379 research outputs found
Microbiology survey shows authors have most to gain from peer review
In the week that an international team of publishers, science communicators and other scholarly organisations launch the second international Peer Review Week, the preliminary findings from our new survey reveal that authors gain more from peer review than the people who do the actual review
Briquetting of waste glass cullet fine particles for energy-saving glass manufacture
Fine particles of glass cullet (fines) arising during glass recycling cannot presently be recycled into glass manufacture due to the potential for bubble formation and foaming. Consolidation of glass fines into briquettes could enable their re-introduction into furnaces, reducing waste and glass melting energies. Properties of briquetted cullet fines and briquette melting behaviour in soda-lime-silica glass batches are presented. Morphology and density of glass fines and briquettes; and briquette mass and mechanical properties as functions of time after formation were analyzed. Compressive strength increases linearly with time after briquette formation. With slight batch modifications to maintain the same final glass composition, up to 15 wt % briquettes were successfully added to a representative container glass batch and melted. Results confirm that briquette batch additions can provide equivalent final glass composition, optical absorption characteristics and redox to briquette-free batches, supporting their industrial uptake
Applying refinement to the use of mice and rats in rheumatoid arthritis research
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a painful, chronic
disorder and there is currently an unmet need for effective
therapies that will benefit a wide range of patients. The
research and development process for therapies and treatments
currently involves in vivo studies, which have the
potential to cause discomfort, pain or distress. This Working
Group report focuses on identifying causes of sufferingwithin
commonly used mouse and rat ‘models’ of RA, describing
practical refinements to help reduce suffering and improve
welfare without compromising the scientific objectives. The
report also discusses other, relevant topics including identifying
and minimising sources of variation within in vivo RA
studies, the potential to provide pain relief including analgesia,
welfare assessment, humane endpoints, reporting
standards and the potential to replace animals in RA research
Semi-parametric modeling of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in Orange County, California using tests, cases, deaths, and seroprevalence data
Mechanistic modeling of SARS-CoV-2 transmission dynamics and frequently
estimating model parameters using streaming surveillance data are important
components of the pandemic response toolbox. However, transmission model
parameter estimation can be imprecise, and sometimes even impossible, because
surveillance data are noisy and not informative about all aspects of the
mechanistic model. To partially overcome this obstacle, we propose a Bayesian
modeling framework that integrates multiple surveillance data streams. Our
model uses both SARS-CoV-2 diagnostics test and mortality time series to
estimate our model parameters, while also explicitly integrating seroprevalence
data from cross-sectional studies. Importantly, our data generating model for
incidence data takes into account changes in the total number of tests
performed. We model transmission rate, infection-to-fatality ratio, and a
parameter controlling a functional relationship between the true case incidence
and the fraction of positive tests as time-varying quantities and estimate
changes of these parameters nonparameterically. We apply our Bayesian data
integration method to COVID-19 surveillance data collected in Orange County,
California between March, 2020 and March, 2021 and find that 33-62% of the
Orange County residents experienced SARS-CoV-2 infection by the end of
February, 2021. Despite this high number of infections, our results show that
the abrupt end of the winter surge in January, 2021, was due to both behavioral
changes and a high level of accumulated natural immunity.Comment: 37 pages, 16 pages of main text, including 5 figures, 1 tabl
Entrepreneurship, Self-Employment and Business Data: An Introduction to Several Large, Nationally-Representative Datasets
The PTF Orion Project: a Possible Planet Transiting a T-Tauri Star
We report observations of a possible young transiting planet orbiting a
previously known weak-lined T-Tauri star in the 7-10 Myr old Orion-OB1a/25-Ori
region. The candidate was found as part of the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF)
Orion project. It has a photometric transit period of 0.448413 +- 0.000040
days, and appears in both 2009 and 2010 PTF data. Follow-up low-precision
radial velocity (RV) observations and adaptive optics imaging suggest that the
star is not an eclipsing binary, and that it is unlikely that a background
source is blended with the target and mimicking the observed transit. RV
observations with the Hobby-Eberly and Keck telescopes yield an RV that has the
same period as the photometric event, but is offset in phase from the transit
center by approximately -0.22 periods. The amplitude (half range) of the RV
variations is 2.4 km/s and is comparable with the expected RV amplitude that
stellar spots could induce. The RV curve is likely dominated by stellar spot
modulation and provides an upper limit to the projected companion mass of M_p
sin i_orb < 4.8 +- 1.2 M_Jup; when combined with the orbital inclination, i
orb, of the candidate planet from modeling of the transit light curve, we find
an upper limit on the mass of the planetary candidate of M_p < 5.5 +- 1.4
M_Jup. This limit implies that the planet is orbiting close to, if not inside,
its Roche limiting orbital radius, so that it may be undergoing active mass
loss and evaporation.Comment: Corrected typos, minor clarifications; minor updates/corrections to
affiliations and bibliography. 35 pages, 10 figures, 3 tables. Accepted to
Ap
Applying refinement to the use of mice and rats in rheumatoid arthritis research
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a painful, chronic disorder and there is currently an unmet need for effective therapies that will benefit a wide range of patients. The research and development process for therapies and treatments currently involves in vivo studies, which have the potential to cause discomfort, pain or distress. This Working Group report focuses on identifying causes of suffering within commonly used mouse and rat ‘models’ of RA, describing practical refinements to help reduce suffering and improve welfare without compromising the scientific objectives. The report also discusses other, relevant topics including identifying and minimising sources of variation within in vivo RA studies, the potential to provide pain relief including analgesia, welfare assessment, humane endpoints, reporting standards and the potential to replace animals in RA research
Impact of on-site cardiac catheterization on resource utilization and fatal and non-fatal outcomes after acute myocardial infarction
BACKGROUND: Patterns of care for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) strongly depend on the availability of on-site cardiac catheterization facilities. Although the management found at hospitals without on-site catheterization does not lead to increased mortality, little it known about its impact on resource utilization and non-fatal outcomes. METHODS: We identified all patients (n = 35,289) admitted with a first AMI in the province of Quebec between January 1, 1996 and March 31, 1999 using population-based administrative databases. Medical resource utilization and non-fatal and fatal outcomes were compared among patients admitted to hospitals with and without on-site cardiac catheterization facilities. RESULTS: Cardiac catheterization and PCI were more frequently performed among patients admitted to hospitals with catheterization facilities. However, non-invasive procedures were not used more frequently at hospitals without catheterization facilities. To the contrary, echocardiography [odds ratio (OR), 2.04; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.93–2.16] and multi-gated acquisition imaging (OR, 1.24; 95% CI, 1.17–1.32) were used more frequently at hospitals with catheterization, and exercise treadmill testing (OR, 1.02; 95% CI, 0.91–1.15) and Sestamibi/Thallium imaging (OR, 0.93; 95% CI, 0.88–0.98) were used similarly at hospitals with and without catheterization. Use of anti-ischemic medications and frequency of emergency room and physician visits, were similar at both types of institutions. Readmission rates for AMI-related cardiac complications and mortality were also similar [adjusted hazard ratio, recurrent AMI: 1.02, 95% CI, 0.89–1.16; congestive heart failure: 1.02; 95% CI, 0.90–1.15; unstable angina: 0.93; 95% CI, 0.85–1.02; mortality: 0.99; 95% CI, 0.93–1.05)]. CONCLUSION: Although on-site availability of cardiac catheterization facilities is associated with greater use of invasive cardiac procedures, non-availability of catheterization did not translate into a higher use of non-invasive tests or have an impact on the fatal and non-fatal outcomes available for study in our administrative database
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