Université libre de Bruxelles

About: Université libre de Bruxelles is a education organization based out in Brussels, Belgium. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Breast cancer. The organization has 24974 authors who have published 56969 publications receiving 2084303 citations. The organization is also known as: ULB.

Mild hyponatremia and risk of fracture in the ambulatory elderly.

Abstract: Background: Mild hyponatremia is the commonest electrolyte imbalance in the older population and has been shown to be associated with gait and attention deficits resulting in higher frequency of falls. The association of mild hyponatremia and bone fracture is still unknown. Objective: To determine if mild hyponatremia is associated with increased risk of bone fracture in ambulatory elderly. Design, setting and participants: Case control study of 513 cases of bone fracture after incidental fall in ambulatory patients aged 65 or more in general university hospital. Controls were age and sex matched randomly selected ambulatory patients without history of bone fracture. Main exposure measures: Odds ratio (OR) of bone fracture after incidental fall associated with presence of hyponatremia. Results: Prevalence of hyponatremia (serum sodium <135 mEq/l,) in patients with bone fracture and in controls patient was, respectively, 13.06% and 3.90%. Hyponatremia was mild and asymptomatic in all patients (mean serum sodium 131 mEq/l) and was found to be associated with bone fracture after incidental fall in ambulatory elderly (unadjusted OR: 3.47, 95% CI: 2.09–5.79, and adjusted OR: 4.16 95% CI: 2.24–7.71). Hyponatremia was either drug induced (36% diuretics, 17% selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) or resulted from idiopathic syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion (37%). Hyponatremia was associated with 9.20% of all bone fractures. Conclusions: Mild asymptomatic hyponatremia is associated with bone fracture in ambulatory elderly and avoiding iatrogenic hyponatremia or treating hyponatremia may decrease the number of bone fractures in this population.

Focus plane detection criteria in digital holography microscopy by amplitude analysis

Abstract: We propose and test a focus plane determination method that computes the digital refocus distance of an object investigated by digital holographic microscopy working in transmission. For this purpose we analyze the integrated amplitude modulus as a function of the digital holographic reconstruction distance. It is shown that when the focus distance is reached, the integrated amplitude is minimum for pure amplitude object and maximum for pure phase object. After a theoretical analysis, the method is demonstrated on actual digital holograms for the refocusing of pure amplitude and of pure phase microscopic samples.

Possibility of spontaneous parity violation in hot QCD

Abstract: We argue that for QCD in the limit of a large number of colors, the axial $\mathrm{U}(1)$ symmetry of massless quarks is effectively restored at the deconfining phase transition. If this transition is of second order, metastable states in which parity is spontaneously broken can appear in the hadronic phase. These metastable states have dramatic signatures, including enhanced production of $\ensuremath{\eta}$ and ${\ensuremath{\eta}}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ mesons, which can decay through parity violating decay processes such as $\ensuremath{\eta}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{0}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{0}$, and global parity odd asymmetries for charged pions.