Illness and injury in family day care: a seasonal survey

Many mothers with children under age 6 are employed and it is not usually feasible for a parent to stay home with a child who is mildly ill. Such ill children likely remain in child day care programs. The extent to which this occurs and the management of these children in family day care was studied. Over the course of a year, 1 to 3 visits were made to 714 family day care homes in order to survey providers. With enrollments ranging between 0 and 18 children per day care home at the time of each visit, information on 3,630 "child enrollment days" was collected. The median age of children in care was 2 years. An average of 16% of all children were ill on any one day (with seasonal variation); 1% were injured. Of ill children, 82% attended day care that day, 49% had contacted a physician about that illness, and 28% were administered a medication at the day care setting. Twenty-one percent of children receiving medication in day care had no contact with a physician for that illness. These data show that mild childhood illnesses are routinely managed by child day care providers. Physicians who traditionally limit their illness-management education to parents need to recognize the health education and consultation needs of day care providers.     

Style-Controllable Speech-Driven Gesture Synthesis Using Normalising Flows

Automatic synthesis of realistic gestures promises to transform the fields of animation, avatars and communicative agents. In off-line applications, novel tools can alter the role of an animator to that of a director, who provides only high-level input for the desired animation; a learned network then translates these instructions into an appropriate sequence of body poses. In interactive scenarios, systems for generating natural animations on the fly are key to achieving believable and relatable characters. In this paper we address some of the core issues towards these ends. By adapting a deep learning-based motion synthesis method called MoGlow, we propose a new generative model for generating state-of-the-art realistic speech-driven gesticulation. Owing to the probabilistic nature of the approach, our model can produce a battery of different, yet plausible, gestures given the same input speech signal. Just like humans, this gives a rich natural variation of motion. We additionally demonstrate the ability to exert directorial control over the output style, such as gesture level, speed, symmetry and spacial extent. Such control can be leveraged to convey a desired character personality or mood. We achieve all this without any manual annotation of the data. User studies evaluating upper-body gesticulation confirm that the generated motions are natural and well match the input speech. Our method scores above all prior systems and baselines on these measures, and comes close to the ratings of the original recorded motions. We furthermore find that we can accurately control gesticulation styles without unnecessarily compromising perceived naturalness. Finally, we also demonstrate an application of the same method to full-body gesticulation, including the synthesis of stepping motion and stance.     

eDNA Inactivation and Biofilm Inhibition by the PolymericBiocide Polyhexamethylene Guanidine Hydrochloride (PHMG-Cl)

The choice of effective biocides used for routine hospital practice should consider the role of disinfectants in the maintenance and development of local resistome and how they might affect antibiotic resistance gene transfer within the hospital microbial population. Currently, there is little understanding of how different biocides contribute to eDNA release that may contribute to gene transfer and subsequent environmental retention. Here, we investigated how different biocides affect the release of eDNA from mature biofilms of two opportunistic model strains Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 27853 (PA) and Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923 (SA) and contribute to the hospital resistome in the form of surface and water contaminants and dust particles. The effect of four groups of biocides, alcohols, hydrogen peroxide, quaternary ammonium compounds, and the polymeric biocide polyhexamethylene guanidine hydrochloride (PHMG-Cl), was evaluated using PA and SA biofilms. Most biocides, except for PHMG-Cl and 70% ethanol, caused substantial eDNA release, and PHMG-Cl was found to block biofilm development when used at concentrations of 0.5% and 0.1%. This might be associated with the formation of DNA–PHMG-Cl complexes as PHMG-Cl is predicted to bind to AT base pairs by molecular docking assays. PHMG-Cl was found to bind high-molecular DNA and plasmid DNA and continued to inactivate DNA on surfaces even after 4 weeks. PHMG-Cl also effectively inactivated biofilm-associated antibiotic resistance gene eDNA released by a pan-drug-resistant Klebsiella strain, which demonstrates the potential of a polymeric biocide as a new surface-active agent to combat the spread of antibiotic resistance in hospital settings.     

The effects of surface oxidation on luminescence of nano diamonds

In this work we quantify and characterise the effects of air-oxidation on nitrogen-vacancy defect luminescence in both high-temperature-high-pressure and detonation synthesized nanodiamonds using Raman and luminescence spectroscopies. We find that oxidation treatments result in an increased nitrogen-vacancy centre excited state lifetime from 13 ns to 25 ns and in 5-nm diamonds the intensity of this luminescence increases by at least 5-fold. At the same time, in 5-nm diamonds, short lived surface-defect related luminescence is reduced by 10-fold. Furthermore we find that air oxidation reduces the sp² and disordered carbon fraction of nanodiamonds by up to 5-fold in 5-nm nanodiamonds. Based on these results, the authors suggest that the disordered-carbon and graphite shell of 5-nm nanodiamonds quenches nitrogen-vacancy luminescence, and that this quenching can be partially reduced by surface oxidation. These findings provide useful insights into the role of the graphite and disordered carbon shell in quenching luminescence, and have implications for the applicability of 5-nm nanodiamonds to bio- and quantum physics applications.     

Computational model of three-dimensional cardiac electromechanics

We coupled a continuum model of impulse propagation with a three-dimensional model of regional ventricular mechanics. Equations for action potential propagation, myofilament activation and active contraction were solved in an anatomically detailed finite element model of canine left and right ventricular geometry, muscle fiber architecture and Purkinje fiber network anatomy. Finite element equations for time-dependent excitation and recovery variables were assembled using a collocation method and solved using adaptive Runge-Kutta integration. Resting tissue mechanics were modeled as nonlinear, orthotropic and hyperelastic. A Windkessel model for arterial impedance was coupled to ventricular pressure and volume to compute hemodynamic boundary conditions during ejection. Ventricular volume constraints were imposed during the isovolumic phases. This model showed good agreement in the time course of regional systolic strains with experimental measurements during normal sinus rhythm and demonstrates the importance of the Purkinje fiber system in determining the mechanical activation sequence.     

BaMg1/3Nb2/3O3–Mg4Nb2O9 composite microwave ceramics with high Q-factor and low sintering temperature

Revised thermodynamic equilibrium in the BaO–MgO–Nb₂O₅ pseudo-ternary system has lead to development of a novel composite dielectric material with dielectric constant, ?′ = 25.5, efficacy factor, Q × f = 160 THz, and temperature coefficient of the resonant frequency, τ_f = +0.5 ppm/K. The material shows one of the highest Q-factors among the Ta-free microwave dielectric resonators. It also does not contain volatile Zn and Co elements. Other important property of the title compound is low sintering temperature of 1320 °C which significantly reduces the processing cost.     

Nitrogen activation for plasma chemical synthesis of thin Si3N4 films

In this paper we summarize a study of the reactions of plasma-activated nitrogen with silane and NO admixture during the plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) of Si₃N₄ films outside the plasma region. The dominant role of nitrogen atoms, mainly in the ground (⁴S) state, was demonstrated experimentally. Probable chemical processes in the PECVD zone are discussed.