Design, fabrication and preliminary uncertainty analysis of a primary humidity measurement standard

This thesis describes the design and implementation of a new primary humidity standard in the National Metrology Laboratory of Ireland. In this thesis the basic principles of humidity metrology and primary dew point generation are explained. A number of existing designs of primary humidity standards are discussed. Useful equations relating to humidity metrology and particularly humidity generation as a primary measurement standard are given and in some cases derived. Several new designs of the components of a primary humidity standard are proposed and the benefits of each design is compared based on theory, cost of fabrication and simulations using computational fluid dynamics. From this comparison the individual components are chosen, and the complete design is given. A new type of corrosion resistant plating that has previously not been used with other primary dew point generators was chosen and its merits are discussed. The design was fabricated, and a number of modifications were made in order to improve the performance of the generator based on initial testing of the system. Finally, a preliminary uncertainty budget was developed for the calibration of chilled mirror hygrometers using the new primary humidity standard. This uncertainty budget covers the range from -40 °C frost point (fp) to 90 °C dew point (dp) and gives an uncertainty of ±0.060 °C fp at -40 °C fp and ±0.038 °C dp at 90 °C dp both with a coverage interval of 95 %. A calibration of a chilled mirror hygrometer was performed, and the results are compared to the calibration results obtained at an external metrology laboratory. The results obtained at NML were found to agree with the external laboratory to within ±0.009 °C dew/frost point. Future work involving the generator is outlined

Perceptions and experiences of community-based healthcare professionals in the state of Qatar having do not attempt resuscitation discussions during the COVID-19 pandemic : Corrigendum

© 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/In the published article, there was an error in the Ethics statement. The correct Ethics statement appears below. The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Medical Research Committee, Hamad Medical Corporation (MRC-01-20-433). Documentation of informed consent was waived by the HMC-IRB as per institutional and local requirements. The authors apologize for this error and state that this does not change the scientific conclusions of the article in any way. The original article has been updated.Peer reviewe

Perceptions and experiences of community-based healthcare professionals in the state of Qatar having do not attempt resuscitation discussions during the COVID-19 pandemic

© 2023 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Introduction: The values and attitudes of healthcare professionals influence their handling of “do-not-attempt-resuscitation” (DNAR) orders, as does that of the families they interact with. The aim of this study was to describe attitudes, perceptions, and practices among community-based medical practitioners towards discussing cardiopulmonary resuscitation and DNAR orders with patients and their relatives, and to investigate if the COVID-19 pandemic affected their practice in having these discussions. Methods: This is a researcher-developed online survey-based study which aimed to recruit a convenience sample of respondents from a total population of 106 healthcare professionals working for the Mobile Healthcare Service (MHS), Hamad Medical Corporation Ambulance Service in the State of Qatar. Results: 33 family physicians, 38 nurses, and 20 paramedics (n = 91) responded to the questionnaire, of who around 40, 8, and 50%, respectively, had engaged in Do Not Attempt Resuscitation discussions during their work with MHS. 15% of physicians who had experience with Do Not Attempt Resuscitation discussions in Qatar felt that the family or patient were not open to having such discussions. 90% of paramedics thought that Do Not Attempt Resuscitation was a taboo topic for their patients in Qatar, and this view was shared by 75% of physicians and 50% of nurses. Per the responses, the COVID-19 pandemic had not affected the likelihood of most of the physicians or nurses (and 50% of the paramedics) identifying patients with whom having a Do Not Attempt Resuscitation discussion would be clinically appropriate. Discussion: Overall, for all three groups, the COVID-19 pandemic did not affect the likelihood of identifying patients with whom a Do Not Attempt Resuscitation discussion would be clinically appropriate. We found that the greatest barriers in having Do Not Attempt Resuscitation discussions were perceived to be the religious or cultural beliefs of the patient and/or their family, along with the factor of feeling the staff member did not know the patient or their family well enough. All three groups said they would be more likely to have a conversation about Do Not Attempt Resuscitation if barriers were addressed.Peer reviewe

Biomarkers predictive of treatment response in psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis: a systematic review.

AimsThe ability to predict response to treatment remains a key unmet need in psoriatic disease. We conducted a systematic review of studies relating to biomarkers associated with response to treatment in either psoriasis vulgaris (PsV) or psoriatic arthritis (PsA).MethodsA search was conducted in PubMed, Embase and the Cochrane library from their inception to 2 September 2020, and conference proceedings from four major rheumatology conferences. Original research articles studying pre-treatment biomarker levels associated with subsequent response to pharmacologic treatment in either PsV or PsA were included.ResultsA total of 765 articles were retrieved and after review, 44 articles (22 relating to PsV and 22 to PsA) met the systematic review's eligibility criteria. One study examined the response to methotrexate, one the response to tofacitinib and all the other studies to biologic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs). Whilst several studies examined the HLA-C*06 allele in PsV, the results were conflicting. Interleukin (IL)-12 serum levels and polymorphisms in the IL-12B gene show promise as biomarkers of treatment response in PsV. Most, but not all, studies found that higher baseline levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) were associated with a better clinical response to treatment in patients with PsA.ConclusionSeveral studies have identified biomarkers associated with subsequent response to treatment in psoriatic disease. However, due to the different types of biomarkers, treatments and outcome measures used, firm conclusions cannot be drawn. Further validation is needed before any of these biomarkers translate to clinical practice

Biomarkers predictive of treatment response in psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis: a systematic review.

AIMS: The ability to predict response to treatment remains a key unmet need in psoriatic disease. We conducted a systematic review of studies relating to biomarkers associated with response to treatment in either psoriasis vulgaris (PsV) or psoriatic arthritis (PsA). METHODS: A search was conducted in PubMed, Embase and the Cochrane library from their inception to 2 September 2020, and conference proceedings from four major rheumatology conferences. Original research articles studying pre-treatment biomarker levels associated with subsequent response to pharmacologic treatment in either PsV or PsA were included. RESULTS: A total of 765 articles were retrieved and after review, 44 articles (22 relating to PsV and 22 to PsA) met the systematic review's eligibility criteria. One study examined the response to methotrexate, one the response to tofacitinib and all the other studies to biologic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs). Whilst several studies examined the HLA-C*06 allele in PsV, the results were conflicting. Interleukin (IL)-12 serum levels and polymorphisms in the IL-12B gene show promise as biomarkers of treatment response in PsV. Most, but not all, studies found that higher baseline levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) were associated with a better clinical response to treatment in patients with PsA. CONCLUSION: Several studies have identified biomarkers associated with subsequent response to treatment in psoriatic disease. However, due to the different types of biomarkers, treatments and outcome measures used, firm conclusions cannot be drawn. Further validation is needed before any of these biomarkers translate to clinical practice

Evolution of Heterogeneous Cellular Automata in Fluctuating Environments

The importance of environmental fluctuations in the evolution of living organisms by natural selection has been widely noted by biologists and linked to many important characteristics of life such as modularity, plasticity, genotype size, mutation rate, learning, or epigenetic adaptations. In artificial-life simulations, however, environmental fluctuations are usually seen as a nuisance rather than an essential characteristic of evolution. HetCA is a heterogeneous cellular automata characterized by its ability to generate open-ended long-term evolution and “evolutionary progress”. In this paper, we propose to measure the impact of different types of environmental fluctuations in HetCA. Our results indicate that environmental changes induce mechanisms analogous to epigenetic adaptation or multilevel selection. This is particularly prevalent in two of the tested fluctuation schemes, which involve a round-robin inhibition of certain cell types, where phenotypic selection seems to occur.Funding for this work was provided by the Science Foundation Ireland and the ERC Advanced Grant EPNet #340828. Some of the simulations were run on the MareNostrum supercomputer of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.Postprint (author's final draft

A New Wave: A Dynamic Approach to Genetic Programming

Wave is a novel form of semantic genetic programming which operates by optimising the residual errors of a succession of short genetic programming runs, and then producing a cumulative solution. These short genetic programming runs are called periods, and they have heterogeneous parameters. In this paper we leverage the potential of Wave's heterogeneity to simulate a dynamic evolutionary environment by incorporating self adaptive parameters together with an innovative approach to population renewal. We conduct an empirical study comparing this new approach with multiple linear regression~(MLR) as well as several evolutionary computation~(EC) methods including the well known geometric semantic genetic programming~(GSGP) together with several other optimised Wave techniques. The results of our investigation show that the dynamic Wave algorithm delivers consistently equal or better performance than Standard GP (both with or without linear scaling), achieves testing fitness equal or better than multiple linear regression, and performs significantly better than GSGP on five of the six problems studied

Perceptions and experiences of community-based healthcare professionals in the state of Qatar having do not attempt resuscitation discussions during the COVID-19 pandemic

IntroductionThe values and attitudes of healthcare professionals influence their handling of “do-not-attempt-resuscitation” (DNAR) orders, as does that of the families they interact with. The aim of this study was to describe attitudes, perceptions, and practices among community-based medical practitioners towards discussing cardiopulmonary resuscitation and DNAR orders with patients and their relatives, and to investigate if the COVID-19 pandemic affected their practice in having these discussions.MethodsThis is a researcher-developed online survey-based study which aimed to recruit a convenience sample of respondents from a total population of 106 healthcare professionals working for the Mobile Healthcare Service (MHS), Hamad Medical Corporation Ambulance Service in the State of Qatar.Results33 family physicians, 38 nurses, and 20 paramedics (n = 91) responded to the questionnaire, of who around 40, 8, and 50%, respectively, had engaged in Do Not Attempt Resuscitation discussions during their work with MHS. 15% of physicians who had experience with Do Not Attempt Resuscitation discussions in Qatar felt that the family or patient were not open to having such discussions. 90% of paramedics thought that Do Not Attempt Resuscitation was a taboo topic for their patients in Qatar, and this view was shared by 75% of physicians and 50% of nurses. Per the responses, the COVID-19 pandemic had not affected the likelihood of most of the physicians or nurses (and 50% of the paramedics) identifying patients with whom having a Do Not Attempt Resuscitation discussion would be clinically appropriate.DiscussionOverall, for all three groups, the COVID-19 pandemic did not affect the likelihood of identifying patients with whom a Do Not Attempt Resuscitation discussion would be clinically appropriate. We found that the greatest barriers in having Do Not Attempt Resuscitation discussions were perceived to be the religious or cultural beliefs of the patient and/or their family, along with the factor of feeling the staff member did not know the patient or their family well enough. All three groups said they would be more likely to have a conversation about Do Not Attempt Resuscitation if barriers were addressed

Climate Change – Refining the Impacts for Ireland: STRIVE Report (2001-CD-C3-M1) ISBN: 978-1-84095-297-1

International Context: As a mid-latitude country Ireland can expect its future temperature changes to mirror quite closely those of the globe as a whole. Best estimates of global temperature change by the end of the present century are currently in the region 1.8–4.0°C1. Regional Context: Weighted Ensemble Downscaling from Global Climate Models Global climate models (GCMs) have greatly improved in reliability and resolution as computing power has increased and better inputs from earth observation have become available. Despite this, they remain too coarse in terms of their grid size to enable climate scenarios at the scale necessary for impact analysis to be achieved. This study employs a statistical downscaling approach to overcome these difficulties and also to provide new information on model uncertainty with a view to reducing uncertainty in key sectors such as water resource management, agriculture and biodiversity