Search Results (8)

Objective: This study assessed the utility of capillary blood cartridge-based analysis in evaluating neonatal jitteriness (NJ). Methods: In this retrospective study, we compared outcomes between neonates (37–41 weeks of gestation) diagnosed with neonatal jitteriness (NJ) within the first 72 h of life and a control group of healthy neonates (GA 37–41 weeks) with an uneventful perinatal course and no signs of jitteriness. Results: Each group included 101 neonates. Jittery neonates had a higher proportion of males (70.3% vs. 50.5%, p = 0.004), a lower mean gestational age (38.8 vs. 39.2 weeks, p = 0.002), and a higher rate of emergency cesarean deliveries (14.9% vs. 3.0%, p = 0.003). The logistic regression identified male sex (OR = 2.5, p = 0.007) and in utero selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) exposure (OR = 9.0, p = 0.005) as significant risk factors for NJ. The capillary blood parameters, except glucose levels, did not differ significantly between the neonates admitted to the NICU and those discharged. Hypoglycemic jittery neonates were 10 times more likely to require NICU admission compared to their non-hypoglycemic counterparts (OR = 10.9, 95% CI: 2–59.5, p = 0.006). Conclusions: Point-of-care glucose testing using a bedside glucometer may be sufficient for the evaluation of neonatal jitteriness, as capillary blood cartridge-based testing did not offer an additional diagnostic value. What is Known: NJ is often viewed as a self-resolving benign phenomenon; however, in certain cases, it can be an indicator of an underlying pathology. There is substantial evidence linking the maternal use of SSRIs or SNRIs during pregnancy with the occurrence of NJ in newborns as well as an association between hypoglycemia and NJ. What is New: This study is the first to evaluate the clinical utility of systematic capillary blood cartridge-based testing in jittery neonates using a relatively large cohort. Male neonates were disproportionately represented among cases of NJ. Healthy neonates with jitteriness had normal electrolytes, with hypoglycemia as the only concern. A glucometer test may suffice for evaluation, but those who are small for their gestational age or have initial hypoglycemia require a routine follow-up due to a higher risk of NICU admission. Full article

MuDR, the founder member of the Mutator superfamily and its MURA transcripts, has been identified as toxic sequences to Escherichia coli (E. coli), which heavily hindered the elucidation of the biochemical features of MURA transposase and confined the broader application of the Mutator system in other organisms. To harness less constrained systems as alternatives, we attempted to clone TED and Jittery, two recently isolated autonomous Mutator-like elements (MULEs) from maize, respectively. Their full-length transcripts and genomic copies are successfully cloned when the incubation time for bacteria to recover from heat shock is extended appropriately prior to plating. However, during their proliferation in E. coli, TED transformed plasmids are unstable, as evidenced by derivatives from which frameshift, deletion mutations, or IS transposon insertions are readily detected. Our results suggest that neither leaky expression of the transposase nor the presence of terminal inverse repeats (TIRs) are responsible for the cloning barriers, which were once ascribed to the presence of the Shine–Dalgarno-like sequence. Instead, the internal sequence of TED (from 1250 to 2845 bp), especially the exons in this region, was the most likely causer. The findings provide novel insights into the property and function of the Mutator superfamily and shed light on the dissection of toxic effects on cloning from MULEs. Full article

Caffeine consumption has been linked to poor sleep health in adolescents, but it is unknown whether poor sleep predicts caffeine consumption, and/or whether caffeine consumption predicts poor sleep, particularly when sleep is measured objectively. Data were collected from a micro-longitudinal sub-study of the age 15 wave of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (n = 589). Adolescents wore an actigraphy device and completed daily surveys for ~1 week. Daily surveys assessed subjective sleep quality and caffeinated beverage consumption (0 = no caffeine, 1 = any caffeine). Separate mixed models assessed whether actigraphy-measured sleep duration, timing, maintenance efficiency, and subjective quality predicted next-day caffeinated beverage consumption within and between adolescents. Variability (standard deviation) of sleep duration and timing, sleep regularity index, and social jetlag were tested as additional between-person predictors. Lagged models tested whether daily caffeinated beverage consumption predicted sleep that night (n = 458). Adolescents with more variable sleep duration and midpoint had higher average odds of consuming caffeinated beverages compared to others. After adolescents consumed ≥1 caffeinated beverage, they had later sleep onset that night and wake time the next morning than usual versus when they did not consume caffeine. Curbing caffeinated beverage consumption may aid in the maintenance of regular sleep schedules and advance sleep timing in adolescents. Full article

This article revisits the traditionally jittery Latvian–Russian relations during the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of securitization. Though the pandemic might have offered less space for confrontation and possible prospects for differentiation of (de)securitization vectors, the mutual securitization processes have continued in the vein of previous years. Furthermore, they have showed no signs of easing as not only have the traditional issues remained securitized but new thematic areas both related and unrelated to the pandemic have taken center stage. All in all, the pandemic has opened new avenues for securitization, though it had no fundamental impact on the established securitization trends. Full article

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become a very popular way of acquiring video within contexts such as remote data acquisition or surveillance. Unfortunately, their viewpoint is often unstable, which tends to impact the automatic processing of their video flux negatively. To counteract the effects of an inconsistent viewpoint, two video processing strategies are classically adopted, namely registration and stabilization, which tend to be affected by distinct issues, namely jitter and drifting. Following our prior work, we suggest that the motion estimators used in both situations can be modeled to take into account their inherent errors. By acknowledging that drifting and jittery errors are of a different nature, we propose a combination that is able to limit their influence and build a hybrid solution for jitter-free video registration. In this work, however, our modeling was restricted to 2D-rigid transforms, which are rather limited in the case of airborne videos. In the present paper, we extend and refine the theoretical ground of our previous work. This addition allows us to show how to practically adapt our previous work to perspective transforms, which our study shows to be much more accurate for this problem. A lightweight implementation enables us to automatically register stationary UAV videos in real time. Our evaluation includes traffic surveillance recordings of up to 2 h and shows the potential of the proposed approach when paired with background subtraction tasks. Full article

Cognitive and mood benefits of coffee are often attributed to caffeine. However, emerging evidence indicates behavioural effects of non-caffeine components within coffee, suggesting the potential for direct or synergistic effects of these compounds when consumed with caffeine in regular brewed coffee. The current randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind, counterbalanced-crossover study compared the effects of regular coffee, decaffeinated coffee, and placebo on measures of cognition and mood. Age and sex effects were explored by comparing responses of older (61–80 years, N = 30) and young (20–34 years, N = 29) males and females. Computerised measures of episodic memory, working memory, attention, and subjective state were completed at baseline and 30 min post-drink. Regular coffee produced the expected effects of decreased reaction time and increased alertness when compared to placebo. When compared to decaffeinated coffee, increased digit vigilance accuracy and decreased tiredness and headache ratings were observed. Decaffeinated coffee also increased alertness when compared to placebo. Higher jittery ratings following regular coffee in young females and older males represented the only interaction of sex and age with treatment. These findings suggest behavioural activity of coffee beyond its caffeine content, raising issues with the use of decaffeinated coffee as a placebo and highlighting the need for further research into its psychoactive effects. Full article

The effects of ionizing radiation on field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) have been investigated in depth during the last decades. The impact of these effects is typically evaluated on implementations which have a deterministic behavior. In this article, two well-known true-random number generators (TRNGs) based on sampling jittery signals have been exposed to a Co-60 radiation source as in the standard tests for space conditions. The effects of the accumulated dose on these TRNGs, an in particular, its repercussion over their randomness quality (e.g., entropy or linear complexity), have been evaluated by using two National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) statistical test suites. The obtained results clearly show how the degradation of the statistical properties of these TRNGs increases with the accumulated dose. It is also notable that the deterioration of the TRNG (non-deterministic component) appears before that the degradation of the deterministic elements in the FPGA, which compromises the integrated circuit lifetime. Full article

Sports and energy (S/E) drinks are commonly used by high school (HS) athletes, yet little is known about this population’s consumption patterns or the drinks’ side-effects. The objectives of this pilot study were to survey HS athletes about their use of S/E drinks and assess potential side-effects. One hundred American HS athletes (72 were female; 27 were male; one did not identify gender) were part of a cross-sectional internet-based survey. The mean age of the athletes was 16.0 ± 1.1 years. The athletes self-reported S/E consumption patterns, motivations for consumption, and drink side-effects. Nearly two-thirds (59.5%) of athletes surveyed were at least occasional users of sports drinks, and more than one-third (37.3%) were at least occasional users of energy drinks. Of the athletes who had ever drunk an S/E drink, 49.5% drank their first sport drink at ≤ 8 years and 41.3% consumed their first energy drink ≤ 11–12 years of age. The most common motivation for consumption of sports drinks was to rehydrate (84.1%) and of energy drinks was to gain energy (61.8%). Side effects of S/E drinks were frequently reported; 25.3% of energy drink users reporting being nervous/jittery after consumption. Thus HS athletes should be cautioned about consumption of S/E drinks until more is understood about their short- and long-term side-effects. Full article