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Body language is a powerful tool that we use to communicate how we feel, but it is unclear whether other primates also communicate in this way. Here, we use functional magnetic resonance imaging to show that the body-selective patches in macaques are activated by affective body language. Unexpectedly, we found these regions to be tolerant of naturalistic variation in posture as well as species; the bodies of macaques, humans, and domestic cats all evoked a stronger response when they conveyed fear than when they conveyed no affect. Multivariate analyses confirmed that the neural representation of fear-related body expressions was species-invariant. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that, like humans, macaques have body-selective brain regions in the ventral visual pathway for processing affective body language. These data also indicate that representations of body stimuli in these regions are built on the basis of emergent properties, such as socio-affective meaning, and not just putative image properties.

The transmission of 5 × 4.224 Tb/s Nyquist superchannels over 2688 km distance has been demonstrated using trench-assisted multicore fibre (TA-MCF) at different spans for the first time at reduced channel spacing. The channel spacing has been efficiently reduced from 32 GHz (before modulation) to 25 GHz (after modulation) using Nyquist superchannels with hybrid modulation to transmit 15 subcarriers in one superchannel without any distortion. Five Nyquist superchannels, each using 15 × 35.2 Gbaud PM-16QAM subcarriers (4.224 Tb/s), are transmitted over seven cores of TA-MCF with low crosstalk over the same distance. Further, by utilising the core-to-core rotation scheme, the inter-core crosstalk from the neighbouring cores has been reduced after WDM/SDM transmission.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a global pandemic that significantly impacts people living with diabetes. Diabetes-related factors of glycemic control, medication pharmacodynamics, and insulin access can impact the severity of a COVID-19 infection. In this commentary, we explore how digital health can support the diabetes community through the pandemic. For those living with diabetes, digital health presents the opportunity to access care with greater convenience while not having to expose themselves to infection in an in-person clinic. Digital diabetes apps can increase agency in self-care and produce clinically significant improvement in glycemic control through facilitating the capture of diabetes device data. However, the ability to share these data back to the clinic to inform virtual care and enhance diabetes coaching and guidance remains a challenge. In the end, it requires an unnecessarily high level of technical sophistication on the clinic’s part and on those living with diabetes to routinely use their diabetes device data in clinic visits, virtual or otherwise. As the world comes together to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, close collaboration among the global diabetes community is critical to understand and manage the sustained impact of the pandemic on people living with diabetes.

UNSTRUCTURED The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a global pandemic that significantly impacts people living with diabetes. Diabetes-related factors of glycemic control, medication pharmacodynamics, and insulin access can impact the severity of a COVID-19 infection. In this commentary, we explore how digital health can support the diabetes community through the pandemic. For those living with diabetes, digital health presents the opportunity to access care with greater convenience while not having to expose themselves to infection in an in-person clinic. Digital diabetes apps can increase agency in self-care and produce clinically significant improvement in glycemic control through facilitating the capture of diabetes device data. However, the ability to share these data back to the clinic to inform virtual care and enhance diabetes coaching and guidance remains a challenge. In the end, it requires an unnecessarily high level of technical sophistication on the clinic’s part and on those living with diabetes to routinely use their diabetes device data in clinic visits, virtual or otherwise. As the world comes together to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, close collaboration among the global diabetes community is critical to understand and manage the sustained impact of the pandemic on people living with diabetes.

In this work uniform, transparent thin films of Graphene Oxide (GO) of variable thickness have been prepared using Langmuir Blodgett (LB) deposition process. Surface pressure-area isotherms and hysteresis measurements have been used to characterize the GO Langmuir thin films on the water sub-phase prior to transfer onto solid substrate to determine the suitable deposition parameters. AFM analysis of the deposited films (1,2,4 and 5 layers) shows that the films are continuous and smooth (low r.m.s. roughness). The roughness of the films increases with increasing number of transferred layers and smoother films are obtained for higher barrier compression rates.

Cloud Computing is the resource provided over the Internet for the use of data storage by the user. It is an environment used to enable a cost-effective storage of a large amount of shared pool of resources over the Internet. It has a rapid expansion over the few years for large companies and private sectors. Cloud computing with its numerous benefits also faces data privacy and security issues that causes threats in the clouds. This paper, hence, lists the various security issues in the clouds based on their confidentiality, integrity and availability and the corresponding solutions to those threats and issues in the cloud environment. It also lists a comparative study of all the solutions to the security issues so that the best-fit solutions can be identified based on the CIA triad. This paper analyses the solutions of security issues faced by the cloud users and providers.

Patients with diabetes often face serious complications due to limited self-management skills, the inability to adhere to care regimens, and psychosocial factors. Although regular self-monitoring of blood glucose is known to benefit patients receiving insulin therapy, its role in patients not treated with insulin has been unclear. However, recent studies have demonstrated that structured self-monitoring of blood glucose can significantly benefit patients who are not taking insulin, facilitating improved self-awareness and clinical decision making. We hypothesize that effective self-management by patients with type 2 diabetes who do not need insulin requires a behavioural intervention that enables the association between lifestyle behaviours, such as dietary intake and physical activity, and overall glycemic control. Mobile health applications (apps), coupled with wireless medical peripheral devices, can facilitate self-monitoring; deliver tailored, actionable knowledge; elicit positive behaviour changes and promote effective self-management of diabetes. Although existing apps incorporate tracking and feedback from healthcare providers, few attempt to elicit positive behaviour changes for the purposes of developing patients' self-care skills. The purpose of this article is to present a systematic approach to the design and development a diabetes self-management mobile app, which included 1) a scoping review of literature; 2) the development of an overarching theoretical approach and 3) validation of the app features through user-centred design methods. The resulting app, bant II, facilitates 1) self-monitoring of blood glucose, physical activity, diet and weight; 2) identification of glycemic patterns in relation to lifestyle; 3) remedial decision making and 4) positive behaviour change through incentives.

We demonstrate the performance of Nyquist superchannel system along with multicast overlay system which employs Nyquist dual polarization quadrature amplitude modulation (DP-16QAM) and polarization shift keying (POLSK) modulation to transmit 640 GB/s as unicast and differential phase shift keying (DPSK) modulation for 40Gb/s as multicast. The performance of multicast overlay system transmits total 5.1Tb/s data rate using 8*640 GB/s unicast signal and 40Gb/s multicast signals. From the simulation results, best BER, input power, and Q-factor have been analyzed for multicast overlay system. In addition, the proposed design Nyquist DP-16QAM modulation offers efficient utilization of bandwidth for transmission of each channel at the high data rate.

Brain tumor detection and studying its behavior are very difficult processes in the field of medical image processing due to the nature of brain image, and its formation is very complex, which can only be studied by experienced person of the field. Segmentation acts as leading role in the field of medical image processing. Medical resonance (MR) image is a diagnostic tool for the diagnosis of brain and related images of medical field. The purpose of this paper is to show segmentation and determination of brain tumor in MR images. We are applying threshold segmentation with morphological operation with reconstruction. In this paper, we are also showing comparison analysis between watershed segmentation with thresholding.

BackgroundWhile optimal blood glucose control is known to reduce the long-term complications associated with type 1 diabetes mellitus, adolescents often struggle to achieve their blood glucose targets. However, their strong propensity toward technology presents a unique opportunity for the delivery of novel self-management interventions. To support type 1 diabetes self-management in this population, we developed the diabetes self-management app bant, which included wireless blood glucose reading transfer, out-of-range blood glucose trend alerts, coaching around out-of-range trend causes and fixes, and a point-based incentive system. ObjectiveThe primary objective was to evaluate bant ’s effect on hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) through a randomized controlled trial (RCT). Secondary measures (eg, self-monitoring of blood glucose [SMBG]) were also collected to assess bant ’s impact on the self-management behaviors of adolescents with type 1 diabetes. MethodsWe enrolled 92 adolescents into a 12-month RCT, with 46 receiving usual care and 46 receiving usual care plus bant. Clinical outcome data were collected at quarterly research visits via validated tools, electronic chart review, glucometer downloads, and semistructured interviews. App satisfaction was assessed at 6 and 12 months, and at trial end, users ranked bant components based on perceived usefulness. Mobile analytics captured frequency of blood glucose uploads, which were used to categorize participants into high, moderate, low, or very low engagement levels. ResultsLinear mixed models showed no changes in primary and secondary clinical outcomes. However, exploratory regression analysis demonstrated a statistically significant association between increased SMBG and improved HbA1c in the intervention group. For a subgroup of bant users taking SMBG ≥5 daily, there was a significant improvement in HbA1c of 0.58% (P=.02), while the parallel subgroup in the control arm experienced no significant change in HbA1c (decrease of 0.06%, P=.84). Although app usage did diminish over the trial, on average, 35% (16/46 participants) were classified as moderately or highly engaged (uploaded SMBG ≥3 days a week) over the 12 months. ConclusionAlthough primary analysis of clinical outcomes did not demonstrate differences between the bant and control groups, exploratory analysis suggested that bant may positively impact the use of SMBG data and glycemic control among youth. The next generation of bant will aim to remove barriers to use, such as deploying the app directly to personal devices instead of secondary research phones, and to explore the utility of integrating bant into routine clinical care to facilitate more frequent feedback. Future evaluations of mHealth apps should consider more robust research tools (eg, ResearchKit) and alternative RCT study designs to enable more rapid and iterative evaluations, better suited to the nature of rapidly evolving consumer technology. Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT01899274; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01899274 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6qWrqF1yw)

Background: With the introduction of mesh for repair of inguinal hernia, the focus of surgeons has shifted to postoperative pain and quality of life (QOL). As compared to open procedures, laparoscopic procedures have been found to be associated with less pain and faster recovery. The present study was designed to assess whether this holds true when open Lichtenstein repair is done using lightweight mesh (LWM) because, in previous studies where laparoscopic inguinal hernia repair is compared to open Lichtenstein repair, heavyweight mesh (HWM) was used for both techniques. HWM was used for total extraperitoneal (TEP) in the current study because of higher recurrence associated with LWM. Materials and Methods: This prospective randomized study was done on 60 patients divided into two groups: the Lichtenstein group and the TEP group. Patients were followed at 1 week, 1 month, and 6 months for any postoperative complication. QOL was assessed using hernia-specific Carolinas Comfort Scale. Results: No statistically significant difference was observed between the two groups with regard to various postoperative complications. Only one recurrence was detected at 1 month in TEP group. The mean groin pain was significantly less in TEP group at 24 h, 1 week, and 1 month (P Conclusion: Except for less pain in the early postoperative period TEP does not offer any advantage and Lichtenstein repair using LWM can still be considered as the best option for inguinal hernia repair, especially in countries where resources are limited.

BackgroundLifestyle behavior modification can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, one of the leading causes of death worldwide, by up to 80%. We hypothesized that a dynamic risk assessment and behavior change tool delivered as a mobile app, hosted by a reputable nonprofit organization, would promote uptake among community members. We also predicted that the uptake would be influenced by incentives offered for downloading the mobile app. ObjectiveThe primary objective of our study was to evaluate the engagement levels of participants using the novel risk management app. The secondary aim was to assess the effect of incentives on the overall uptake and usage behaviors. MethodsWe publicly launched the app through the iTunes App Store and collected usage data over 5 months. Aggregate information included population-level data on download rates, use, risk factors, and user demographics. We used descriptive statistics to identify usage patterns, t tests, and analysis of variance to compare group means. Correlation and regression analyses determined the relationship between usage and demographic variables. ResultsWe captured detailed mobile usage data from 69,952 users over a 5-month period, of whom 23,727 (33.92%) were registered during a 1-month AIR MILES promotion. Of those who completed the risk assessment, 73.92% (42,380/57,330) were female, and 59.38% (34,042/57,330) were 22 challenges. On average, users in the incentives group completed slightly more challenges during the first 30 days of the intervention (mean 7.9, SD 0.13) than those in the nonincentives group (mean 6.1, SD 0.06, t28870=–12.293, P

Can an app help manage diabetes? We discuss how the advent of mobile health apps in connecting patients to providers is creating new opportunities for the management of diabetes. Although there are promising outcomes, there is still much to be learned about how such technology could be fully exploited.