6,468 research outputs found
Traditional versus Heterodox Motives for Academic Patenting: Evidence from the Netherlands
International audienceThis paper examines what motivates university researchers to patent the results of collaborative research with business firms. We provide evidence of the existence of a motivational academic patenting space comprised of: i) an industry-driven domain related to traditional-market motives (protection of inventions that will be commercialized); ii) a university-driven domain driven by various ('heterodox') motives related mostly to signalling specific research competences; iii) a 'hybrid' publicly-driven domain related to projects aligned to the research agendas of public sponsors. These three types of motivations reflect the connections between academic patenting and different types of innovation, and the roles of industry partners in proposing, financing and performing specific research projects. We use data from 16 in depth case studies of innovations developed by Dutch universities to provide preliminary empirical evidence of this typology of motivational spaces for patenting university knowledge
Determining Sneutrino Masses and Physical Implications
In some areas of supersymmetry parameter space, sneutrinos are lighter than
the charginos and the next-to-lightest neutralino, and they decay into the
invisible neutrino plus lightest-neutralino channel with probability one. In
such a scenario they can be searched for in decays of charginos that are
pair-produced in e+e- collisions, and in associated sneutrino-chargino
production in photon-electron collisions. The sneutrino properties can be
determined with high accuracy from the edges of the decay energy spectra in the
first case and from threshold scans in the second. In the final part of the
report we investigate the mass difference of sneutrinos and charged sleptons
between the third and the first two generations in seesaw-type models of the
neutrino/sneutrino sector. For a wide range these mass differences are
sensitive to the seesaw scale.Comment: 20 p
Radiative decay Z_H-> \gamma A_H in the little Higgs model with T-parity
In the little Higgs model with T-parity (LHTM), the only tree-level
kinematically allowed two-body decay of the Z_H boson is Z_H-> A_H H and thus
one-loop induced two-body decays may have a significant rate. We study the
Z_H-> \gamma A_H decay, which is induced at the one-loop level by a fermion
triangle and is interesting as it depends on the mechanism of anomaly
cancellation of the model. All the relevant two- and three-body decays of the
Z_H gauge boson arising at the tree-level are also calculated. We consider a
small region of the parameter space where the scale of the symmetry breaking f
is still allowed to be as low as 500 GeV by electroweak precision data. We
first analyze the scenario of a Higgs boson with a mass of 120 GeV. We found
that the Z_H->\gamma A_H branching ratio can be of the order of a tree-level
three-body decay and may be at the reach of detection at the LHC for f close to
500 GeV, but it may be difficult to detect for f=1 TeV. There is also an
scenario where the Higgs boson has an intermediate mass such that the Z_H-> A_H
H decay is closed, the Z_H-> \gamma A_H gets considerably enhanced and the
chances of detection get a large boost.Comment: 19 pages, 9 figures, 2 table
Bloqueio Aurículo-Ventricular Completo Congénito. Caso Clínico e Revisão da Literatura
Introduction: Congenital complete atrioventricular block (AVB) without cardiac malformation is a rare and potentially fatal condition. In most cases it is associated with maternal systemic lupus erythematosus through transplacental passage of antibodies anti-SSA/Ro and/or anti-SSB/La. Antenatal fluorinated-steroids have been successful in reversing first and second degree congenital AVB but inconsistent in third degree block.
Case Report:The authors report a case of fetal bradycardia diagnosed at 24 weeks of gestation. The fetal echocardiogram revealed a second/third degree AVB without structural heart disease. Maternal anti-SSA/Ro antibodies were detected. There was no blockage improvement with maternal oral fluorinated-steroids. An elective cesarean section was performed at term with the delivery of a healthy girl that required an epicardical pacemaker on the 8th day of life.
Conclusion: In this case, treatment with maternal fluorinated corticosteroids was not effective in preventing progression of the heart block
Interaction of paraoxonase-192 polymorphism with low HDL-cholesterol in coronary artery disease risk.
A doença coronária (DC) é a principal causa
de mortalidade nos países desenvolvidos. O
aumento da peroxidação lipídica está associado
com a progressão acelerada da arteriosclerose.
A Paraoxonase (PON1) é uma
enzima antioxidante, que protege contra a
peroxidação lipídica e a DC. A actividade
da PON1 está sob controlo genético e a sua
base molecular consiste num polimorfismo
do gene da PON1 que apresenta duas isoformas
comuns: a forma nativa, Q (192 Gln)
com elevada capacidade de protecção das
LDL da peroxidação lipídica in vitro, e a
isoforma mutada R (192 Arg) com baixa
capacidade de protecção.
Objectivo: O objectivo deste trabalho foi
investigar a interacção entre o alelo R do
gene da PON 1 e os níveis plasmáticos
baixos de colesterol HDL, no risco do
aparecimento da DC.
Métodos: Participaram no estudo 818 indivíduos,
298 doentes coronários com idade
média 55.0±10.3 anos, 78.9% do sexo masculino,
e 520 controlos, com uma idade
média de 53.3±11, 7 anos, 72, 5% do sexo
masculino, tendo casos e controlos sido
emparelhados por idade e sexo. Foi considerado
um valor <de 40 mg/dl (0,90
mmol/L), nos homens e <de 50 mg/dl (1,11
mmol/L), nas mulheres como um nível baixo
de Colesterol HDL. As comparações
genotípicas, entre casos e controlos, foram efectuadas pelo teste do Chi-quadrado. A
significância estatística foi aceite para valores
de p <0,05. Para determinar o risco
relativo de DC, em relação ao genótipo RR
e aos níveis baixos de colesterol HDL, foi
usada uma análise univariada e foram utilizadas
as tabelas epidemiológicas 4x2 e
medidas de sinergismo (modelo aditivo - SI
e multiplicativo - SIM) para determinar a
interacção entre o genótipo RR e os níveis
baixos de colesterol HDL. Foi finalmente
calculado o excesso de risco relativo (RERI)
e proporção atribuída à interacção (AP).
Resultados: A PON 1 192 RR está associada
à DC [OR=1,61; p=0,043] para toda a população.
A associação de níveis baixos de
HDL com o genótipo 192 RR mostrou um
aumento do risco de DC (OR=17,38; p
<0,0001) comparada aos níveis normais de
HDL associados ao mesmo genótipo
(OR=1,39; p=0,348) e aos níveis baixos de
HDL sem o genótipo RR (OR=7,79; p
<0,0001). Índices de Sinergismo: SI= 2,3;
SIM = 1.6; RERI=9,2; AP=0,53.
Conclusão: Estes dados sugerem a existência
de um efeito sinérgico entre o genótipo
192 RR da PON1 e os valores baixos de
colesterol HDL, na emergência de DC, pois
este genótipo aumentou o risco de DC, em
especial, na população com níveis plasmáticos
baixos de colesterol HDL. A proporção
de DC que pode ser atribuída a esta interacção
(AP) foi de 0,53 significando que
53% da DC que surgiu nestes indivíduos,
foi explicada por esta interacção.INTRODUCTION:
Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the main cause of mortality in developed countries. Increased lipid peroxidation is associated with accelerated progression of atherosclerosis. Paraoxonase (PON1) is an antioxidant enzyme bound to high-density lipoprotein (HDL), which protects against lipid peroxidation and coronary artery disease. PON1 activity is under genetic control and its molecular basis is a polymorphism in the PON1 gene that shows two common isoforms: the wild Q form (192 Gln) with high ability to protect LDL from lipid peroxidation in vitro, and the mutated R (Arg) form with lower ability.
AIM:
To explore the interaction of the R allele of the paraoxonase gene and low HDL-cholesterol concentrations in CAD risk.
METHODS:
The study population consisted of 818 individuals, 298 coronary patients, aged 55.0 +/- 10.3 years, 78.9% male, and 520 age and gender matched healthy controls, aged 53.3 +/- 11.7 years, 72.5% male. Low HDL-cholesterol was defined as < 0.90 mmol/l in men and < 1.11 mmol/l in women. Comparisons of genotypes between cases and controls were performed by a chi-square test. Statistical significance was accepted at p < 0.05. Odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for the RR genotypes and HDL-deficient subjects were computed using univariate analysis (2 x 2 tables). To determine the interaction between the RR paraoxonase genotype and HDL-deficient subjects, we used 4 x 2 epidemiologic tables and synergy measures: the additive model (Rothman's synergy index, SI) and multiplicative model (Khoury's synergy index, SIM). The relative excess risk due to interaction (RERI) and the attributable proportion (AP) due to interaction (Rothman) were calculated.
RESULTS:
The PON1 RR192 polymorphism was associated with coronary heart disease (OR = 1.61; p = 0.043) in the whole population. HDL-deficient subjects with the RR192 genotype showed increased risk for CAD (OR = 17.38; p < 0.0001) compared to those with normal HDL and RR192 (OR = 1.39; p = 0.348) and HDL-deficient subjects not carrying the RR genotype (OR = 7.79; p < 0.0001). Synergy measures were SI = 2.3, SIM = 1.6; RERI = 9.2.
CONCLUSION:
These data suggest the existence of a synergistic effect of the PON1 RR192 genotype (with lower antioxidant ability) and HDL-deficient subjects in risk for development of CAD. The AP due to this interaction was 0.53, meaning that 53% of CAD was explained by this interaction.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
A text mining approach for the extraction of kinetic information from literature
Systems biology has fostered interest in the use of kinetic models to better understand the dynamic behavior of metabolic networks in a wide variety of conditions. Unfortunately, in most cases, data available in different databases are not sufficient for the development of such models, since a significant part of the relevant information is still scattered in the literature. Thus, it becomes essential to develop specific and powerful text mining tools towards this aim.
In this context, this work has as main objective the development of a text mining tool to extract, from scientific literature, kinetic parameters, their respective values and their relations with enzymes and metabolites. The pipeline proposed integrates the development of a novel plug-in over the text mining tool @Note2. Overall, the results validate the developed approach
In situ assessment of the normal incidence sound absorption coefficient of asphalt mixtures with a new impedance tube
Normal incidence sound absorption coefficient of materials is usually calculated with the use
of an impedance tube following the ISO 10534-2 international standard. The same is applied
in the evaluation of the sound absorption characteristics of pavement mixtures. In this
research an impedance tube which was specifically designed to be used in field conditions
has been developed. In order test the tube six asphalt slabs were constructed in laboratory
and its sound absorption coefficient measured with the new impedance tube. Then, several
road sections, with different types of surface, among dense asphalt layers and thin layers,
namely with rubberized asphalt were tested. In this paper, some considerations are made
regarding the performance of the new impedance tube and the sound absorption coefficient
of each asphalt mixtures.(undefined
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