Objective.Intermittent hypoxia, the primary pathology of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), causes cardiovascular responses resulting in changes in hemodynamic parameters such as stroke volume (SV), blood pressure (BP), and heart rate (HR). However, previous studies have produced very different conclusions, such as suggesting that SV increases or decreases during apnea. A key reason for drawing contrary conclusions from similar measurements may be due to ignoring the time delay in acquiring response signals. By analyzing the signals collected during hypoxia, we aim to establish criteria for determining the delay time between the onset of apnea and the onset of physiological parameter response.Approach.We monitored oxygen saturation (SpO2), transcutaneous oxygen pressure (TcPO2), and hemodynamic parameters SV, HR, and BP, during sleep in 66 patients with different OSA severity to observe body\'s response to hypoxia and determine the delay time of above parameters. Data were analyzed using the Kruskal-Wallis test, Quade test, and Spearman test.Main results.We found that simultaneous acquisition of various parameters inevitably involved varying degrees of response delay (7.12-25.60 s). The delay time of hemodynamic parameters was significantly shorter than that of SpO2and TcPO2(p< 0.01). OSA severity affected the response delay of SpO2, TcPO2, SV, mean BP, and HR (p< 0.05). SV delay time was negatively correlated with the apnea-hypopnea index (r= -0.4831,p< 0.0001).Significance.The real body response should be determined after removing the effect of delay time, which is the key to solve the problem of drawing contradictory conclusions from similar studies. The methods and important findings presented in this study provide key information for revealing the true response of the cardiovascular system during hypoxia, indicating the importance of proper signal analysis for correctly interpreting the cardiovascular hemodynamic response phenomena and exploring their physiological and pathophysiological mechanisms.

The modification of a Smith predictor for the control of plants with response-delay asymmetry has been proposed. It was developed for application in frequency converters for the control of the speed of the AC induction motor drives of pumps used in water- and liquefied-petroleum-gas-supply systems. Such plants are characterized by long response delays, and often these delays are asymmetric, i.e., the response delay to the rising and falling plant-control signal is different. A distinctive feature of the proposed modification is that the value of the response delay in the model of the plant used for the realization of the Smith predictor is switched. The operation of the proposed switched-delay Smith predictor, which was used with the proportional-integral controller, was analyzed using a simulation and experimentally in a real water-supply system. The obtained results prove an advantage of the suggested solution.

Understanding the processes that create inhibitory demands is central to understanding the role of inhibitory control in all aspects of development. The processes that create inhibitory demands on most developmental tasks seem clear and well understood. However, there is one inhibitory task that appears substantially easier than the others: the Reverse Categorization task, in which children are asked to \"reverse sort\" items (e.g., put large items in a small box and put small items in a large box). This finding is both surprising and problematic because it cannot be explained by any existing account of inhibitory development. Four experiments with 3- and 4-year-olds sought to explain why the Reverse Categorization task is easy. Two experiments (N = 64) investigated the hypothesis that children conceptualize the task in a way that reduces its inhibitory demands; and two experiments (N = 56) tested the hypothesis that the task is easier because children sort items slowly. The data indicate that children spontaneously respond more slowly on the Reverse Categorization task than on other inhibitory tasks and that this slowing reduces the task\'s cognitive demands. The way in which slowed responding works, and its relation to other inhibition-reducing interventions, is discussed.

Phone-based surveys are increasingly being used in healthcare settings to collect data from potentially large numbers of subjects, e.g., to evaluate their levels of satisfaction with medical providers, to study behaviors and trends of specific populations, and to track their health and wellness. Often, subjects respond to such surveys once, but it has become increasingly important to capture their responses multiple times over an extended period to accurately and quickly detect and track changes. With the help of smartphones, it is now possible to automate such longitudinal data collections, e.g., push notifications can be used to alert a subject whenever a new survey is available. This paper investigates various design factors of a longitudinal smartphone-based health survey data collection that contribute to user compliance and quality of collected data. This work presents the design recommendations based on analysis of data collected from 17 subjects over a 1-month period.

Delayed responses are a common phenomenon in experience sampling studies. Yet no consensus exists on whether they should be excluded from the analysis or what the threshold for exclusion should be. Delayed responses could introduce bias, but previous investigations of systematic differences between delayed and timely responses have offered unclear results. To investigate differences as a function of delay, we conducted secondary analyses of nine paper and pencil based experience sampling studies including 1,528 individuals with different clinical statuses. In all participants, there were significant decreases in positive and increases in negative affect as a function of delay. In addition, delayed answers of participants without depression showed higher within-person variability and an initial strengthening in the relationships between contextual stress and affect. Participants with depression mostly showed the opposite pattern. Delayed responses seem qualitatively different from timely responses. Further research is needed to understand the mechanisms underlying these differences.

Livestock diseases have devastating consequences economically, socially and politically across the globe. In certain systems, pathogens remain viable after host death, which enables residual transmissions from infected carcasses. Rapid culling and carcass disposal are well-established strategies for stamping out an outbreak and limiting its impact; however, wait-times for these procedures, i.e. response delays, are typically farm-specific and time-varying due to logistical constraints. Failing to incorporate variable response delays in epidemiological models may understate outbreak projections and mislead management decisions. We revisited the 2001 foot-and-mouth epidemic in the United Kingdom and sought to understand how misrepresented response delays can influence model predictions. Survival analysis identified farm size and control demand as key factors that impeded timely culling and disposal activities on individual farms. Using these factors in the context of an existing policy to predict local variation in response times significantly affected predictions at the national scale. Models that assumed fixed, timely responses grossly underestimated epidemic severity and its long-term consequences. As a result, this study demonstrates how general inclusion of response dynamics and recognition of partial controllability of interventions can help inform management priorities during epidemics of livestock diseases.

We propose a new analytical method for determining the response threshold in electroretinogram (ERG) in which the wave shows a biphasic slow dc-potential shift. This method uses the recorded wave to the highest intensity stimuli in each wavelength tested as a template wave f(t), and it was compared with other recorded waves obtained under lower intensities g(t). Our test recordings in medaka Oryzias latipes were analogous between the template and the compared waveforms, although there were differences in amplitude and time lag (τ, peak time difference) which occurred as a result of the difference in stimulus intensity. Cross-correlation analysis was applied. Based on the obtained cross-correlation function Cfg(τ) in each comparison, τ was determined as the time lag at which the cross-correlation coefficient Rfg(τ) showed the maximum value. Determined thresholds that were based on both the experimenter\'s visual inspection and this new method agreed well when the adoption condition was set to satisfy R(τ) ≥ 0.7 and τ ≤ 150 ms in scotopic or τ ≤ 120 ms in photopic conditions. We concluded that this \"template wave matching method\" is a quick and reliable objective assessment that can be used to determine the threshold. This study analyzed ERG recordings in response to 6 kinds of wavelength light stimuli (380 nm to 620 nm) at different photon flux densities. We report the threshold levels and relative spectral sensitivities in scotopic and photopic vision of medaka.

Event-based prospective memory (PM) tasks require individuals to remember to perform an action when they encounter a specific cue in the environment, and they have clear relevance for daily functioning for individuals with HIV. In many everyday tasks, not only must the individual maintain the intent to perform the PM task, but the PM task response also competes with the alternative and more habitual task response. The current study examined whether event-based PM can be improved by slowing down the pace of the task environment. Fifty-seven young adults living with HIV performed an ongoing lexical decision task while simultaneously performing a PM task of monitoring for a specific word (which was focal to the ongoing task of making lexical decisions) or syllable contained in a word (which was nonfocal). Participants were instructed to refrain from making task responses until after a tone was presented, which occurred at varying onsets (0-1600 ms) after each stimulus appeared. Improvements in focal and nonfocal PM accuracy were observed with response delays of 600 ms. Furthermore, the difference in PM accuracy between the low-demand focal PM task and the resource-demanding nonfocal PM task was reduced by half across increasingly longer delays, falling from 31% at 0-ms delay to only 14% at 1600-ms delay. The degree of ongoing task response slowing for the PM conditions, relative to a control condition that did not have a PM task and made lexical decisions only, also decreased with increased delay. Overall, the evidence indicates that delaying the task responses of younger HIV-infected adults increased the probability that the PM relevant features of task stimuli were adequately assessed prior to the ongoing task response, and by implication that younger HIV infected adults can more adequately achieve PM goals when the pace of the task environment is slowed down.