The impact of social network change and health decline: a qualitative study on experiences of older adults who are ageing in place

Background Older adults prefer to age in place. Social network change and health decline challenge ageing in place, as stressors that make age-related advantages disappear. The aim of this study was to explore social network change and health decline and its impact on older adults who are ageing in place. Method In-depth interviews (n = 16) were conducted with older adults who were ageing in place and who were experiencing health decline and social network change. Procedures for grounded theory building were followed to analyse the interviews with respondents who were discharged from the hospital less than 4 months ago (n = 7). Narrative analysis was conducted to reach a deeper understanding of the expected complexity of experiences of this targeted sample. Results Results encompass a typology with four types of impact: A. Sneak preview of old age, B. Disruptive transition into old age, C. Drastically ageing, and D. Steadily ageing. Additionally, indications were found that older adults should be able to move along the four types of impact and ideally could end up in quartile D, experiencing little or no impact at all (anymore). Conclusion The results present an optimistic view on the possibilities of older adults to continue ageing in place despite experiencing unavoidable and uncontrollable stressors in life. Also, the results provide leads for practice, to develop an action perspective for home care nurses and gerontological social workers to determine and reduce the impact of social network change and health decline on older adults who are ageing in place. Suggestions for further research would be to unravel how to detect temporal setbacks in successful ageing in place.

Optimization of MgO-GGBS Cementitious Systems Using Thermo-Chemical Approaches

The current study investigated the development of a sustainable thermo-chemical approach to effectively optimize MgO-waste activated GGBS formulations, using four types of magnesium oxide (MgO) waste materials with ground granulated blast-furnace slag (GGBS) to develop binary cementitious systems (MgO-GGBS). This stems from the expected complexity of cementitious binder optimization outcomes into a simpler analytic form, enhancing the rapid delivery of optimization results and contributing to the global awareness of sustainable approaches and use of industrial wastes. Three levels of Portland cement by weight (90, 80, and 70 wt.%) was replaced with MgO wastes including an industrial by-product (GGBS) to develop an experimental regime. Investigation was carried out by employing an experiment-based optimisation technique (thermo-chemical approach), which involved the design of an experimental regime and application of experimental tests (pH measurements, thermogravimetric and derivative thermogravimetric analysis—TG/DTG and isothermal calorimetry), establishment of design variable/parameters, measurement of the design performance of the identified design parameters, and review of the relationship between the independent (control) and dependent variables (MgO wastes and their compositions). The experimental test results successfully optimised the binder compositions, established the best performing binder system (MG1), and provided an in-depth insight into the thermal stability and hydration kinetics of the investigated binder systems.

Dual midbrain and forebrain origins of thalamic inhibitory interneurons

The ubiquitous presence of inhibitory interneurons in the thalamus of primates contrasts with the sparsity of interneurons reported in mice. Here, we identify a larger than expected complexity and distribution of interneurons across the mouse thalamus, where all thalamic interneurons can be traced back to two developmental programmes: one specified in the midbrain and the other in the forebrain. Interneurons migrate to functionally distinct thalamocortical nuclei depending on their origin: the abundant, midbrain-derived class populates the first and higher order sensory thalamus while the rarer, forebrain-generated class is restricted to some higher order associative regions. We also observe that markers for the midbrain-born class are abundantly expressed throughout the thalamus of the New World monkey marmoset. These data therefore reveal that, despite the broad variability in interneuron density across mammalian species, the blueprint of the ontogenetic organisation of thalamic interneurons of larger-brained mammals exists and can be studied in mice.

Accelerating numerical wave propagation by wavefield adapted meshes. Part II: full-waveform inversion

SUMMARY We present a novel full-waveform inversion (FWI) approach which can reduce the computational cost by up to an order of magnitude compared to conventional approaches, provided that variations in medium properties are sufficiently smooth. Our method is based on the usage of wavefield adapted meshes which accelerate the forward and adjoint wavefield simulations. By adapting the mesh to the expected complexity and smoothness of the wavefield, the number of elements needed to discretize the wave equation can be greatly reduced. This leads to spectral-element meshes which are optimally tailored to source locations and medium complexity. We demonstrate a workflow which opens up the possibility to use these meshes in FWI and show the computational advantages of the approach. We provide examples in 2-D and 3-D to illustrate the concept, describe how the new workflow deviates from the standard FWI workflow, and explain the additional steps in detail.

Vectorized linear approximations for attacks on SNOW 3G

SNOW 3G is a stream cipher designed in 2006 by ETSI/SAGE, serving in 3GPP as one of the standard algorithms for data confidentiality and integrity protection. It is also included in the 4G LTE standard. In this paper we derive vectorized linear approximations of the finite state machine in SNOW3G. In particular,we show one 24-bit approximation with a bias around 2−37 and one byte-oriented approximation with a bias around 2−40. We then use the approximations to launch attacks on SNOW 3G. The first approximation is used in a distinguishing attack resulting in an expected complexity of 2172 and the second one can be used in a standard fast correlation attack resulting in key recovery in an expected complexity of 2177. If the key length in SNOW 3G would be increased to 256 bits, the results show that there are then academic attacks on such a version faster than the exhaustive key search.

Amino acid exchangeabilities vary across the tree of life

Different amino acid pairs have drastically different relative exchangeabilities (REs), and accounting for this variation is an important and common practice in inferring phylogenies, testing selection, and predicting mutational effects, among other analyses. In all such endeavors, REs have been generally considered invariant among species; this assumption, however, has not been scrutinized. Using maximum likelihood to analyze 180 genome sequences, we estimated REs from 90 clades representing all three domains of life, and found numerous instances of substantial between-clade differences in REs. REs show more differences between orthologous proteins of different clades than unrelated proteins of the same clade, suggesting that REs are genome-wide, clade-specific features, probably a result of proteome-wide evolutionary changes in the physicochemical environments of amino acid residues. The discovery of among-clade RE variations cautions against assuming constant REs in various analyses and demonstrates a higher-than-expected complexity in mechanisms of proteome evolution.

The Expected Number of Extreme Discs

Given a finite set D of n planar discs whose centers are distributed randomly. We are interested in the expected number of extreme discs of the convex hull of D. We show that the expected number of extreme discs is at most O(log2n) for any distribution. This result can be used to derive expected complexity of convex hull algorithms. Keywords: Convex hull, computational geometry, expected number. Mathematics Subject Classification (2010): 65D18, 52A15, 51N05.

Dual midbrain and forebrain origins of thalamic inhibitory interneurons

The proportion and distribution of local inhibitory neurons (interneurons) in the thalamus varies widely across mammals. The ubiquitous presence of interneurons in the thalamus of primates contrasts with the extreme sparsity of interneurons reported in mice and other small-brained mammals. This is reflected in the structure and function of thalamic local circuits, which are more complex in primates compared to rodents. To what extent the broad range of interneuron densities observed in mammalian species reflect the appearance of novel interneuron types or the elaboration of a plesiomorphic ontogenetic program, remains unclear.Here, we identify a larger than expected complexity and distribution of interneurons across the mouse thalamus, where all thalamic interneurons can be traced back to two developmental programs: one specified in the midbrain and the other in the forebrain. Interneurons migrate to functionally distinct thalamocortical nuclei depending on their origin the abundant, midbrain-derived class populates the first and higher order sensory thalamus while the rarer, forebrain-generated class is restricted to some higher order associative regions. We also observe that markers for the midbrain-born class are abundantly expressed throughout the thalamus of the New World monkey marmoset. These data therefore reveal that, despite the broad variability in interneuron density across mammalian species, the blueprint of the ontogenetic organization of thalamic interneurons of larger-brained mammals exists and can be studied in mice.