Controlled trial with brinerdin : a new antihypertensive

A double-blind study on 40 ambulant, mild to moderate hypertensive patients aged from 35-67 years is presented. After a dose-adjustment period and a 3-week wash-out the patients were randomized into 2 groups each on active drug and placebo respectively. Regular physical and laboratory examinations were made. The Brinerdin group showed a highly significant fall in blood pressure. In all cases the fall was gradual without sudden fluctuation. By comparison the placebo group showed only insignificant changes in blood pressure. At the effective dosage of 1-3 tablets daily there were no untoward side-effects. As with all saluretic drugs some patients tended to have slightly raised uric acid levels. The study demonstrates that at a dosage of 1-3 tablets per day Brinerdin is an effective anti-hypertensive agent. In all cases comparison with placebo showed a highly significant difference in favour of Brinerdin.peer-reviewe

Boat and ship engravings at Al Zubarah, Qatar: the dāw exposed?

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from ArchaeopressOn-going excavations at the site of the 18th–19th century walled town of Al Zubarah, Qatar, have uncovered a number of engravings of seagoing craft etched into the dry plasterwork of buildings within the settlement. The engravings are essentially graffiti, carved into the interiors of rooms without aesthetic reference to the original decorative schema of their settings. The resulting images are of varying sophistication and detail — dependent, no doubt, on the skill and inclination of their executors. While the crudest images are rudimentary outlines of hulls, others show detail that demonstrates the familiarity of their creators with boat construction and type — not surprising in a settlement whose raison d’être was the livings to be made from the sea. This iconographic vestige provides an insight into the types of vessel their creators used and encountered, and allows us to venture our own identifications of them. It also prompts us to reflect on the nature of the relationship between Al Zubarah’s some-time residents and the sea: the vessels depicted are for the most part a mixture of ocean-going types built within the Gulf or western Indian Ocean region. One, however, is of a European naval vessel, perhaps suggesting the shadow of British imperial power in the Gulf. Finally, the process of identification of these watercraft inspires renewed reflection on the word ‘dhow’ and its variants, from both a typological and an etymological perspective; these new reflections are presented at the end of this paper

Radiation therapy combined with intracerebral administration of carboplatin for the treatment of brain tumors

Background: In this study we determined if treatment combining radiation therapy (RT) with intracerebral (i.c.) administration of carboplatin to F98 glioma bearing rats could improve survival over that previously reported by us with a 15 Gy dose (5 Gy × 3) of 6 MV photons.Methods: First, in order to reduce tumor interstitial pressure, a biodistribution study was carried out to determine if pretreatment with dexamethasone alone or in combination with mannitol and furosemide (DMF) would increase carboplatin uptake following convection enhanced delivery (CED). Next, therapy studies were carried out in rats that had received carboplatin either by CED over 30 min (20 μg) or by Alzet pumps over 7 d (84 μg), followed by RT using a LINAC to deliver either 20 Gy (5 Gy × 4) or 15 Gy (7.5 Gy × 2) dose at 6 or 24 hrs after drug administration. Finally, a study was carried out to determine if efficacy could be improved by decreasing the time interval between drug administration and RT.Results: Tumor carboplatin values for D and DMF-treated rats were 9.4 ±4.4 and 12.4 ±3.2 μg/g, respectively, which were not significantly different (P = 0.14). The best survival data were obtained by combining pump delivery with 5 Gy × 4 of X-irradiation with a mean survival time (MST) of 107.7 d and a 43% cure rate vs. 83.6 d with CED vs. 30-35 d for RT alone and 24.6 d for untreated controls. Treatment-related mortality was observed when RT was initiated 6 h after CED of carboplatin and RT was started 7 d after tumor implantation. Dividing carboplatin into two 10 μg doses and RT into two 7.5 Gy fractions, administered 24 hrs later, yielded survival data (MST 82.1 d with a 25% cure rate) equivalent to that previously reported with 5 Gy × 3 and 20 μg of carboplatin.Conclusions: Although the best survival data were obtained by pump delivery, CED was highly effective in combination with 20 Gy, or as previously reported, 15 Gy, and the latter would be preferable since it would produce less late tissue effects.peer-reviewe

An MPEG-7 scheme for semantic content modelling and filtering of digital video

Abstract Part 5 of the MPEG-7 standard specifies Multimedia Description Schemes (MDS); that is, the format multimedia content models should conform to in order to ensure interoperability across multiple platforms and applications. However, the standard does not specify how the content or the associated model may be filtered. This paper proposes an MPEG-7 scheme which can be deployed for digital video content modelling and filtering. The proposed scheme, COSMOS-7, produces rich and multi-faceted semantic content models and supports a content-based filtering approach that only analyses content relating directly to the preferred content requirements of the user. We present details of the scheme, front-end systems used for content modelling and filtering and experiences with a number of users

Shear-Velocity Structure and Dynamics Beneath the Sicily Channel and Surrounding Regions of the Central Mediterranean Inferred From Seismic Surface Waves

The evolution of the Sicily Channel Rift Zone (SCRZ) is thought to accommodate the regional tectonic stresses of the Calabrian subduction system. Much of the observations we have today are either limited to the surface or to the upper crust or deeper from regional seismic tomography, missing important details about the lithospheric structure and dynamics. It is unclear whether the rifting is passive from far-field extensional stresses or active from mantle upwelling beneath. We measure Rayleigh-and Love-wave phase velocities from ambient seismic noise and invert for 3-D shear-velocity and radial anisotropic models. Variations in crustal S-velocities coincide with topographic and tectonic features. The Tyrrhenian Sea has a ∼10 km thin crust, followed by the SCRZ (∼20 km). The thickest crust is beneath the Apennine-Maghrebian Mountains (∼55 km). Areas experiencing extension and intraplate volcanism have positive crustal radial anisotropy (VSH > VSV); areas experiencing compression and subduction-related volcanism have negative anisotropy. The crustal anisotropy across the Channel shows the extent of the extension. Beneath the Tyrrhenian Sea, we find very low sub-Moho S-velocities. In contrast, the SCRZ has a thin mantle lithosphere underlain by a low-velocity zone. The lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary rises from 60 km depth beneath Tunisia to ∼33 km beneath the SCRZ. Negative radial anisotropy in the upper mantle beneath the SCRZ is consistent with vertical mantle flow. We hypothesize a more active mantle upwelling beneath the rift than previously thought from an interplay between poloidal and toroidal fluxes related to the Calabrian slab, which in turn produces uplift at the surface and induces volcanism

Integrated geophysical-petrological modeling of lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary in central Tibet using electromagnetic and seismic data

We undertake a petrologically driven approach to jointly model magnetotelluric (MT) and seismic surface wave dispersion (SW) data from central Tibet, constrained by topographic height. The approach derives realistic temperature and pressure distributions within the upper mantle and characterizes mineral assemblages of given bulk chemical compositions as well as water content. This allows us to define a bulk geophysical model of the upper mantle based on laboratory and xenolith data for the most relevant mantle mineral assemblages and to derive corresponding predicted geophysical observables. One-dimensional deep resistivity models were derived for two groups of MT stations. One group, located in the Lhasa Terrane, shows the existence of an electrically conductive upper mantle layer and shallower conductive upper mantle layer for the other group, located in the Qiangtang Terrane. The subsequent one-dimensional integrated petrological-geophysical modeling suggests a lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary (LAB) at a depth of 80¿120 km with a dry lithosphere for the Qiangtang Terrane. In contrast, for the Lhasa Terrane the LAB is located at about 180 km but the presence of a small amount of water in the lithospheric mantle (<0.02 wt%) is required to fit the longest period MT responses. Our results suggest two different lithospheric configurations beneath the southern and central Tibetan Plateau. The model for the Lhasa Terrane implies underthrusting of a moderately wet Indian plate. The model for the Qiangtang Terrane shows relatively thick and conductive crust and implies thin and dry Tibetan lithosphere.Peer Reviewe

ELVIS: Entertainment-led video summaries

© ACM, 2010. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications, 6(3): Article no. 17 (2010) http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1823746.1823751Video summaries present the user with a condensed and succinct representation of the content of a video stream. Usually this is achieved by attaching degrees of importance to low-level image, audio and text features. However, video content elicits strong and measurable physiological responses in the user, which are potentially rich indicators of what video content is memorable to or emotionally engaging for an individual user. This article proposes a technique that exploits such physiological responses to a given video stream by a given user to produce Entertainment-Led VIdeo Summaries (ELVIS). ELVIS is made up of five analysis phases which correspond to the analyses of five physiological response measures: electro-dermal response (EDR), heart rate (HR), blood volume pulse (BVP), respiration rate (RR), and respiration amplitude (RA). Through these analyses, the temporal locations of the most entertaining video subsegments, as they occur within the video stream as a whole, are automatically identified. The effectiveness of the ELVIS technique is verified through a statistical analysis of data collected during a set of user trials. Our results show that ELVIS is more consistent than RANDOM, EDR, HR, BVP, RR and RA selections in identifying the most entertaining video subsegments for content in the comedy, horror/comedy, and horror genres. Subjective user reports also reveal that ELVIS video summaries are comparatively easy to understand, enjoyable, and informative

Compromised chronic efficacy of a glucokinase activator AZD1656 in mouse models for common human <em>GCKR</em> variants

Glucokinase activators (GKAs) have been developed as blood glucose lowering drugs for type 2 diabetes. Despite good short-term efficacy, several GKAs showed a decline in efficacy chronically during clinical trials. The underlying mechanisms remain incompletely understood. We tested the hypothesis that deficiency in the liver glucokinase regulatory protein (GKRP) as occurs with common human GCKR variants affects chronic GKA efficacy. We used a Gckr-P446L mouse model for the GCKR exonic rs1260326 (P446L) variant and the Gckr-del/wt mouse to model transcriptional deficiency to test for chronic efficacy of the GKA, AZD1656 in GKRP-deficient states. In the Gckr-P446L mouse, the blood glucose lowering efficacy of AZD1656 (3 mg/kg body wt) after 2 weeks was independent of genotype. However after 19 weeks, efficacy was maintained in wild-type but declined in the LL genotype, in conjunction with raised hepatic glucokinase activity and without raised liver lipids. Sustained blood glucose lowering efficacy in wild-type mice was associated with qualitatively similar but more modest changes in the liver transcriptome compared with the P446L genotype, consistent with GKA therapy representing a more modest glucokinase excess than the P446L genotype. Chronic treatment with AZD1656 in the Gckr-del/wt mouse was associated with raised liver triglyceride and hepatocyte microvesicular steatosis. The results show that in mouse models of liver GKRP deficiency in conjunction with functional liver glucokinase excess as occurs in association with common human GCKR variants, GKRP-deficiency predisposes to declining efficacy of the GKA in lowering blood glucose and to GKA induced elevation in liver lipids