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Peer reviewed: True, INTRODUCTION: In the past 5 years, there have been several advances in the management of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We aim for a new guideline to update the most recent guideline published in 2019. We present the prospective operating procedure and technical summary protocol in the manuscript. METHODS: 'Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation' (GRADE) will be followed in the development of the guideline, approach as laid out in the GRADE handbook, supported by the WHO. The guideline development group is formed by a variety of disciplines, across both primary and secondary care that took part in an online Delphi process and split into key areas. A final consensus list of thematic questions within a 'patient, intervention, comparison, outcome' format has been produced and agreed in the final phase of the Delphi process.There will be a detailed technical evidence review with source data including systematic reviews appraised with AMSATAR 2 tool (Assessment of multiple systematic reviews), randomised controlled trial data that will be judged for risk of bias with the Cochrane tool and observational studies for safety concerns assessed through the Robins-I tool. Based on the available evidence, some of the recommendations will be based on GRADE while others will be best practice statements.A full Delphi process will be used to make recommendations using online response systems.This set of procedures has been approved by the Clinical Services and Standards Committee, the British Society of Gastroenterology executive board and aligned with IBD UK standards.

Background Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is associated with many diseases, but evidence indicating that OSA is a risk factor for dyslipidemia is lacking. Aim This cross-sectional study investigated the prevalence of lipid abnormalities in patients with OSA and its association with OSA severity. Material and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 102 patients with suspected OSA underwent standard polysomnography. All patients with an apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) of ≥5 with symptoms were diagnosed as having OSA. A fasting blood sample was collected from all patients. Blood levels of triglycerides (TGs), total cholesterol (TC), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL), and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL) were measured. The relationship between the AHI and lipid profiles was analyzed, and linear regression analysis was performed to evaluate the effect of dyslipidemia on OSA. Results: The patients with OSA had a significantly higher TG level and a significantly lower HDL level than did those without OSA. The lipid abnormalities increased with OSA severity. The mean serum TG level was higher in the severe OSA group (175±46.5 vs. 153±42.45, mg/dl P = 0.048), and the mean serum HDL level was lower in the severe OSA group (38.43 ± 5.19 vs. 45.73 ± 4.98, mg/dl P = 0.004). Serum TG, cholesterol, and LDL levels were correlated with a BMI of 30 in the OSA group. Linear regression analysis indicated that only age (β = 0.301, P = 0.000), BMI (β = 0.455, P = 0.000), serum HDL level (β = -0.297, P = 0.012), and serum LDL level (β = 0.429, P = 0.001) were the independent predictors of OSA. Conclusion: OSA and obesity are potential risk factors for dyslipidemia. The diagnosis of hyperlipidemia was linked to OSA, and the association was more significant with OSA severity. Hyperlipidemia was well recognized in patients with OSA. LDL and HDL are the independent predictors of OSA.

Environments explained 49.4%, G×E interaction 28.1%, and genotypes only 5.6% of the total sum of squares due to treatments for the first year of studied period 2018-2019 and 2019-2020. More than 95% of variations had been accounted for by the first seven interaction principal components. Superiority indexes had identified WH1239, DBW187, HD3249 genotypes as per the BLUE estimates. Same genotypes were highlighted by superiority and other measures based on BLUP of genotypes. Adaptability measures as per BLUEs expressed deviation from other measures and maintained the right angle with MASV1 and stability measures in Biplot analysis. Superiority indexes were clustered in the same quadrant. Similar clustering patterns had been displayed by measures based on BLUPs. Wheat genotypes HD3249, K1006 selected by superiority indexes and adaptability measures for the second year. Biplot analysis utilized 80% variability accounted by two PCs. Adaptability measures were placed in a different quadrant. However, measures maintained nearly the right angle with other stability measures with exception of superiority indexes. A similar pattern of clustering had been observed for adaptability as well as superiority indexes as per BLUP of genotypes. Key words: AMMI model, MASV, WAASB, SI, SSI, Biplot analysis.

Background/Aims: The coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted the training of medical trainees internationally. The aim of this study was to assess the global impact of COVID-19 on endoscopy training from the perspective of endoscopy trainers and to identify strategies implemented to mitigate the impact on trainee education.Methods: Teaching faculty of gastroenterology (GI) training programs globally were invited to complete a 36-question web-based survey to report the characteristics of their training programs and the impact of COVID-19 on various aspects of endoscopy training, including what factors decisions were based on.Results: The survey response rate was 52.6% (305 out of 580 individuals); 92.8% reported a negative impact on endoscopy training, with suspension of elective procedures (77.1%) being the most detrimental factor. Geographic variations were noted, with European programs reporting the lowest percentage of trainee participation in procedures. A higher proportion of trainees in the Americas were allowed to continue performing procedures, and trainers from the Americas reported receiving the greatest support for endoscopy teaching.Conclusions: This study demonstrated that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant negative impact on GI endoscopy training internationally, as reported by endoscopy trainers. Focus-optimizing endoscopy training and assessment of competencies are necessary to ensure adequate endoscopy training.

Tobacco use is widely prevalent since so many years worldwide. Tobaccos negative effects are well-known, and there is strong evidence that its constituents are responsible for cancer, oral problems, other health hazards and even deaths. Also, tobacco users with COVID-19 have higher risk of severity.Therefore, Cessation is necessary to lower this risk from coronavirus, and other illnesses.Consumers are looking for alternative methods to quit tobacco use. Numerous pharmacologicaland non-pharmacological strategies havebeen tried for tobacco cessation.Although pharmacological approaches have been reported more effective but non pharmacological approaches are also gaining importance and popularity.This review article is primarily focused on non-pharmacological approaches for Tobacco Cessation. &nbsp

Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body diseases are the most common causes of neurodegeneration and dementia. Amyloid-beta (Aβ) and alpha-synuclein (αSyn) are two key proteins involved in the pathogenesis of these neurodegenerative diseases. Immunotherapy aims to reduce the harmful effects of protein accumulation by neutralising toxic species and facilitating their removal. The results of the first immunisation trial against Aβ led to a small percentage of meningoencephalitis cases which revolutionised vaccine design, causing a shift in the field of immunotherapy from active to passive immunisation. While the vast majority of immunotherapies have been developed for Aβ and tested in Alzheimer’s disease, the field has progressed to targeting other proteins including αSyn. Despite showing some remarkable results in animal models, immunotherapies have largely failed final stages of clinical trials to date, with the exception of Aducanumab recently licenced in the US by the FDA. Neuropathological findings translate quite effectively from animal models to human trials, however, cognitive and functional outcome measures do not. The apparent lack of translation of experimental studies to clinical trials suggests that we are not obtaining a full representation of the effects of immunotherapies from animal studies. Here we provide a background understanding to the key concepts and challenges involved in therapeutic design. This review further provides a comprehensive comparison between experimental and clinical studies in Aβ and αSyn immunotherapy and aims to determine the possible reasons for the disconnection in their outcomes.

AMMI analysis for feed barley genotypes evaluated North Wes tern Plains Zone of India had expressed highly significanteffects of environments (E), GxE interaction and genotypes (G). Interaction effects GxE accounted for 23.4 and 26.9%,while environment explained up to tune of 63.4 and 61.4%; during cropping seasons of 2018-19 and 2019-20, respectively.ASTAB measure achieved the desirable lower values for PL906, DWRB137, UPB1080. Composite measure MASV1found PL906, DWRB137, RD2552, and as per MASV ranks desired PL906, DWRB137, and UPB1080 genotypeswould be of choice for these locations of the zone. Superiority index while weighting 0.65 and 0.35 for average yield& s tability found KB1707, PL906, RD2994 as of s table performance with high yield. Biplot graphical analysis as per73.7% of variation of the measures exhibited MASV1 clubbed with ASTAB, EV, SIPC, Za, W3, WAASB and MASVmeasures. For the second-year lower value of WAASB measure had observed for KB1707, RD2994. Barley genotypesDWRB137, PL906 were selected as per values of ASTAB measure. MASV1 selected PL906, DWRB137 while PL906,DWRB137 identified by MASV as genotypes of choice. Superiority index pointed towards PL906, DWRB137 feed barleygenotypes. About 64.3% of variation among the measures under biplot analysis seen AMMI based IPCA1, Za, W1, W2,W3, ASTAB, WAASB measures grouped in quadrant. Simultaneous utilization of AMMI and BLUP of genotypes wouldbe more appropriate to recommend high-yielding s table genotypes.

Objective: Thiopurines are widely used as maintenance therapy in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) but the evidence base for their use is sparse and their role increasingly questioned. Using the largest series reported to date, we assessed the long-term effectiveness of thiopurines in ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD), including their impact on need for surgery. Design: Outcomes were assessed in 11 928 patients (4968 UC, 6960 CD) in the UK IBD BioResource initiated on thiopurine monotherapy with the intention of maintaining medically induced remission. Effectiveness was assessed retrospectively using patient-level data and a definition that required avoidance of escalation to biological therapy or surgery while on thiopurines. Analyses included overall effectiveness, time-to-event analysis for treatment escalation and comparison of surgery rates in patients tolerant or intolerant of thiopurines. Results: Using 68 132 patient-years of exposure, thiopurine monotherapy appeared effective for the duration of treatment in 2617/4968 (52.7%) patients with UC compared with 2378/6960 (34.2%) patients with CD (p

BackgroundThere is a need for reliable and robust Parkinson's disease biomarkers that reflect severity and are sensitive to disease modifying investigational therapeutics.ObjectiveTo demonstrate the utility of EEG as a reliable, quantitative biomarker with potential as a pharmacodynamic endpoint for use in clinical assessments of neuroprotective therapeutics for Parkison's disease.MethodsA multi modal study was performed including aquisition of resting state EEG data and dopamine transporter PET imaging from Parkinson's disease patients off medication and compared against age-matched controls.ResultsQualitative and test/retest analysis of the EEG data demonstrated the reliability of the methods. Source localization using low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography identified significant differences in Parkinson's patients versus control subjects in the anterior cingulate and temporal lobe, areas with established association to Parkinson's disease pathology. Changes in cortico-cortical and cortico-thalamic coupling were observed as excessive EEG beta coherence in Parkinson's disease patients, and correlated with UPDRS scores and dopamine transporter activity, supporting the potential for cortical EEG coherence to serve as a reliable measure of disease severity. Using machine learning approaches, an EEG discriminant function analysis classifier was identified that parallels the loss of dopamine synapses as measured by dopamine transporter PET.ConclusionOur results support the utility of EEG in characterizing alterations in neurophysiological oscillatory activity associated with Parkinson's disease and highlight potential as a reliable method for monitoring disease progression and as a pharmacodynamic endpoint for Parkinson's disease modification therapy.

A field experiment was conducted at Agriculture Instructional cum Research Farm, IGKV Raipur during kharif and Rabi seasons three consecutive years of 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18 to study the effect of nutrient management practices on productivity of rice and soil chemical properties under system of rice intensification in rice-rice cropping system. The experiment was laid out in randomized block design with four replications. The treatments were- T1-100%RFD + 10t FYM/ha, T2-100%RFD + 5t FYM/ha +Green Manuring +Microbes, T3 -75%RFD+ Treatment with neem product + 10t FYM/ha, T4 -75%RFD + Treatment with neem product + 5t FYM/ha+ Green Manuring + Microbes T5 -STBR + 10t FYM/ha, T6 -STBR + 5t FYM/ha + Green Manuring + Microbes, T7 -100% RFD, T8 -100% Organic (N equivalent), T9- control and T10- Normal transplanting with RFD. Results indicated that application of fertilizers based on STBR along with 5tFYM+5t Green manure+Microbes produced the maximum grain yield of rice, which was however at par with application of fertilizers based on STBR along with 10 t FYM/ha. STBR based fertilizer application recorded 8.62-10.20% and 8.64-11.29% higher grain yield during Kharif and rabi season, respectively, compared to application of recommended fertilizer dose. Application of fertilizers based on STBR along with 5tFYM+5t Green manure+ Microbes (PSB and Azospirillum) registered 50.58 and 50.55% % increase in grain yield compared to application of nutrients through organic sources only during Kharif and rabi season, respectively. There was no significant difference in soil pH due to different nutrient management during all the three years of study. Moreover, after three seasons of experimentation soil has increased carbon, available nitrogen, and available phosphorus but available potassium decreased slightly. The raise in soil organic carbon content, available nitrogen, and available phosphorus were to the tune of 0.10 to 0.12%, 35.1 to 58.9 kg/ha and 5.82 to 6.90 kg/ha, respectively whereas decrease in soil available potassium was to the tune of 24.3 to 38.5 kg/ha.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Neuroinflammation has been implicated in the pathophysiology of Parkinson's disease (PD), which might be influenced by successful neuroprotective drugs. The uptake of [11C](R)‐PK11195 (PK) is often considered to be a proxy for neuroinflammation, and can be quantified using the Logan graphical method with an image‐derived blood input function, or the Logan reference tissue model using automated reference region extraction. The purposes of this study were (1) to assess whether these noninvasive image analysis methods can discriminate between patients with PD and healthy volunteers (HVs), and (2) to establish the effect size that would be required to distinguish true drug‐induced changes from system variance in longitudinal trials. METHODS The sample consisted of 20 participants with PD and 19 HVs. Two independent teams analyzed the data to compare the volume of distribution calculated using image‐derived input functions (IDIFs), and binding potentials calculated using the Logan reference region model. RESULTS With all methods, the higher signal‐to‐background in patients resulted in lower variability and better repeatability than in controls. We were able to use noninvasive techniques showing significantly increased uptake of PK in multiple brain regions of participants with PD compared to HVs. CONCLUSION Although not necessarily reflecting absolute values, these noninvasive image analysis methods can discriminate between PD patients and HVs. We see a difference of 24% in the substantia nigra between PD and HV with a repeatability coefficient of 13%, showing that it will be possible to estimate responses in longitudinal, within subject trials of novel neuroprotective drugs.

BACKGROUND:In Alzheimer's disease, there are striking changes in CSF composition that relate to altered choroid plexus (CP) function. Studying CP tissue gene expression at the blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier could provide further insight into the epithelial and stromal responses to neurodegenerative disease states. METHODS:Transcriptome-wide Affymetrix microarrays were used to determine disease-related changes in gene expression in human CP. RNA from post-mortem samples of the entire lateral ventricular choroid plexus was extracted from 6 healthy controls (Ctrl), 7 patients with advanced (Braak and Braak stage III-VI) Alzheimer's disease (AD), 4 with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and 3 with Huntington's disease (HuD). Statistics and agglomerative clustering were accomplished with MathWorks, MatLab; and gene set annotations by comparing input sets to GeneGo ( http://www.genego.com ) and Ingenuity ( http://www.ingenuity.com ) pathway sets. Bonferroni-corrected hypergeometric p-values of

In present days market environment, supply chains has to be competitive enough to handle pressures like varying customer's expectations, low cost high quality products to be delivered at the minimum time and the most important is throat cutting competition at world wide scale. Recently, supply chain competitiveness has been, therefore, accepted as one of the most important philosophies in the supply chain literature. Various researchers and practitioners have tried to identify and implement enablers in supply chains which can bring competitiveness in the supply chains i.e. supply chain competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to suggest select enablers for supply chain competitiveness in the Indian manufacturing sector using an integrated approach of literature review and exploratory interviews with eminent professionals from the supply chain area in various industries, academia and research. The aim of the paper is to highlight the important enablers in the area of supply chain competitiveness and to suggest recommendations to the industry and managers of manufacturing supply chains with a view to encourage more efforts in this wider domain area.

In this era of competitiveness, there is a growing need for supply chains also to become competitive enough to handle pressures like varying customer's expectations, low cost high quality products to be delivered at the minimum time and the most important is throat cutting competition at world wide scale. In the recent years, supply chain competitiveness has been, therefore, accepted as one of the most important philosophies in the supply chain literature and researchers have tried to identify variables of supply chain competitiveness. This paper highlights some of the concepts of supply chain competitiveness and tries to identify select variables on the basis of literature review. Further, the paper tries to highlight the importance of the identified variables in the achievement of supply chain competitiveness. The aim is to explore the the concept and to motivate researchers to further investigate the enexplored areas of this important subject domain.

In this era of competitiveness, there is a growing need for supply chains also to become competitive enough to handle pressures like varying customer's expecations, low cost high quality products to be delivered at the minimum time and the most important is throat cutting competition at world wide scale. In the recent years, supply chain competitiveness has been, therefore, accepted as one of the most important philosophies in the supply chain literature. Various researchers and practitioners have tried to identify and implement strategies in supply chains which can bring competitiveness in the supply chains i.e. supply chain competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to suggest select strategies for supply chain competitiveness in the Indian manufacturing sector using an integrated approach of literature review and exploratory interviews with eminent professionals from the supply chain area in various industries, academia and research. The aim of the paper is to highlight the important area of competitiveness in the supply chain and to suggest recommendations to the industry and managers of manufacturing sector.

Erythropoietin (Epo) is used for managing anemia in cancer patients. However, recent studies have raised concerns for this practice. We investigated the expression and function of Epo and the erythropoietin receptor (EpoR) in tumor biopsies and cell lines from human head and neck cancer. Epo responsiveness of the cell lines was assessed by Epoetin-alpha-induced tyrosine phosphorylation of the Janus kinase 2 (JAK2) protein kinase. Transmigration assays across Matrigel-coated filters were used to examine the effects of Epoetin-alpha on cell invasiveness. In 32 biopsies, we observed a significant association between disease progression and expression of Epo and its receptor, EpoR. Expression was highest in malignant cells, particularly within hypoxic and infiltrating tumor regions. Although both Epo and EpoR were expressed in human head and neck carcinoma cell lines, only EpoR was upregulated by hypoxia. Epoetin-alpha treatment induced prominent JAK2 phosphorylation and enhanced cell invasion. Inhibition of JAK2 phosphorylation reduced both basal and Epo-induced invasiveness. Our findings support a role for autocrine or paracrine Epo signaling in the malignant progression and local invasiveness of head and neck cancer. This mechanism may also be activated by recombinant Epo therapy and could potentially produce detrimental effects in rhEpo-treated cancer patients.

Register allocation, in high-level synthesis and ASIP design, is the process of determining the number of registers to include in the resulting circuit or processor. The goal is to allocate the minimum number of registers such that no scalar variable is spilled to memory. Previously, an optimal polynomial-time algorithm for this problem has been presented for individual procedures represented in Static Single Assignment (SSA) Form. This result is now extended to complete programs (or sub-programs), as long as: (1) each procedure is represented in SSA Form; and (2) at every procedure call, all live variables are split at the call point. With this representation, it is possible to ensure that the interprocedural interference graph (IIG) is chordal, and can therefore be colored optimally in polynomial time. An optimal coloring of the IIG can be achieved by allocating registers for each procedure individually. Previous work has shown that optimal register allocation in SSA Form does not require an interference graph. Optimal interprocedural register allocation, therefore, is achieved without constructing an interference graph, giving the optimal algorithm a significant runtime advantage over prior sub-optimal heuristics.

The efficient synthesis of circuits is a well-studied problem. Due to the NP-hardness of the problem, no optimal algorithm has been presented so far. However, the heuristics presented by several researchers in the past, which are also adopted by commercially available tools, are able to generate near-optimal design implementation for most circuits. Apart from very few exceptions, these heuristics exploit the rules of Boolean algebra, involving the logical operations OR and AND, in order to transform the circuit. The approach works well for common logic circuits where OR and AND gates constitute the major portion of the circuitry. On the other hand, on arithmetic circuits including a large proportion of XOR gates in addition to the other two basic types, these heuristics perform poorly. For arithmetic circuits, current logic synthesis tools generate design implementations which are far from optimal. This is the case even for very common arithmetic circuits such as adders and multipliers. Current synthesis tools are unable to convert a Ripple Carry Adder (RCA) into a Carry Look-Ahead Adder (CLA) when synthesized for delay. For this reason, designers still rely on manually explored designs for arithmetic circuits. In this work, we explore the challenges in the efficient synthesis of arithmetic circuits and present a set of efficient algorithms to overcome these challenges. The presented algorithms vary in their computational complexity, and also in the granularity of the circuit details at which they work. We also present a methodology to combine these algorithms so that they can be applied on larger circuits without losing performance. The developed method, to which we refer as pre-synthesis circuit restructuring, starts with an elementary description of the input circuit and generates a quasi-optimal implementation of the circuit. The presented algorithms have been tested on a wide variety of circuits, including both arithmetic and nonarithmetic circuits. In nonarithmetic circuits, the generated design implementations have performance comparable to those generated by state-of-the-art techniques. However, for arithmetic and composite (mixture of arithmetic and nonarithmetic) circuits, our algorithms generate significantly better implementations. Contrary to currently used synthesis tools, our algorithms are able to convert a Ripple Carry Adder into a Carry Look-Ahead Adder without using any information about the functionality of the input circuit. For some circuits, such as multipliers and multi-input comparators, our algorithms are able to generate completely new design implementations, which have not yet been explored manually. Since our algorithm is able to generate a meaningful (i.e., near optimal) architectural implementation of a circuit component without any prior knowledge about its functionality, it eliminates the need of library implementation of arithmetic circuits. Although the algorithms presented here are not specific to arithmetic circuits and can be applied to any circuit, due to higher complexity compared to other logic synthesis heuristics, the use of our method is recommended for arithmetic circuits only. In addition to experimental evidence, the effectiveness of our algorithm on arithmetic circuits is also proved theoretically.

Nowadays many customised embedded processors offer the possibility of speeding up an application by implementing it using Application-Specific Functional units (AFUs). However, the AFUs must satisfy certain constraints in terms of read and write ports between AFU and processor register file. Due to these restrictions the size and complexity of AFUs remain small. However, in recent some work has been done on relaxing the register file port constraints by serialising register file access (i.e., by allowing multi cycle read and write). This makes the problem of selecting best AFU significantly more complex. Most previous approaches use a two staged process to solve this problem, i.e., first selecting AFUs under some higher 110 constraints and then serialise them under the actual register file port constraints. Not only these methods are complex but also lead to suboptimal solutions. In this paper we formulate the AFU selection problem as an Integer Linear Programming and solve it optimally. We show experimentally that our methodology produces significantly better results compared to state of art techniques.

Despite the progress of the last decades in electronic design automation, arithmetic circuits have always received way less attention than other classes of digital circuits. Logic synthesisers, which play a fundamental role in design today, play a minor role on most arithmetic circuits, performing some local optimisations but hardly improving the overall structure of arithmetic components. Architectural optimisations have been often studied manually, and only in the case of very common building blocks such as fast adders and multi-input adders, ad-hoc techniques have been developed. A notable case is multi-input addition, which is the core of many circuits such as multipliers, etc. The most common technique to implement multi-input addition is using compressor trees, which are often composed of carry-save adders (based on (3 : 2) counters, i.e., full adders). A large body of literature exists to implement compressor trees using large counters. However, all the large counters were built by using full and half adders recursively. In this paper we give some definite answers to issues related to the use of large counters. We present a general technique to implement large counters whose performance is much better than the ones composed of full and half adders. Also we show that it is not always useful to use larger optimised counters and sometimes a combination of various size counters gives the best performance. Our results show 15% improvement in the critical path delay. In some cases even hardware area is reduced by using our counters.

Activation of leg muscles is an important component in the regulation of blood pressure during standing, failure of which could result in syncope and falls. Our previous work demonstrated baroreflex mediated activation of leg muscles (muscle-pump baroreflex) as an important factor in the regulation of blood pressure during standing; however, the effect of aging on the muscle-pump baroreflex of individual leg muscles during standing remains to be understood. Here, the interaction between systolic blood pressure (SBP) and the activation of lateral gastrocnemius (LG), medial gastrocnemius (MG), tibialis anterior (TA), and soleus (SOL) muscles during standing was quantified. Beat-to-beat heart period (RR interval), SBP, electromyography impulse (EMGimp) were derived from continuously acquired electrocardiography, finger blood pressure, and calf-electromyography, respectively. The cardiac baroreflex (SBP→RR) causality (0.88 ± 0.08 vs. 0.94 ± 0.03, p = 0.01), percent time with significant coherence (%SC: 50.95 ± 23.31 vs. 76.75 ± 16.91, p = 0.001), and gain (4.39 ± 4.38 vs. 13.05 ± 8.11, p < 0.001) was lower in older (69 ± 4 years) compared to young (26 ± 2 years) persons. Muscle-pump baroreflex (SBP→EMGimp) causality of LG (0.81 ± 0.08 vs. 0.88 ± 0.05, p = 0.01) and SOL (0.79 ± 0.11 vs. 0.88 ± 0.04, p = 0.01) muscles was lower in older compared to young persons. %SC was lower for all muscles in the older group (LG, p < 0.001; MG, p = 0.01; TA, p = 0.01; and SOL, p < 0.001) compared to young. The study outcomes highlighted impairment in muscle-pump baroreflex with age in addition to cardiac baroreflex. The findings of the study can assist in the development of an effective system for monitoring orthostatic tolerance via cardiac and muscle-pump baroreflexes to mitigate syncope and falls.

The interference graph for a procedure in Static Single Assignment (SSA) Form is chordal. Since the k-colorability problem can be solved in polynomial-time for chordal graphs, this result has generated interest in SSA-based heuristics for spilling and coalescing. Since copies can be folded during SSA construction, instances of the coalescing problem under SSA have fewer affinities than traditional methods. This paper presents Optimistic Chordal Coloring (OCC), a coalescing heuristic for chordal graphs. OCC was evaluated on interference graphs from embedded/multimedia benchmarks: in all cases, OCC found the optimal solution, and ran, on average, 2.30x faster than Iterated Register Coalescing.

ObjectiveDelayed second dose SARS-CoV-2 vaccination trades maximal effectiveness for a lower level of immunity across more of the population. We investigated whether patients with inflammatory bowel disease treated with infliximab have attenuated serological responses to a single dose of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.DesignAntibody responses and seroconversion rates in infliximab-treated patients (n=865) were compared with a cohort treated with vedolizumab (n=428), a gut-selective anti-integrin α4β7 monoclonal antibody. Our primary outcome was anti-SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) antibody concentrations, measured using the Elecsys anti-SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) antibody assay 3–10 weeks after vaccination, in patients without evidence of prior infection. Secondary outcomes were seroconversion rates (defined by a cut-off of 15 U/mL), and antibody responses following past infection or a second dose of the BNT162b2 vaccine.ResultsGeometric mean (SD) anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody concentrations were lower in patients treated with infliximab than vedolizumab, following BNT162b2 (6.0 U/mL (5.9) vs 28.8 U/mL (5.4) pConclusionInfliximab is associated with attenuated immunogenicity to a single dose of the BNT162b2 and ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. Vaccination after SARS-CoV-2 infection, or a second dose of vaccine, led to seroconversion in most patients. Delayed second dosing should be avoided in patients treated with infliximab.Trial registration numberISRCTN45176516.