunnel syndrome.

Science.gov (United States)

Park, Gi-Young; Kwon, Dong Rak; Seok, Jung Im; Park, Dong-Soon; Cho, Hee Kyung

2018-01-01

Background Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is the most common peripheral compression neuropathy of the upper extremity. Recently, dynamic ultrasound (US) imaging has shown differences in median nerve mobility between the affected and unaffected sides in CTS. Purpose The present study was performed to compare the median nerve mobility between patients with CTS and healthy individuals, and to correlate median nerve mobility with the severity of CTS. Material and Methods A total of 101 patients (128 wrists) with CTS and 43 healthy individuals (70 wrists) were evaluated. Electrodiagnostic studies were initially conducted to determine the neurophysiological grading scale (NGS). The cross-sectional area (CSA) of the median nerve and the grade of median nerve mobility were measured using US. Results The mean grade of median nerve mobility in the CTS group (1.9) was significantly lower than that in the control group (2.6; P mobility and distal motor latency of the median nerve (r = -0.218, P = 0.015), NGS (r = -0.207, P = 0.020) and CSA of the median nerve (r = -0.196, P = 0.028). Conclusion The grade of median nerve mobility was negatively correlated with the severity of CTS. US assessment of median nerve mobility may be useful in diagnosing and determining the severity of CTS.

Conversion rate of laparoscopic cholecystectomy after endoscopic retrograde cholangiography in the treatment of choledocholithiasis - Does the time interval matter?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

de Vries, A.; Donkervoort, S. C.; van Geloven, A. A. W.; Pierik, E. G. J. M.

2005-01-01

Background: Preceding endoscopic retrograde cholangiography (ERC) in patients with choledochocystolithiasis impedes laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) and increases risk of conversion. We studied the influence of time interval between ERC and LC on the course of LC. Methods: All patients treated for

Forty-year follow up of bilateral breast cancer treated with mastectomy: the prognostic value of elapsed interval between the two breast primaries

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Abdalla, Ibrahim; Ferguson, Donald; Powers, Claire; Weichselbaum, Ralph R.; Hellman, Samuel; Heimann, Ruth

1996-01-01

PURPOSE: To analyze the clinical and prognostic characteristics of patients who developed bilateral breast cancer(synchronous or metachronous), to assess their long-term outcome and compare it to patients with unilateral breast cancer (UBC) PATIENTS AND METHODS: From our database of 2136 patients with stage I-III breast cancer treated by mastectomy between 1927 and 1987, we analyzed 115 patients who had bilateral breast cancer (BBC). Synchronous BBC was found in 10 patients while 105 had metachronous BBC at median interval between the two breast primaries of 54 months (range : 0-391 months). The age range at the time of first diagnosis was (29-77 year, median of 51). The majority of patients underwent radical mastectomy (used in 66% of the first cancer and 59% of the second cancer) followed by modified and extended radical mastectomy. Adjuvant therapy after the first mastectomy was as follows: 30% radiotherapy (RT), 23% endocrine therapy and 10% had chemotherapy (CT). Adjuvant therapy for the second primary was as follows: 9% RT, 12% endocrine and 6% had CT. The median follow-up was 160 months for all patients, range: 1-653 months (233 months, range:27-446 for surviving patients). The median follow-up for surviving patients after developing the second cancer was 119 months (range : 1-380). The disease-specific survival (DSS) was calculated from the diagnosis date of the first breast cancer to date of distant metastasis or death of breast cancer. Comparing BBC to UBC is confounded by the fact that BBC represents a selected subgroup that have already survived long enough without recurrence to develop contralateral breast cancer (CBC). The analysis below does not compensate for this, however further analysis will be presented. RESULTS: In comparison with the second breast cancer, the first cancer had a larger tumor size (median of 3 cm vs 2 cm, p=0.001) and higher percentage of positive axillary lymph nodes (55.8% vs 45.1%, p=0.001). When we compared the BBC patients

Concurrent variable-interval variable-ratio schedules in a dynamic choice environment.

Science.gov (United States)

Bell, Matthew C; Baum, William M

2017-11-01

Most studies of operant choice have focused on presenting subjects with a fixed pair of schedules across many experimental sessions. Using these methods, studies of concurrent variable- interval variable-ratio schedules helped to evaluate theories of choice. More recently, a growing literature has focused on dynamic choice behavior. Those dynamic choice studies have analyzed behavior on a number of different time scales using concurrent variable-interval schedules. Following the dynamic choice approach, the present experiment examined performance on concurrent variable-interval variable-ratio schedules in a rapidly changing environment. Our objectives were to compare performance on concurrent variable-interval variable-ratio schedules with extant data on concurrent variable-interval variable-interval schedules using a dynamic choice procedure and to extend earlier work on concurrent variable-interval variable-ratio schedules. We analyzed performances at different time scales, finding strong similarities between concurrent variable-interval variable-interval and concurrent variable-interval variable- ratio performance within dynamic choice procedures. Time-based measures revealed almost identical performance in the two procedures compared with response-based measures, supporting the view that choice is best understood as time allocation. Performance at the smaller time scale of visits accorded with the tendency seen in earlier research toward developing a pattern of strong preference for and long visits to the richer alternative paired with brief "samples" at the leaner alternative ("fix and sample"). © 2017 Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.

VALIDATION OF SPRING OPERATED PRESSURE RELIEF VALVE TIME TO FAILURE AND THE IMPORTANCE OF STATISTICALLY SUPPORTED MAINTENANCE INTERVALS

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Gross, R; Stephen Harris, S

2009-02-18

The Savannah River Site operates a Relief Valve Repair Shop certified by the National Board of Pressure Vessel Inspectors to NB-23, The National Board Inspection Code. Local maintenance forces perform inspection, testing, and repair of approximately 1200 spring-operated relief valves (SORV) each year as the valves are cycled in from the field. The Site now has over 7000 certified test records in the Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS); a summary of that data is presented in this paper. In previous papers, several statistical techniques were used to investigate failure on demand and failure rates including a quantal response method for predicting the failure probability as a function of time in service. The non-conservative failure mode for SORV is commonly termed 'stuck shut'; industry defined as the valve opening at greater than or equal to 1.5 times the cold set pressure. Actual time to failure is typically not known, only that failure occurred some time since the last proof test (censored data). This paper attempts to validate the assumptions underlying the statistical lifetime prediction results using Monte Carlo simulation. It employs an aging model for lift pressure as a function of set pressure, valve manufacturer, and a time-related aging effect. This paper attempts to answer two questions: (1) what is the predicted failure rate over the chosen maintenance/ inspection interval; and do we understand aging sufficient enough to estimate risk when basing proof test intervals on proof test results?

Sosiaalisen median rooli kunnan viestinnässä

OpenAIRE

Selkämaa, Kati

2016-01-01

Opinnäytetyön tavoitteena oli selvittää sosiaalisen median roolia kunnan viestinnässä sekä tutkia, miten sosiaalista mediaa hyödynnetään kuntien viestinnässä. Teoriaosuudessa tarkasteltiin sosiaalista mediaa, tutustuttiin sen tunnetuimpiin sovelluksiin sekä perehdyttiin kuntien viestintään yleisesti. Työssä tarkasteltiin myös kuntien viestintään vaikuttavia ja sitä sääteleviä lakeja. Kuntien sosiaalisen median käyttöön tutustuttiin Kuntaliiton tekemän viestintätutkimuksen tulosten pohjalt...

Development of guidelines for cable median barrier systems in Texas.

Science.gov (United States)

2009-12-01

Since 2003, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has embarked on an aggressive campaign to install : median barriers to prevent cross-median crashes on freeway facilities statewide. In the few years prior to 2003, : virtually all fatalities...

Long time to diagnosis of medulloblastoma in children is not associated with decreased survival or with worse neurological outcome.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jean-Francois Brasme

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: The long time to diagnosis of medulloblastoma, one of the most frequent brain tumors in children, is the source of painful remorse and sometimes lawsuits. We analyzed its consequences for tumor stage, survival, and sequelae. PATIENTS AND METHODS: This retrospective population-based cohort study included all cases of pediatric medulloblastoma from a region of France between 1990 and 2005. We collected the demographic, clinical, and tumor data and analyzed the relations between the interval from symptom onset until diagnosis, initial disease stage, survival, and neuropsychological and neurological outcome. RESULTS: The median interval from symptom onset until diagnosis for the 166 cases was 65 days (interquartile range 31-121, range 3-457. A long interval (defined as longer than the median was associated with a lower frequency of metastasis in the univariate and multivariate analyses and with a larger tumor volume, desmoplastic histology, and longer survival in the univariate analysis, but not after adjustment for confounding factors. The time to diagnosis was significantly associated with IQ score among survivors. No significant relation was found between the time to diagnosis and neurological disability. In the 62 patients with metastases, a long prediagnosis interval was associated with a higher T stage, infiltration of the fourth ventricle floor, and incomplete surgical resection; it nonetheless did not influence survival significantly in this subgroup. CONCLUSIONS: We found complex and often inverse relations between time to diagnosis of medulloblastoma in children and initial severity factors, survival, and neuropsychological and neurological outcome. This interval appears due more to the nature of the tumor and its progression than to parental or medical factors. These conclusions should be taken into account in the information provided to parents and in expert assessments produced for malpractice claims.

Multichannel interval timer

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Turko, B.T.

1983-10-01

A CAMAC based modular multichannel interval timer is described. The timer comprises twelve high resolution time digitizers with a common start enabling twelve independent stop inputs. Ten time ranges from 2.5 μs to 1.3 μs can be preset. Time can be read out in twelve 24-bit words either via CAMAC Crate Controller or an external FIFO register. LSB time calibration is 78.125 ps. An additional word reads out the operational status of twelve stop channels. The system consists of two modules. The analog module contains a reference clock and 13 analog time stretchers. The digital module contains counters, logic and interface circuits. The timer has an excellent differential linearity, thermal stability and crosstalk free performance

Reference Intervals for Urinary Cotinine Levels and the Influence of Sampling Time and Other Predictors on Its Excretion Among Italian Schoolchildren

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Carmela Protano

2018-04-01

Full Text Available (1 Background: Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS exposure remains a public health problem worldwide. The aims are to establish urinary (u- cotinine reference values for healthy Italian children, to evaluate the role of the sampling time and of other factors on children’s u-cotinine excretion. (2 Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed on 330 children. Information on participants was gathered by a questionnaire and u-cotinine was determined in two samples for each child, collected during the evening and the next morning. (3 Results: Reference intervals (as the 2.5th and 97.5th percentiles of the distribution in evening and morning samples were respectively equal to 0.98–4.29 and 0.91–4.50 µg L−1 (ETS unexposed and 1.39–16.34 and 1.49–20.95 µg L−1 (ETS exposed. No statistical differences were recovered between median values found in evening and morning samples, both in ETS unexposed and exposed. Significant predictors of u-cotinine excretions were ponderal status according to body mass index of children (β = 0.202; p-value = 0.041 for evening samples; β = 0.169; p-value = 0.039 for morning samples and paternal educational level (β = −0.258; p-value = 0.010; for evening samples; β = −0.013; p-value = 0.003 for morning samples. (4 Conclusions: The results evidenced the need of further studies for assessing the role of confounding factors on ETS exposure, and the necessity of educational interventions on smokers for rising their awareness about ETS.

The effect of chorionicity and twin-to-twin delivery time interval on short-term outcome of the second twin

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hjortø, Sofie; Nickelsen, Carsten; Petersen, Janne

2013-01-01

Abstract Objectives: To investigate the effect of chorionicity and twin-to-twin delivery time interval on short-term outcome in the second twin. Additionally, to investigate predictors of adverse outcome in both twins. Methods: Data included vaginally delivered twins (≥ 36 weeks) from Copenhagen ...

INTERVAL OBSERVER FOR A BIOLOGICAL REACTOR MODEL

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

T. A. Kharkovskaia

2014-05-01

Full Text Available The method of an interval observer design for nonlinear systems with parametric uncertainties is considered. The interval observer synthesis problem for systems with varying parameters consists in the following. If there is the uncertainty restraint for the state values of the system, limiting the initial conditions of the system and the set of admissible values for the vector of unknown parameters and inputs, the interval existence condition for the estimations of the system state variables, containing the actual state at a given time, needs to be held valid over the whole considered time segment as well. Conditions of the interval observers design for the considered class of systems are shown. They are: limitation of the input and state, the existence of a majorizing function defining the uncertainty vector for the system, Lipschitz continuity or finiteness of this function, the existence of an observer gain with the suitable Lyapunov matrix. The main condition for design of such a device is cooperativity of the interval estimation error dynamics. An individual observer gain matrix selection problem is considered. In order to ensure the property of cooperativity for interval estimation error dynamics, a static transformation of coordinates is proposed. The proposed algorithm is demonstrated by computer modeling of the biological reactor. Possible applications of these interval estimation systems are the spheres of robust control, where the presence of various types of uncertainties in the system dynamics is assumed, biotechnology and environmental systems and processes, mechatronics and robotics, etc.

A delay-dependent approach to robust control for neutral uncertain neural networks with mixed interval time-varying delays

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lu, Chien-Yu

2011-01-01

This paper considers the problem of delay-dependent global robust stabilization for discrete, distributed and neutral interval time-varying delayed neural networks described by nonlinear delay differential equations of the neutral type. The parameter uncertainties are norm bounded. The activation functions are assumed to be bounded and globally Lipschitz continuous. Using a Lyapunov functional approach and linear matrix inequality (LMI) techniques, the stability criteria for the uncertain neutral neural networks with interval time-varying delays are established in the form of LMIs, which can be readily verified using the standard numerical software. An important feature of the result reported is that all the stability conditions are dependent on the upper and lower bounds of the delays. Another feature of the results lies in that it involves fewer free weighting matrix strategy, and upper bounds of the inner product between two vectors are not introduced to reduce the conservatism of the criteria. Two illustrative examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and the reduced conservatism of the proposed method

High-intensity interval training: Modulating interval duration in overweight/obese men.

Science.gov (United States)

Smith-Ryan, Abbie E; Melvin, Malia N; Wingfield, Hailee L

2015-05-01

High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is a time-efficient strategy shown to induce various cardiovascular and metabolic adaptations. Little is known about the optimal tolerable combination of intensity and volume necessary for adaptations, especially in clinical populations. In a randomized controlled pilot design, we evaluated the effects of two types of interval training protocols, varying in intensity and interval duration, on clinical outcomes in overweight/obese men. Twenty-five men [body mass index (BMI) > 25 kg · m(2)] completed baseline body composition measures: fat mass (FM), lean mass (LM) and percent body fat (%BF) and fasting blood glucose, lipids and insulin (IN). A graded exercise cycling test was completed for peak oxygen consumption (VO2peak) and power output (PO). Participants were randomly assigned to high-intensity short interval (1MIN-HIIT), high-intensity interval (2MIN-HIIT) or control groups. 1MIN-HIIT and 2MIN-HIIT completed 3 weeks of cycling interval training, 3 days/week, consisting of either 10 × 1 min bouts at 90% PO with 1 min rests (1MIN-HIIT) or 5 × 2 min bouts with 1 min rests at undulating intensities (80%-100%) (2MIN-HIIT). There were no significant training effects on FM (Δ1.06 ± 1.25 kg) or %BF (Δ1.13% ± 1.88%), compared to CON. Increases in LM were not significant but increased by 1.7 kg and 2.1 kg for 1MIN and 2MIN-HIIT groups, respectively. Increases in VO2peak were also not significant for 1MIN (3.4 ml·kg(-1) · min(-1)) or 2MIN groups (2.7 ml · kg(-1) · min(-1)). IN sensitivity (HOMA-IR) improved for both training groups (Δ-2.78 ± 3.48 units; p < 0.05) compared to CON. HIIT may be an effective short-term strategy to improve cardiorespiratory fitness and IN sensitivity in overweight males.

Median nerve trauma in a rat model of work-related musculoskeletal disorder.

Science.gov (United States)

Clark, Brian D; Barr, Ann E; Safadi, Fayez F; Beitman, Lisa; Al-Shatti, Talal; Amin, Mamta; Gaughan, John P; Barbe, Mary F

2003-07-01

Anatomical and physiological changes were evaluated in the median nerves of rats trained to perform repetitive reaching. Motor degradation was evident after 4 weeks. ED1-immunoreactive macrophages were seen in the transcarpal region of the median nerve of both forelimbs by 5-6 weeks. Fibrosis, characterized by increased immunoexpression of collagen type I by 8 weeks and connective tissue growth factor by 12 weeks, was evident. The conduction velocity (NCV) within the carpal tunnel showed a modest but significant decline after 9-12 weeks. The lowest NCV values were found in animals that refused to participate in the task for the full time available. Thus, both anatomical and physiological signs of progressive tissue damage were present in this model. These results, together with other recent findings indicate that work-related carpal tunnel syndrome develops through mechanisms that include injury, inflammation, fibrosis and subsequent nerve compression.

Improving Door-to-balloon Time by Decreasing Door-to-ECG time for Walk-in STEMI Patients

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Coyne, Christopher J.

2014-12-01

Full Text Available Introduction: The American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology guidelines recommend rapid door-to-electrocardiography (ECG times for patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI. Previous quality improvement research at our institution revealed that we were not meeting this benchmark for walk-in STEMI patients. The objective is to investigate whether simple, directed changes in the emergency department (ED triage process for potential cardiac patients could decrease door-to-ECG times and secondarily door-to-balloon times. Methods: We conducted an interventional study at a large, urban, public teaching hospital from April 2010 to June 2012. All patients who walked into the ED with a confirmed STEMI were enrolled in the study. The primary intervention involved creating a chief complaint-based “cardiac triage” designation that streamlined the evaluation of potential cardiac patients. A secondary intervention involved moving our ECG technician and ECG station to our initial triage area. The primary outcome measure was door-to-ECG time and the secondary outcome measure was door-to-balloon time. Results: We enrolled 91 walk-in STEMI patients prior to the intervention period and 141 patients after the invention. We observed statistically significant reductions in door-to-ECG time (43±93 to 30±72 minutes, median 23 to 14 minutes p<0.01, ECG-to-activation time (87±134 to 52±82 minutes, median 43 to 31 minutes p<0.01, and door-to-balloon time (134±146 to 84±40 minutes, median 85 -75 minutes p=0.03. Conclusion: By creating a chief complaint-based cardiac triage protocol and by streamlining ECG completion, walk-in STEMI patients are systematically processed through the ED. This is not only associated with a decrease in door-to-balloon time, but also a decrease in the variability of the time sensitive intervals of door-to-ECG and ECG-to-balloon time. [West J Emerg Med. 2015;16(1:184–189.

Extension of a chaos control method to unstable trajectories on infinite- or finite-time intervals: Experimental verification

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yagasaki, Kazuyuki

2007-01-01

In experiments for single and coupled pendula, we demonstrate the effectiveness of a new control method based on dynamical systems theory for stabilizing unstable aperiodic trajectories defined on infinite- or finite-time intervals. The basic idea of the method is similar to that of the OGY method, which is a well-known, chaos control method. Extended concepts of the stable and unstable manifolds of hyperbolic trajectories are used here

Novel global robust stability criteria for interval neural networks with multiple time-varying delays

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Xu Shengyuan; Lam, James; Ho, Daniel W.C.

2005-01-01

This Letter is concerned with the problem of robust stability analysis for interval neural networks with multiple time-varying delays and parameter uncertainties. The parameter uncertainties are assumed to be bounded in given compact sets and the activation functions are supposed to be bounded and globally Lipschitz continuous. A sufficient condition is obtained by means of Lyapunov functionals, which guarantees the existence, uniqueness and global asymptotic stability of the delayed neural network for all admissible uncertainties. This condition is in terms of a linear matrix inequality (LMI), which can be easily checked by using recently developed algorithms in solving LMIs. Finally, a numerical example is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method

MEAN OF MEDIAN ABSOLUTE DERIVATION TECHNIQUE MEAN ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

eobe

development of mean of median absolute derivation technique based on the based on the based on .... of noise mean to estimate the speckle noise variance. Noise mean property ..... Foraging Optimization,” International Journal of. Advanced ...

The survival time of chocolates on hospital wards: covert observational study.

Science.gov (United States)

Gajendragadkar, Parag R; Moualed, Daniel J; Nicolson, Phillip L R; Adjei, Felicia D; Cakebread, Holly E; Duehmke, Rudolf M; Martin, Claire A

2013-12-14

To quantify the consumption of chocolates in a hospital ward environment. Multicentre, prospective, covert observational study. Four wards at three hospitals (where the authors worked) within the United Kingdom. Boxes of Quality Street (Nestlé) and Roses (Cadbury) on the ward and anyone eating these chocolates. Observers covertly placed two 350 g boxes of Quality Street and Roses chocolates on each ward (eight boxes were used in the study containing a total of 258 individual chocolates). These boxes were kept under continuous covert surveillance, with the time recorded when each chocolate was eaten. Median survival time of a chocolate. 191 out of 258 (74%) chocolates were observed being eaten. The mean total observation period was 254 minutes (95% confidence interval 179 to 329). The median survival time of a chocolate was 51 minutes (39 to 63). The model of chocolate consumption was non-linear, with an initial rapid rate of consumption that slowed with time. An exponential decay model best fitted these findings (model R(2)=0.844, P<0.001), with a survival half life (time taken for 50% of the chocolates to be eaten) of 99 minutes. The mean time taken to open a box of chocolates from first appearance on the ward was 12 minutes (95% confidence interval 0 to 24). Quality Street chocolates survived longer than Roses chocolates (hazard ratio for survival of Roses v Quality Street 0.70, 95% confidence interval 0.53 to 0.93, P=0.014). The highest percentages of chocolates were consumed by healthcare assistants (28%) and nurses (28%), followed by doctors (15%). From our observational study, chocolate survival in a hospital ward was relatively short, and was modelled well by an exponential decay model. Roses chocolates were preferentially consumed to Quality Street chocolates in a ward setting. Chocolates were consumed primarily by healthcare assistants and nurses, followed by doctors. Further practical studies are needed.

Influence Of Inspection Intervals On Mechanical System Reliability

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zilberman, B.

1998-01-01

In this paper a methodology of reliability analysis of mechanical systems with latent failures is described. Reliability analysis of such systems must include appropriate usage of check intervals for latent failure detection. The methodology suggests, that based on system logic the analyst decides at the beginning if a system can fail actively or latently and propagates this approach through all system levels. All inspections are assumed to be perfect (all failures are detected and repaired and no new failures are introduced as a result of the maintenance). Additional assumptions are that mission time is much smaller, than check intervals and all components have constant failure rates. Analytical expressions for reliability calculates are provided, based on fault tree and Markov modeling techniques (for two and three redundant systems with inspection intervals). The proposed methodology yields more accurate results than are obtained by not using check intervals or using half check interval times. The conventional analysis assuming that at the beginning of each mission system is as new, give an optimistic prediction of system reliability. Some examples of reliability calculations of mechanical systems with latent failures and establishing optimum check intervals are provided

Electroacupuncture and Acupuncture Promote the Rat’s Transected Median Nerve Regeneration

OpenAIRE

Ho, C. Y.; Yao, C. H.; Chen, W. C.; Shen, W. C.; Bau, D. T.

2013-01-01

Background. Acupuncture and electroacupuncture treatments of damaged nerves may aid nerve regeneration related to hindlimb function, but the effects on the forelimb-related median nerve were not known. Methods. A gap was made in the median nerve of each rat by suturing the stumps into silicone rubber tubes. The influences of acupuncture and electroacupuncture treatments on transected median nerve regeneration were evaluated from morphological, electrophysiological, and functional angles. Resu...

Haemostatic reference intervals in pregnancy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Szecsi, Pal Bela; Jørgensen, Maja; Klajnbard, Anna

2010-01-01

largely unchanged during pregnancy, delivery, and postpartum and were within non-pregnant reference intervals. However, levels of fibrinogen, D-dimer, and coagulation factors VII, VIII, and IX increased markedly. Protein S activity decreased substantially, while free protein S decreased slightly and total......Haemostatic reference intervals are generally based on samples from non-pregnant women. Thus, they may not be relevant to pregnant women, a problem that may hinder accurate diagnosis and treatment of haemostatic disorders during pregnancy. In this study, we establish gestational age......-20, 21-28, 29-34, 35-42, at active labor, and on postpartum days 1 and 2. Reference intervals for each gestational period using only the uncomplicated pregnancies were calculated in all 391 women for activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT), fibrinogen, fibrin D-dimer, antithrombin, free protein S...

Process improvement to enhance existing stroke team activity toward more timely thrombolytic treatment.

Science.gov (United States)

Cho, Han-Jin; Lee, Kyung Yul; Nam, Hyo Suk; Kim, Young Dae; Song, Tae-Jin; Jung, Yo Han; Choi, Hye-Yeon; Heo, Ji Hoe

2014-10-01

Process improvement (PI) is an approach for enhancing the existing quality improvement process by making changes while keeping the existing process. We have shown that implementation of a stroke code program using a computerized physician order entry system is effective in reducing the in-hospital time delay to thrombolysis in acute stroke patients. We investigated whether implementation of this PI could further reduce the time delays by continuous improvement of the existing process. After determining a key indicator [time interval from emergency department (ED) arrival to intravenous (IV) thrombolysis] and conducting data analysis, the target time from ED arrival to IV thrombolysis in acute stroke patients was set at 40 min. The key indicator was monitored continuously at a weekly stroke conference. The possible reasons for the delay were determined in cases for which IV thrombolysis was not administered within the target time and, where possible, the problems were corrected. The time intervals from ED arrival to the various evaluation steps and treatment before and after implementation of the PI were compared. The median time interval from ED arrival to IV thrombolysis in acute stroke patients was significantly reduced after implementation of the PI (from 63.5 to 45 min, p=0.001). The variation in the time interval was also reduced. A reduction in the evaluation time intervals was achieved after the PI [from 23 to 17 min for computed tomography scanning (p=0.003) and from 35 to 29 min for complete blood counts (p=0.006)]. PI is effective for continuous improvement of the existing process by reducing the time delays between ED arrival and IV thrombolysis in acute stroke patients.

Interval sampling methods and measurement error: a computer simulation.

Science.gov (United States)

Wirth, Oliver; Slaven, James; Taylor, Matthew A

2014-01-01

A simulation study was conducted to provide a more thorough account of measurement error associated with interval sampling methods. A computer program simulated the application of momentary time sampling, partial-interval recording, and whole-interval recording methods on target events randomly distributed across an observation period. The simulation yielded measures of error for multiple combinations of observation period, interval duration, event duration, and cumulative event duration. The simulations were conducted up to 100 times to yield measures of error variability. Although the present simulation confirmed some previously reported characteristics of interval sampling methods, it also revealed many new findings that pertain to each method's inherent strengths and weaknesses. The analysis and resulting error tables can help guide the selection of the most appropriate sampling method for observation-based behavioral assessments. © Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.

Hardware design of the median filter based on window structure and batcher′s oddeven sort network

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

SUN Kaimin

2013-06-01

Full Text Available Area and speed are two important factors to be considered in designing Median Filter with digital circuits.Area consideration requires the use of logical resources as little as possible,while speed consideration requires the system capable of working on higher clock frequencies,with as few clock cycles as possible to complete a frame filtering or real time filtering.This paper gives a new design of Median Filter,the hardware structure of which is a 3×3 window structure with two buffers.The filter function module is based on Batcher′s Odd-Even Sort network theory.Structural design is implemented in FPGA,verified by ModelSim software and realizes video image filtering.The experimental analysis shows that this new structure of Median Filter effectively decreases logical resources (merely using 741 Logic Elements,and accelerates the pixel processing speed up to 27MHz.This filter achieves realtime processing of video images of 30 frames/s.This design not only has a certain practicality,but also provides a reference for the hardware structure design ideas in digital image processing.

The influence of the anesthesia-to-stimulation time interval on seizure quality parameters in electroconvulsive therapy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jorgensen, A; Christensen, S J; Jensen, A E K

2018-01-01

BACKGROUND: Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) continues to be the most efficacious treatment for severe depression and other life-threatening acute psychiatric conditions. Treatment efficacy is dependent upon the induced seizure quality, which may be influenced by a range of treatment related factors....... Recently, the time interval from anesthesia to the electrical stimulation (ASTI) has been suggested to be an important determinant of seizure quality. METHODS: We measured ASTI in 73 ECT sessions given to 22 individual patients, and analyzed its influence on five seizure quality parameters (EEG seizure...

How Much Volume of Local Anesthesia and How Long Should You Wait After Injection for an Effective Wrist Median Nerve Block?

Science.gov (United States)

Lovely, Lyndsay M; Chishti, Yasmin Z; Woodland, Jennifer L; Lalonde, Donald H

2018-05-01

Many surgeons and emergentologists use non-ultrasound-guided wrist nerve blocks. There is little evidence to guide the ideal volume of local anesthesia or how long we should wait after injection before performing pain-free procedures. This pilot study examined time to maximal anesthesia to painful needle stick in 14 volunteer participants receiving bilateral wrist blocks of 6 versus 11 mL of local. One surgeon performed all 14 bilateral wrist median nerve blocks in participants who remained blinded until after bandages were applied to their wrist. No one could see which wrist received the larger 11-mL volume injection versus the 6-mL block. Blinded sensory assessors then measured perceived maximal numbness time and numbness to needle stick pain in the fingertips of the median nerve distribution. Failure to get a complete median nerve block occurred in seven of fourteen 6-mL wrist blocks versus failure in only one of fourteen 11-mL blocks. Perceived maximal numbness occurred at roughly 40 minutes after injection, but actual numbness to painful needle stick took around 100 minutes. Incomplete median nerve numbness occurred with both 6- and 11-mL non-ultrasound-guided blocks at the wrist. In those with complete blocks, it took a surprisingly long time of 100 minutes for maximal anesthesia to occur to painful needle stick stimuli to the fingertips of the median nerve distribution. Non-ultrasound-guided median nerve blocks at the wrist as described in this article lack reliability and take too long to work.

Haemostatic reference intervals in pregnancy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Szecsi, Pal Bela; Jørgensen, Maja; Klajnbard, Anna

2010-01-01

Haemostatic reference intervals are generally based on samples from non-pregnant women. Thus, they may not be relevant to pregnant women, a problem that may hinder accurate diagnosis and treatment of haemostatic disorders during pregnancy. In this study, we establish gestational age-specific refe......Haemostatic reference intervals are generally based on samples from non-pregnant women. Thus, they may not be relevant to pregnant women, a problem that may hinder accurate diagnosis and treatment of haemostatic disorders during pregnancy. In this study, we establish gestational age......-specific reference intervals for coagulation tests during normal pregnancy. Eight hundred one women with expected normal pregnancies were included in the study. Of these women, 391 had no complications during pregnancy, vaginal delivery, or postpartum period. Plasma samples were obtained at gestational weeks 13......-20, 21-28, 29-34, 35-42, at active labor, and on postpartum days 1 and 2. Reference intervals for each gestational period using only the uncomplicated pregnancies were calculated in all 391 women for activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT), fibrinogen, fibrin D-dimer, antithrombin, free protein S...

Lapset median käyttäjinä

OpenAIRE

Jalonen, Taru; Suomela, Sonja

2010-01-01

Laurea-ammattikorkeakoulu Tiivistelmä Hyvinkää Sosiaali-, terveys- ja liikunta-ala Hoitotyön koulutusohjelma Terveydenhoitaja AMK Sairaanhoitaja AMK Taru Jalonen, Sonja Suomela Lapset median käyttäjinä Vuosi ‎2010‎ Sivumäärä ‎63‎ Tämän opinnäytetyön tarkoituksena oli selvittää lasten tottumuksia ja kokemuksia mediasta sekä ‎niiden herättämiä tunteita. Lisäksi selvitimme lasten käyttämiä mediaympäristöjä sekä median ‎näkymistä lasten leikeissä. Tämä työ on os...

Total and domain-specific sitting time among employees in desk-based work settings in Australia.

Science.gov (United States)

Bennie, Jason A; Pedisic, Zeljko; Timperio, Anna; Crawford, David; Dunstan, David; Bauman, Adrian; van Uffelen, Jannique; Salmon, Jo

2015-06-01

To describe the total and domain-specific daily sitting time among a sample of Australian office-based employees. In April 2010, paper-based surveys were provided to desk-based employees (n=801) in Victoria, Australia. Total daily and domain-specific (work, leisure-time and transport-related) sitting time (minutes/day) were assessed by validated questionnaires. Differences in sitting time were examined across socio-demographic (age, sex, occupational status) and lifestyle characteristics (physical activity levels, body mass index [BMI]) using multiple linear regression analyses. The median (95% confidence interval [CI]) of total daily sitting time was 540 (531-557) minutes/day. Insufficiently active adults (median=578 minutes/day, [95%CI: 564-602]), younger adults aged 18-29 years (median=561 minutes/day, [95%CI: 540-577]) reported the highest total daily sitting times. Occupational sitting time accounted for almost 60% of total daily sitting time. In multivariate analyses, total daily sitting time was negatively associated with age (unstandardised regression coefficient [B]=-1.58, pphysical activity (minutes/week) (B=-0.03, pemployees reported that more than half of their total daily sitting time was accrued in the work setting. Given the high contribution of occupational sitting to total daily sitting time among desk-based employees, interventions should focus on the work setting. © 2014 Public Health Association of Australia.

Routes to Diagnosis for Suspected Sarcoma: The Impact of Symptoms and Clinical Findings on the Diagnostic Process

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Heidi Buvarp Dyrop

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Background and Objectives. Sarcoma patients often experience delay before diagnosis. We examined the association between presenting symptoms/signs and time intervals for suspected sarcoma patients. Methods. 545 consecutive patients suspected for sarcoma referred over a one-year period were included. Median time intervals in routes to diagnosis were collected from medical records and questionnaires. Results. 102 patients (18.7% had a sarcoma; 68 (12.5% had other malignancies. Median interval for the patient (time from first symptom to first doctor visit, primary care, local hospital, sarcoma center, diagnostic, and total interval for sarcoma patients were 77, 17, 29, 17, 65, and 176 days, respectively. Sarcoma patients visited more hospital departments and had longer median primary care (+10 days and diagnostic intervals (+19 days than patients with benign conditions. Median primary care (−19 days and sarcoma center (−4 days intervals were shorter for patients with a lump versus no lump. Median patient (+40 days, primary care (+12 days, diagnostic (+17 days, and total intervals (+78 days were longer for patients presenting with pain versus no pain. GP suspicion of malignancy shortened local hospital (−20 days and total intervals (−104 days. Conclusions. The main part of delay could be attributed to the patient and local hospitals. Length of time intervals was associated with presenting symptoms/signs and GP suspicion.

The impact of the time interval on in-vitro fertilisation success after failure of the first attempt.

Science.gov (United States)

Bayoglu Tekin, Y; Ceyhan, S T; Kilic, S; Korkmaz, C

2015-05-01

The aim of this study was to identify the optimal time interval for in-vitro fertilisation that would increase treatment success after failure of the first attempt. This retrospective study evaluated 454 consecutive cycles of 227 infertile women who had two consecutive attempts within a 6-month period at an IVF centre. Data were collected on duration of stimulation, consumption of gonadotropin, numbers of retrieved oocytes, mature oocytes, fertilised eggs, good quality embryos on day 3/5 following oocyte retrieval and clinical and ongoing pregnancy. There were significant increases in clinical pregnancy rates at 2-, 3- and 4-month intervals. The maximum increase was after two menstrual cycles (p = 0.001). The highest rate of ongoing pregnancy was in women that had the second attempt after the next menstrual cycle following failure of IVF (27.2%). After IVF failure, initiating the next attempt within 2-4 months increases the clinical pregnancy rates.

Yield and quality of milk and udder health in Martina Franca ass: effects of daily interval and time of machine milking

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Giovanni Martemucci

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Twenty asses of Martina Franca breed, machine milked twice a day, were used to assess the influence of milking interval (3-h, 5-h, and 8-h; N=5 and time (700, 1200 and 1900 on milk yield and udder health. Individual milk samples were taken to determine fat, protein and lactose con- tent. Sensory analysis profile was also assessed. Milk’s total bacterial count (TBC, somatic cell con- tent (SCC and udder’s skin temperature were considered to assess udder health. Milk yield increases by 28.4% (P<0.01 with a milking interval from 3-h to 8-h and is higher (P<0.01 at morning milking. The maximum milk yield per milking corresponds to 700 milking (1416.9 mL thus indicating a circa- dian rhythm in milk secretion processes. Milking intervals of 5 and 8 hours cause a decrease (P<0.01 in milk fat and lactose content. The 8-h interval leads to an increase (P<0.01 in SCC but without any significance for the health udder. No alterations about CBT, clinical evaluation and temperature of ud- der were observed. Milk organoleptic characteristics were better in the 3-h interval milking.

Optimal design of work zone median crossovers.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-09-01

The use of temporary median crossovers in work zones allows for the closure of one side of a multi-lane roadway while : maintaining two-way traffic on the opposite side. This process provides the ability for construction and maintenance crews : to co...

Reconstruction of dynamical systems from interspike intervals

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sauer, T.

1994-01-01

Attractor reconstruction from interspike interval (ISI) data is described, in rough analogy with Taken's theorem for attractor reconstruction from time series. Assuming a generic integrate-and-fire model coupling the dynamical system to the spike train, there is a one-to-one correspondence between the system states and interspike interval vectors of sufficiently large dimension. The correspondence has an important implication: interspike intervals can be forecast from past history. We show that deterministically driven ISI series can be distinguished from stochastically driven ISI series on the basis of prediction error

Trastuzumab re-treatment following adjuvant trastuzumab and the importance of distant disease-free interval: the HERA trial experience.

Science.gov (United States)

Metzger-Filho, Otto; de Azambuja, Evandro; Procter, Marion; Krieguer, Magalie; Smith, Ian; Baselga, Jose; Cameron, David; Untch, Michael; Jackisch, Christian; Bell, Richard; Gianni, Luca; Goldhirsch, Aron; Piccart, Martine; Gelber, Richard D

2016-01-01

This retrospective analysis conducted using data from patients enrolled onto the Herceptin Adjuvant has two objectives: The first is to evaluate the impact of the time interval between the end of adjuvant trastuzumab and distant recurrence (TDRI) upon overall survival (OS). The second is to describe the duration of trastuzumab-based regimens in the metastatic setting for patients previously treated with adjuvant trastuzumab. The first objective included 187 patients treated with adjuvant trastuzumab and diagnosed with distant recurrence at 4-year median follow-up. The second objective included data from questionnaires sent to investigators retreating patients with trastuzumab upon distant recurrence: 144 of 156 questionnaires were returned (93 %), and 90 patients were selected based on available clinical information and consent for subsequent studies. There was no statistically significant relationship between TDRI following 1 year of adjuvant trastuzumab and OS from distant recurrence: hazard ratio 0.991, p = 0.46. The median OS from distant recurrence was numerically longer among patients with a TDRI of ≥12 months (n = 103) than information beyond disease progression should be included in future clinical studies.

OPTIMASI OLSR ROUTING PROTOCOL PADA JARINGAN WIRELESS MESH DENGAN ADAPTIVE REFRESHING TIME INTERVAL DAN ENHANCE MULTI POINT RELAY SELECTING ALGORITHM

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Faosan Mapa

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Normal 0 false false false IN X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Wireless Mesh Network (WMN adalah suatu konektivitas jaringan yang self-organized, self-configured dan multi-hop. Tujuan dari WMN adalah menawarkan pengguna suatu bentuk jaringan nirkabel yang dapat dengan mudah berkomunikasi dengan jaringan konvensional dengan kecepatan tinggi dan dengan cakupan yang lebih luas serta biaya awal yang minimal. Diperlukan suatu desain protokol routing yang efisien untuk WMN yang secara adaptif dapat mendukung mesh routers dan mesh clients. Dalam tulisan ini, diusulkan untuk mengoptimalkan protokol OLSR, yang merupakan protokol routing proaktif. Digunakan heuristik yang meningkatkan protokol OLSR melalui adaptive refreshing time interval dan memperbaiki metode MPR selecting algorithm. Suatu analisa dalam meningkatkan protokol OLSR melalui adaptive refreshing time interval dan memperbaiki algoritma pemilihan MPR menunjukkan kinerja yang signifikan dalam hal throughput jika dibandingkan dengan protokol OLSR yang asli. Akan tetapi, terdapat kenaikan dalam hal delay. Pada simulasi yang dilakukan dapat disimpulkan bahwa OLSR dapat dioptimalkan dengan memodifikasi pemilihan node MPR berdasarkan cost effective dan penyesuaian waktu interval refreshing hello message sesuai dengan keadaan

Clinical chemistry reference intervals of healthy adult populations in Gojjam Zones of Amhara National Regional State, Northwest Ethiopia.

Science.gov (United States)

Mekonnen, Zewdie; Amuamuta, Asmare; Mulu, Wondemagegn; Yimer, Mulat; Zenebe, Yohannes; Adem, Yesuf; Abera, Bayeh; Gebeyehu, Wondemu; Gebregziabher, Yakob

2017-01-01

Reference interval is crucial for disease screening, diagnosis, monitoring, progression and treatment efficacy. Due to lack of locally derived reference values for the parameters, clinicians use reference intervals derived from western population. But, studies conducted in different African countries have indicated differences between locally and western derived reference values. Different studies also indicated considerable variation in clinical chemistry reference intervals by several variables such as age, sex, geographical location, environment, lifestyle and genetic variation. This study aimed to determine the reference intervals of common clinical chemistry parameters of the community of Gojjam Zones, Northwest Ethiopia. Population based cross-sectional study was conducted from November 2015 to December 2016 in healthy adult populations of Gojjam zone. Data such as, medical history, physical examination and socio-demographic data were collected. In addition, laboratory investigations were undertaken to screen the population. Clinical chemistry parameters were measured using Mindray BS 200 clinical chemistry autoanalyzer as per the manufacturer's instructions. Descriptive statistics was used to calculate mean, median and 95th percentiles. Independent sample T-test and one way ANOVA were used to see association between variables. After careful screening of a total of 799 apparently healthy adults who were consented for this study, complete data from 446 (224 females and 222 males) were included for the analysis. The mean age of both the study participants was 28.8 years. Males had high (Preference intervals of amylase, LDH, total protein and total bilirubin were not significantly different between the two sex groups (P>0.05). Mean, median, 95% percentile values of AST, ALP, amylase, LDH, creatinine, total protein, total bilirubin, and direct bilirubin across all age groups of participants were similar (P>0.05). But, there was a significant difference in the

A novel interval type-2 fractional order fuzzy PID controller: Design, performance evaluation, and its optimal time domain tuning.

Science.gov (United States)

Kumar, Anupam; Kumar, Vijay

2017-05-01

In this paper, a novel concept of an interval type-2 fractional order fuzzy PID (IT2FO-FPID) controller, which requires fractional order integrator and fractional order differentiator, is proposed. The incorporation of Takagi-Sugeno-Kang (TSK) type interval type-2 fuzzy logic controller (IT2FLC) with fractional controller of PID-type is investigated for time response measure due to both unit step response and unit load disturbance. The resulting IT2FO-FPID controller is examined on different delayed linear and nonlinear benchmark plants followed by robustness analysis. In order to design this controller, fractional order integrator-differentiator operators are considered as design variables including input-output scaling factors. A new hybridized algorithm named as artificial bee colony-genetic algorithm (ABC-GA) is used to optimize the parameters of the controller while minimizing weighted sum of integral of time absolute error (ITAE) and integral of square of control output (ISCO). To assess the comparative performance of the IT2FO-FPID, authors compared it against existing controllers, i.e., interval type-2 fuzzy PID (IT2-FPID), type-1 fractional order fuzzy PID (T1FO-FPID), type-1 fuzzy PID (T1-FPID), and conventional PID controllers. Furthermore, to show the effectiveness of the proposed controller, the perturbed processes along with the larger dead time are tested. Moreover, the proposed controllers are also implemented on multi input multi output (MIMO), coupled, and highly complex nonlinear two-link robot manipulator system in presence of un-modeled dynamics. Finally, the simulation results explicitly indicate that the performance of the proposed IT2FO-FPID controller is superior to its conventional counterparts in most of the cases. Copyright © 2017 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Right Propositional Neighborhood Logic over Natural Numbers with Integer Constraints for Interval Lengths

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bresolin, Davide; Goranko, Valentin; Montanari, Angelo

2009-01-01

Interval temporal logics are based on interval structures over linearly (or partially) ordered domains, where time intervals, rather than time instants, are the primitive ontological entities. In this paper we introduce and study Right Propositional Neighborhood Logic over natural numbers...... with integer constraints for interval lengths, which is a propositional interval temporal logic featuring a modality for the 'right neighborhood' relation between intervals and explicit integer constraints for interval lengths. We prove that it has the bounded model property with respect to ultimately periodic...

Time-interval for integration of stabilizing haptic and visual information in subjects balancing under static and dynamic conditions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jean-Louis eHoneine

2014-10-01

Full Text Available Maintaining equilibrium is basically a sensorimotor integration task. The central nervous system continually and selectively weights and rapidly integrates sensory inputs from multiple sources, and coordinates multiple outputs. The weighting process is based on the availability and accuracy of afferent signals at a given instant, on the time-period required to process each input, and possibly on the plasticity of the relevant pathways. The likelihood that sensory inflow changes while balancing under static or dynamic conditions is high, because subjects can pass from a dark to a well-lit environment or from a tactile-guided stabilization to loss of haptic inflow. This review article presents recent data on the temporal events accompanying sensory transition, on which basic information is fragmentary. The processing time from sensory shift to reaching a new steady state includes the time to (a subtract or integrate sensory inputs, (b move from allocentric to egocentric reference or vice versa, and (c adjust the calibration of motor activity in time and amplitude to the new sensory set. We present examples of processes of integration of posture-stabilizing information, and of the respective sensorimotor time-intervals while allowing or occluding vision or adding or subtracting tactile information. These intervals are short, in the order of 1-2 s for different postural conditions, modalities and deliberate or passive shift. They are just longer for haptic than visual shift, just shorter on withdrawal than on addition of stabilizing input, and on deliberate than unexpected mode. The delays are the shortest (for haptic shift in blind subjects. Since automatic balance stabilization may be vulnerable to sensory-integration delays and to interference from concurrent cognitive tasks in patients with sensorimotor problems, insight into the processing time for balance control represents a critical step in the design of new balance- and locomotion training

Time-interval for integration of stabilizing haptic and visual information in subjects balancing under static and dynamic conditions

Science.gov (United States)

Honeine, Jean-Louis; Schieppati, Marco

2014-01-01

Maintaining equilibrium is basically a sensorimotor integration task. The central nervous system (CNS) continually and selectively weights and rapidly integrates sensory inputs from multiple sources, and coordinates multiple outputs. The weighting process is based on the availability and accuracy of afferent signals at a given instant, on the time-period required to process each input, and possibly on the plasticity of the relevant pathways. The likelihood that sensory inflow changes while balancing under static or dynamic conditions is high, because subjects can pass from a dark to a well-lit environment or from a tactile-guided stabilization to loss of haptic inflow. This review article presents recent data on the temporal events accompanying sensory transition, on which basic information is fragmentary. The processing time from sensory shift to reaching a new steady state includes the time to (a) subtract or integrate sensory inputs; (b) move from allocentric to egocentric reference or vice versa; and (c) adjust the calibration of motor activity in time and amplitude to the new sensory set. We present examples of processes of integration of posture-stabilizing information, and of the respective sensorimotor time-intervals while allowing or occluding vision or adding or subtracting tactile information. These intervals are short, in the order of 1–2 s for different postural conditions, modalities and deliberate or passive shift. They are just longer for haptic than visual shift, just shorter on withdrawal than on addition of stabilizing input, and on deliberate than unexpected mode. The delays are the shortest (for haptic shift) in blind subjects. Since automatic balance stabilization may be vulnerable to sensory-integration delays and to interference from concurrent cognitive tasks in patients with sensorimotor problems, insight into the processing time for balance control represents a critical step in the design of new balance- and locomotion training devices

Years Versus Days Between Successive Surgeries, After an Initial Outpatient Procedure, for the Median Patient Versus the Median Surgeon in the State of Iowa.

Science.gov (United States)

Dexter, Franklin; Jarvie, Craig; Epstein, Richard H

2018-03-01

Previously, we studied the relative importance of different institutional interventions that the largest hospital in Iowa could take to grow the anesthesia department's outpatient surgical care. Most (>50%) patients having elective surgery had not previously had surgery at the hospital. Patient perioperative experience was unimportant for influencing total anesthesia workload and numbers of patients. More important was the availability of surgical clinic appointments within several days. These results would be generalizable if the median time from surgery to a patient's next surgical procedure was large (eg, >2 years), among all hospitals in Iowa with outpatient surgery, and without regard to the hospital where the next procedure was performed. There were 37,172 surgical cases at hospital outpatient departments of any of the 117 hospitals in Iowa from July 1, 2013, to September 30, 2013. Data extracted about each case included its intraoperative work relative value units. The 37,172 cases were matched to all inpatient and outpatient records for the next 2 years statewide using patient linkage identifiers; from these were determined whether the patient had surgery again within 2 years. Furthermore, the cases' 1820 surgeons were matched to the surgeon's next outpatient or inpatient case, both including and excluding other cases performed on the date of the original case. By patient, the median time to their next surgical case, either outpatient or inpatient, exceeded 2 years, tested with weighting by intraoperative relative value units and repeated when unweighted (both P 2 years for patients versus 1 day for surgeons. Thus, although patients' experiences are an important attribute of quality of care, surgeons' experiences are orders of magnitude more important from the vantage point of marketing and growth of an anesthesia practice.

The use of a DNA stabilizer in human dental tissues stored under different temperature conditions and time intervals

Science.gov (United States)

TERADA, Andrea Sayuri Silveira Dias; da SILVA, Luiz Antonio Ferreira; GALO, Rodrigo; de AZEVEDO, Aline; GERLACH, Raquel Fernanda; da SILVA, Ricardo Henrique Alves

2014-01-01

Objective The present study evaluated the use of a reagent to stabilize the DNA extracted from human dental tissues stored under different temperature conditions and time intervals. Material and Methods A total of 161 teeth were divided into two distinct groups: intact teeth and isolated dental pulp tissue. The samples were stored with or without the product at different time intervals and temperature. After storage, DNA extraction and genomic DNA quantification were performed using real-time PCR; the fragments of the 32 samples that represented each possible condition were analyzed to find the four pre-selected markers in STR analysis. Results The results of the quantification showed values ranging from 0.01 to 10,246.88 ng/μL of DNA. The statistical difference in the quantity of DNA was observed when the factors related to the time and temperature of storage were analyzed. In relation to the use of the specific reagent, its use was relevant in the group of intact teeth when they were at room temperature for 30 and 180 days. The analysis of the fragments in the 32 selected samples was possible irrespective of the amount of DNA, confirming that the STR analysis using an automated method yields good results. Conclusions The use of a specific reagent showed a significant difference in stabilizing DNA in samples of intact human teeth stored at room temperature for 30 and 180 days, while the results showed no justification for using the product under the other conditions tested. PMID:25141206

Sosiaalisen median markkinointisuunnitelma uudelle hoitoalan konseptoidulle työvaatemallistolle

OpenAIRE

Leppälä, Sanna

2017-01-01

Opinnäytetyössä pohdittiin keinoja saada uuden konseptoidun työvaatemalliston näkyvyyttä esille sosiaalisen median keinoin. Toimeksiantaja-yrityksenä toimi suomalainen Virtually Oy ja kohteena oli sen uusi hoitajille suunnattu työvaatemallisto. Malliston ympärille halutaan luoda kestävä brändi ja sosiaalisen median markkinointi on tukemassa brändin tunnettavuutta ja myyntiä. Sosiaalinen media ei yritysten välisessä liiketoiminnassa toimi ainoana markkinoinnin työkaluna, vaan se on tukemas...

Method of high precision interval measurement in pulse laser ranging system

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Zhen; Lv, Xin-yuan; Mao, Jin-jin; Liu, Wei; Yang, Dong

2013-09-01

Laser ranging is suitable for laser system, for it has the advantage of high measuring precision, fast measuring speed,no cooperative targets and strong resistance to electromagnetic interference,the measuremen of laser ranging is the key paremeters affecting the performance of the whole system.The precision of the pulsed laser ranging system was decided by the precision of the time interval measurement, the principle structure of laser ranging system was introduced, and a method of high precision time interval measurement in pulse laser ranging system was established in this paper.Based on the analysis of the factors which affected the precision of range measure,the pulse rising edges discriminator was adopted to produce timing mark for the start-stop time discrimination,and the TDC-GP2 high precision interval measurement system based on TMS320F2812 DSP was designed to improve the measurement precision.Experimental results indicate that the time interval measurement method in this paper can obtain higher range accuracy. Compared with the traditional time interval measurement system,the method simplifies the system design and reduce the influence of bad weather conditions,furthermore,it satisfies the requirements of low costs and miniaturization.

Race and time from diagnosis to radical prostatectomy: does equal access mean equal timely access to the operating room?--Results from the SEARCH database.

Science.gov (United States)

Bañez, Lionel L; Terris, Martha K; Aronson, William J; Presti, Joseph C; Kane, Christopher J; Amling, Christopher L; Freedland, Stephen J

2009-04-01

African American men with prostate cancer are at higher risk for cancer-specific death than Caucasian men. We determine whether significant delays in management contribute to this disparity. We hypothesize that in an equal-access health care system, time interval from diagnosis to treatment would not differ by race. We identified 1,532 African American and Caucasian men who underwent radical prostatectomy (RP) from 1988 to 2007 at one of four Veterans Affairs Medical Centers that comprise the Shared Equal-Access Regional Cancer Hospital (SEARCH) database with known biopsy date. We compared time from biopsy to RP between racial groups using linear regression adjusting for demographic and clinical variables. We analyzed risk of potential clinically relevant delays by determining odds of delays >90 and >180 days. Median time interval from diagnosis to RP was 76 and 68 days for African Americans and Caucasian men, respectively (P = 0.004). After controlling for demographic and clinical variables, race was not associated with the time interval between diagnosis and RP (P = 0.09). Furthermore, race was not associated with increased risk of delays >90 (P = 0.45) or >180 days (P = 0.31). In a cohort of men undergoing RP in an equal-access setting, there was no significant difference between racial groups with regard to time interval from diagnosis to RP. Thus, equal-access includes equal timely access to the operating room. Given our previous finding of poorer outcomes among African Americans, treatment delays do not seem to explain these observations. Our findings need to be confirmed in patients electing other treatment modalities and in other practice settings.

Brain response during the M170 time interval is sensitive to socially relevant information.

Science.gov (United States)

Arviv, Oshrit; Goldstein, Abraham; Weeting, Janine C; Becker, Eni S; Lange, Wolf-Gero; Gilboa-Schechtman, Eva

2015-11-01

Deciphering the social meaning of facial displays is a highly complex neurological process. The M170, an event related field component of MEG recording, like its EEG counterpart N170, was repeatedly shown to be associated with structural encoding of faces. However, the scope of information encoded during the M170 time window is still being debated. We investigated the neuronal origin of facial processing of integrated social rank cues (SRCs) and emotional facial expressions (EFEs) during the M170 time interval. Participants viewed integrated facial displays of emotion (happy, angry, neutral) and SRCs (indicated by upward, downward, or straight head tilts). We found that the activity during the M170 time window is sensitive to both EFEs and SRCs. Specifically, highly prominent activation was observed in response to SRC connoting dominance as compared to submissive or egalitarian head cues. Interestingly, the processing of EFEs and SRCs appeared to rely on different circuitry. Our findings suggest that vertical head tilts are processed not only for their sheer structural variance, but as social information. Exploring the temporal unfolding and brain localization of non-verbal cues processing may assist in understanding the functioning of the social rank biobehavioral system. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Wait times in the emergency department for patients with mental illness

Science.gov (United States)

Atzema, Clare L.; Schull, Michael J.; Kurdyak, Paul; Menezes, Natasja M.; Wilton, Andrew S.; Vermuelen, Marian J.; Austin, Peter C.

2012-01-01

Background: It has been suggested that patients with mental illness wait longer for care than other patients in the emergency department. We determined wait times for patients with and without mental health diagnoses during crowded and noncrowded periods in the emergency department. Methods: We conducted a population-based retrospective cohort analysis of adults seen in 155 emergency departments in Ontario between April 2007 and March 2009. We compared wait times and triage scores for patients with mental illness to those for all other patients who presented to the emergency department during the study period. Results: The patients with mental illness (n = 51 381) received higher priority triage scores than other patients, regardless of crowding. The time to assessment by a physician was longer overall for patients with mental illness than for other patients (median 82, interquartile range [IQR] 41–147 min v. median 75 [IQR 36–140] min; p < 0.001). The median time from the decision to admit the patient to hospital to ward transfer was markedly shorter for patients with mental illness than for other patients (median 74 [IQR 15–215] min v. median 152 [IQR 45–605] min; p < 0.001). After adjustment for other variables, patients with mental illness waited 10 minutes longer to see a physician compared with other patients during noncrowded periods (95% confidence interval [CI] 8 to 11), but they waited significantly less time than other patients as crowding increased (mild crowding: −14 [95% CI −12 to −15] min; moderate crowding: −38 [95% CI −35 to −42] min; severe crowding: −48 [95% CI −39 to −56] min; p < 0.001). Interpretation: Patients with mental illness were triaged appropriately in Ontario’s emergency departments. These patients waited less time than other patients to see a physician under crowded conditions and only slightly longer under noncrowded conditions. PMID:23148052

Convex Interval Games

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Alparslan-Gok, S.Z.; Brânzei, R.; Tijs, S.H.

2008-01-01

In this paper, convex interval games are introduced and some characterizations are given. Some economic situations leading to convex interval games are discussed. The Weber set and the Shapley value are defined for a suitable class of interval games and their relations with the interval core for

Spectral of electrocardiographic RR intervals to indicate atrial fibrillation

Science.gov (United States)

Nuryani, Nuryani; Satrio Nugroho, Anto

2017-11-01

Atrial fibrillation is a serious heart diseases, which is associated on the risk of death, and thus an early detection of atrial fibrillation is necessary. We have investigated spectral pattern of electrocardiogram in relation to atrial fibrillation. The utilized feature of electrocardiogram is RR interval. RR interval is the time interval between a two-consecutive R peaks. A series of RR intervals in a time segment is converted to a signal with a frequency domain. The frequency components are investigated to find the components which significantly associate to atrial fibrillation. A segment is defined as atrial fibrillation or normal segments by considering a defined number of atrial fibrillation RR in the segment. Using clinical data of 23 patients with atrial fibrillation, we find that the frequency components could be used to indicate atrial fibrillation.

Sosiaalisen median rooli mikroyrittäjän ostoprosessissa

OpenAIRE

Martikainen, Inkeri

2014-01-01

Opinnäytetyön tavoite oli selvittää sosiaalisen median rooli mikroyrittäjän ostoprosessissa; miten mikroyrittäjä hakee tietoa sosiaalisesta mediasta ja millainen vaikutus sieltä löytyvillä käyttäjäarvioilla on ostopäätökseen. Opinnäytetyö tehtiin erään finanssialan yrityksen toimeksiantona. Opinnäytetyön tarkoituksena oli antaa digitaalisen markkinoinnin ammattilaisille tietoa siitä, miten mikroyrittäjiä voidaan tavoittaa sosiaalisen median kautta, ja saada näin uusia asiakkaita. Tutkimus...

Median forehead flap - beyond classic indication

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cristian R. Jecan

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Introduction. The paramedian forehead flap is one of the best options for reconstruction of the median upper two-thirds of the face due to its vascularity, color, texture match and ability to resurface all or part of the reconstructed area. The forehead flap is the gold standard for nasal soft tissue reconstruction and the flap of choice for larger cutaneous nasal defects having a robust pedicle and large amount of tissue. Materials and Methods. We are reporting a clinical series of cutaneous tumors involving the nose, medial canthus, upper and lower eyelid through a retrospective review of 6 patients who underwent surgical excision of the lesion and primary reconstruction using a paramedian forehead flap. Results. The forehead flap was used for total nose reconstruction, eyelids and medial canthal reconstruction. All flaps survived completely and no tumor recurrence was seen in any of the patients. Cosmetic and functional results were favorable. Conclusions. The forehead flap continues to be one of the best options for nose reconstruction and for closure of surgical defects of the nose larger than 2 cm. Even though is not a gold standard, median forehead flap can be an advantageous technique in periorbital defects reconstruction.

Ultrahigh-frequency ultrasound of fascicles in the median nerve at the wrist.

Science.gov (United States)

Cartwright, Michael S; Baute, Vanessa; Caress, James B; Walker, Francis O

2017-10-01

An ultrahigh-frequency (70 MHZ) ultrasound device has recently been approved for human use. This study seeks to determine whether this device facilitates counting of fascicles within the median nerve at the wrist. Twenty healthy volunteers underwent imaging of the median nerve at the wrist bilaterally. The number of fascicles in each nerve was counted by two independent raters. The mean fascicle number was 22.68. Correlation was strong between the two raters (r = 0.68, P nerve area did not predict fascicle number. Those with bifid median nerves and persistent median arteries had lower fascicle density than those without anatomic anomalies (1.79 vs. 2.29; P = 0.01). Fascicles within the median nerve at the wrist can be readily imaged. Ultrahigh-frequency ultrasound technology may be informative in a variety of disorders affecting the peripheral nervous system. Muscle Nerve 56: 819-822, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Overconfidence in Interval Estimates

Science.gov (United States)

Soll, Jack B.; Klayman, Joshua

2004-01-01

Judges were asked to make numerical estimates (e.g., "In what year was the first flight of a hot air balloon?"). Judges provided high and low estimates such that they were X% sure that the correct answer lay between them. They exhibited substantial overconfidence: The correct answer fell inside their intervals much less than X% of the time. This…

Using the Initial Systolic Time Interval to assess cardiac autonomic function in Parkinson’s disease

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jan H. Meijer

2011-12-01

Full Text Available The Initial Systolic Time Interval (ISTI has been defined as the time difference between the peak electrical and peak mechanical activity of the heart. ISTI is obtained from the electro-cardiogram and the impedance cardiogram. The response of ISTI while breathing at rest and to a deep breathing stimulus was studied in a group of patients suffering from Parkinson's disease (PD and a group of healthy control subjects. ISTI showed substantial variability during these manoeuvres. The tests showed that the variability of RR and ISTI was substantially different between PD patients and controls. It is hypothesized that in PD patients the sympathetic system compensates for the loss of regulatory control function of the blood-pressure by the parasympathetic system. It is concluded that ISTI is a practical, additional and independent parameter that can be used to assist other tests in evaluating autonomic control of the heart in PD patients.doi:10.5617/jeb.216 J Electr Bioimp, vol. 2, pp. 98-101, 2011

Restricted Interval Valued Neutrosophic Sets and Restricted Interval Valued Neutrosophic Topological Spaces

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Anjan Mukherjee

2016-08-01

Full Text Available In this paper we introduce the concept of restricted interval valued neutrosophic sets (RIVNS in short. Some basic operations and properties of RIVNS are discussed. The concept of restricted interval valued neutrosophic topology is also introduced together with restricted interval valued neutrosophic finer and restricted interval valued neutrosophic coarser topology. We also define restricted interval valued neutrosophic interior and closer of a restricted interval valued neutrosophic set. Some theorems and examples are cites. Restricted interval valued neutrosophic subspace topology is also studied.

A study on assessment methodology of surveillance test interval and Allowed Outage Time

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Che, Moo Seong; Cheong, Chang Hyeon; Ryu, Yeong Woo; Cho, Jae Seon; Heo, Chang Wook; Kim, Do Hyeong; Kim, Joo Yeol; Kim, Yun Ik; Yang, Hei Chang [Seoul National Univ., Seoul (Korea, Republic of)

1997-07-15

Objectives of this study is the development of methodology by which assesses the optimization of Surveillance Test Interval(STI) and Allowed Outage Time(AOT) using PSA method that can supplement the current deterministic methods and the improvement of Korean nuclear power plants safety. In the first year of this study, the survey about the assessment methodologies, modeling and results performed by domestic and international researches are performed as the basic step before developing the assessment methodology of this study. The assessment methodology that supplement the revealed problems in many other studies is presented and the application of new methodology into the example system assures the feasibility of this method. In the second year of this study, the sensitivity analyses about the failure factors of the components are performed in the bases of the assessment methodologies of the first study, the interaction modeling of the STI and AOT is quantified. And the reliability assessment methodology about the diesel generator is reviewed and applied to the PSA code.

A study on assessment methodology of surveillance test interval and Allowed Outage Time

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Che, Moo Seong; Cheong, Chang Hyeon; Ryu, Yeong Woo; Cho, Jae Seon; Heo, Chang Wook; Kim, Do Hyeong; Kim, Joo Yeol; Kim, Yun Ik; Yang, Hei Chang

1997-07-01

Objectives of this study is the development of methodology by which assesses the optimization of Surveillance Test Interval(STI) and Allowed Outage Time(AOT) using PSA method that can supplement the current deterministic methods and the improvement of Korean nuclear power plants safety. In the first year of this study, the survey about the assessment methodologies, modeling and results performed by domestic and international researches are performed as the basic step before developing the assessment methodology of this study. The assessment methodology that supplement the revealed problems in many other studies is presented and the application of new methodology into the example system assures the feasibility of this method. In the second year of this study, the sensitivity analyses about the failure factors of the components are performed in the bases of the assessment methodologies of the first study, the interaction modeling of the STI and AOT is quantified. And the reliability assessment methodology about the diesel generator is reviewed and applied to the PSA code

Evaluation of locally established reference intervals for hematology and biochemistry parameters in Western Kenya.

Science.gov (United States)

Odhiambo, Collins; Oyaro, Boaz; Odipo, Richard; Otieno, Fredrick; Alemnji, George; Williamson, John; Zeh, Clement

2015-01-01

Important differences have been demonstrated in laboratory parameters from healthy persons in different geographical regions and populations, mostly driven by a combination of genetic, demographic, nutritional, and environmental factors. Despite this, European and North American derived laboratory reference intervals are used in African countries for patient management, clinical trial eligibility, and toxicity determination; which can result in misclassification of healthy persons as having laboratory abnormalities. An observational prospective cohort study known as the Kisumu Incidence Cohort Study (KICoS) was conducted to estimate the incidence of HIV seroconversion and identify determinants of successful recruitment and retention in preparation for an HIV vaccine/prevention trial among young adults and adolescents in western Kenya. Laboratory values generated from the KICoS were compared to published region-specific reference intervals and the 2004 NIH DAIDS toxicity tables used for the trial. About 1106 participants were screened for the KICoS between January 2007 and June 2010. Nine hundred and fifty-three participants aged 16 to 34 years, HIV-seronegative, clinically healthy, and non-pregnant were selected for this analysis. Median and 95% reference intervals were calculated for hematological and biochemistry parameters. When compared with both published region-specific reference values and the 2004 NIH DAIDS toxicity table, it was shown that the use of locally established reference intervals would have resulted in fewer participants classified as having abnormal hematological or biochemistry values compared to US derived reference intervals from DAIDS (10% classified as abnormal by local parameters vs. >40% by US DAIDS). Blood urea nitrogen was most often out of range if US based intervals were used: 83% by US based reference intervals. Differences in reference intervals for hematological and biochemical parameters between western and African populations

Clinical and Biological Features of Interval Colorectal Cancer

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yu Mi Lee

2017-05-01

Full Text Available Interval colorectal cancer (I-CRC is defined as a CRC diagnosed within 60 months after a negative colonoscopy, taking into account that 5 years is the “mean sojourn time.” It is important to prevent the development of interval cancer. The development of interval colon cancer is associated with female sex, old age, family history of CRC, comorbidities, diverticulosis, and the skill of the endoscopist. During carcinogenesis, sessile serrated adenomas/polyps (SSA/Ps share many genomic and colonic site characteristics with I-CRCs. The clinical and biological features of I-CRC should be elucidated to prevent the development of interval colon cancer.

Median Robust Extended Local Binary Pattern for Texture Classification.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Li; Lao, Songyang; Fieguth, Paul W; Guo, Yulan; Wang, Xiaogang; Pietikäinen, Matti

2016-03-01

Local binary patterns (LBP) are considered among the most computationally efficient high-performance texture features. However, the LBP method is very sensitive to image noise and is unable to capture macrostructure information. To best address these disadvantages, in this paper, we introduce a novel descriptor for texture classification, the median robust extended LBP (MRELBP). Different from the traditional LBP and many LBP variants, MRELBP compares regional image medians rather than raw image intensities. A multiscale LBP type descriptor is computed by efficiently comparing image medians over a novel sampling scheme, which can capture both microstructure and macrostructure texture information. A comprehensive evaluation on benchmark data sets reveals MRELBP's high performance-robust to gray scale variations, rotation changes and noise-but at a low computational cost. MRELBP produces the best classification scores of 99.82%, 99.38%, and 99.77% on three popular Outex test suites. More importantly, MRELBP is shown to be highly robust to image noise, including Gaussian noise, Gaussian blur, salt-and-pepper noise, and random pixel corruption.

Response-rate differences in variable-interval and variable-ratio schedules: An old problem revisited

OpenAIRE

Cole, Mark R.

1994-01-01

In Experiment 1, a variable-ratio 10 schedule became, successively, a variable-interval schedule with only the minimum interreinforcement intervals yoked to the variable ratio, or a variable-interval schedule with both interreinforcement intervals and reinforced interresponse times yoked to the variable ratio. Response rates in the variable-interval schedule with both interreinforcement interval and reinforced interresponse time yoking fell between the higher rates maintained by the variable-...

Closeness-Centrality-Based Synchronization Criteria for Complex Dynamical Networks With Interval Time-Varying Coupling Delays.

Science.gov (United States)

Park, Myeongjin; Lee, Seung-Hoon; Kwon, Oh-Min; Seuret, Alexandre

2017-09-06

This paper investigates synchronization in complex dynamical networks (CDNs) with interval time-varying delays. The CDNs are representative of systems composed of a large number of interconnected dynamical units, and for the purpose of the mathematical analysis, the leading work is to model them as graphs whose nodes represent the dynamical units. At this time, we take note of the importance of each node in networks. One way, in this paper, is that the closeness-centrality mentioned in the field of social science is grafted onto the CDNs. By constructing a suitable Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional, and utilizing some mathematical techniques, the sufficient and closeness-centrality-based conditions for synchronization stability of the networks are established in terms of linear matrix inequalities. Ultimately, the use of the closeness-centrality can be weighted with regard to not only the interconnection relation among the nodes, which was utilized in the existing works but also more information about nodes. Here, the centrality will be added as the concerned information. Moreover, to avoid the computational burden causing the nonconvex term including the square of the time-varying delay, how to deal with it is applied by estimating it to the convex term including time-varying delay. Finally, two illustrative examples are given to show the advantage of the closeness-centrality in point of the robustness on time-delay.

Benchmarking Telestroke Proficiency: Page-to-Needle Time Among Neurovascular Fellows and Attendings.

Science.gov (United States)

Jagolino-Cole, Amanda L; Bozorgui, Shima; Ankrom, Christy M; Bambhroliya, Arvind B; Cossey, Tiffany D; Trevino, Alyssa D; Savitz, Sean I; Wu, Tzu-Ching; Vahidy, Farhaan S

2017-09-01

Formal telestroke training for neurovascular fellows (NVFs) is necessary because of growing use of telestroke technologies in the management of acute ischemic stroke; yet, educational approaches and training benchmarks are not formalized. Time between telestroke consultant page and tissue-type plasminogen activator administration (page-to-needle time, PTNT) can provide an objective measure of proficiency. We compared PTNT between NVFs and neurovascular attendings (NVAs) and evaluated changes in PTNT with experience. We identified suspected acute ischemic stroke patients in our telestroke registry from July 2013 to December 2015 who received tissue-type plasminogen activator. Using multivariable quantile regression, we estimated the difference and 95% confidence interval in median PTNT between NVFs and NVAs. We also report the coefficient of change in PTNT over increasing number of telestroke consults. NVFs evaluated 53.7% of 618 tissue-type plasminogen activator cases over telestroke. NVAs had significantly shorter PTNT compared with NVFs, with a difference in median PTNT of -9 minutes (95% confidence interval, -12.3 to -5.7). This difference persisted when adjusted for relative tissue-type plasminogen activator contraindications. For each additional telestroke consult, PTNT decreased by 0.07 minutes for NVFs or NVAs ( P =0.02 and importance of integrating telestroke training into supervised neurovascular fellowships to increase proficiency prior to independent practice and suggest that PTNT can be a benchmark for tracking proficiency. © 2017 American Heart Association, Inc.

RR-Interval variance of electrocardiogram for atrial fibrillation detection

Science.gov (United States)

Nuryani, N.; Solikhah, M.; Nugoho, A. S.; Afdala, A.; Anzihory, E.

2016-11-01

Atrial fibrillation is a serious heart problem originated from the upper chamber of the heart. The common indication of atrial fibrillation is irregularity of R peak-to-R-peak time interval, which is shortly called RR interval. The irregularity could be represented using variance or spread of RR interval. This article presents a system to detect atrial fibrillation using variances. Using clinical data of patients with atrial fibrillation attack, it is shown that the variance of electrocardiographic RR interval are higher during atrial fibrillation, compared to the normal one. Utilizing a simple detection technique and variances of RR intervals, we find a good performance of atrial fibrillation detection.

Speckle Reduction and Structure Enhancement by Multichannel Median Boosted Anisotropic Diffusion

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yang Zhi

2004-01-01

Full Text Available We propose a new approach to reduce speckle noise and enhance structures in speckle-corrupted images. It utilizes a median-anisotropic diffusion compound scheme. The median-filter-based reaction term acts as a guided energy source to boost the structures in the image being processed. In addition, it regularizes the diffusion equation to ensure the existence and uniqueness of a solution. We also introduce a decimation and back reconstruction scheme to further enhance the processing result. Before the iteration of the diffusion process, the image is decimated and a subpixel shifted image set is formed. This allows a multichannel parallel diffusion iteration, and more importantly, the speckle noise is broken into impulsive or salt-pepper noise, which is easy to remove by median filtering. The advantage of the proposed technique is clear when it is compared to other diffusion algorithms and the well-known adaptive weighted median filtering (AWMF scheme in both simulation and real medical ultrasound images.

MK-801 and memantine act differently on short-term memory tested with different time-intervals in the Morris water maze test.

Science.gov (United States)

Duda, Weronika; Wesierska, Malgorzata; Ostaszewski, Pawel; Vales, Karel; Nekovarova, Tereza; Stuchlik, Ales

2016-09-15

N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) play a crucial role in spatial memory formation. In neuropharmacological studies their functioning strongly depends on testing conditions and the dosage of NMDAR antagonists. The aim of this study was to assess the immediate effects of NMDAR block by (+)MK-801 or memantine on short-term allothetic memory. Memory was tested in a working memory version of the Morris water maze test. In our version of the test, rats underwent one day of training with 8 trials, and then three experimental days when rats were injected intraperitoneally with low- 5 (MeL), high - 20 (MeH) mg/kg memantine, 0.1mg/kg MK-801 or 1ml/kg saline (SAL) 30min before testing, for three consecutive days. On each experimental day there was just one acquisition and one test trial, with an inter-trial interval of 5 or 15min. During training the hidden platform was relocated after each trial and during the experiment after each day. The follow-up effect was assessed on day 9. Intact rats improved their spatial memory across the one training day. With a 5min interval MeH rats had longer latency then all rats during retrieval. With a 15min interval the MeH rats presented worse working memory measured as retrieval minus acquisition trial for path than SAL and MeL and for latency than MeL rats. MK-801 rats had longer latency than SAL during retrieval. Thus, the high dose of memantine, contrary to low dose of MK-801 disrupts short-term memory independent on the time interval between acquisition and retrieval. This shows that short-term memory tested in a working memory version of water maze is sensitive to several parameters: i.e., NMDA receptor antagonist type, dosage and the time interval between learning and testing. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Optimization of Spacecraft Rendezvous and Docking using Interval Analysis

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Van Kampen, E.; Chu, Q.P.; Mulder, J.A.

2010-01-01

This paper applies interval optimization to the fixed-time multiple impulse rendezvous and docking problem. Current methods for solving this type of optimization problem include for example genetic algorithms and gradient based optimization. Unlike these methods, interval methods can guarantee that

The in vitro antibacterial effect of iodine-potassium iodide and calcium hydroxide in infected dentinal tubules at different time intervals.

Science.gov (United States)

Lin, Shaul; Kfir, Anda; Laviv, Amir; Sela, Galit; Fuss, Zvi

2009-03-01

The aim of this study was to evaluate the antibacterial effect of iodine-potassium iodide (IKI) and calcium hydroxide (CH) on dentinal tubules infected with Enterococcus faecalis (E. faecalis) at different time intervals. Hollow cylinders of bovine root dentin (n=45) were infected and divided into three equal groups filled with either IKI or CH and a positive control. After placing each medicament in the infected cylinders for time periods of 10 minutes, 48 hours and 7 days, microbiological samples were analyzed. At the end of each period, four 100 microm thick inner dentin layers (400 microm thick from each specimen) were removed using dental burs of increasing diameters. Dentin powder was cultured on agar plates to quantitatively assess their infection, expressed in colony forming units (cfu). In all layers of the positive control group, heavy bacterial infection was observed. After 10 minutes, IKI reduced the amount of viable bacteria more efficiently than CH, whereas at later time intervals CH showed the best results. For short periods of exposure, IKI has a more efficient antibacterial effect in the dentinal tubules than CH but CH performs better after longer durations of exposure. This research indicates the use of IKI is a better choice for disinfecting the root canal than CH if only a short duration of exposure is used because of its more efficient antibacterial effect. However, if a longer exposure time is used, then CH is a better choice because of its better disinfecting effect over time.

An investigation on the noise reduction performance of profiled rigid median barriers at highways

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mohammad Reza Monazzam

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Median barriers as a portion of a divided highway are provided to minimize the cross-median crashes. Moreover, median barriers similar to roadside noise barriers could protect people from transportation noise. Thus, there is a need to investigate various median barrier models to identify changes of insertion loss over a simple rigid barrier. In order to estimate the acoustical influence of median barrier′s profile in the shadow zone, different median barrier models are presented and their insertion losses are calculated over a frequency range from 50 to 4000 Hz using a two-dimensional boundary element method. The present investigation has clearly revealed that among the profiled median barriers, T-shape, Y-shape, and L-shape provide better performance than that of the other shapes. It is also found that among inclined barriers, V-shape barrier significantly presents higher values of attenuation. Based on the calculation of different geometrics, it has been shown that a further 2 dB (A in efficiency could be obtained by a better design of the median barrier which is labeled model "L."

Call-to-balloon time dashboard in patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction results in significant improvement in the logistic chain.

Science.gov (United States)

Hermans, Maaike P J; Velders, Matthijs A; Smeekes, Martin; Drexhage, Olivier S; Hautvast, Raymond W M; Ytsma, Timon; Schalij, Martin J; Umans, Victor A W M

2017-08-04

Timely reperfusion with primary percutaneous coronary intervention (pPCI) in ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients is associated with superior clinical outcomes. Aiming to reduce ischaemic time, an innovative system for home-to-hospital (H2H) time monitoring was implemented, which enabled real-time evaluation of ischaemic time intervals, regular feedback and improvements in the logistic chain. The objective of this study was to assess the results after implementation of the H2H dashboard for monitoring and evaluation of ischaemic time in STEMI patients. Ischaemic time in STEMI patients transported by emergency medical services (EMS) and treated with pPCI in the Noordwest Ziekenhuis, Alkmaar before (2008-2009; n=495) and after the implementation of the H2H dashboard (2011-2014; n=441) was compared. Median time intervals were significantly shorter in the H2H group (door-to-balloon time 32 [IQR 25-43] vs. 40 [IQR 28-55] minutes, p-value dashboard was independently associated with shorter time delays. Real-time monitoring and feedback on time delay with the H2H dashboard improves the logistic chain in STEMI patients, resulting in shorter ischaemic time intervals.

Effect of antibiotic decontamination of the GI tract on survival time after neutron and gamma irradiation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Geraci, J.P.; Jackson, K.L.; Mariano, M.S.

1984-01-01

Antibiotic decontaminated and conventional rats were whole-body irradiated with 8 MeV neutrons (1.5 to 13 Gy) or 137 Cs gamma radiation (9 to 20 Gy). The animals were checked for survival at four hour intervals from the second to the seventh day postirradiation and at eight hour intervals on other days. Decontamination of the GI tract increased median survival time 1 to 5 days in this range of dose dependency, whereas the effect of decontamination was negligible for doses that produced mostly intestinal death. These results suggest that sepsis and endotoxin produced by bacteria from the intestinal tract play little role in acute intestinal radiation death

COLOUR IMAGE STEGANOGRAPHY USING MEDIAN MAINTENANCE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

S. Arivazhagan

2011-08-01

Full Text Available Steganographic algorithms in the recent past have been producing stego images with perceptual invisibility, better secrecy and certain robustness against attacks like cropping, filtering etc. Recovering a good quality secret from a good quality stego image may not always be possible. The method proposed in this paper works in transform domain and attempts to extract the secret almost as same as the embedded one maintaining minimal changes to the cover image by using techniques like median maintenance, offset and quantization.

Optimal time interval between capecitabine intake and radiotherapy in preoperative chemoradiation for locally advanced rectal cancer

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yu, Chang Sik; Kim, Tae Won; Kim, Jong Hoon; Choi, Won Sik; Kim, Hee Cheol; Chang, Heung Moon; Ryu, Min Hee; Jang, Se Jin; Ahn, Seung Do; Lee, Sang-wook; Shin, Seong Soo; Choi, Eun Kyung; Kim, Jin Cheon

2007-01-01

Purpose: Capecitabine and its metabolites reach peak plasma concentrations 1 to 2 hours after a single oral administration, and concentrations rapidly decrease thereafter. We performed a retrospective analysis to find the optimal time interval between capecitabine administration and radiotherapy for rectal cancer. Methods and Materials: The time interval between capecitabine intake and radiotherapy was measured in patients who were treated with preoperative radiotherapy and concurrent capecitabine for rectal cancer. Patients were classified into the following groups. Group A1 included patients who took capecitabine 1 hour before radiotherapy, and Group B1 included all other patients. Group B1 was then subdivided into Group A2 (patients who took capecitabine 2 hours before radiotherapy) and Group B2. Group B2 was further divided into Group A3 and Group B3 with the same method. Total mesorectal excision was performed 6 weeks after completion of chemoradiation and the pathologic response was evaluated. Results: A total of 200 patients were enrolled in this study. Pathologic examination showed that Group A1 had higher rates of complete regression of primary tumors in the rectum (23.5% vs. 9.6%, p = 0.01), good response (44.7% vs. 25.2%, p = 0.006), and lower T stages (p = 0.021) compared with Group B1; however, Groups A2 and A3 did not show any improvement compared with Groups B2 and B3. Multivariate analysis showed that increases in primary tumors in the rectum and good response were only significant when capecitabine was administered 1 hour before radiotherapy. Conclusion: In preoperative chemoradiotherapy for rectal cancer, the pathologic response could be improved by administering capecitabine 1 hour before radiotherapy

Electromyogram median power frequency in dynamic exercise at medium exercise intensities

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ament, W; Bonga, GJJ; Hof, AL; Verkerke, GJ

The electromyogram (EMG) median power Frequency of the calf muscles was investigated during an exhausting treadmill exercise and a 20-min recovery period. The exercise was an uphill run at a speed of 5 km . h(-1) and a gradient of 20%. During exercise there was no decrease of EMG median power

Consequences of Secondary Calibrations on Divergence Time Estimates.

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John J Schenk

Full Text Available Secondary calibrations (calibrations based on the results of previous molecular dating studies are commonly applied in divergence time analyses in groups that lack fossil data; however, the consequences of applying secondary calibrations in a relaxed-clock approach are not fully understood. I tested whether applying the posterior estimate from a primary study as a prior distribution in a secondary study results in consistent age and uncertainty estimates. I compared age estimates from simulations with 100 randomly replicated secondary trees. On average, the 95% credible intervals of node ages for secondary estimates were significantly younger and narrower than primary estimates. The primary and secondary age estimates were significantly different in 97% of the replicates after Bonferroni corrections. Greater error in magnitude was associated with deeper than shallower nodes, but the opposite was found when standardized by median node age, and a significant positive relationship was determined between the number of tips/age of secondary trees and the total amount of error. When two secondary calibrated nodes were analyzed, estimates remained significantly different, and although the minimum and median estimates were associated with less error, maximum age estimates and credible interval widths had greater error. The shape of the prior also influenced error, in which applying a normal, rather than uniform, prior distribution resulted in greater error. Secondary calibrations, in summary, lead to a false impression of precision and the distribution of age estimates shift away from those that would be inferred by the primary analysis. These results suggest that secondary calibrations should not be applied as the only source of calibration in divergence time analyses that test time-dependent hypotheses until the additional error associated with secondary calibrations is more properly modeled to take into account increased uncertainty in age estimates.

Median mental sinus in twins.

Science.gov (United States)

Ong, S T; Ngeow, W C

1999-05-01

Sinus on the chin can be the result of a chronic apical abscess due to pulp necrosis of a mandibular anterior tooth. The tooth is usually asymptomatic, and a dental cause is therefore not apparent to the patient or the unsuspecting clinician. Not infrequently, the patient may seek treatment from a dermatologist or general surgeon instead of a dentist. Excision and repair of the fistula may be carried out with subsequent breakdown because the dental pathology is not removed. This paper reports the presence of median mental sinus of dental origin in twins. One case healed following root canal therapy while the other required both root canal therapy and surgery to eliminate the infection.

Voimaa visuaalisuudesta : Narratiivinen kirjallisuuskatsaus visuaalisen sosiaalisen median vaikutuksista nuorten aikuisten hyvinvointiin

OpenAIRE

Viita, Shir

2017-01-01

Viita, Shir. Voimaa visuaalisuudesta – Narratiivinen kirjallisuuskatsaus visuaalisen sosiaalisen median vaikutuksista nuorten aikuisten hyvinvointiin. Kevät 2016. 52 s., 1 liite. Diakonia ammattikorkeakoulu. Sosiaalialan koulutusohjelma, sosionomin suuntautumisvaihtoehto. Sosionomi (AMK). Opinnäytetyön tavoitteena on tuottaa tietoa sosiaalialan ammattilaisille visuaalisen sosiaalisen median sivustojen Instagramin ja Snapchatin vaikutuksista nuorten aikuisten hyvinvointiin. Opinnäyte...

The incidence and clinical associated factors of interval colorectal cancers in Southern Taiwan

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cheng-En Tsai

2018-03-01

Conclusion: The prevalence of interval CRC in the present study is 3.28%. Comorbidity with ESRD and shorter ascending colon withdrawal time could be factors associated with interval CRC. Good colon preparation for the patients with ESRD and more ascending colon withdrawal time could reduce the interval CRC.

Application of median-equation approach for outlier detection in geodetic networks

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Serif Hekimoglu

Full Text Available In geodetic measurements some outliers may occur sometimes in data sets, depending on different reasons. There are two main approaches to detect outliers as Tests for outliers (Baarda's and Pope's Tests and robust methods (Danish method, Huber method etc.. These methods use the Least Squares Estimation (LSE. The outliers affect the LSE results, especially it smears the effects of the outliers on the good observations and sometimes wrong results may be obtained. To avoid these effects, a method that does not use LSE should be preferred. The median is a high breakdown point estimator and if it is applied for the outlier detection, reliable results can be obtained. In this study, a robust method which uses median with or as a treshould value on median residuals that are obtained from median equations is proposed. If the a priori variance of the observations is known, the reliability of the new approch is greater than the one in the case where the a priori variance is unknown.

Distortion of time interval reproduction in an epileptic patient with a focal lesion in the right anterior insular/inferior frontal cortices.

Science.gov (United States)

Monfort, Vincent; Pfeuty, Micha; Klein, Madelyne; Collé, Steffie; Brissart, Hélène; Jonas, Jacques; Maillard, Louis

2014-11-01

This case report on an epileptic patient suffering from a focal lesion at the junction of the right anterior insular cortex (AIC) and the adjacent inferior frontal cortex (IFC) provides the first evidence that damage to this brain region impairs temporal performance in a visual time reproduction task in which participants had to reproduce the presentation duration (3, 5 and 7s) of emotionally-neutral and -negative pictures. Strikingly, as compared to a group of healthy subjects, the AIC/IFC case considerably overestimated reproduction times despite normal variability. The effect was obtained in all duration and emotion conditions. Such a distortion in time reproduction was not observed in four other epileptic patients without insular or inferior frontal damage. Importantly, the absolute extent of temporal over-reproduction increased in proportion to the magnitude of the target durations, which concurs with the scalar property of interval timing, and points to an impairment of time-specific rather than of non temporal (such as motor) mechanisms. Our data suggest that the disability in temporal reproduction of the AIC/IFC case would result from a distorted memory representation of the encoded duration, occurring during the process of storage and/or of recovery from memory and leading to a deviation of the temporal judgment during the reproduction task. These findings support the recent proposal that the anterior insular/inferior frontal cortices would be involved in time interval representation. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Separate patient serum sodium medians from males and females provide independent information on analytical bias

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hansen, Steen Ingemann; Petersen, Per Hyltoft; Lund, Flemming

2017-01-01

BACKGROUND: During monitoring of monthly medians of results from patients undertaken to assess analytical stability in routine laboratory performance, the medians for serum sodium for male and female patients were found to be significantly related. METHODS: Daily, weekly and monthly patient medians...... all instruments. CONCLUSIONS: The tight relationship between the gender medians for serum sodium is only possible when raw laboratory data are used for calculation. The two patient medians can be used to confirm both and are useful as independent estimates of analytical bias during constant...... calibration periods. In contrast to the gender combined median, the estimate of analytical bias can be confirmed further by calculation of the ratios of medians for males and females....

A GPU-Based Genetic Algorithm for the P-Median Problem

OpenAIRE

AlBdaiwi, Bader F.; AboElFotoh, Hosam M. F.

2016-01-01

The p-median problem is a well-known NP-hard problem. Many heuristics have been proposed in the literature for this problem. In this paper, we exploit a GPGPU parallel computing platform to present a new genetic algorithm implemented in Cuda and based on a Pseudo Boolean formulation of the p-median problem. We have tested the effectiveness of our algorithm using a Tesla K40 (2880 Cuda cores) on 290 different benchmark instances obtained from OR-Library, discrete location problems benchmark li...

Lightweight MAC-Spoof Detection Exploiting Received Signal Power and Median Filtering

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Papini, Davide

2011-01-01

this kind of attack based on signal power monitoring. The main contribution of our work is the introduction of a median l- ter that enables the detection of the attack by looking at the variance of the signal power. We take into account two types of references for the samples, time and number of frames......IEEE 802.11 networks are subject to MAC-spoof attacks. An attacker can easily steal the identity of a legitimate station, even Access Points, thus enabling him to take full control over network basic mech- anisms or even access restricted resources. In this paper we propose a method to detect...

Study on risk insight for additional ILRT interval extension

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Seo, M. R.; Hong, S. Y.; Kim, M. K.; Chung, B. S.; Oh, H. C.

2005-01-01

In U.S., the containment Integrated Leakage Rate Test (ILRT) interval was extended from 3 times per 10 years to once per 10 years based on NUREG-1493 'Performance-Based Containment Leak-Test Program' in 1995. In September, 2001, ILRT interval was extended up to once per 15 years based on Nuclear Energy Industry (NEI) provisional guidance 'Interim Guidance for Performing Risk Impact Assessments In Support of One-Time Extensions for Containment Integrated Leakage Rate Test Surveillance Intervals'. In Korea, the containment ILRT was performed with 5 year interval. But, in MOST(Ministry of Science and Technology) Notice 2004-15 'Standard for the Leak- Rate Test of the Nuclear Reactor Containment', the extension of the ILRT interval to once per 10 year can be allowed if some conditions are met. So, the safety analysis for the extension of Yonggwang Nuclear (YGN) Unit 1 and 2 ILRT interval extension to once per 10 years was completed based on the methodology in NUREG-1493. But, during review process by regulatory body, KINS, it was required that some various risk insight or index for risk analysis should be developed. So, we began to study NEI interim report for 15 year ILRT interval extension. As previous analysis based on NUREG-1493, MACCS II (MELCOR Accident Consequence Code System) computer code was used for the risk analysis of the population, and the population dose was selected as a reference index for the risk evaluation

Median nerve fascicular anatomy as a basis for distal neural prostheses.

Science.gov (United States)

Planitzer, Uwe; Steinke, Hanno; Meixensberger, Jürgen; Bechmann, Ingo; Hammer, Niels; Winkler, Dirk

2014-05-01

Functional electrical stimulation (FES) serves as a possible therapy to restore missing motor functions of peripheral nerves by means of cuff electrodes. FES is established for improving lower limb function. Transferring this method to the upper extremity is complex, due to a lack of anatomical data on the physiological configuration of nerve fascicles. Our study's aim was to provide an anatomical basis for FES of the median nerve in the distal forearm and hand. We investigated 21 distal median nerves from 12 body donors. The peripheral fascicles were traced back by removing the external and interfascicular epineurium and then assigned to 4 quadrants. A distinct motor and sensory distribution was observed. The fascicles innervating the thenar eminence and the first lumbrical muscle originated from the nerves' radial parts in 82%. The fascicle supplying the second lumbrical muscle originated from the ulnar side in 78%. No macroscopically visible plexus formation was observed for the distal median nerve in the forearm. The findings on the distribution of the motor branches of the median nerve and the missing plexus formation may likely serve as an anatomical basis for FES of the distal forearm. However, due to the considerable variability of the motor branches, cuff electrodes will need to be adapted individually in FES. Taking into account the sensory distribution of the median nerve, FES may also possibly be applied in the treatment of regional pain syndromes. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

Variant palmaris profundus enclosed by an unusual loop of the median nerve

Science.gov (United States)

CHOU, HSIU-CHU; JENG, HELLEN; KO, TSUI-LING; PAI, MAN-HUI; CHANG, CHIU-YUN; WU, CHING-HSIANG

2001-01-01

According to the usual description in most anatomy texts, the median nerve in the forearm passes between the 2 heads of pronator teres. It continues distally between flexor digitorum superficialis and profundus almost to the retinaculum. Muscular branches leave the nerve near the elbow and supply all superficial muscles of the anterior part of the forearm except flexor carpi ulnaris. Many variations of the median nerve in the forearm have been reported (Urban & Krosman, 1992). The palmaris profundus is also a rare anomaly of the forearm (Dyreby & Engber, 1982). It originates from the radial side of the common flexor tendon in the proximal forearm and inserts into the undersurface of the palmar aponeurosis. The origin of palmaris profundus may be close to the median nerve and its branches, and may be involved in compressive neuropathy of the anterior interosseous nerve. Its tendon crossing through the carpal canal has been implicated in the carpal tunnel syndrome (reviewed by Lahey & Aulicino, 1986). In some cases, palmaris profundus was found enclosed in a common fascial sheath with the median nerve (Stark, 1992; Sahinoglu et al. 1994). To indicate its close association with the median nerve, the palmaris profundus was also named ‘musculus comitans nervi mediani’ (Sahinoglu et al. 1994). This article reports an unusual loop of the median nerve encircling an anomalous palmaris profundus in the forearm, which, to the best of our knowledge, has not been previously described. PMID:11693311

Programming with Intervals

Science.gov (United States)

Matsakis, Nicholas D.; Gross, Thomas R.

Intervals are a new, higher-level primitive for parallel programming with which programmers directly construct the program schedule. Programs using intervals can be statically analyzed to ensure that they do not deadlock or contain data races. In this paper, we demonstrate the flexibility of intervals by showing how to use them to emulate common parallel control-flow constructs like barriers and signals, as well as higher-level patterns such as bounded-buffer producer-consumer. We have implemented intervals as a publicly available library for Java and Scala.

Simultaneous determination of radionuclides separable into natural decay series by use of time-interval analysis

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hashimoto, Tetsuo; Sanada, Yukihisa; Uezu, Yasuhiro

2004-01-01

A delayed coincidence method, time-interval analysis (TIA), has been applied to successive α-α decay events on the millisecond time-scale. Such decay events are part of the 220 Rn→ 216 Po (T 1/2 145 ms) (Th-series) and 219 Rn→ 215 Po (T 1/2 1.78 ms) (Ac-series). By using TIA in addition to measurement of 226 Ra (U-series) from α-spectrometry by liquid scintillation counting (LSC), two natural decay series could be identified and separated. The TIA detection efficiency was improved by using the pulse-shape discrimination technique (PSD) to reject β-pulses, by solvent extraction of Ra combined with simple chemical separation, and by purging the scintillation solution with dry N 2 gas. The U- and Th-series together with the Ac-series were determined, respectively, from alpha spectra and TIA carried out immediately after Ra-extraction. Using the 221 Fr→ 217 At (T 1/2 32.3 ms) decay process as a tracer, overall yields were estimated from application of TIA to the 225 Ra (Np-decay series) at the time of maximum growth. The present method has proven useful for simultaneous determination of three radioactive decay series in environmental samples. (orig.)

An O(n log n) Version of the Averbakh-Berman Algorithm for the Robust Median of a Tree

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Brodal, Gerth Stølting; Georgiadis, Loukas; Katriel, Irit

2008-01-01

We show that the minmax regret median of a tree can be found in O(nlog n) time. This is obtained by a modification of Averbakh and Berman's O(nlog2 n)-time algorithm: We design a dynamic solution to their bottleneck subproblem of finding the middle of every root-leaf path in a tree....

The Median Solution of the Newsvendor Problem and Some Observations

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sinha Pritibhushan

2015-09-01

Full Text Available We consider the median solution of the Newsvendor Problem. Some properties of such a solution are shown through a theoretical analysis and a numerical experiment. Sometimes, though not often, median solution may be better than solutions maximizing expected profit, or maximizing minimum possible, over distribution with the same average and standard deviation, expected profit, according to some criteria. We discuss the practical suitability of the objective function set and the solution derived, for the Newsvendor Problem, and other such random optimization problems.

The Interval Slope Method for Long-Term Forecasting of Stock Price Trends

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Chun-xue Nie

2016-01-01

Full Text Available A stock price is a typical but complex type of time series data. We used the effective prediction of long-term time series data to schedule an investment strategy and obtain higher profit. Due to economic, environmental, and other factors, it is very difficult to obtain a precise long-term stock price prediction. The exponentially segmented pattern (ESP is introduced here and used to predict the fluctuation of different stock data over five future prediction intervals. The new feature of stock pricing during the subinterval, named the interval slope, can characterize fluctuations in stock price over specific periods. The cumulative distribution function (CDF of MSE was compared to those of MMSE-BC and SVR. We concluded that the interval slope developed here can capture more complex dynamics of stock price trends. The mean stock price can then be predicted over specific time intervals relatively accurately, in which multiple mean values over time intervals are used to express the time series in the long term. In this way, the prediction of long-term stock price can be more precise and prevent the development of cumulative errors.

Event- and interval-based measurement of stuttering: a review.

Science.gov (United States)

Valente, Ana Rita S; Jesus, Luis M T; Hall, Andreia; Leahy, Margaret

2015-01-01

Event- and interval-based measurements are two different ways of computing frequency of stuttering. Interval-based methodology emerged as an alternative measure to overcome problems associated with reproducibility in the event-based methodology. No review has been made to study the effect of methodological factors in interval-based absolute reliability data or to compute the agreement between the two methodologies in terms of inter-judge, intra-judge and accuracy (i.e., correspondence between raters' scores and an established criterion). To provide a review related to reproducibility of event-based and time-interval measurement, and to verify the effect of methodological factors (training, experience, interval duration, sample presentation order and judgment conditions) on agreement of time-interval measurement; in addition, to determine if it is possible to quantify the agreement between the two methodologies The first two authors searched for articles on ERIC, MEDLINE, PubMed, B-on, CENTRAL and Dissertation Abstracts during January-February 2013 and retrieved 495 articles. Forty-eight articles were selected for review. Content tables were constructed with the main findings. Articles related to event-based measurements revealed values of inter- and intra-judge greater than 0.70 and agreement percentages beyond 80%. The articles related to time-interval measures revealed that, in general, judges with more experience with stuttering presented significantly higher levels of intra- and inter-judge agreement. Inter- and intra-judge values were beyond the references for high reproducibility values for both methodologies. Accuracy (regarding the closeness of raters' judgements with an established criterion), intra- and inter-judge agreement were higher for trained groups when compared with non-trained groups. Sample presentation order and audio/video conditions did not result in differences in inter- or intra-judge results. A duration of 5 s for an interval appears to be

Measurement of subcritical multiplication by the interval distribution method

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Nelson, G.W.

1985-01-01

The prompt decay constant or the subcritical neutron multiplication may be determined by measuring the distribution of the time intervals between successive neutron counts. The distribution data is analyzed by least-squares fitting to a theoretical distribution function derived from a point reactor probability model. Published results of measurements with one- and two-detector systems are discussed. Data collection times are shorter, and statistical errors are smaller the nearer the system is to delayed critical. Several of the measurements indicate that a shorter data collection time and higher accuracy are possible with the interval distribution method than with the Feynman variance method

Motor Unit Interpulse Intervals During High Force Contractions.

Science.gov (United States)

Stock, Matt S; Thompson, Brennan J

2016-01-01

We examined the means, medians, and variability for motor-unit interpulse intervals (IPIs) during voluntary, high force contractions. Eight men (mean age = 22 years) attempted to perform isometric contractions at 90% of their maximal voluntary contraction force while bipolar surface electromyographic (EMG) signals were detected from the vastus lateralis and vastus medialis muscles. Surface EMG signal decomposition was used to determine the recruitment thresholds and IPIs of motor units that demonstrated accuracy levels ≥ 96.0%. Motor units with high recruitment thresholds demonstrated longer mean IPIs, but the coefficients of variation were similar across all recruitment thresholds. Polynomial regression analyses indicated that for both muscles, the relationship between the means and standard deviations of the IPIs was linear. The majority of IPI histograms were positively skewed. Although low-threshold motor units were associated with shorter IPIs, the variability among motor units with differing recruitment thresholds was comparable.

First Passage Time Intervals of Gaussian Processes

Science.gov (United States)

Perez, Hector; Kawabata, Tsutomu; Mimaki, Tadashi

1987-08-01

The first passage time problem of a stationary Guassian process is theretically and experimentally studied. Renewal functions are derived for a time-dependent boundary and numerically calculated for a Gaussian process having a seventh-order Butterworth spectrum. The results show a multipeak property not only for the constant boundary but also for a linearly increasing boundary. The first passage time distribution densities were experimentally determined for a constant boundary. The renewal functions were shown to be a fairly good approximation to the distribution density over a limited range.

Interpregnancy interval and risk of autistic disorder.

Science.gov (United States)

Gunnes, Nina; Surén, Pål; Bresnahan, Michaeline; Hornig, Mady; Lie, Kari Kveim; Lipkin, W Ian; Magnus, Per; Nilsen, Roy Miodini; Reichborn-Kjennerud, Ted; Schjølberg, Synnve; Susser, Ezra Saul; Øyen, Anne-Siri; Stoltenberg, Camilla

2013-11-01

A recent California study reported increased risk of autistic disorder in children conceived within a year after the birth of a sibling. We assessed the association between interpregnancy interval and risk of autistic disorder using nationwide registry data on pairs of singleton full siblings born in Norway. We defined interpregnancy interval as the time from birth of the first-born child to conception of the second-born child in a sibship. The outcome of interest was autistic disorder in the second-born child. Analyses were restricted to sibships in which the second-born child was born in 1990-2004. Odds ratios (ORs) were estimated by fitting ordinary logistic models and logistic generalized additive models. The study sample included 223,476 singleton full-sibling pairs. In sibships with interpregnancy intervals autistic disorder, compared with 0.13% in the reference category (≥ 36 months). For interpregnancy intervals shorter than 9 months, the adjusted OR of autistic disorder in the second-born child was 2.18 (95% confidence interval 1.42-3.26). The risk of autistic disorder in the second-born child was also increased for interpregnancy intervals of 9-11 months in the adjusted analysis (OR = 1.71 [95% CI = 1.07-2.64]). Consistent with a previous report from California, interpregnancy intervals shorter than 1 year were associated with increased risk of autistic disorder in the second-born child. A possible explanation is depletion of micronutrients in mothers with closely spaced pregnancies.

Effect of palady and cup feeding on premature neonates′ weight gain and reaching full oral feeding time interval

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Maryam Marofi

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Background: Premature neonates′ feeding is of great importance due to its effective role in their growth. These neonates should reach an independent oral nutrition stage before being discharged from the Neonatal Intensive care Unit. Therefore, the researcher decided to conduct a study on the effect of palady and cup feeding on premature neonates′ weight gain and their reaching full oral feeding time interval. Materials and Methods: This is a clinical trial with a quantitative design conducted on 69 premature infants (gestational age between 29 and 32 weeks who were assigned to cup (n = 34 and palady (n = 35 feeding groups through random allocation. The first feeding was administrated either by cup or palady method in each shift within seven sequential days (total of 21 cup and palady feedings. Then, the rest of feeding was administrated by gavage. Results: Mean hospitalization time (cup = 39.01 and palady = 30.4; P < 0.001 and mean time interval to reach full oral feeding (cup = 33.7 and palady = 24.1; P < 0.001 were significantly lower in palady group compared to cup group. Mean weight changes of neonates 7 weeks after the intervention compared to those in the beginning of the intervention were significantly more in palady group compared to the cup group (cup = 146.7 and palady = 198.8; P < 0.001. Conclusions: The neonates in palady group reached full oral feeding earlier than those of cup group. Subjects′ weight gain was also higher in palady group compared to the cup group. Premature neonates with over 30 weeks of gestational age and physiological stability can be fed by palady.

Myofibroma in the Palm Presenting with Median Nerve Compression Symptoms

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Heidi Sarkozy, PA-C, BS

2014-08-01

Full Text Available Summary: A myofibroma is a benign proliferation of myofibroblasts in the connective tissue. Solitary myofibromas are a rare finding especially in an adult. We report a case of a 23-year-old man presenting with an enlarging mass over his right palm. The patient is an active weight lifter. He reported numbness and tingling in the median nerve distribution. Nerve conduction studies and magnetic resonance imaging scans suggested a tumor involving or compressing the median nerve. The final diagnosis of myofibroma was made only after the histopathological diagnosis.

A validation of ground ambulance pre-hospital times modeled using geographic information systems.

Science.gov (United States)

Patel, Alka B; Waters, Nigel M; Blanchard, Ian E; Doig, Christopher J; Ghali, William A

2012-10-03

Evaluating geographic access to health services often requires determining the patient travel time to a specified service. For urgent care, many research studies have modeled patient pre-hospital time by ground emergency medical services (EMS) using geographic information systems (GIS). The purpose of this study was to determine if the modeling assumptions proposed through prior United States (US) studies are valid in a non-US context, and to use the resulting information to provide revised recommendations for modeling travel time using GIS in the absence of actual EMS trip data. The study sample contained all emergency adult patient trips within the Calgary area for 2006. Each record included four components of pre-hospital time (activation, response, on-scene and transport interval). The actual activation and on-scene intervals were compared with those used in published models. The transport interval was calculated within GIS using the Network Analyst extension of Esri ArcGIS 10.0 and the response interval was derived using previously established methods. These GIS derived transport and response intervals were compared with the actual times using descriptive methods. We used the information acquired through the analysis of the EMS trip data to create an updated model that could be used to estimate travel time in the absence of actual EMS trip records. There were 29,765 complete EMS records for scene locations inside the city and 529 outside. The actual median on-scene intervals were longer than the average previously reported by 7-8 minutes. Actual EMS pre-hospital times across our study area were significantly higher than the estimated times modeled using GIS and the original travel time assumptions. Our updated model, although still underestimating the total pre-hospital time, more accurately represents the true pre-hospital time in our study area. The widespread use of generalized EMS pre-hospital time assumptions based on US data may not be appropriate in a

Ranking Exponential Trapezoidal Fuzzy Numbers by Median Value

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S. Rezvani

2013-12-01

Full Text Available In this paper, we want represented a method for ranking of two exponential trapezoidal fuzzy numbers. A median value is proposed for the ranking of exponential trapezoidal fuzzy numbers. For the validation the results of the proposed approach are compared with different existing approaches.

Intraneural hemangioma of the median nerve: A case report

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sevinç Teoman

2008-02-01

Full Text Available Abstract Hemangiomas of the median nerve are very rare and, so far, only ten cases of intraneural hemangioma of this nerve have been reported in the literature. We present a case of 14-year-old girl who had a soft tissue mass in the region of the left wrist with signs and symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome. Total removal of the mass was achieved using microsurgical epineural and interfasicular dissection. The symptoms were relieved completely, after this procedure, without any neurologic deficit. On follow-up two years later, no recurrence was observed. Whenever a child or young adult patient presents with CTS the possibility of a hemangioma involving the median nerve should be kept in mind in the differential diagnosis.

Brain malformation in single median maxillary central incisor

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kjaer, I; Wagner, Aa; Thomsen, L L

2009-01-01

Clinical and radiographic examinations and MR scan of a 12-year-old girl with SMMCI (single median maxillary central incisor) showed impaired growth and a midline defect involving the central incisor, cranium and the midline structures in the brain, falx cerebri and pituitary gland. She had a sev...

Dose dependency of the frequency of micronucleated binucleated clone cells and of division related median clone sizes difference. Pt. 2

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hagemann, G,; Kreczik, A.; Treichel, M.

1996-01-01

Following irradiation of the progenitor cells the clone growth of CHO cells decreases as a result of cell losses. Lethally acting expressions of micronuclei are produced by heritable lethal mutations. The dependency of the frequency of micronucleated binucleated clone cells and of the median clone sizes difference on the radiation dose was measured and compared to non-irradiated controls. Using the cytokinesis-block-micronucleus-method binucleated cells with micronuclei were counted as ratio of all binucleated cells within a clone size distribution. This ratio (shortened: micronucleus yield) was determined for all clone size distributions, which had been exposed to different irradiation doses and incubation times. The micronucleus yields were compared to the corresponding median clone sizes differences. The micronucleus yield is linearly dependent on the dose and is independent of the incubation time. The same holds true for the division related median clone sizes difference, which as a result is also linearly dependent on the micronucleus yield. Due to the inevitably errors of the cell count of micronucleated binucleated cells, an automatic measurement of the median clone sizes differences is the preferred method for evaluation of cellular radiation sensitivity for heritable lethal mutations. This value should always be determined in addition, if clone survival fractions are used as predictive test because it allows for an estimation of the remission probability of surviving cells. (orig.) [de

Interpregnancy intervals: impact of postpartum contraceptive effectiveness and coverage.

Science.gov (United States)

Thiel de Bocanegra, Heike; Chang, Richard; Howell, Mike; Darney, Philip

2014-04-01

The purpose of this study was to determine the use of contraceptive methods, which was defined by effectiveness, length of coverage, and their association with short interpregnancy intervals, when controlling for provider type and client demographics. We identified a cohort of 117,644 women from the 2008 California Birth Statistical Master file with second or higher order birth and at least 1 Medicaid (Family Planning, Access, Care, and Treatment [Family PACT] program or Medi-Cal) claim within 18 months after index birth. We explored the effect of contraceptive method provision on the odds of having an optimal interpregnancy interval and controlled for covariates. The average length of contraceptive coverage was 3.81 months (SD = 4.84). Most women received user-dependent hormonal contraceptives as their most effective contraceptive method (55%; n = 65,103 women) and one-third (33%; n = 39,090 women) had no contraceptive claim. Women who used long-acting reversible contraceptive methods had 3.89 times the odds and women who used user-dependent hormonal methods had 1.89 times the odds of achieving an optimal birth interval compared with women who used barrier methods only; women with no method had 0.66 times the odds. When user-dependent methods are considered, the odds of having an optimal birth interval increased for each additional month of contraceptive coverage by 8% (odds ratio, 1.08; 95% confidence interval, 1.08-1.09). Women who were seen by Family PACT or by both Family PACT and Medi-Cal providers had significantly higher odds of optimal birth intervals compared with women who were served by Medi-Cal only. To achieve optimal birth spacing and ultimately to improve birth outcomes, attention should be given to contraceptive counseling and access to contraceptive methods in the postpartum period. Copyright © 2014 Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

Prognostic Value of Cardiac Time Intervals by Tissue Doppler Imaging M-Mode in Patients With Acute ST-Segment-Elevation Myocardial Infarction Treated With Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Biering-Sørensen, Tor; Mogelvang, Rasmus; Søgaard, Peter

2013-01-01

Background- Color tissue Doppler imaging M-mode through the mitral leaflet is an easy and precise method to estimate all cardiac time intervals from 1 cardiac cycle and thereby obtain the myocardial performance index (MPI). However, the prognostic value of the cardiac time intervals and the MPI...... assessed by color tissue Doppler imaging M-mode through the mitral leaflet in patients with ST-segment-elevation myocardial infarction (MI) is unknown. Methods and Results- In total, 391 patients were admitted with an ST-segment-elevation MI, treated with primary percutaneous coronary intervention...

Chaos on the interval

CERN Document Server

Ruette, Sylvie

2017-01-01

The aim of this book is to survey the relations between the various kinds of chaos and related notions for continuous interval maps from a topological point of view. The papers on this topic are numerous and widely scattered in the literature; some of them are little known, difficult to find, or originally published in Russian, Ukrainian, or Chinese. Dynamical systems given by the iteration of a continuous map on an interval have been broadly studied because they are simple but nevertheless exhibit complex behaviors. They also allow numerical simulations, which enabled the discovery of some chaotic phenomena. Moreover, the "most interesting" part of some higher-dimensional systems can be of lower dimension, which allows, in some cases, boiling it down to systems in dimension one. Some of the more recent developments such as distributional chaos, the relation between entropy and Li-Yorke chaos, sequence entropy, and maps with infinitely many branches are presented in book form for the first time. The author gi...

A Time Interval of More Than 18 Months Between a Pregnancy and a Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass Increases the Risk of Iron Deficiency and Anaemia in Pregnancy.

Science.gov (United States)

Crusell, Mie; Nilas, Lisbeth; Svare, Jens; Lauenborg, Jeannet

2016-10-01

The aim of the study is to explore the impact of time between Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) and pregnancy on obstetrical outcome and nutritional derangements. In a retrospective cross-sectional study of pregnant women admitted for antenatal care at two tertiary hospitals, we examined 153 women with RYGB and a singleton pregnancy of at least 24 weeks. The women were stratified according to a pregnancy pregnancy, gestational hypertension, length of pregnancy, mode of delivery and foetal birth weight. The two groups were comparable regarding age, parity and prepregnancy body mass index. The frequency of iron deficiency anaemia (ferritin pregnancy outcome or birth weight between the two groups. A long surgery-to-pregnancy time interval after a RYGB increases the risk of iron deficiency anaemia but not of other nutritional deficits. Time interval does not seem to have an adverse effect on the obstetrical outcome, including intrauterine growth restriction. Specific attention is needed on iron deficit with increasing surgery-to-pregnancy time interval.

A probabilistic approach for representation of interval uncertainty

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zaman, Kais; Rangavajhala, Sirisha; McDonald, Mark P.; Mahadevan, Sankaran

2011-01-01

In this paper, we propose a probabilistic approach to represent interval data for input variables in reliability and uncertainty analysis problems, using flexible families of continuous Johnson distributions. Such a probabilistic representation of interval data facilitates a unified framework for handling aleatory and epistemic uncertainty. For fitting probability distributions, methods such as moment matching are commonly used in the literature. However, unlike point data where single estimates for the moments of data can be calculated, moments of interval data can only be computed in terms of upper and lower bounds. Finding bounds on the moments of interval data has been generally considered an NP-hard problem because it includes a search among the combinations of multiple values of the variables, including interval endpoints. In this paper, we present efficient algorithms based on continuous optimization to find the bounds on second and higher moments of interval data. With numerical examples, we show that the proposed bounding algorithms are scalable in polynomial time with respect to increasing number of intervals. Using the bounds on moments computed using the proposed approach, we fit a family of Johnson distributions to interval data. Furthermore, using an optimization approach based on percentiles, we find the bounding envelopes of the family of distributions, termed as a Johnson p-box. The idea of bounding envelopes for the family of Johnson distributions is analogous to the notion of empirical p-box in the literature. Several sets of interval data with different numbers of intervals and type of overlap are presented to demonstrate the proposed methods. As against the computationally expensive nested analysis that is typically required in the presence of interval variables, the proposed probabilistic representation enables inexpensive optimization-based strategies to estimate bounds on an output quantity of interest.

Synchronization of Switched Interval Networks and Applications to Chaotic Neural Networks

OpenAIRE

Cao, Jinde; Alofi, Abdulaziz; Al-Mazrooei, Abdullah; Elaiw, Ahmed

2013-01-01

This paper investigates synchronization problem of switched delay networks with interval parameters uncertainty, based on the theories of the switched systems and drive-response technique, a mathematical model of the switched interval drive-response error system is established. Without constructing Lyapunov-Krasovskii functions, introducing matrix measure method for the first time to switched time-varying delay networks, combining Halanay inequality technique, synchroniza...

Transmission line sag calculations using interval mathematics

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Shaalan, H. [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Washington, DC (United States)]|[US Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point, NY (United States)

2007-07-01

Electric utilities are facing the need for additional generating capacity, new transmission systems and more efficient use of existing resources. As such, there are several uncertainties associated with utility decisions. These uncertainties include future load growth, construction times and costs, and performance of new resources. Regulatory and economic environments also present uncertainties. Uncertainty can be modeled based on a probabilistic approach where probability distributions for all of the uncertainties are assumed. Another approach to modeling uncertainty is referred to as unknown but bounded. In this approach, the upper and lower bounds on the uncertainties are assumed without probability distributions. Interval mathematics is a tool for the practical use and extension of the unknown but bounded concept. In this study, the calculation of transmission line sag was used as an example to demonstrate the use of interval mathematics. The objective was to determine the change in cable length, based on a fixed span and an interval of cable sag values for a range of temperatures. The resulting change in cable length was an interval corresponding to the interval of cable sag values. It was shown that there is a small change in conductor length due to variation in sag based on the temperature ranges used in this study. 8 refs.

Chosen interval methods for solving linear interval systems with special type of matrix

Science.gov (United States)

Szyszka, Barbara

2013-10-01

The paper is devoted to chosen direct interval methods for solving linear interval systems with special type of matrix. This kind of matrix: band matrix with a parameter, from finite difference problem is obtained. Such linear systems occur while solving one dimensional wave equation (Partial Differential Equations of hyperbolic type) by using the central difference interval method of the second order. Interval methods are constructed so as the errors of method are enclosed in obtained results, therefore presented linear interval systems contain elements that determining the errors of difference method. The chosen direct algorithms have been applied for solving linear systems because they have no errors of method. All calculations were performed in floating-point interval arithmetic.

Time interval measurement between two emissions: Kr + Au; Mesure de l`intervalle de temps entre deux emissions: Kr + Au

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Aboufirassi, M; Bougault, R.; Brou, R.; Colin, J.; Durand, D.; Genoux-Lubain, A.; Horn, D.; Laville, J.L.; Le Brun, C.; Lecolley, J.F.; Lefebvres, F.; Lopez, O.; Louvel, M.; Mahi, M.; Steckmeyer, J.C.; Tamain, B. [Lab. de Physique Corpusculaire, Caen Univ., 14 (France); LPC (Caen) - CRN (Strasbourg) - GANIL Collaboration

1998-04-01

To indicate the method allowing the determination of the emission intervals, the results obtained with the Kr + Au system at 43 and 60 A.MeV are presented. The experiments were performed with the NAUTILUS exclusive detectors. Central collisions were selected by means of a relative velocity criterion to reject the events containing a forward emitted fragment. For the two bombardment energies the data analysis shows that the formation of a compound of mass around A = 200. By comparing the fragment dynamical variables with simulations one can conclude about the simultaneity of the compound deexcitation processes. It was found that a 5 MeV/A is able to reproduce the characteristics of the detected fragments. Also, it was found that to reproduce the dynamical characteristics of the fragments issued from central collisions it was not necessary to superimpose a radial collective energy upon the Coulomb and thermal motion. The distribution of the relative angles between detected fragments is used here as a chronometer. For simultaneous ruptures the small relative angles are forbidden by the Coulomb repulsion, while for sequential processes this interdiction is the more lifted the longer the interval between the two emissions is. For the system discussed here the comparison between simulation and data has been carried out for the extreme cases, i.e. for a vanishing and infinite time interval between the two emissions, respectively. More sophisticated simulations to describe angular distributions between the emitted fragments were also developed 2 refs.

Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting with short relaxation intervals.

Science.gov (United States)

Amthor, Thomas; Doneva, Mariya; Koken, Peter; Sommer, Karsten; Meineke, Jakob; Börnert, Peter

2017-09-01

The aim of this study was to investigate a technique for improving the performance of Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting (MRF) in repetitive sampling schemes, in particular for 3D MRF acquisition, by shortening relaxation intervals between MRF pulse train repetitions. A calculation method for MRF dictionaries adapted to short relaxation intervals and non-relaxed initial spin states is presented, based on the concept of stationary fingerprints. The method is applicable to many different k-space sampling schemes in 2D and 3D. For accuracy analysis, T 1 and T 2 values of a phantom are determined by single-slice Cartesian MRF for different relaxation intervals and are compared with quantitative reference measurements. The relevance of slice profile effects is also investigated in this case. To further illustrate the capabilities of the method, an application to in-vivo spiral 3D MRF measurements is demonstrated. The proposed computation method enables accurate parameter estimation even for the shortest relaxation intervals, as investigated for different sampling patterns in 2D and 3D. In 2D Cartesian measurements, we achieved a scan acceleration of more than a factor of two, while maintaining acceptable accuracy: The largest T 1 values of a sample set deviated from their reference values by 0.3% (longest relaxation interval) and 2.4% (shortest relaxation interval). The largest T 2 values showed systematic deviations of up to 10% for all relaxation intervals, which is discussed. The influence of slice profile effects for multislice acquisition is shown to become increasingly relevant for short relaxation intervals. In 3D spiral measurements, a scan time reduction of 36% was achieved, maintaining the quality of in-vivo T1 and T2 maps. Reducing the relaxation interval between MRF sequence repetitions using stationary fingerprint dictionaries is a feasible method to improve the scan efficiency of MRF sequences. The method enables fast implementations of 3D spatially

Interfascicular suture with nerve autografts for median, ulnar and radial nerve lesions.

Science.gov (United States)

Pluchino, F; Luccarelli, G

1981-05-01

Interfascicular nerve suture with autografts is the operation of choice for repairing peripheral nerve injuries because it ensures more precise alignment of the fasciculi and so better chances of reinnervation of the sectioned nerve. The procedure as described by Millesi et al has been used at the Istituto Neurologico di Milano in 30 patients with traumatic lesions of the median, ulnar and radial nerves. All have been followed up for 2 to 7 years since operation. The results obtained are compared with those of other series obtained with interfascicular suture and with epineural suture. Microsurgery is essential. The best time to operate is discussed.

Impulse Noise Cancellation of Medical Images Using Wavelet Networks and Median Filters

Science.gov (United States)

Sadri, Amir Reza; Zekri, Maryam; Sadri, Saeid; Gheissari, Niloofar

2012-01-01

This paper presents a new two-stage approach to impulse noise removal for medical images based on wavelet network (WN). The first step is noise detection, in which the so-called gray-level difference and average background difference are considered as the inputs of a WN. Wavelet Network is used as a preprocessing for the second stage. The second step is removing impulse noise with a median filter. The wavelet network presented here is a fixed one without learning. Experimental results show that our method acts on impulse noise effectively, and at the same time preserves chromaticity and image details very well. PMID:23493998

Levels and correlates of non-adherence to WHO recommended inter-birth intervals in Rufiji, Tanzania

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Exavery Amon

2012-12-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Poorly spaced pregnancies have been documented worldwide to result in adverse maternal and child health outcomes. The World Health Organization (WHO recommends a minimum inter-birth interval of 33 months between two consecutive live births in order to reduce the risk of adverse maternal and child health outcomes. However, birth spacing practices in many developing countries, including Tanzania, remain scantly addressed. Methods Longitudinal data collected in the Rufiji Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS from January 1999 to December 2010 were analyzed to investigate birth spacing practices among women of childbearing age. The outcome variable, non-adherence to the minimum inter-birth interval, constituted all inter-birth intervals Results A total of 15,373 inter-birth intervals were recorded from 8,980 women aged 15–49 years in Rufiji district over the follow-up period of 11 years. The median inter-birth interval was 33.4 months. Of the 15,373 inter-birth intervals, 48.4% were below the WHO recommended minimum length of 33 months between two live births. Non-adherence was associated with younger maternal age, low maternal education, multiple births from the preceding pregnancy, non-health facility delivery of the preceding birth, being an in-migrant resident, multi-parity and being married. Conclusion Generally, one in every two inter-birth intervals among 15–49 year-old women in Rufiji district is poorly spaced, with significant variations by socio-demographic and behavioral characteristics of mothers and newborns. Maternal, newborn and child health services should be improved with a special emphasis on community- and health facility-based optimum birth spacing education in order to enhance health outcomes of mothers and their babies, especially in rural settings.

Comparison of ultrasound imaging in transverse median and parasagittal oblique planes for thoracic epidurals: A pilot study.

Science.gov (United States)

Khemka, Rakhi; Rastogi, Sonal; Desai, Neha; Chakraborty, Arunangshu; Sinha, Subir

2016-06-01

The use of ultrasound (US) scanning to assess the depth of epidural space to prevent neurological complications is established in current practice. In this study, we hypothesised that pre-puncture US scanning for estimating the depth of epidural space for thoracic epidurals is comparable between transverse median (TM) and paramedian sagittal oblique (PSO) planes. We performed pre-puncture US scanning in 32 patients, posted for open abdominal surgeries. The imaging was done to detect the depth of epidural space from skin (ultrasound depth [UD]) and needle insertion point, in parasagittal oblique plane in PSO group and transverse median plane in TM group. Subsequently, epidural space was localised through the predetermined insertion point by 'loss of resistance' technique and needle depth (ND) to the epidural space was marked. Correlation between the UD and actual ND was calculated and concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) was used to determine the degree of agreement between UD and ND in both the planes. The primary outcome, i.e., the comparison between UD and ND, done using Pearson correlation coefficient, was 0.99 in both PSO and TM groups, and the CCC was 0.93 (95% confidence interval [95% CI]: 0.81-0.97) and 0.90 (95% CI: 0.74-0.96) in PSO and TM groups respectively, which shows a strong positive association between UD and ND in both groups. The use of pre-puncture US scanning in both PSO and TM planes for estimating the depth of epidural space at the level of mid- and lower-thoracic spine is comparable.

Nuorten sosiaalisen median käyttö seurustelusuhteissa : "Onksiul snappii, kikkii tai whatsappii?"

OpenAIRE

Pöllänen, Kati

2016-01-01

Tässä opinnäytetyössä tutkittiin nuorten sosiaalisen median käyttöä seurustelusuhteissa. Seurustelusuhteella tarkoitetaan kahden toisistaan pitävän ihmisen romanttista suhdetta. Työssä tarkasteltiin keskinuorten ja myöhäisnuorten käyttämiä sosiaalisen median sovelluksia, käyttömääriä ja –tapoja. Lisäksi selvitettiin, millainen rooli sosiaalisella medialla on seurustelusuhteen eri vaiheissa. Työssä tutustuttiin nuorten sosiaalisen median käyttöön kenttätutkimuksella, jossa nu...

The Alteration of Emotion Regulation Precedes the Deficits in Interval Timing in the BACHD Rat Model for Huntington Disease

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Daniel Garces

2018-05-01

Full Text Available Huntington disease (HD is an autosomal dominantly inherited, progressive neurodegenerative disorder which is accompanied by executive dysfunctions and emotional alteration. The aim of the present study was to assess the impact of emotion/stress on on-going highly demanding cognitive tasks, i.e., temporal processing, as a function of age in BACHD rats (a “full length” model of HD. Middle-aged (4–6 months and old (10–12 months rats were first trained on a 2 vs. 8-s temporal discrimination task, and then exposed to a series of bisection tests under normal and stressful (10 mild unpredictable foot-shocks conditions. The animals were then trained on a peak interval task, in which reinforced fixed-interval (FI 30-s trials were randomly intermixed with non-reinforced probe trials. After training, the effect of stress upon time perception was again assessed. Sensitivity to foot-shocks was also assessed independently. The results show effects of both age and genotype, with largely greater effects in old BACHD animals. The older BACHD animals had impaired learning in both tasks, but reached equivalent levels of performance as WT animals at the end of training in the temporal discrimination task, while remaining impaired in the peak interval task. Whereas sensitivity to foot-shock did not differ between BACHD and WT rats, delivery of foot-shocks during the test sessions had a disruptive impact on temporal behavior in WT animals, an effect which increased with age. In contrast, BACHD rats, independent of age, did not show any significant disruption under stress. In conclusion, BACHD rats showed a disruption in temporal learning in late symptomatic animals. Age-related modification in stress-induced impairment of temporal control of behavior was also observed, an effect which was greatly reduced in BACHD animals, thus confirming previous results suggesting reduced emotional reactivity in HD animals. The results suggest a staggered onset in cognitive

Median sternotomy for double lung transplantation with cardiopulmonary bypass in seven consecutive patients

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kohno, Mitsutomo; Steinbrüchel, Daniel A

2012-01-01

We describe our technique of using median sternotomy to perform double lung transplantations with cardiopulmonary bypass. By sparing the respiratory muscles, median sternotomy is probably less invasive and preserves lung function. Furthermore, it causes less long-term discomfort than intercostal...

Optimal parallel algorithms for problems modeled by a family of intervals

Science.gov (United States)

Olariu, Stephan; Schwing, James L.; Zhang, Jingyuan

1992-01-01

A family of intervals on the real line provides a natural model for a vast number of scheduling and VLSI problems. Recently, a number of parallel algorithms to solve a variety of practical problems on such a family of intervals have been proposed in the literature. Computational tools are developed, and it is shown how they can be used for the purpose of devising cost-optimal parallel algorithms for a number of interval-related problems including finding a largest subset of pairwise nonoverlapping intervals, a minimum dominating subset of intervals, along with algorithms to compute the shortest path between a pair of intervals and, based on the shortest path, a parallel algorithm to find the center of the family of intervals. More precisely, with an arbitrary family of n intervals as input, all algorithms run in O(log n) time using O(n) processors in the EREW-PRAM model of computation.

The analysis of QT interval and repolarization morphology of the heart in chronic exposure to lead.

Science.gov (United States)

Kiełtucki, J; Dobrakowski, M; Pawlas, N; Średniawa, B; Boroń, M; Kasperczyk, S

2017-10-01

There are no common recommendations regarding electrocardiographic monitoring in occupationally exposed workers. Therefore, the present study was designed to investigate whether exposure to lead results in an increase of selected electrocardiography (ECG) pathologies, such as QT interval prolongation and repolarization disorders, in occupationally exposed workers. The study group included 180 workers occupationally exposed to lead compounds. The exposed group was divided according to the median of the mean blood lead level (PbB mean ) calculated based on a series of measurements performed during 5-year observation period (35 µg/dl) into two subgroups: low exposure (LE, PbB mean = 20.0-35.0 µg/dl) and high exposure (HE, PbB mean = 35.1-46.4 µg/dl). The control group consisted of 69 healthy workers without occupational exposure to lead. ECG evaluation included the analysis of heart rate (HR), QT interval and repolarization abnormalities. Mean QT interval was significantly greater in the exposed population than in the control group by 2%. In the HE group, mean QT interval was significantly greater than in the control group by 4% and significantly different from those noted in the LE group. Positive correlations between QT interval and lead exposure indices were also reported. Besides, there was a negative correlation between HR and blood lead level. Increased concentration of lead in the blood above 35 μg/dl is associated with the QT interval prolongation, which may trigger arrhythmias when combined with other abnormalities, such as long QT syndrome. Therefore, electrocardiographic evaluation should be a part of a routine monitoring of occupationally exposed populations.

Synchronization of Switched Interval Networks and Applications to Chaotic Neural Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jinde Cao

2013-01-01

Full Text Available This paper investigates synchronization problem of switched delay networks with interval parameters uncertainty, based on the theories of the switched systems and drive-response technique, a mathematical model of the switched interval drive-response error system is established. Without constructing Lyapunov-Krasovskii functions, introducing matrix measure method for the first time to switched time-varying delay networks, combining Halanay inequality technique, synchronization criteria are derived for switched interval networks under the arbitrary switching rule, which are easy to verify in practice. Moreover, as an application, the proposed scheme is then applied to chaotic neural networks. Finally, numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.

Effect of Remote Back-Up Protection System Failure on the Optimum Routine Test Time Interval of Power System Protection

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Y Damchi

2013-12-01

Full Text Available Appropriate operation of protection system is one of the effective factors to have a desirable reliability in power systems, which vitally needs routine test of protection system. Precise determination of optimum routine test time interval (ORTTI plays a vital role in predicting the maintenance costs of protection system. In the most previous studies, ORTTI has been determined while remote back-up protection system was considered fully reliable. This assumption is not exactly correct since remote back-up protection system may operate incorrectly or fail to operate, the same as the primary protection system. Therefore, in order to determine the ORTTI, an extended Markov model is proposed in this paper considering failure probability for remote back-up protection system. In the proposed Markov model of the protection systems, monitoring facility is taken into account. Moreover, it is assumed that the primary and back-up protection systems are maintained simultaneously. Results show that the effect of remote back-up protection system failures on the reliability indices and optimum routine test intervals of protection system is considerable.

Characterization of melatonin binding sites in the Harderian gland and median eminence of the rat

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lopez-Gonzalez, M.A.; Calvo, J.R.; Rubio, A.; Goberna, R.; Guerrero, J.M.

1991-01-01

The characterization of specific melatonin binding sites in the Harderian gland (HG) and median eminence (ME) of the rat was studied using [ 125 I]melatonin. Binding of melatonin to membrane crude preparations of both tissues was dependent on time and temperature. Thus, maximal binding was obtained at 37 degree C after 30-60 min incubation. Binding was also dependent on protein concentration. The specific binding of [ 125 I]melatonin was saturable, exhibiting only the class of binding sites in both tissues. The dissociation constants (Kd) were 170 and 190 pM for ME and HG, respectively. The concentration of the binding sites in ME was 8 fmol/mg protein, and in the HG 4 fmol/mg protein. In competition studies, binding of [ 125 I]melatonin to ME or HG was inhibited by increasing concentration of native melatonin; 50% inhibition was observed at about 702 and 422 nM for ME and HG, respectively. Additionally, the [ 125 I]melatonin binding to the crude membranes was not affected by the addition of different drugs such as norepinephrine, isoproterenol, phenylephrine, propranolol, or prazosin. The results confirm the presence of melatonin binding sites in median eminence and show, for the first time, the existence of melatonin binding sites in the Harderian gland

A case of fibrolipomatous hamartoma of the median nerve with macrodactyly

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sathish Arakeri

2012-07-01

Full Text Available Fibrolipomatous hamartoma of nerve is a tumor-like lipomatous process principally involving affecting young persons. The median nerve is most commonly affectedinvolved. The lesion is characterized by a soft slowly growing mass, surrounding and infiltrating major nerves and their branches. It may cause symptoms of compression neuropathy and is associated with macrodactyly in one third of cases. Here, we present a case of Fibrolipomatous hamartoma of nerve in the wrist of a young man arising from median nerve. Debulking of the tumour was performed.

Educational system, income inequality and growth: the median voter's decision

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Joilson Dias

2005-03-01

Full Text Available I analyze a long run educational policy as a mechanism to close the income gap among low, median and high-income families. If the choice is made endogenous by the use of the median voter theorem, the results are as follow: i public education system guarantees income convergence, however the income growth rate of the median voter is smaller; ii the combination public and private (hybrid educational system allows faster income growth rate, but income inequality is almost the natural outcome. The ending result is that the combination public and private system will prevail, since the income growth rate of the median voter is higher in this system. This might explain the persistence and differences of income inequality among the economies.O objetivo deste artigo é analisar a utilização da política educacional no longo prazo como mecanismo para a redução da desigualdade de renda entre famílias de renda baixa, mediana e alta. Se a decisão sobre a política for endogeneizada, de acordo com o teorema do eleitor mediano, os resultados são os seguintes: i o sistema educacional público para todos, apesar de garantir convergência de renda, produz uma menor taxa de crescimento da renda do eleitor mediano; ii a combinação público-privado (sistema educacional híbrido permite uma maior taxa de crescimento da renda do eleitor mediano, no entanto a desigualdade de renda é inerente a este sistema. Como resultado final, o eleitor mediano irá escolher o sistema público-privado, pois o crescimento da sua renda é maior, o que pode explicar a persistência e as diferenças na desigualdade de renda das economias.

Birth interval and its predictors among married women in Dabat ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

2008-12-30

Birth intervals (time between two successive live births) if short are associated with diverse complications. We assessed birth interval and its predictors among 613 married women who gave birth from January 1 to December 30, 2008. Data were collected in April 2012. Life table and Kaplan-Meier curve were used to ...

Tuning for temporal interval in human apparent motion detection.

Science.gov (United States)

Bours, Roger J E; Stuur, Sanne; Lankheet, Martin J M

2007-01-08

Detection of apparent motion in random dot patterns requires correlation across time and space. It has been difficult to study the temporal requirements for the correlation step because motion detection also depends on temporal filtering preceding correlation and on integration at the next levels. To specifically study tuning for temporal interval in the correlation step, we performed an experiment in which prefiltering and postintegration were held constant and in which we used a motion stimulus containing coherent motion for a single interval value only. The stimulus consisted of a sparse random dot pattern in which each dot was presented in two frames only, separated by a specified interval. On each frame, half of the dots were refreshed and the other half was a displaced reincarnation of the pattern generated one or several frames earlier. Motion energy statistics in such a stimulus do not vary from frame to frame, and the directional bias in spatiotemporal correlations is similar for different interval settings. We measured coherence thresholds for left-right direction discrimination by varying motion coherence levels in a Quest staircase procedure, as a function of both step size and interval. Results show that highest sensitivity was found for an interval of 17-42 ms, irrespective of viewing distance. The falloff at longer intervals was much sharper than previously described. Tuning for temporal interval was largely, but not completely, independent of step size. The optimal temporal interval slightly decreased with increasing step size. Similarly, the optimal step size decreased with increasing temporal interval.

Median Sternotomy or Right Thoracotomy Techniques for Total Artificial Heart Implantation in Calves.

Science.gov (United States)

Karimov, Jamshid H; Moazami, Nader; Sunagawa, Gengo; Kobayashi, Mariko; Byram, Nicole; Sale, Shiva; Such, Kimberly A; Horvath, David J; Golding, Leonard A R; Fukamachi, Kiyotaka

2016-10-01

The choice of optimal operative access technique for mechanical circulatory support device implantation ensures successful postoperative outcomes. In this study, we retrospectively evaluated the median sternotomy and lateral thoracotomy incisions for placement of the Cleveland Clinic continuous-flow total artificial heart (CFTAH) in a bovine model. The CFTAH was implanted in 17 calves (Jersey calves; weight range, 77.0-93.9 kg) through a median sternotomy (n = 9) or right thoracotomy (n = 8) for elective chronic implantation periods of 14, 30, or 90 days. Similar preoperative preparation, surgical techniques, and postoperative care were employed. Implantation of the CFTAH was successfully performed in all cases. Both methods provided excellent surgical field visualization. After device connection, however, the median sternotomy approach provided better visualization of the anastomoses and surgical lines for hemostasis confirmation and repair due to easier device displacement, which is severely limited following right thoracotomy. All four animals sacrificed after completion of the planned durations (up to 90 days) were operated through full median sternotomy. Our data demonstrate that both approaches provide excellent initial field visualization. Full median sternotomy provides larger viewing angles at the anastomotic suture line after device connection to inflow and outflow ports. Copyright © 2015 International Center for Artificial Organs and Transplantation and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

On interval and cyclic interval edge colorings of (3,5)-biregular graphs

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Casselgren, Carl Johan; Petrosyan, Petros; Toft, Bjarne

2017-01-01

A proper edge coloring f of a graph G with colors 1,2,3,…,t is called an interval coloring if the colors on the edges incident to every vertex of G form an interval of integers. The coloring f is cyclic interval if for every vertex v of G, the colors on the edges incident to v either form an inte...

Heat Generation on Implant Surface During Abutment Preparation at Different Elapsed Time Intervals.

Science.gov (United States)

Al-Keraidis, Abdullah; Aleisa, Khalil; Al-Dwairi, Ziad Nawaf; Al-Tahawi, Hamdi; Hsu, Ming-Lun; Lynch, Edward; Özcan, Mutlu

2017-10-01

The purpose of this study was to evaluate heat generation at the implant surface caused by abutment preparation using a diamond bur in a high-speed dental turbine in vitro at 2 different water-coolant temperatures. Thirty-two titanium-alloy abutments were connected to a titanium-alloy implant embedded in an acrylic resin placed within a water bath at a controlled temperature of 37°C. The specimens were equally distributed into 2 groups (16 each). Group 1: the temperature was maintained at 20 ± 1°C; and group 2: the temperature was maintained at 32 ± 1°C. Each abutment was prepared in the axial plane for 1 minute and in the occlusal plane for 1 minute. The temperature of the heat generated from abutment preparation was recorded and measured at 3 distinct time intervals. Water-coolant temperature (20°C vs 32°C) had a statistically significant effect on the implant's temperature change during preparation of the abutment (P water-coolant temperature of 20 ± 1°C during preparation of the implant abutment decreased the temperature recorded at the implant surface to 34.46°C, whereas the coolant temperature of 32 ± 1°C increased the implant surface temperature to 40.94°C.

INTERVAL STATE ESTIMATION FOR SINGULAR DIFFERENTIAL EQUATION SYSTEMS WITH DELAYS

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T. A. Kharkovskaia

2016-07-01

Full Text Available The paper deals with linear differential equation systems with algebraic restrictions (singular systems and a method of interval observer design for this kind of systems. The systems contain constant time delay, measurement noise and disturbances. Interval observer synthesis is based on monotone and cooperative systems technique, linear matrix inequations, Lyapunov function theory and interval arithmetic. The set of conditions that gives the possibility for interval observer synthesis is proposed. Results of synthesized observer operation are shown on the example of dynamical interindustry balance model. The advantages of proposed method are that it is adapted to observer design for uncertain systems, if the intervals of admissible values for uncertain parameters are given. The designed observer is capable to provide asymptotically definite limits on the estimation accuracy, since the interval of admissible values for the object state is defined at every instant. The obtained result provides an opportunity to develop the interval estimation theory for complex systems that contain parametric uncertainty, varying delay and nonlinear elements. Interval observers increasingly find applications in economics, electrical engineering, mechanical systems with constraints and optimal flow control.

Hybrid neuro-heuristic methodology for simulation and control of dynamic systems over time interval.

Science.gov (United States)

Woźniak, Marcin; Połap, Dawid

2017-09-01

Simulation and positioning are very important aspects of computer aided engineering. To process these two, we can apply traditional methods or intelligent techniques. The difference between them is in the way they process information. In the first case, to simulate an object in a particular state of action, we need to perform an entire process to read values of parameters. It is not very convenient for objects for which simulation takes a long time, i.e. when mathematical calculations are complicated. In the second case, an intelligent solution can efficiently help on devoted way of simulation, which enables us to simulate the object only in a situation that is necessary for a development process. We would like to present research results on developed intelligent simulation and control model of electric drive engine vehicle. For a dedicated simulation method based on intelligent computation, where evolutionary strategy is simulating the states of the dynamic model, an intelligent system based on devoted neural network is introduced to control co-working modules while motion is in time interval. Presented experimental results show implemented solution in situation when a vehicle transports things over area with many obstacles, what provokes sudden changes in stability that may lead to destruction of load. Therefore, applied neural network controller prevents the load from destruction by positioning characteristics like pressure, acceleration, and stiffness voltage to absorb the adverse changes of the ground. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Effects of smartphone overuse on hand function, pinch strength, and the median nerve.

Science.gov (United States)

İnal, Esra Erkol; Demİrcİ, kadİr; Çetİntürk, Azİze; Akgönül, Mehmet; Savaş, Serpİl

2015-08-01

In this study we investigated the flexor pollicis longus (FPL) tendon and median nerve in smartphone users by ultrasonography to assess the effects of smartphone addiction on the clinical and functional status of the hands. One hundred two students were divided into 3 groups: non-users, and high or low smartphone users. Smartphone Addiction Scale (SAS) scores and grip and pinch strengths were recorded. Pain in thumb movement and rest and hand function were evaluated on the visual analog scale (VAS) and the Duruöz Hand Index (DHI), respectively. The cross-sectional areas (CSAs) of the median nerve and the FPL tendon were calculated bilaterally using ultrasonography. Significantly higher median nerve CSAs were observed in the dominant hands of the high smartphone users than in the non-dominant hands (PSmartphone overuse enlarges the median nerve, causes pain in the thumb, and decreases pinch strength and hand functions. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A study of retrograde degeneration of median nerve forearm ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Mona Mokhtar El Bardawil

2013-10-22

Oct 22, 2013 ... tient clinic of the Physical Medicine Rheumatology and Reha- bilitation ... F-wave to calculate axillary F central loop (AFCL) latency of median and ..... amplitude which substantially results from the block of faster ... Postoperative electrophysiological follow up for ... Regional rheumatic pain syndromes. In:.

A novel image inpainting technique based on median diffusion

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)