Complex demodulation of cardiorespiratory dynamics preceding vasovagal syncope

BACKGROUND: The dynamic autonomic processes leading to vasovagal syncope are poorly understood. METHODS AND RESULTS: We used complex demodulation to continuously assess changes in respiration, R-R interval, and arterial pressure (blood pressure) variability during 60 degree head-up tilt in 25 healthy subjects with tilt-induced vasovagal syncope and 25 age-matched nonsyncopal control subjects. Coherence and transfer function analyses were used to examine the relation between respiration and R-R interval variability before syncope. Baseline blood pressure, R-R, and ventilation were similar between syncope subjects and control subjects. Syncope subjects experienced an increase in tidal volume and decrease in BP beginning 3 minutes before impending syncope (systolic blood pressure <80 mm Hg) necessitated termination of tilt. Approximately 90 seconds before syncope there was a sudden prolongation of R-R interval and increase in amplitude of high and low frequency R-R interval variability, indicating an abrupt enhancement of vagal tone. The increase in respiratory amplitude between 180 and 90 seconds before syncope was not accompanied by changes in R-R interval or R-R variability, suggesting a dissociation between respiration and the respiratory sinus arrhythmia. The coherence analysis showed fewer syncope subjects with coherence between respiratory and R-R interval variabilities and lower transfer magnitudes in syncope subjects compared with control subjects. Nonsyncopal subjects had no change in respiratory, R-R interval, or blood pressure dynamics during matched time periods before the time of syncope. CONCLUSIONS: Vasovagal syncope is preceded by a period of hyperpnea and cardiorespiratory decoupling followed by an abrupt increase in cardiovagal tone. Respiratory pumping without inspiratory cardiac slowing may partially counteract preload reduction until sudden bradycardia precipitates syncope.     

Comparison of phospholipid profiles of primary adenocarcinoma in the lung and other organs

Phospholipid profiles, particularly molecular structure of phosphatidylcholine, of human primary lung adenocarcinoma were compared with those of the histologically same type of carcinoma from other organs in order to search for a possibility that differentiates between primary and metastatic tumors in the lung. The saturated class, mainly containing palmitic acid at both positions, accounted for 20.8% of phosphatidylcholine in lung adenocarcinoma, whereas it accounted for only 6–10.7% in the adenocarcinoma of other organs. Adenocarcinoma of organs other than the lung had specific characteristics of unsaturated molecular classes of phosphatidylcholine for each organ. Stomach tumor had high contents of dienes and tetraenes with particularly high proportion of arachidonic acid at the 2-position. Breast tumor had a high content of monoenes, containing palmitoleic acid at the 2-position. Adenocarcinomas of rectum, colon and thyroid contained more dienes compared to lung adenocarcinoma.     

Burning behavior of sedan passenger cars

Four full-scale fire experiments using 4-door sedan passenger cars were carried out. The cars were ignited either at the splashguard of the right rear wheel or at the left front seat in the passenger compartment with a gasoline spill. The temperature inside the burning car and the mass loss rate were measured. The burning of the 4-door sedan was composed of three compartmental fires: the engine compartment, the passenger compartment, and the rear part inclusive of the fuel. In the experiments where ignition was initiated at the splashguard, the flame spread in the following order: to the rear part of the car, to the passenger compartment, and to the engine compartment. Breakage of the window glass markedly affected the spread of fire into the passenger compartment. The quantity of gasoline in the fuel tank also affected the speed of spread of the fire, because the gasoline ignited at an early stage of the fire. In the experiment where ignition was initiated in the passenger compartment, the fire gained force after the windshield was broken entirely. The flame spread in the following order: to the passenger compartment, to the engine compartment, and to the rear part of the car. The temperature within the passenger compartment peaked at 1000 °C. The heat release rate (HRR) curves showed several peaks depending on the burning of the three compartments. The HRR increased markedly when the fire spread to several different parts of the car at the same time. The HHR peaked at 3 MW when the passenger compartment and fuel (gasoline) burned simultaneously. The measured HRR curves were characterized by superposition of a Boltzmann curve and a Gaussian curve in order to obtain a model, which allowed us to make a more precise prediction of the fire spread probability from a burning car to nearby structures. The HRRs of burning cars were described by the sum of HRR from each compartment.     

Dynamic characteristics of thermostatic expansion valves

Analytical and experimental investigations of the factors which affect the dynamic flow response characteristics of thermostatic expansion valves have been made. From the basic equations, the flow responses of a valve can be described by transfer functions and the Bode diagram. A measuring device can be developed to obtain the frequency responses of the flow rate of a valve. The comparison between the experimental values obtained from the frequency response measurements and the calculated values obtained from the analysis showed good agreement.     

Kinetic analysis of ion pair extraction of an alkyl sulfate anion across a liquid/liquid interface by fluorescence microspectroscopy and microelectrochemistry of single microdroplets

Mass transfer of an alkyl sulfate anion with a (ferrocenylmethyl)trimethylammonium cation from water into single oil microdroplets was kinetically studied by microcapillary injection, fluorescence microspectroscopy, and microelectrochemistry. The partitioning ratio and the extraction rate significantly depended on the alkyl chain length of the alkyl sulfate anion. The extraction rate for the n-dodecyl sulfate or n-tridecyl sulfate ion was proportional to both the alkyl sulfate ion and ferrocene derivative concentrations while that for the n-undecyl sulfate ion was proportional to the anion concentration alone. The results are discussed in terms of transfer of the individual ions across the microdroplet/water interface and adsorption/ion pair formation of the alkyl sulfate ion at the microdroplet/water interface.     

Dynamic stochastic resonance-based improved logo extraction in discrete cosine transform domain

In this paper, a dynamic stochastic resonance (DSR) technique is used for blind watermark extraction in discrete cosine transform (DCT) domain. The watermark embedding has been done on mid-band DCT coefficients. DSR has been used to improve the robustness of the extraction algorithm by utilizing the degradation introduced during attacks. DSR is an iterative process that tunes the coefficients of the possibly attacked watermarked image so that the effect of noise is suppressed and hidden information is enhanced. Resilience of this technique has been tested in the presence of various attacks. An adaptive optimization procedure has been adopted for the selection of bistable parameters to achieve maximum correlation coefficient under minimum computational complexity. Using the proposed technique, robust extraction of watermark is obtained without trading-off with visual quality of the watermarked image. When compared with the plain DCT-based technique, DSR-based technique has been found to give remarkable performance.