Blood pressure-lowering effects of nifedipine/candesartan combinations in high-risk individuals: Subgroup analysis of the DISTINCT randomised trial

The DISTINCT study (reDefining Intervention with Studies Testing Innovative Nifedipine GITS - Candesartan Therapy) investigated the efficacy and safety of nifedipine GITS/candesartan cilexetil combinations vs respective monotherapies and placebo in patients with hypertension. This descriptive sub-analysis examined blood pressure (BP)-lowering effects in high-risk participants, including those with renal impairment (estimated glomerular filtration rate<90 ml min-1, n=422), type 2 diabetes mellitus (n=202), hypercholesterolaemia (n=206) and cardiovascular (CV) risk factors (n=971), as well as the impact of gender, age and body mass index (BMI). Participants with grade I/II hypertension were randomised to treatment with nifedipine GITS (N) 20, 30, 60 mg and/or candesartan cilexetil (C) 4, 8, 16, 32 mg or placebo for 8 weeks. Mean systolic BP and diastolic BP reductions after treatment in high-risk participants were greater, overall, with N/C combinations vs respective monotherapies or placebo, with indicators of a dose-response effect. Highest rates of BP control (ESH/ESC 2013 guideline criteria) were also achieved with highest doses of N/C combinations in each high-risk subgroup. The benefits of combination therapy vs monotherapy were additionally observed in patient subgroups categorised by gender, age or BMI. All high-risk participants reported fewer vasodilatory adverse events in the pooled N/C combination therapy than the N monotherapy group. In conclusion, consistent with the DISTINCT main study outcomes, high-risk participants showed greater reductions in BP and higher control rates with N/C combinations compared with respective monotherapies and lesser vasodilatory side-effects compared with N monotherapy

The CogBIAS longitudinal study protocol: cognitive and genetic factors influencing psychological functioning in adolescence.

BACKGROUND: Optimal psychological development is dependent upon a complex interplay between individual and situational factors. Investigating the development of these factors in adolescence will help to improve understanding of emotional vulnerability and resilience. The CogBIAS longitudinal study (CogBIAS-L-S) aims to combine cognitive and genetic approaches to investigate risk and protective factors associated with the development of mood and impulsivity-related outcomes in an adolescent sample. METHODS: CogBIAS-L-S is a three-wave longitudinal study of typically developing adolescents conducted over 4 years, with data collection at age 12, 14 and 16. At each wave participants will undergo multiple assessments including a range of selective cognitive processing tasks (e.g. attention bias, interpretation bias, memory bias) and psychological self-report measures (e.g. anxiety, depression, resilience). Saliva samples will also be collected at the baseline assessment for genetic analyses. Multilevel statistical analyses will be performed to investigate the developmental trajectory of cognitive biases on psychological functioning, as well as the influence of genetic moderation on these relationships. DISCUSSION: CogBIAS-L-S represents the first longitudinal study to assess multiple cognitive biases across adolescent development and the largest study of its kind to collect genetic data. It therefore provides a unique opportunity to understand how genes and the environment influence the development and maintenance of cognitive biases and provide insight into risk and protective factors that may be key targets for intervention.This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC grant agreement no: [324176]

Factors determining accumulation of mycotoxin producers in cereal grain during harvesting

During the meteorologically contrasting period of 2003-2005, the contamination of winter wheat, malt barley and fodder barley grain with micromycetes during grain harvesting and preparation for storage was investigated. Micromycetes of over 70 species ascribed to 16 genera were isolated and identifi ed, the density of their populations in grain was determined. Micromycetes with a population density of >50% were attributed to dominant species. Short biological characteristic, ecological peculiarities of the dominating micromycetes are provided; factors determining intensity of their development and abilities to synthesise and excrete toxic metabolites are indicated. The importance of grain drying for stabilisation of its contamination with micromycete propagules is highlighted. It is noted that in grain dried in shaft dryer using air at 90°C the number of cfu (colony forming units) was reduced from 2.2 to 8.2 times. When active ventilation is applied, conditions favourable for the development of micromycetes remain longest in the upper layers of the mound. The airfl ow passing through the layer of damp grain inhibits the development of micromycetes, but an increase of comparative air fl ow for more than 500 m3·(t·h)-1 did not reduce the abundance of micromycete cfu. After drying Alternaria alternata, Fusarium avenaceum, F. culmorum, Penicillum verrucosum dominated in wheat grain; Aspergillus fl avus, Bipolaris sorokiniana, Fusarium chlamydosporum, F. culmorum, F. tricinctum in malts barley grain; Fusarium avenaceum, F. culmorum, F. tricinctum, Alternaria alternata in fodder barley grain. It has been determined that all micromycetes recorded on grain after drying are potential producers of toxic metabolites, i.e. are hazardous to human health

Design and performance of MPEG video streaming to palmtop computers

Today&apos;s wide variety of computing devices oer a large range of resource availability. These resources include CPU speed, bandwidth, and memory. Workstations and PCs typically are rich in resources, whereas palmtop devices are generally quite limited. This disparity oers challenges to integrating these heterogeneous devices into a single distributed system. Services must be available to each device, but it may be necessary to modify certain services if the connected device does not have the required resources to support them. Proxies may be introduced into the system to o-load computations that would preclude certain services to resource-deprived devices. We have implemented one such proxy that enables the viewing of live MPEG video on the 3Com PalmPilot. The proxy is able to transform the video feed on-the-y, removing extraneous information, thereby reducing CPU and memory requirements and allowing palm devices to participate in video sessions. This paper discusses the design and p..

Virtual Hardware for Operating Systems Development

Developing an operating system on bare hardware is difficult due to an inhospitable development environment, long edit-compile-run-debug times, and the need for extra target hardware. This paper contributes general techniques for creating virtual hardware for operating systems development. The virtual machine is realized on top of UNIX and is a close approximation of real hardware, including interrupts, time slicing, virtual memory, devices, multiple processors with separately programmable memory management units, and the ability to run application programs natively. Debugging and testing our operating system in such an environment was considerably quicker and easier compared to developing on bare hardware. 1 Introduction Developing operating systems is difficult on bare hardware. There is a paucity of tools for run time and post mortem debugging, as well as execution profiling. Rapid prototyping requires quick edit-compilerun -debug cycles. Fast turnarounds are a problem when machin..