183 research outputs found
Effect of experimental modulation of mood on exertional dyspnoea in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
No full textBackground and Objective
Dyspnoea is a debilitating symptom in individuals with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and a range of other chronic cardiopulmonary diseases and is often associated with anxiety and depression. The present study examined the effect of visually-induced mood shifts on exertional dyspnoea in individuals with COPD.
Methods
Following familiarization, 20 participants with mild to severe COPD (age 57–79 years) attended three experimental sessions on separate days, performing two 5-min treadmill exercise tests separated by a 30-min interval on each day. During each exercise test, participants viewed either a positive, negative or neutral set of images sourced from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) and rated dyspnoea or leg fatigue (0–10). Heart rate (HR) and peripheral oxygen saturation (SpO2) were measured at 1-min intervals during each test. Mood valence ratings were obtained using Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) scale (1–9).
Results
Mood valence ratings were significantly higher when viewing positive (end-exercise mean ± SEM = 7.6 ± 0.3) compared to negative IAPS images (2.4 ± 0.3, p < 0.001). Dyspnoea intensity (mean ± SEM = 5.8 ± 0.4) and dyspnoea unpleasantness (5.6 ± 0.3) when viewing negative images were significantly higher compared to positive images (4.2 ± 0.4, p = 0.004 and 3.4 ± 0.5, p = 0.003). Eighty-five percent of participants (n = 17) met the minimal clinically important difference (MCID) criteria for both dyspnoea intensity and unpleasantness. HR, SpO2 and leg fatigue did not differ significantly between conditions.
Conclusion
These findings indicate that the negative affective state worsens dyspnoea in COPD, thereby suggesting strategies aimed at reducing the likelihood of negative mood or improving the mood may be effective in managing morbidity associated with dyspnoea in COPD.Full Tex
Rubble mound breakwaters for the new port of Ennore (India) - Evaluation of construction
No full textAt the east coast of India, 20 kilometres north of Chennai, a new satellite port has been designed and is currently under construction. The project is called the Ennore Coal Port Project. Complete design and supervision of the construction is carried out by HASKONING Consulting Engineers and Architects. The objective of this graduation project was to evaluate the construction processes of two major contracts of the port construction, viz. quarrying and transportation of rock and breakwater construction. Two rubble mound breakwaters were designed to withstand a wave height with a return period of hundred years with minimum damage. This resulted in a protection of a single layer Accropode blocks with a maxim weight of 15 tonnes at the deepest section of the northern breakwater. The southern breakwater is protected by natural rock with a maximum grading of 5-12 tonnes. The breakwaters are built by marine based methods (up to -4m Chart Datum) and by land based methods above this level. Rock for the breakwaters is quarried at Karikkal, a for this project developed quarry, situated 120 km west of Madras. The rock is sorted into various gradings and then loaded on especially for this purpose constructed skips. The skips are transported on trucks for the first 25 km to a transfer station. From there on the skips will be placed on trains, which transport the skips directly to a stockpile area at the port site. The empty skips are then transported back to Karikkal. A period of three and a half months of the graduation project was spent on the construction site in India. This period was mainly used to gather information to be worked out further in the Netherlands. Deviations in the construction process from earlier made assumptions were investigated. In the Netherlands an analyses of the effects of these deviations on the operational processes, time schedules and realised construction was done. The analyses shows that for the processes of quarrying and transportation of rock, as well as for the processes of breakwater construction, there are a number of deviations in the actual construction phase from earlier planned processes (such as: realignment of the north breakwater, use of equipment that is not the most suitable for the job and working without an approved work method statement). The main effect of the deviations are delays and difficulties during the production process itself (such as: necessity for resurveys and absence of a supervision tool). The deviations are further examined and some recommendations are given to the Client.Hydraulic EngineeringCivil Engineering and Geoscience
Analysis Tools for Large Connectomes
No full textNew reconstruction techniques are generating connectomes of unprecedented size. These must be analyzed to generate human comprehensible results. The analyses being used fall into three general categories. The first is interactive tools used during reconstruction, to help guide the effort, look for possible errors, identify potential cell classes, and answer other preliminary questions. The second type of analysis is support for formal documents such as papers and theses. Scientific norms here require that the data be archived and accessible, and the analysis reproducible. In contrast to some other “omic” fields such as genomics, where a few specific analyses dominate usage, connectomics is rapidly evolving and the analyses used are often specific to the connectome being analyzed. These analyses are typically performed in a variety of conventional programming language, such as Matlab, R, Python, or C++, and read the connectomic data either from a file or through database queries, neither of which are standardized. In the short term we see no alternative to the use of specific analyses, so the best that can be done is to publish the analysis code, and the interface by which it reads connectomic data. A similar situation exists for archiving connectome data. Each group independently makes their data available, but there is no standardized format and long-term accessibility is neither enforced nor funded. In the long term, as connectomics becomes more common, a natural evolution would be a central facility for storing and querying connectomic data, playing a role similar to the National Center for Biotechnology Information for genomes. The final form of analysis is the import of connectome data into downstream tools such as neural simulation or machine learning. In this process, there are two main problems that need to be addressed. First, the reconstructed circuits contain huge amounts of detail, which must be intelligently reduced to a form the downstream tools can use. Second, much of the data needed for these downstream operations must be obtained by other methods (such as genetic or optical) and must be merged with the extracted connectome
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