Cryogenic propellant venting under low pressure conditions final report

Cryogenic propellant venting under low pressure conditions - heat-transfer coefficients for two- phase, single component, solid-gas mixture flow in short, vertical tub

Matrix Transfer Function Design for Flexible Structures: An Application

The application of matrix transfer function design techniques to the problem of disturbance rejection on a flexible space structure is demonstrated. The design approach is based on parameterizing a class of stabilizing compensators for the plant and formulating the design specifications as a constrained minimization problem in terms of these parameters. The solution yields a matrix transfer function representation of the compensator. A state space realization of the compensator is constructed to investigate performance and stability on the nominal and perturbed models. The application is made to the ACOSSA (Active Control of Space Structures) optical structure

"L'amicizia non è una vana parola" Lettere di Andrea Caffi a Olga Signorelli

Pubblicazione di fonte inedita (carteggio) con introduzione (pp. 347-357) e note

A new technique for elucidating β\beta-decay schemes which involve daughter nuclei with very low energy excited states

A new technique of elucidating $\beta$-decay schemes of isotopes with large density of states at low excitation energies has been developed, in which a Broad Energy Germanium (BEGe) detector is used in conjunction with coaxial hyper-pure germanium detectors. The power of this technique has been demonstrated on the example of 183Hg decay. Mass-separated samples of 183Hg were produced by a deposition of the low-energy radioactive-ion beam delivered by the ISOLDE facility at CERN. The excellent energy resolution of the BEGe detector allowed $\gamma$ rays energies to be determined with a precision of a few tens of electronvolts, which was sufficient for the analysis of the Rydberg-Ritz combinations in the level scheme. The timestamped structure of the data was used for unambiguous separation of $\gamma$ rays arising from the decay of 183Hg from those due to the daughter decays

An Integrated Circuit for Signal Processing of the AMS RICH Photmultipliers Tubes

An analog integrated circuit has been designed, in a BiCMOS 0.8 micron technology, for the feasability study of the signal processing of the AMS RICH photomultiplier tubes. This low power, three channel gated integrator includes its own gate and no external analog delay is requiered. It processes PMT pulses over a dynamic range of more than 100. A logic output that indicates whether the analog charge has to be considered is provided. This gated integrator is used with a compact DSP based acquisition system in a 132 channels RICH prototype. The charge calibration of each channel is carried out using a LED. The pedestal measurement is performed on activation of a dedicated input. The noise contribution study of the input RC network and amplifiers is presented.Comment: IEEE symp. on Nucl. Sci. and Med. Imaging, Toront

Has the phasing out of stavudine in accordance with changes in WHO guidelines led to a decrease in single-drug substitutions in first-line antiretroviral therapy for HIV in sub-Saharan Africa?

This version is the Accepted Manuscript and is published in final edited form as: AIDS. 2017 January 02; 31(1): 147–157. doi:10.1097/QAD.0000000000001307OBJECTIVE: We assessed the relationship between phasing out stavudine in first-line antiretroviral therapy (ART) in accordance with WHO 2010 policy and single-drug substitutions (SDS) (substituting the nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor in first-line ART) in sub-Saharan Africa. DESIGN: Prospective cohort analysis (International epidemiological Databases to Evaluate AIDS-Multiregional) including ART-naive, HIV-infected patients aged at least 16 years, initiating ART between January 2005 and December 2012. Before April 2010 (July 2007 in Zambia) national guidelines called for patients to initiate stavudine-based or zidovudine-based regimen, whereas thereafter tenofovir or zidovudine replaced stavudine in first-line ART. METHODS: We evaluated the frequency of stavudine use and SDS by calendar year 2004-2014. Competing risk regression was used to assess the association between nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor use and SDS in the first 24 months on ART. RESULTS: In all, 33 441 (8.9%; 95% confience interval 8.7-8.9%) SDS occurred among 377 656 patients in the first 24 months on ART, close to 40% of which were amongst patients on stavudine. The decrease in SDS corresponded with the phasing out of stavudine. Competing risks regression models showed that patients on tenofovir were 20-95% less likely to require a SDS than patients on stavudine, whereas patients on zidovudine had a 75-85% decrease in the hazards of SDS when compared to stavudine. CONCLUSION: The decline in SDS in the first 24 months on treatment appears to be associated with phasing out stavudine for zidovudine or tenofovir in first-line ART in our study. Further efforts to decrease the cost of tenofovir and zidovudine for use in this setting is warranted to substitute all patients still receiving stavudine

Novel image analysis approach for quantifying expression of nuclear proteins assessed by immunohistochemistry: application to measurement of oestrogen and progesterone receptor levels in breast cancer

INTRODUCTION: Manual interpretation of immunohistochemistry (IHC) is a subjective, time-consuming and variable process, with an inherent intra-observer and inter-observer variability. Automated image analysis approaches offer the possibility of developing rapid, uniform indicators of IHC staining. In the present article we describe the development of a novel approach for automatically quantifying oestrogen receptor (ER) and progesterone receptor (PR) protein expression assessed by IHC in primary breast cancer. METHODS: Two cohorts of breast cancer patients (n = 743) were used in the study. Digital images of breast cancer tissue microarrays were captured using the Aperio ScanScope XT slide scanner (Aperio Technologies, Vista, CA, USA). Image analysis algorithms were developed using MatLab 7 (MathWorks, Apple Hill Drive, MA, USA). A fully automated nuclear algorithm was developed to discriminate tumour from normal tissue and to quantify ER and PR expression in both cohorts. Random forest clustering was employed to identify optimum thresholds for survival analysis. RESULTS: The accuracy of the nuclear algorithm was initially confirmed by a histopathologist, who validated the output in 18 representative images. In these 18 samples, an excellent correlation was evident between the results obtained by manual and automated analysis (Spearman\u27s rho = 0.9, P \u3c 0.001). Optimum thresholds for survival analysis were identified using random forest clustering. This revealed 7% positive tumour cells as the optimum threshold for the ER and 5% positive tumour cells for the PR. Moreover, a 7% cutoff level for the ER predicted a better response to tamoxifen than the currently used 10% threshold. Finally, linear regression was employed to demonstrate a more homogeneous pattern of expression for the ER (R = 0.860) than for the PR (R = 0.681). CONCLUSIONS: In summary, we present data on the automated quantification of the ER and the PR in 743 primary breast tumours using a novel unsupervised image analysis algorithm. This novel approach provides a useful tool for the quantification of biomarkers on tissue specimens, as well as for objective identification of appropriate cutoff thresholds for biomarker positivity. It also offers the potential to identify proteins with a homogeneous pattern of expression