464 research outputs found
Clinical standards for the management of adverse effects during treatment for TB
BACKGROUND: Adverse effects (AE) to TB treatment cause morbidity, mortality and treatment interruption. The aim of these clinical standards is to encourage best practise for the diagnosis and management of AE.METHODS: 65/81 invited experts participated in a Delphi process using a 5-point Likert scale to score draft standards.RESULTS: We identified eight clinical standards. Each person commencing treatment for TB should: Standard 1, be counselled regarding AE before and during treatment; Standard 2, be evaluated for factors that might increase AE risk with regular review to actively identify and manage these; Standard 3, when AE occur, carefully assessed and possible allergic or hypersensitivity reactions considered; Standard 4, receive appropriate care to minimise morbidity and mortality associated with AE; Standard 5, be restarted on TB drugs after a serious AE according to a standardised protocol that includes active drug safety monitoring. In addition: Standard 6, healthcare workers should be trained on AE including how to counsel people undertaking TB treatment, as well as active AE monitoring and management; Standard 7, there should be active AE monitoring and reporting for all new TB drugs and regimens; and Standard 8, knowledge gaps identified from active AE monitoring should be systematically addressed through clinical research.CONCLUSION: These standards provide a person-centred, consensus-based approach to minimise the impact of AE during TB treatment.CONTEXTE : Les effets indĂ©sirables (AE) du traitement de la TB sont une cause de morbiditĂ©, de mortalitĂ© et dâinterruption du traitement. Lâobjectif de ces normes cliniques est dâencourager une meilleure pratique en matiĂšre de diagnostic et de prise en charge des AE. MĂTHODES : Ont participĂ© 65/81 experts invitĂ©s Ă un processus Delphi utilisant une Ă©chelle de Likert en 5 points pour Ă©valuer des Ă©bauches de normes. RĂSULTATS : Nous avons identifiĂ© huit normes cliniques. Chaque personne commençant un traitement antituberculeux devrait : Norme 1, ĂȘtre informĂ©e des AE avant et pendant le traitement ; Norme 2, ĂȘtre Ă©valuĂ©e afin de dĂ©tecter tout facteur susceptible dâaugmenter le risque dâAE et faire lâobjet dâun examen rĂ©gulier afin dâidentifier et de prendre en charge ces facteurs de maniĂšre proactive ; Norme 3, en cas dâAE, ĂȘtre Ă©valuĂ©e avec soin et tenir compte dâĂ©ventuelles rĂ©actions allergiques ou dâhypersensibilitĂ© ; Norme 4, recevoir des soins appropriĂ©s pour minimiser la morbiditĂ© et la mortalitĂ© associĂ©es aux AE ; Norme 5, reprendre les mĂ©dicaments antituberculeux aprĂšs un AE grave selon un protocole standardisĂ© avec une surveillance active de lâinnocuitĂ© des mĂ©dicaments ; Norme 6, les agents de santĂ© doivent ĂȘtre formĂ©s aux AE, y compris Ă la maniĂšre de conseiller les personnes qui suivent un traitement antituberculeux, ainsi quâĂ la surveillance et Ă la prise en charge actives des AE ; Norme 7 : tous les nouveaux mĂ©dicaments et schĂ©mas antituberculeux doivent faire lâobjet dâune surveillance active des AE et dâune notification ; et Norme 8 : les lacunes en matiĂšre de connaissances identifiĂ©es grĂące Ă la surveillance active des AE doivent ĂȘtre systĂ©matiquement comblĂ©es par la recherche clinique. CONCLUSION : Ces normes fournissent une approche centrĂ©e sur la personne et fondĂ©e sur le consensus afin de minimiser lâimpact des AE pendant le traitement de la TB
A preliminary design study of a microparticle accelerator final report, 30 jan. - 13 apr. 1964
Design study for 2MV microparticle accelerato
Reconstructing annual inflows to the headwater catchments of the Murray River, Australia, using the Pacific Decadal Oscillation
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is a major forcing of inter-decadal to quasi-centennial variability of the hydroclimatology of the Pacific Basin. Its effects are most pronounced in the extra-tropical regions, while it modulates the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the largest forcing of global inter-annual climate variability. PalaeoPDO indices are now available for at least the past 500 years. Here we show that the \u3e500 year PDO index of Shen et al. (2006) is highly correlated with inflows to the headwaters of Australia\u27s longest river system, the Murray-Darling. We then use the PDO to reconstruct annual inflows to the Murray River back to A.D. 1474. These show penta-decadal and quasi-centennial cycles of low inflows and a possible 500 year cycle of much greater inflow variability. Superimposed on this is the likely influence of recent anthropogenic global warming. We believe this may explain the exceptionally low inflows of the past decade, the lowest of the previous 529 years
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Costs and Emissions Associated with Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle Charging in the Xcel Energy Colorado Service Territory
The combination of high oil costs, concerns about oil security and availability, and air quality issues related to vehicle emissions are driving interest in plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). PHEVs are similar to conventional hybrid electric vehicles, but feature a larger battery and plug-in charger that allows electricity from the grid to replace a portion of the petroleum-fueled drive energy. PHEVs may derive a substantial fraction of their miles from grid-derived electricity, but without the range restrictions of pure battery electric vehicles. As of early 2007, production of PHEVs is essentially limited to demonstration vehicles and prototypes. However, the technology has received considerable attention from the media, national security interests, environmental organizations, and the electric power industry. The use of PHEVs would represent a significant potential shift in the use of electricity and the operation of electric power systems. Electrification of the transportation sector could increase generation capacity and transmission and distribution (T&D) requirements, especially if vehicles are charged during periods of high demand. This study is designed to evaluate several of these PHEV-charging impacts on utility system operations within the Xcel Energy Colorado service territory
SigurĂ°ar saga fĂłts (The Saga of SigurĂ°r Foot): A Translation
This is the first English translation of the short Icelandic romance SigurĂ°ar saga fĂłts, with an introduction presenting the evidence for its dating and immediate literary context. Like most Icelandic romances, SigurĂ°ar saga is a bridal-quest story; the support of a foster-brother is key to the hero winning the bride; and the foster-brothers start out as opponents before recognising their mutual excellence and swearing foster-brotherhood. Uniquely, however, the men who become foster-brothers begin by competing for the same bride (SignĂœ): the eponymous SigurĂ°r fĂłtr wins SignĂœ only because Ăsmundr gives her to him in exchange for foster-brotherhood. Ăsmundrâs decision can be read as demonstrating with unusual starkness the superior importance in much Icelandic romance of homosocial relationships over heterosexual ones, giving the saga a certain paradigmatic status. Translating the saga in an open-access forum and reconstructing its literary context will, we hope, encourage further analyses
SigurĂ°ar saga fĂłts (The Saga of SigurĂ°r Foot): A Translation
This is the first English translation of the short Icelandic romance SigurĂ°ar saga fĂłts, with an introduction presenting the evidence for its dating and immediate literary context. Like most Icelandic romances, SigurĂ°ar saga is a bridal-quest story; the support of a foster-brother is key to the hero winning the bride; and the foster-brothers start out as opponents before recognising their mutual excellence and swearing foster-brotherhood. Uniquely, however, the men who become foster-brothers begin by competing for the same bride (SignĂœ): the eponymous SigurĂ°r fĂłtr wins SignĂœ only because Ăsmundr gives her to him in exchange for foster-brotherhood. Ăsmundrâs decision can be read as demonstrating with unusual starkness the superior importance in much Icelandic romance of homosocial relationships over heterosexual ones, giving the saga a certain paradigmatic status. Translating the saga in an open-access forum and reconstructing its literary context will, we hope, encourage further analyses
Rapid Artefact Removal and H&E-Stained Tissue Segmentation
We present an innovative method for rapidly segmenting hematoxylin and eosin (H&E)-stained tissue in whole-slide images (WSIs) that eliminates a wide range of undesirable artefacts such as pen marks and scanning artefacts. Our method involves taking a single-channel representation of a lowmagnification RGB overview of the WSI in which the pixel values are bimodally distributed suchthat H&E-stained tissue is easily distinguished from both background and a wide variety of artefacts. We demonstrate our method on 30 WSIs prepared from a wide range of institutions and WSI digital scanners, each containing substantial artefacts, and compare it to segmentations provided by Otsu thresholding and Histolab tissue segmentation and pen filtering tools. We found that our methodsegmented the tissue and fully removed all artefacts in 29 out of 30 WSIs, whereas Otsu thresholding failed to remove any artefacts, and the Histolab pen filtering tools only partially removed the pen marks. The beauty of our approach lies in its simplicity: manipulating RGB colour space and using Otsu thresholding allows for the segmentation of H&E-stained tissue and the rapid removal ofartefacts without the need for machine learning or parameter tuning
Pyrosequencing the transcriptome of the greenhouse whitefly, Trialeurodes vaporariorum reveals multiple transcripts encoding insecticide targets and detoxifying enzymes.
Published onlineJournal ArticleResearch Support, Non-U.S. Gov'tBACKGROUND: The whitefly Trialeurodes vaporariorum is an economically important crop pest in temperate regions that has developed resistance to most classes of insecticides. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying resistance have not been characterised and, to date, progress has been hampered by a lack of nucleotide sequence data for this species. Here, we use pyrosequencing on the Roche 454-FLX platform to produce a substantial and annotated EST dataset. This 'unigene set' will form a critical reference point for quantitation of over-expressed messages via digital transcriptomics. RESULTS: Pyrosequencing produced around a million sequencing reads that assembled into 54,748 contigs, with an average length of 965 bp, representing a dramatic expansion of existing cDNA sequences available for T. vaporariorum (only 43 entries in GenBank at the time of this publication). BLAST searching of non-redundant databases returned 20,333 significant matches and those gene families potentially encoding gene products involved in insecticide resistance were manually curated and annotated. These include, enzymes potentially involved in the detoxification of xenobiotics and those encoding the targets of the major chemical classes of insecticides. A total of 57 P450s, 17 GSTs and 27 CCEs were identified along with 30 contigs encoding the target proteins of six different insecticide classes. CONCLUSION: Here, we have developed new transcriptomic resources for T. vaporariorum. These include a substantial and annotated EST dataset that will serve the community studying this important crop pest and will elucidate further the molecular mechanisms underlying insecticide resistance.CASE PhD studentship BBSRCBayer CropScienceRothamsted Researc
Susceptibility of cat fleas (siphonaptera: Puclicidae) to fipronil and imidacloprid using adult and larval bioassays
© 2014 Entomological Society of America This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits non-commercial reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact [email protected] monitoring of the susceptibility offleas to insecticides has typically been conducted by exposing adults on treated surfaces. Other methods such as topical applications of insecticides to adults and larval bioassays on treated rearing media have been developed. Unfortunately, baseline responses of susceptible strains of cat flea, Ctenocephalides felis (BouchÚ), except for imidacloprid, have not been determined for all on-animal therapies and new classes of chemistry now being used. However, the relationship between adult and larval bioassays of fleas has not been previously investigated. The adult and larval bioassays of fipronil and imidacloprid were compared for both field-collected isolates and laboratory strains. Adult topical bioassays of fipronil and imidacloprid to laboratory strains and field-collected isolates demonstrated that LD50s of fipronil and imidacloprid ranged from 0.11 to 0.40 nanograms per flea and 0.02 to 0.18 nanograms per flea, respectively. Resistance ratios for fipronil and imidacloprid ranged from 0.11 to 2.21. Based on the larval bioassay published for imidacloprid, a larval bioassay was established for fipronil and reported in this article. The ranges of the LC50s of fipronil and imidacloprid in the larval rearing media were 0.07-0.16 and 0.11-0.21 ppm, respectively. Resistance ratios for adult and larval bioassays ranged from 0.11 to 2.2 and 0.58 to 1.75, respectively. Both adult and larval bioassays provided similar patterns for fipronil and imidacloprid. Although the adult bioassays permitted a more precise dosage applied, the larval bioassays allowed for testing isolates without the need to maintain on synthetic or natural hosts.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio
Transgressing the moral economy: Wheelerism and management of the nationalised coal industry in Scotland
This article illuminates the links between managerial style and political economy in post-1945 Britain, and explores the origins of the 1984â1985 miners' strike, by examining in longer historical context the abrasive attitudes and policies of Albert Wheeler, Scottish Area Director of the National Coal Board (NCB). Wheeler built on an earlier emphasis on production and economic criteria, and his micro-management reflected pre-existing centralising tendencies in the industries. But he was innovative in one crucial aspect, transgressing the moral economy of the Scottish coalfield, which emphasised the value of economic security and changes by joint industrial agreement
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