Glasgow time signals

From 1859 to 1864, both visual and audio one o’clock time signals operated in Glasgow. Although the University carried a remit to provide the city’s time, following convoluted processes of establishment, a local chronometer-maker operated a time ball for 4 years. Towards the end of the period, time guns were triggered by telegraph from the Royal Observatory Edinburgh. Both exercises caused aggravation for the University. For the ball, the Professor of Astronomy, John Pringle Nichol, failed to convince the City Council that the “drop” control should originate from the University’s Observatory. For the guns, Robert Grant, the newly appointed Astronomy Chair holder, was aggrieved by the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Piazzi Smyth, appearing to operate above his station. Rather than having only a once per day reference, both projects were abandoned as the University laid a dedicated telegraph cable from its observatory to control many public clocks and additional clocks with large sweep fingers indicating exact time to the second

AZEuS: An Adaptive Zone Eulerian Scheme for Computational MHD

A new adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) version of the ZEUS-3D astrophysical magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) fluid code, AZEuS, is described. The AMR module in AZEuS has been completely adapted to the staggered mesh that characterises the ZEUS family of codes, on which scalar quantities are zone-centred and vector components are face-centred. In addition, for applications using static grids, it is necessary to use higher-order interpolations for prolongation to minimise the errors caused by waves crossing from a grid of one resolution to another. Finally, solutions to test problems in 1-, 2-, and 3-dimensions in both Cartesian and spherical coordinates are presented.Comment: 52 pages, 17 figures; Accepted for publication in ApJ

The effectiveness of heart failure disease management: Initial findings from a comprehensive program

A prevalent, chronic condition among members of the mushrooming elderly population in the United States, heart failure (HF) is a logical focus for population-based disease management. Evidence supporting the premise that multidisciplinary interventions can significantly improve clinical outcomes while decreasing the cost of medical care for people with HF is steadily mounting. A growing number of controlled and observational studies focus on the effects of HF disease management on re-admission rates, length of stay, and improvement in appropriate diagnostic testing and prescribing. This paper describes a large-scale, comprehensive HF program and reports on clinical quality, utilization, and financial outcomes observed after 1 year. The preliminary findings strengthen the case for comprehensive HF disease management as an effective means for improving clinical outcomes and reducing total medical costs for large patient populations

Evaluation of a comprehensive diabetes disease management program: Progress in the struggle for sustained behavior change

The successful management of diabetes with a goal of achieving near-normoglycemia requires patients to make multiple lifestyle changes as part of an intensive, complex, and coordinated therapeutic regimen aimed at reducing the risk of complications associated with the disease. The difficulty in creating and sustaining these lifestyle behavior changes is a major stumbling block in achieving the desired therapeutic goal. An underlying assumption of comprehensive disease management is that regular, personal contact with nurses and ancillary health professionals will facilitate these lifestyle behavior changes for program participants. The results of a survey of self-reported data from 750 participants in a comprehensive diabetes management program, reported on here, show strong perceptions of positive behavior change over the broad range of medical and lifestyle treatment areas associated with effective management of diabetes. These results suggest that diabetes disease management programs are an effective approach to helping diabetic patients accomplish the lifestyle behaviors critical to their health

Ticket Fare Optimization for China’s High-Speed Railway Based on Passenger Choice Behavior

Although China’s high-speed railway (HSR) is maturing after more than ten years of construction and development, the load factor and revenue of HSR could still be improved by optimizing the ticket fare structure. Different from the present unitary and changeless fare structure, this paper explores the application of multigrade fares to China’s HSR. On the premise that only one fare grade can be offered for each origin-destination (O-D) at the same time, this paper addresses the questions of how to adjust ticket price over time to maximize the revenue. First, on the basis of piecewise pricing strategy, a ticket fare optimization model is built, which could be transformed to convex program to be solved. Then, based on the analysis of passenger arrival regularity using historical ticket data of Beijing-Shanghai HSR line, several experiments are performed using the method proposed in the paper to explore the properties of the optimal multigrade fare scheme

Nod1 signaling overcomes resistance of S. pneumoniae to opsonophagocytic killing

Airway infection by the Gram-positive pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae (Sp) leads to recruitment of neutrophils but limited bacterial killing by these cells. Co-colonization by Sp and a Gram-negative species, Haemophilus influenzae (Hi), provides sufficient stimulus to induce neutrophil and complement-mediated clearance of Sp from the mucosal surface in a murine model. Products from Hi, but not Sp, also promote killing of Sp by ex vivo neutrophil-enriched peritoneal exudate cells. Here we identify the stimulus from Hi as its peptidoglycan. Enhancement of opsonophagocytic killing was facilitated by signaling through nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-1 (Nod1), which is involved in recognition of γ-D-glutamyl-meso-diaminopimelic acid (meso-DAP) contained in cell walls of Hi but not Sp. Neutrophils from mice treated with Hi or compounds containing meso-DAP, including synthetic peptidoglycan fragments, showed increased Sp killing in a Nod1-dependent manner. Moreover, Nod1-/- mice showed reduced Hi-induced clearance of Sp during co-colonization. These observations offer insight into mechanisms of microbial competition and demonstrate the importance of Nod1 in neutrophil-mediated clearance of bacteria in vivo

Compartmentalized megakaryocyte death generates functional platelets committed to caspase-independent death

Caspase-directed apoptosis usually fragments cells, releasing nonfunctional, prothrombogenic, membrane-bound apoptotic bodies marked for rapid engulfment by macrophages. Blood platelets are functional anucleate cells generated by specialized fragmentation of their progenitors, megakaryocytes (MKs), but committed to a constitutive caspase-independent death. Constitutive formation of the proplatelet-bearing MK was recently reported to be caspase-dependent, apparently involving mitochondrial release of cytochrome c, a known pro-apoptogenic factor. We extend those studies and report that activation of caspases in MKs, either constitutively or after Fas ligation, yields platelets that are functionally responsive and evade immediate phagocytic clearance, and retain mitochondrial transmembrane potential until constitutive platelet death ensues. Furthermore, the exclusion from the platelet progeny of caspase-9 present in the progenitor accounts for failure of mitochondrial release of cytochrome c to activate caspase-3 during platelet death. Thus, progenitor cell death by apoptosis can result in birth of multiple functional anucleate daughter cells