Burnout and risk of cardiovascular disease: Evidence, possible causal paths, and promising research directions.

Burnout is characterized by emotional exhaustion, physical fatigue, and cognitive weariness, resulting from prolonged exposure to work-related stress. The authors review the accumulated evidence suggesting that burnout and the related concept of vital exhaustion are associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular-related events. The authors present evidence supporting several potential mechanisms linking burnout with ill health, including the metabolic syndrome, dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis along with sympathetic nervous system activation, sleep disturbances, systemic inflammation, impaired immunity functions, blood coagulation and fibrinolysis, and poor health behaviors. The association of burnout and vital exhaustion with these disease mediators suggests that their impact on health may be more extensive than currently indicated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Output feedback stabilizability and passivity in nonstationary and nonlinear systems

Passivity properties and passivity conditions have been shown to be very important for the stability of various methodologies of control with uncertainty in linear‐time‐invariant (LTI) systems. Many publications have defined the conditions that allow LTI systems to become strictly passive (and their transfer function strictly positive real) via constant or dynamic output feedback. As beyond the usual uncertainty, real‐world systems are not necessarily invariant, this paper expands the applicability of previous results to nonstationary and nonlinear systems. The paper first reviews a few pole–zero dynamics definitions in nonstationary systems and relates them to stability and passivity of the systems. The paper then finds the sufficient conditions that allow nonstationary systems to become stable and strictly passive via static or dynamic output feedback. Applications in robotics and adaptive control are also presented. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Prolonging Shelf-Life of Carp by Combined Ionising Radiation and Refrigeration

Experiments were performed using ionisating radiation in order to prolong the shelf-life of two groups of refrigerated fish ( Cyprinus carpio ). After irradiation fish were kept at 0–2°C. Non-irradiated fish reached the non-acceptability point in 16 days and irradiated fish reached that point in 31 days. No difference was found between shelf-life of whole or eviscerated fish. If fish were immediately cooled to 0°C after death, their shelf-life was prolonged considerably. From this study it is clear that chemical tests of freshness such as TVB-N and K value determination are not appropriate for the study of irradiated fish. Organoleptic estimations and a new determination using an odour concentration meter seem to fit best the objective determination of freshness.     

Aroused versus calm positive affects as predictors of lipids.

Objective: The authors hypothesized that high-pleasure low-arousal (HPLA) would predict a subsequent decrease of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and triglycerides (TRI), as well as a subsequent increase of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C). The authors also hypothesized that high-pleasure high-arousal (HPHA) would have the opposite effects on these blood lipids, predicting a subsequent increase of LDL-C and TRI, and a decrease of HDL-C. Design: Participants were 990 male and 595 female apparently healthy employees who underwent a routine periodic health examination at two points in time, Time 1 (T1) and Time 2 (T2), about 24 months apart. Data were analyzed separately for the men and women, and the authors controlled for possible confounders shown in past research to be implicated with hyperlipidemia. Main Outcome Measures: HPHA and HPLA were assessed based on the Job-Related Affective Well-Being Scale, while LDL-C, TRI, and HDL-C were assessed based on fasting blood samples. Results: For the men, support for our hypotheses was found relative to HDL-C and TRI. The authors did not find support for our hypotheses for thee women. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that for men, the two types of positive affects may have opposite physiological consequences with respect to subsequent changes in blood lipid levels. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Discriminative common vectors for face recognition

In face recognition tasks, the dimension of the sample space is typically larger than the number of the samples in the training set. As a consequence, the within-class scatter matrix is singular and the linear discriminant analysis (LDA) method cannot be applied directly. This problem is known as the "small sample size" problem. In this paper, we propose a new face recognition method called the discriminative common vector method based on a variation of Fisher's linear discriminant analysis for the small sample size case. Two different algorithms are given to extract the discriminative common vectors representing each person in the training set of the face database. One algorithm uses the within-class scatter matrix of the samples in the training set while the other uses the subspace methods and the Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization procedure to obtain the discriminative common vectors. Then, the discriminative common vectors are used for classification of new faces. The proposed method yields an optimal solution for maximizing the modified Fisher's linear discriminant criterion given in the paper. Our test results show that the discriminative common vector method is superior to other methods in terms of recognition accuracy, efficiency, and numerical stability.     

Characterization of titanium coatings obtained by the cold plasma technique

Titanium coatings obtained by the RF cold plasma technique at a temperature of 550°C were characterized in order to create a model mechanism for the formation process. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction, Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Energy Dispersive Analysis of X-ray (EDAX) and Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES) were employed to identify and to characterize the sputtered films. The coatings obtained were composed of titanium-copper intermetallic compounds. It is suggested that the intermetallic compounds are formed in a solid state reaction due to local energetic processes taking place in the plasma, in spite of the relatively low temperature of the substrate. According to the suggested model copper migrates outwards from the substrate, in an enhanced synergistic process, along the surfaces of the titanium deposited particles.     

Nitriding of AISI M2 tool steel in an inductive r.f. plasma

The nitriding of AISI M2 tool steel in an inductive r.f. plasma was investigated. The plasma was sustained with a 27.12 MHz generator in gas mixtures of N₂ and H₂ at a pressure of 10 mbar. The ion nitriding was performed at a net r.f. power of 400 W at substrate temperatures of 450–500 °C. X-ray diffraction studies of the treated samples revealed that the most efficient formation of nitride phases was observed in samples nitrided in a pure N₂ plasma. As a result of the ion nitriding the surface hardness was substantially increased from a Vickers hardness VHN of 290 kgf mm^-2 for untreated samples to a maximum VHN of 1200 kgf mm^-2 for samples treated in a plasma sustained in a gas mixture with N₂:H₂ = 1:1.     

Fourier transform infrared-attenuated total reflection nitrate determination of soil pastes using principal component regression, partial least squares, and cross-correlation

This paper investigates the use of Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) attenuated total reflectance (ATR) spectroscopy as a fast and simple way for direct determination of nitrate concentration in soil pastes, which would assist precision fertilizer placement and reduce nitrate pollution. Eight types of soils are investigated, with nitrate concentrations ranging from 0 to 1000 ppm-N. The spectral region around the nitrate band (1300-1550 cm(-1)) is analyzed by (1) principal component regression (PCR), (2) partial least squares (PLS), and (3) cross-correlation with reference libraries that include spectra of pure ions and/or soils. The main obstacle to accurate nitrate measurement appears to be an interfering band present in calcareous soils. This band, which may be due to carbonate, is located around 1450 cm(-1) and overlaps with the nitrate band centered around 1370 cm(-1). For non-calcareous soils, and in particular for light sandy agricultural soils, PLS and cross-correlation with a reference library containing only spectra of ions in water give similar results (about 8 ppm-N on dry soil basis), while PCR leads to slightly poorer results. When calcareous soils are included in the analysis, the prediction errors are about twice as large. In this case, the best results are obtained using PLS, followed by PCR, while cross-correlation with reference libraries leads to poorer results.