Sleep in relation to age, sex, and chronotype in Japanese workers

The Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire and Life Habits Inventory were administered to 622 Japanese workers matched for sex and age. We investigated the distributions of the scores on the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire and sleep-wake habits by age and sex. Subjects were classified into five age groups and three chronotypes. The distributions and mean scores on the questionnaire advanced slightly toward the Morning type from the young to the aged group. The habitual bedtimes and waking times were significantly earlier in all the chronotypes from the young to the aged group, and the preferred bedtimes and waking times were also clearly earlier from the young to the aged group. The length of sleep was shorter for the Evening than the Morning types, especially in the group below 24 yr. The differences in habitual and preferred sleep length were greater than 1 hour for all age groups, especially the two groups under 34 yr. The number of awakenings during night sleep increased from the young to the aged group for all chronotypes. The older Evening type tended more toward frequent napping and longer naptime. The variabilities of bedtime and sleep length were larger for the young and Evening type than for the old group and Morning types. Further, the mood upon waking and satisfaction with sleep length were better in the aged Evening type than the young Morning type. The women under 44 yr. woke up earlier than the men of the same age, and the women of the 35-54 yr. groups had a shorter length of sleep than others. These may be related to childcare and housework. These results indicated that the phase of circadian rhythms had moved forward from the young to the aged group, and the individual's rhythm, of those that were aged Morning types, showed better agreement with sleep-wake rhythms than did others.     

NMDA receptors mediate peripheral chemoreceptor afferent input in the conscious rat

N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) glutamate receptors mediate critical components of cardiorespiratory control in anesthetized animals. The role of NMDA receptors in the ventilatory responses to peripheral and central chemoreceptor stimulation was investigated in conscious, freely behaving rats. Minute ventilation (VE) responses to 10% O2, 5% CO2, and increasing intravenous doses of sodium cyanide were measured in intact rats before and after intravenous administration of the NMDA receptor antagonist MK-801 (3 mg/kg). After MK-801, eupcapnic tidal volume (VT) decreased while frequency increased, resulting in a modest reduction in VE. Inspiratory time (TI) decreased, whereas expiratory time remained unchanged. The VE responses to hypercapnia were qualitatively similar in control and MK-801 conditions, with slight reductions in respiratory drive (VT/TI) after MK-801. In contrast, responses to hypoxia were markedly attenuated after MK-801 and were primarily due to reduced frequency changes, whereas VT was unaffected. Sodium cyanide doses associated with significant VE increases were 5 and 50 microg/kg before and after MK-801, respectively. Thus 1-log shift to the right of individual dose-response curves occurred with MK-801. Selective carotid body denervation reduced VE during hypoxia by 70%, and residual hypoxic ventilatory responses were abolished after MK-801. These findings suggest that, in conscious rats, carotid and other peripheral chemoreceptor-mediated hypoxic ventilatory responses are critically dependent on NMDA receptor activation and that NMDA receptor mechanisms are only modestly involved during hypercapnia.     

Design of an Ultra-Compact and Highly-Sensitive Temperature Sensor Using Photonic Crystal Based Single Micro-Ring Resonator and Cascaded Micro-Ring Resonator

Silicon - In the present report, a photonic crystal based micro-ring resonator (MRR) structure is proposed which is very compact in size and has very fast response and is employed for temperature...     

Heavy-fuel flame radiation in gas turbine combustors—exploratory results

With lower costs and greater availability, heavy fuel oil appears as an attractive alternative to the conventional gas oil used in industrial gas turbines. However, higher levels of radiation and smoke are expected, and this note reports on some preliminary tests made with a combustion chamber burning fuels of different carbon content, ranging from kerosine to a 25% blend of residual fuel oil in gas oil, at a chamber pressure of 10 atm^*. The combustion rig was equipped with a total-radiation pyrometer and black-body furnace capable of measurement at different axial stations along the spray-stabilized flame. The presence of the residual fuel oil in the gas oil was found to promote significant increases in the mean levels of radiation, emissivity and smoke density, with a modest increase in liner temperature.     

Quantification of the inherent uncertainty in the relaxation modulus and creep compliance of asphalt mixes

Advanced material characterization of asphalt concrete is essential for realistic and accurate performance prediction of flexible pavements. However, such characterization requires rigorous testing regimes that involve mechanical testing of a large number of laboratory samples at various conditions and set-ups. Advanced measurement instrumentation in addition to meticulous and accurate data analysis and analytical representation are also of high importance. Such steps as well as the heterogeneous nature of asphalt concrete (AC) constitute major factors of inherent variability. Thus, it is imperative to model and quantify the variability of the needed asphalt material’s properties, mainly the linear viscoelastic response functions such as: relaxation modulus, \(E(t)\), and creep compliance, \(D(t)\). The objective of this paper is to characterize the inherent uncertainty of both \(E(t)\) and \(D(t)\) over the time domain of their master curves. This is achieved through a probabilistic framework using Monte Carlo simulations and First Order approximations, utilizing \(E^{*}\) data for six AC mixes with at least eight replicates per mix. The study shows that the inherent variability, presented by the coefficient of variation (COV), in \(E(t)\) and \(D(t)\) is low at small reduced times, and increases with the increase in reduced time. At small reduced times, the COV in \(E(t)\) and \(D(t)\) are similar in magnitude; however, differences become significant at large reduced times. Additionally, the probability distributions and COVs of \(E(t)\) and \(D(t)\) are mix dependent. Finally, a case study is considered in which the inherent uncertainty in \(D(t)\) is forward propagated to assess the effect of variability on the predicted number of cycles to fatigue failure of an asphalt mix.     

PAK-104P, a pyridine analogue, reverses paclitaxel and doxorubicin resistance in cell lines and nude mice bearing xenografts that overexpress the multidrug resistance protein

For ethical decision-making near the end of life, autonomy is the moral North Star. At the same time, for some treatments, the burdens so clearly outweigh benefits that physicians may make a judgment not to offer the treatment. This is often clearer in surgery. A person with colon cancer and metastases may not insist on resection of the metastases. For some reason, some treatments have escaped these logical constraints. Attempted resuscitation of a dying patient is a good example. The circumstances in which a physician may make choices on behalf of a competent, terminally-ill patient without consent, and even without notification, are hotly debated, but data suggest that physicians do so frequently. Patients who lack capacity present even more difficult challenges. Advance directives, when available, can be extremely helpful, but even with them difficult problems can remain. If advance directives have not been established, family and close friends are an obvious source of guidance. Their legal role varies in different jurisdictions; in practice, they are crucial in bedside decision-making. Guardianship and alternatives to it remain a poor last resort. Euthanasia is a very difficult problem. We believe it is semantically misleading to lump under the term "passive euthanasia" those circumstances where potentially life-sustaining treatment is withheld or withdrawn. The tension between patient autonomy and medical common sense remains unresolved within the "futility" controversy. The authors believe it serves no purpose to discuss carefully with dying patients propositions that are nonsense. At the same time, physicians must not confuse decisions about quality of life with judgements about treatment effectiveness. We believe that what many, although not all, dying patients want are physicians with intelligent compassion who can take care of them through the dying process.     

About the relevance of roughness parameters used for characterizing worn femoral heads

This study aims to contribute to the definition of a methodology, which can help to select a relevant roughness parameter with a view to describing the topography of orthopaedic bearing surfaces. In this investigation, the surface topography of a retrieved titanium alloy (TA6V) femoral head was characterized using visual inspection, optical microscopy and three-dimensional contacting profilometry. A numerical analysis of roughness measurements was then undertaken to assess in a first step the values of different roughness parameters of interest found in papers dealing with the topography of orthopaedic bearing surfaces. In a second step, the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and the Computer-Based Bootstrap Method were combined to determine statistically, and without preconceived opinion, which of those parameters is the most relevant to describe the different investigated worn regions of the studied femoral head.     

Performance evaluation of an efficient reduced-complexity time synchronization approach for OFDM systems

This paper presents a performance analysis of a recently proposed preamble-based reduced-complexity (RC) two-stage synchronization technique. The preamble, composed of two identical subsequences, is first used to determine an uncertainty interval based on Cox and Schmidl algorithm. Then, a differential correlation-based metric is carried using a new sequence obtained by element wise multiplication of the preamble subsequence and a shifted version of it. This second step is performed to fine tune the coarse time estimate, by carrying the differential correlation-based metric over the uncertainty interval of limited width around the coarse estimate, thus leading to low computational load. In this paper, we first discuss some complexity issues of the RC approach compared to previously proposed algorithms. Then, we study the effect of the training sequence class and length choices on the synchronization performance in the case of multipath channels. The impact of the uncertainty interval width on the trade-off between performance and complexity is also studied. The two-stage approach was found to provide almost equal performance to those obtained by the most efficient differential correlation-based benchmarks. However, it has a very reduced computational load, equivalent to that of sliding correlation-based approaches.     

Cascaded waste‐heat recovery as a green technology for energy sustainability in power generation

In this work, the Cascaded waste‐heat recovery (WHR) is analyzed from the thermodynamic point of view. Typically, WHR is most effective with small gas turbines and old machines which have a relatively higher design mass flow per kW and higher exhaust temperatures than new designs. The working fluid used in the WHR technology is propane, which vaporizes and condenses at low temperatures. The temperature of the heat source, the outlet pressure of the two expanders, and the mass flow rate of the working fluid are assumed as working variables of the technology. The effect of these variables on the thermal efficiency and power output is evaluated. The obtained results are analyzed and discussed. The results of the calculation are also compared with similar published studies. The overall efficiency considering the gas turbine upstream ranges from about 35% up to 39%. The highest efficiency and power output of the WHR alone at 900 K heat source temperature, 800 kPa condenser pressure, and 100 kg/s mass‐flow rate are 30% and 18 MW, respectively, for two‐expander WHR, and 18% and 9 MW, respectively, for single expander WHR. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.