BACKGROUND In the intensive care unit (ICU), critical illness delirium occurs in the context of multiple comorbidities, multi-organ failure, and invasive management techniques, such as mechanical ventilation, sedation, and lack of sleep. Delirium is characterized by an acute confusional state defined by fluctuating mental status, inattention, and either disorganized thinking or an altered level...

Non-intrusive appliance load monitoring is the process of disaggregating a household’s total electricity consumption into its contributing appliances. In this paper we propose an approach by which individual appliances can be iteratively separated from an aggregate load. Unlike existing approaches, our approach does not require training data to be collected by sub-metering individual appliances...

Objective: To develop and test the reliability and validity of the State Behavioral Scale for use in describing sedation/agitation levels in young intubated patients supported on mechanical ventilation. Design: In this prospective, psychometric evaluation, pairs of trained pediatric critical care nurse evaluators simultaneously and independently assessed a convenience sample of pediatric intens...

The present experiment examined the effect of aspirin on the escape/avoidance behavioral response to a mechanical stimulus (476 mN von Frey mono®lament) in the place escape avoidance paradigm (PEAP) following subcutaneous administration of carrageenan (CARR). Forty-one male Sprague±Dawley rats received subcutaneous injection of CARR or saline in the left hindpaw and 3 1/2 h later were administe...

Dorsal root ganglia (DRG) neurons, including the nociceptors that detect painful thermal, mechanical, and chemical stimuli, transmit information to spinal cord neurons via glutamatergic and peptidergic neurotransmitters. However, the specific contribution of glutamate to pain generated by distinct sensory modalities or injuries is not known. Here we generated mice in which the vesicular glutama...

TRP vanilloid 2 (TRPV2) is a nonselective cation channel expressed prominently in medium- to large-diameter sensory neurons that can be activated by extreme heat (>52°C). These features suggest that TRPV2 might be a transducer of noxious heat in vivo. TRPV2 can also be activated by hypoosmolarity or cell stretch, suggesting potential roles in mechanotransduction. To address the physiological fu...

We are exploring the use of formal grammars to represent two distinct but interconnected attributes of mechanical designs: geometry and behavior. By creating a formal description of a limited set of behaviors for mechanical designs and a corresponding description of physical components, we can generate the description of a physical system that takes advantage of the multiple behaviors of its co...

This study was designed to investigate the therapeutic effects of saffron (Crocus Sativus L) and its main constituent crocin on neuropathic pain behavioral responses induced by chronic constriction injury (CCI) in rats. Adult male Wistar rats (200 to 250 g) were randomly assigned into 5 groups: Sham + saline, CCI + saline, CCI+ saffron (30 mg/kg), CCI +crocin (15 mg/kg) and CCI + crocin (30 mg/...