Nocturnal blood pressure elevation in patients with type 1 diabetes receiving intensive insulin therapy compared with that in patients receiving conventional insulin therapy

Studies have shown that type 1 diabetic patients may suffer from nocturnal elevation in blood pressure and that this elevation may be related to hyperinsulinemia. In this study we tested the hypothesis that tight type 1 diabetes control, which is usually accompanied by hyperinsulinemia and subclinical nocturnal hypoglycemia, may result in a higher rise in nocturnal blood pressure compared with conventional type 1 diabetes control. Eighteen patients treated with intensive insulin therapy (multiple daily injections; IIT) were compared with 18 patients treated with conventional insulin regimens (twice daily injections of regular and intermediate acting insulin; CIT). Both groups were matched for age, sex, duration of diabetes, body weight, body mass index, baseline daytime blood pressure, and microalbuminuria levels. Hemoglobin A1c was lower in the IIT group compared with that in the CIT group (8.1 +/- 1.2% vs. 11.0 +/- 3.2%; P < 0.01). The amount of insulin/body weight (units per kg) was higher in the IIT group than that in the CIT group (1.0 +/- 0.2 vs. 0.7 +/- 0.2 U/kg; P < 0.05). In all patients, a 24-h ambulatory blood pressure was recorded. The nocturnal diastolic blood pressure was higher in the IIT group (66 +/- 9 mm Hg) than in the CIT group (55 +/- 4 mm Hg; P < 0.01). The nocturnal decline in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure was lower in the IIT group (7 +/- 5 and 6 +/- 4 mm Hg, respectively) compared with that in the CIT group (13 +/- 6 and 16 +/- 6 mm Hg, respectively; P < 0.01). The nocturnal heart rate was higher in IIT group than in the CIT group (81 +/- 12 vs. 67 +/- 9/min; P < 0.05). These findings show that the intensive insulin therapy regimen may have a more deleterious effect than the conventional insulin therapy regimen on the nocturnal blood pressure of patients with type 1 diabetes.     

Determination of the just noticeable difference (JND) in trunk posture perception

The purpose of this study was to assess the ability of subjects to detect a visual difference between trunk postures. Three groups of participants, ranging from novices to experts, were required to make perceptual discriminations between two trunk postures from a series of image pairs on a computer screen. Images were presented for flexion and lateral bending motions from three different reference postures in both ascending and descending directions. Overall, direction played the largest role, interacting with all other variables. Subjects were most sensitive to changes in the ascending direction, where differences were detected at an average of 2°. In the descending direction, subjects detected differences at an average of 7° between postures. These data have implications for the usability and design of posture matching-based biomechanical software interfaces and the accuracy of peak and cumulative load estimates from models that utilize such interfaces to acquire segment posture inputs.     

ANFIS modeling of CO2 separation from natural gas using hollow fiber polymeric membrane

The present study is proposed to develop the Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System optimized by genetic algorithm to estimate CO₂ value in permeate stream using a hollow fiber polymeric membrane for separation of binary gas containing CO₂ and CH₄ in natural gas. To that end, a number of 65 samples was gathered from the literature. Results indicated that the proposed ANFIS model has great potential with high correlation (R² = 0.9993) and less error (RMSE = 0.0064) for estimation of aforementioned parameter.     

Sub-sample displacement estimation from digitized ultrasound RF signals using multi-dimensional polynomial fitting of the cross-correlation function

A widely used time-domain technique for motion or delay estimation between digitized ultrasound RF signals involves the maximization of a discrete pattern-matching function, usually the cross-correlation. To achieve sub-sample accuracy, the discrete pattern-matching function is interpolated using the values at the discrete maximizer and adjacent samples. In prior work, only 1-D fit, applied separately along the axial, lateral, and elevational axes, has been used to estimate the sub-sample motion in 1-D, 2-D, and 3-D. In this paper, we explore the use of 2-D and 3-D polynomial fitting for this purpose. We quantify the estimation error in noise-free simulations using Field II and experiments with a commercial ultrasound machine. In simulated 2-D translational motions, function fitting with quartic spline polynomials leads to maximum bias of 0.2% of the sample spacing in the axial direction and 0.4% of the sample spacing in the lateral direction, corresponding to 38 nm and 1.31 μm, respectively. The maximum standard deviations were approximately 1% of the sample spacing in both the axial and the lateral directions, corresponding to 193 nm axially and 4.43 μm laterally. In simulated 1% axial strain, the same function fitting leads to mean absolute displacement estimation errors of 255 nm in the axial direction and 4.77 μm in the lateral direction. In experiments with a linear array transducer, 2-D quartic spline fitting leads to maximum bias of 458 nm and 6.27 μm in the axial and the lateral directions, respectively. These results are more than one order of magnitude smaller than those obtained with separate 1-D fit when applied to the same data set. Simulations and experiments in 3-D yield similar results when comparing 3-D polynomial fitting with 1-D fitting along the axial, lateral, and elevational directions.     

SVD-based digital image watermarking using complex wavelet transform

A new robust method of non-blind image watermarking is proposed in this paper. The suggested method is performed by modification on singular value decomposition (SVD) of images in Complex Wavelet Transform (CWT) domain while CWT provides higher capacity than the real wavelet domain. Modification of the appropriate sub-bands leads to a watermarking scheme which favourably preserves the quality. The additional advantage of the proposed technique is its robustness against the most of common attacks. Analysis and experimental results show much improved performance of the proposed method in comparison with the pure SVD-based as well as hybrid methods (e.g. DWT-SVD as the recent best SVD-based scheme).     

Experimental Study of Phased Array Beam Steering Characteristics

The influence of several geometric parameters of linear phased arrays was studied. A systematic approach using an automated testing assembly was used to assess the steering performance of the array in a solid medium. In addition to calibrating the transducer with respect to its steering accuracy, this arrangement provided a detailed study of the effects of steering angle, number of elements, inter-element spacing and array aperture on the beam directivity. The experimental results show good agreement quantitatively with the predicted steering characteristics.     

The Metabolic Efficacy of a Cannabidiolic Acid (CBDA) Derivative in Treating Diet- and Genetic-Induced Obesity

Obesity is a global medical problem; its common form is known as diet-induced obesity (DIO); however, there are several rare genetic disorders, such as Prader–Willi syndrome (PWS), that are also associated with obesity (genetic-induced obesity, GIO). The currently available therapeutics for treating DIO and GIO are very limited, and they result in only a partial improvement. Cannabidiolic acid (CBDA), a constituent of Cannabis sativa, gradually decarboxylates to cannabidiol (CBD). Whereas the anti-obesity properties of CBD have been reasonably identified, our knowledge of the pharmacology of CBDA is more limited due to its instability. To stabilize CBDA, a new derivative, CBDA-O-methyl ester (HU-580, EPM301), was synthesized. The therapeutic potential of EPM301 in appetite reduction, weight loss, and metabolic improvements in DIO and GIO was tested in vivo. EPM301 (40 mg/kg/d, i.p.) successfully resulted in weight loss, increased ambulation, as well as improved glycemic and lipid profiles in DIO mice. Additionally, EPM301 ameliorated DIO-induced hepatic dysfunction and steatosis. Importantly, EPM301 (20 and 40 mg/kg/d, i.p.) effectively reduced body weight and hyperphagia in a high-fat diet-fed Magel2^null mouse model for PWS. In addition, when given to standard-diet-fed Magel2^null mice as a preventive treatment, EPM301 completely inhibited weight gain and adiposity. Lastly, EPM301 increased the oxidation of different nutrients in each strain. All together, EPM301 ameliorated obesity and its metabolic abnormalities in both DIO and GIO. These results support the idea to further promote this synthetic CBDA derivative toward clinical evaluation in humans.     

A Novel Actuator Fault-tolerant Control Strategy of DFIG-based Wind Turbines Using Takagi-Sugeno Multiple Models

International Journal of Control, Automation and Systems - In this paper, a new combined fuzzy observer-based fault-tolerant tracking control scheme is proposed for a doubly fed induction generator...