Mesenchymal stem cells for management of rheumatoid arthritis : immune modulation, repair or both?

The authors are grateful for support to their research from Arthritis Research UK (grants 19271, 19429, 19667, 20050, 20775) and the Medical Research Council (grant no. MR/L020211/1)Peer reviewedPostprin

Monitoring Economic and Social Changes within NSW Water Sharing Plan Areas: A Participatory Approach

This paper presents a participatory approach being used to monitor the changes in economic and social indicators within the Water Sharing Plan areas in NSW. The approach entails close cooperation and input from the stakeholders comprising engagement and scoping; profiling, literature review and media scanning; indicators selection; data collection; and analysis and reporting over time. The monitoring data on the key economic and social indicators will be used for review of the Water Sharing Plans as well as further refinement and development of water policies in NSW. This framework provides the basis for developing similar monitoring programs.Monitoring, Irrigation Industry, Water Sharing Plans, Economic and Social Indicators, Methodology, Participatory Approach, Land Economics/Use, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Economic impacts of NSW water sharing plan rules on irrigated agriculture: a case study of Coopers Creek

A water sharing plan is a legal document prepared under the Water Management Act 2000 (WMA) in New South Wales (NSW). It establishes the rules for sharing water between the environment and entitlement holders, with the goal of simultaneously protecting water dependant ecosystems and providing certainty for water users. In NSW 49 water sharing plans have commenced to date and another 40 plans are due to be commenced within next two years covering all surface and groundwater systems. The WMA requires that due consideration be given to the socio-economic impacts of the water sharing rules during preparation and mid-term reviews of the plans. This paper presents the framework used to undertake socio-economic assessment of the impacts of water sharing rules and a case study of impact assessment. The NSW Office of Water (the Office) has used a staged methodological framework that is consistent with the socio-economic assessment guidelines for river, groundwater and water management committees developed by the Independent Advisory Committee on Socio-economic Analysis (IACSEA 1998). This framework is simple, relevant and cost effective. The case study presents socio-economic impact assessment of water sharing rules of the Coopers Creek Water Sharing Plan that commenced in 2004. The results of the case study indicate that the proposed rules could have significant negative or positive impacts on regional irrigated production and employment. This shows that proposals for environmental gains may result in substantial economic losses to the irrigators.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Analysis of cyclic delay diversity on DVB-H systems over spatially correlated channel

The objective of this work is to research and analyze the performance of Cyclic Delay Diversity (CDD) with two transmit antenna on DVB-H systems operating in spatially correlated channel. It is shown in this paper that CDD can achieve desirable transmit diversity gain over uncorrelated channel with or without receiver diversity. However, in reality, the respective signal paths between spatially separated antennas and the mobile receiver is likely to be correlated because of insufficient antenna separation at the transmitter and the lack of scattering effect of the channel. Under this spatially correlated channel, it is apparent that CDD cannot achieve the same diversity gain as obtained under the uncorrelated channel. In this paper, a new upper bound on the pairwise error probability (PEP) of the CDD with spatial correlation of two transmit antennas is derived. The upper bound is used to study the CDD theoretical error performance and diversity gain losses over a generalized spatially correlated Rayleigh channel. This theoretical analysis is validated by the simulation of DVB-H systems with two transmit antennas and the CDD scheme. Both the theoretical and simulated results give the valuable insight that the CDD ability to perform well with a certain amount of channel correlation

Evaluation of diversity gains for DVB-T systems

Copyright @ 2008 Eurescom GmbHThe requirements for future DVB-T/H networks demand that broadcasters design and deploy networks that provide ubiquitous reception in challenging indoors and other obstructed situations. It is essential that such networks are designed costeffectively and with minimized environmental impact. The EC funded project PLUTO has since its start in 2006 explored the use of diversity to improve coverage in these difficult situations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the performance of transmit and receive diversity gains with two antennas to improve the reception of DVB-T/H systems operating in different realistic propagation conditions through a series of tests using the Spirent dual channel emulator

Test-bed development & measurement plan for evaluating transmit diversity in DVB networks

This paper presents a test-bed development and measurement plan for evaluating transmit diversity in the DVB network. Transmit diversity reduces the complexity and improves the power consumption of the personal receiving devices by improving the transmission of signals in NLOS cluttered environments. Also, it is more practical than receive diversity due to the difficulty of locating two receive antennas far enough apart in a small mobile device. Test service scenarios were developed to illustrate the benefits of such technologies so that effectiveness can be researched in a variety of service and terrain scenarios using purpose built test systems. The laboratory tests were designed to validate the theoretical measurements from the theoretical analysis and these results will be verified by a field measurement campaign in short and long time spans

A Patient-Specific Treatment Model for Graves’ Hyperthyroidism

Background: Graves’ is disease an autoimmune disorder of the thyroid gland caused by circulating anti-thyroid receptor antibodies (TRAb) in the serum. TRAb mimics the action of thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) and stimulates the thyroid hormone receptor (TSHR), which results in hyperthyroidism (overactive thyroid gland) and goiter. Methimazole (MMI) is used for hyperthyroidism treatment for patients with Graves’ disease. Methods: We have developed a model using a system of ordinary differential equations for hyperthyroidism treatment with MMI. The model has four state variables, namely concentration of MMI (in mg/L), concentration of free thyroxine - FT4 (in pg/mL), and concentration of TRAb (in U/mL) and the functional size of the thyroid gland (in mL) with thirteen parameters. With a treatment parameter, we simulate the time-course of patients’ progression from hyperthyroidism to euthyroidism (normal condition). We validated the model predictions with data from four patients. Results: When there is no MMI treatment, there is a unique asymptotically stable hyperthyroid state. After the initiation of MMI treatment, the hyperthyroid state moves towards subclinical hyperthyroidism and then euthyroidism. Conclusion: We can use the model to describe or test and predict patient treatment schedules. More specifically, we can fit the model to individual patients’ data including loading and maintenance doses and describe the mechanism, hyperthyroidism → euthyroidism. The model can be used to predict when to discontinue the treatment based on FT4 levels within the physiological range, which in turn help maintain the remittance of euthyroidism and avoid relapses of hyperthyroidism. Basically, the model can guide with decision-making on oral intake of MMI based on FT4 levels

A conceptual model of daily water balance following partial clearing from forest to pasture

A simple conceptual water balance model representing the streamflow generation processes on a daily time step following land use change is presented. The model consists of five stores: (i) Dry, Wet and Subsurface Stores for vertical and lateral water flow, (ii) a transient Stream zone Store (iii) a saturated Goundwater Store. The soil moisture balance in the top soil Dry and Wet Stores are the most important components of the model and characterize the dynamically varying saturated areas responsible for surface runoff, interflow and deep percolation. The Subsurface Store describes the unsaturated soil moisture balance, extraction of percolated water by vegetation and groundwater recharge. The Groundwater Store controls the baseflow to stream (if any) and the groundwater contribution to the stream zone saturated areas. The daily model was developed following a <I>downward approach</I> by analysing data from Ernies (control) and Lemon (53% cleared) catchments in Western Australia and elaborating a monthly model. The daily model performed very well in simulating daily flow generation processes for both catchments. Most of the model parameters were incorporated a priori from catchment attributes such as surface slope, soil depth, porosity, stream length and initial groundwater depth, and some were calibrated by matching the observed and predicted hydrographs. The predicted groundwater depth, and streamflow volumes across all time steps from daily to monthly to annual were in close agreement with observations for both catchments

Rooftop and indoor reception with transmit diversity applied to DVB-T networks: A long term measurement campaign

Although transmit Delay Diversity (DD) can provide a gain in indoor and other Non Line of Sight situations (NLOS), it can introduce degradation in rooftop reception. In fact, when the Ricean K factor of the channel is significantly high (e.g. Line of Sight reception), the channel performs similar to an AWGN channel where the performance degrades due to DD that artificially increase the fading. This paper investigates through practical evaluation the impacts of Transmit DD on LOS and NLOS stationary reception. Then, it studies 2 techniques to reduce the degradation performance in LOS while aiming to keep the same diversity gain in NLOS receptio

Acetaminophen overdose: What practitioners need to know

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108053/1/cld373.pd