Non-enzymatic glycosylation of skin collagen in patients with type 1 (insulin-dependent) diabetes mellitus and limited joint mobility

Forearm skin biopsies were obtained from diabetic subjects with and without limited joint mobility, and from non-diabetic control subjects. Collagen purified from these samples was assayed for non-enzymatic glycosylation. The level in all diabetic patients was significantly greater than that in control subjects (p less than 0.001), but those diabetic patients with limited joint mobility had a level of collagen glycosylation similar to that in those with normal joints (15.3 +/- 1.3 and 16.5 +/- 1.3 nmol fructose/10 mg protein, respectively; mean +/- SEM). Glycosylation of collagen in the diabetic patients correlated with glycosylated haemoglobin measured at the time of skin biopsy (r = 0.60). These results do not support the hypothesis that non-enzymatic glycosylation of collagen, as reflected by the ketoamine link, plays an important role in the development of limited joint mobility in diabetes.

Population Mobility Dynamics Estimated from Mobile Telephony Data

In the last decade, mobile phones and mobile devices using mobile cellular telecommunication network connections have become ubiquitous. In several developed countries, the penetration of such devices has surpassed 100 percent. They facilitate communication and access to large quantities of data without the requirement of a fixed location or connection. Assuming mobile phones usually are in close proximity with the user, their cellular activities and locations are indicative of the user's activities and movements. As such, those cellular devices may be considered as a large scale distributed human activity sensing platform. This paper uses mobile operator telephony data to visualize the regional flows of people across the Republic of Ireland. In addition, the use of modified Markov chains for the ranking of significant regions of interest to mobile subscribers is investigated. Methodology is then presented which demonstrates how the ranking of significant regions of interest may be used to estimate national population, results of which are found to have strong correlation with census data.

The Social and Economic Mobility of Ethnic Minority Communities in Northern Ireland

This report provides evidence of the degree, nature and drivers of poverty across the different ethnic minority groups in Northern Ireland. The 2011 Census highlighted some very different outcomes for ethnic minority groups in Northern Ireland across various indicators related to poverty. Through focus groups and interviews with employees and employers, this study further reveals how far the labour market is segmented among different ethnic minority communities. It also reviews government legislation and strategies relevant to Northern Ireland and the impact of these on poverty among ethnic minority groups. The report: • highlights employees’ difficulties in accessing relevant employment; • investigates employers’ procedures for recruitment, staff retention and development; • outlines government initiatives and programmes to support employees; and • reviews the level of uptake and success of government support for ethnic minority groups seeking employment or setting up a business.

Exiles, Travellers, Vagabonds:Rethinking Mobility in Francophone Women's Writing

Edited Volume

Middleware mechanisms for agent mobility in wireless sensor and actuator networks

This paper describes middleware-level support for agent mobility, targeted at hierarchically structured wireless sensor and actuator network applications. Agent mobility enables a dynamic deployment and adaptation of the application on top of the wireless network at runtime, while allowing the middleware to optimize the placement of agents, e.g., to reduce wireless network traffic, transparently to the application programmer. The paper presents the design of the mechanisms and protocols employed to instantiate agents on nodes and to move agents between nodes. It also gives an evaluation of a middleware prototype running on Imote2 nodes that communicate over ZigBee. The results show that our implementation is reasonably efficient and fast enough to support the envisioned functionality on top of a commodity multi-hop wireless technology. Our work is to a large extent platform-neutral, thus it can inform the design of other systems that adopt a hierarchical structuring of mobile components. © 2012 ICST Institute for Computer Science, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.

Four-dimensional CT analysis of vocal cords mobility for highly focused single vocal cord irradiation

Background and Purpose: To quantify respiratory motion of the vocal cords during normal respiration using 4D-CT. The final goal is to develop a technique for single vocal cord irradiation (SVCI) in early glottic carcinoma. Sparing the non-involved cord and surrounding structures has the potential to preserve voice quality and allow re-irradiation of recurrent and second primary tumors. Material and methods: Four-dimensional CTs of 1 mm slice thickness from 10 early glottic carcinoma patients were acquired. The lateral dimensions of the air gap separating the vocal cords were measured anteriorly, at mid-level and posteriorly at each phase of the 4D-CTs. The corresponding anterior-posterior gaps were similarly measured. Cranio-caudal vocal cords movements during breathing were derived from the shifts of the arythenoids. Results: The population-averaged mean gap size ± the corresponding standard deviation due to breathing (SD_B) for the lateral gaps was 5.8 ± 0.7 mm anteriorly, 8.7 ± 0.9 mm at mid-level, and 11.0 ± 1.3 mm posteriorly. Anterior-posterior gap values were 21.7 ± 0.7 mm, while cranio-caudal shift SD_B was 0.8 mm. Conclusion: Vocal cords breathing motions were found to be small relative to their separation. Hence, breathing motion does not seem to be a limiting factor for SVCI. © 2008 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.