A longitudinal follow-up study of a type 2 diabetes “lost to follow-up” cohort–positive effect on glycaemic control after changes in medication

The aim of this study was to evaluate whether patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) who had stopped attending their diabetes treatment system (referred to as “lost to follow-up”, LTF) but who succeeded in improving their glycaemic control after returning to the diabetes treatment system had changes in their diabetes medication when compared with similar patients who did not show improvement. “LTFs” who had baseline haemoglobin A1 c (HbA1 c) ≥53 mmol/mol and succeeded in reducing HbA1 c ≥ 6 mmol/mol during a 12–30 month follow-up period after adhering again to their diabetes treatment system were compared with “LTFs” who had an unsatisfactory change in HbA1 c or with “LTFs” who maintained good glycaemic control throughout the 12–30 month follow-up period. Unsatisfactory change in HbA1 c was determined as HbA1 c ≥ 53 mmol/mol and change <6 mmol/mol after the 12–30 month follow-up period in their diabetes treatment system or HbA1 c < 53 mmol/mol when returning to the diabetes treatment system but ≥53 mmol/mol at the end of the 12–30 month follow-up period. “LTFs” with improvement in glycaemic control used a higher number of different anti-hyperglycaemic agents (P < 0.001) and their dosages of metformin increased (P < 0.05) when compared with “LTFs” without improvement or “LTFs” with satisfactory glycaemic control. Cholesterol-, LDL-cholesterol- and triglyceride-concentrations decreased during the 12–30 month follow-up period (P < 0.05) in “LTFs” with improved glycaemic control, but not in the other groups. “LTFs” with T2D who had poor glycaemic control seemed to require an increase in their anti-diabetic medication when attempting to improve their glycaemic control. © 2020, © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.Peer reviewe

Effects of nonorthogonality in the time-dependent current through tunnel junctions

A theoretical technique which allows to include contributions from non-orthogonality of the electron states in the leads connected to a tunneling junction is derived. The theory is applied to a single barrier tunneling structure and a simple expression for the time-dependent tunneling current is derived showing explicit dependence of the overlap. The overlap proves to be necessary for a better quantitative description of the tunneling current, and our theory reproduces experimental results substantially better compared to standard approaches.Comment: 4 pages, 1 table, 1 figur

New angles on top quark decay to a charged Higgs

To properly discover a charged Higgs Boson ($H^\pm$) requires its spin and couplings to be determined. We investigate how to utilize \ttbar spin correlations to analyze the $H^\pm$ couplings in the decay $t\to bH^+\to b\tau^+\nu_\tau$. Within the framework of a general Two-Higgs-Doublet Model, we obtain results on the spin analyzing coefficients for this decay and study in detail its spin phenomenology, focusing on the limits of large and small values for $\tan\beta$. Using a Monte Carlo approach to simulate full hadron-level events, we evaluate systematically how the $H^\pm\to\tau^\pm\nu_\tau$ decay mode can be used for spin analysis. The most promising observables are obtained from azimuthal angle correlations in the transverse rest frames of $t(\bar{t})$. This method is particularly useful for determining the coupling structure of $H^\pm$ in the large $\tan\beta$ limit, where differences from the SM are most significant.Comment: 28 pages, 13 figures. Uses JHEP forma

Atmospheric Heating and Wind Acceleration: Results for Cool Evolved Stars based on Proposed Processes

A chromosphere is a universal attribute of stars of spectral type later than ~F5. Evolved (K and M) giants and supergiants (including the zeta Aurigae binaries) show extended and highly turbulent chromospheres, which develop into slow massive winds. The associated continuous mass loss has a significant impact on stellar evolution, and thence on the chemical evolution of galaxies. Yet despite the fundamental importance of those winds in astrophysics, the question of their origin(s) remains unsolved. What sources heat a chromosphere? What is the role of the chromosphere in the formation of stellar winds? This chapter provides a review of the observational requirements and theoretical approaches for modeling chromospheric heating and the acceleration of winds in single cool, evolved stars and in eclipsing binary stars, including physical models that have recently been proposed. It describes the successes that have been achieved so far by invoking acoustic and MHD waves to provide a physical description of plasma heating and wind acceleration, and discusses the challenges that still remain.Comment: 46 pages, 9 figures, 1 table; modified and unedited manuscript; accepted version to appear in: Giants of Eclipse, eds. E. Griffin and T. Ake (Berlin: Springer

Acceptance of near-natural greenspace management relates to ecological and socio-cultural assigned values among European urbanites

Grasslands are widespread elements of urban greenspace providing recreational, psychological and aesthetic benefits to city residents. Two urban grassland types of contrasting management dominate urban greenspaces: frequently mown, species-poor short-cut lawns and less intensively managed, near-natural tall-grass meadows. The higher conservation value of tall-grass meadows makes management interventions such as converting short-cut lawns into tall-grass meadows a promising tool for urban biodiversity conservation. The societal success of such interventions, however, depends on identifying the values urban residents assign to different types of urban grasslands, and how these values translate to attitudes towards greenspace management. Using 2027 questionnaires across 19 European cities, we identify the assigned values that correlate with people's personal greenspace use and their preferences for different types of urban grasslands to determine how these values relate to the agreement with a scenario of converting 50 of their cities� short-cut lawns into tall-grass meadows. We found that most people assigned nature-related values, such as wildness, to tall-grass meadows and utility-related values, such as recreation, to short-cut lawns. Positive value associations of wildness and species richness with tall-grass meadows, and social and nature-related greenspace activities, positively correlated with agreeing to convert short-cut lawns into tall-grass meadows. Conversely, disapproval of lawn conversion correlated with positive value associations of cleanliness and recreation potential with short-cut lawns. Here, people using greenspaces for nature-related activities were outstandingly positive about lawn conversion. The results show that the plurality of values assigned to different types of urban grasslands should be considered in urban greenspace planning. For example, tall-grass meadows could be managed to also accommodate the values associated with short-cut lawns, such as tidiness and recreation potential, to support their societal acceptance

Process Simulation and Control Optimization of a Blast Furnace Using Classical Thermodynamics Combined to a Direct Search Algorithm

Several numerical approaches have been proposed in the literature to simulate the behavior of modern blast furnaces: finite volume methods, data-mining models, heat and mass balance models, and classical thermodynamic simulations. Despite this, there is actually no efficient method for evaluating quickly optimal operating parameters of a blast furnace as a function of the iron ore composition, which takes into account all potential chemical reactions that could occur in the system. In the current study, we propose a global simulation strategy of a blast furnace, the 5-unit process simulation. It is based on classical thermodynamic calculations coupled to a direct search algorithm to optimize process parameters. These parameters include the minimum required metallurgical coke consumption as well as the optimal blast chemical composition and the total charge that simultaneously satisfy the overall heat and mass balances of the system. Moreover, a Gibbs free energy function for metallurgical coke is parameterized in the current study and used to fine-tune the simulation of the blast furnace. Optimal operating conditions and predicted output stream properties calculated by the proposed thermodynamic simulation strategy are compared with reference data found in the literature and have proven the validity and high precision of this simulation

Combining biodiversity resurveys across regions to advance global change research

More and more ecologists have started to resurvey communities sampled in earlier decades to determine long-term shifts in community composition and infer the likely drivers of the ecological changes observed. However, to assess the relative importance of and interactions among multiple drivers, joint analyses of resurvey data from many regions spanning large environmental gradients are needed. In this article, we illustrate how combining resurvey data from multiple regions can increase the likelihood of driver orthogonality within the design and show that repeatedly surveying across multiple regions provides higher representativeness and comprehensiveness, allowing us to answer more completely a broader range of questions. We provide general guidelines to aid the implementation of multiregion resurvey databases. In so doing, we aim to encourage resurvey database development across other community types and biomes to advance global environmental change research

Oralism: a sign of the times? The contest for deaf communication in education provision in late nineteenth-century Scotland

Disability history is a diverse field. In focussing upon children within deaf education in late nineteenth-century Scotland, this essay reflects some of that diversity. In 1880, the International Congress on the Education of the Deaf in Milan stipulated that speech should have ‘preference’ over signs in the education of deaf children. The mode of achieving this, however, effectively banned sign language. Endeavours to teach deaf children to articulate were not new, but this decision placed pressures on deaf institutions to favour the oral system of deaf communication over other methods. In Scotland efforts were made to adopt oralism, and yet educators were faced with the reality that this was not good educational practice for most pupils. This article will consider responses of Scottish educators of deaf children from the 1870s until the beginning of the twentieth century

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results