481 research outputs found
Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of daily all-over-body application of emollient during the first year of life for preventing atopic eczema in high-risk children (The BEEP trial): protocol for a randomised controlled trial.
BACKGROUND: Atopic eczema (AE) is a common skin problem that impairs quality of life and is associated with the development of other atopic diseases including asthma, food allergy and allergic rhinitis. AE treatment is a significant cost burden for health care providers. The purpose of the trial is to investigate whether daily application of emollients for the first year of life can prevent AE developing in high-risk infants (first-degree relative with asthma, AE or allergic rhinitis). METHODS: This is a protocol for a pragmatic, two-arm, randomised controlled, multicentre trial. Up to 1400 term infants at high risk of developing AE will be recruited through the community, primary and secondary care in England. Participating families will be randomised in a 1:1 ratio to receive general infant skin-care advice, or general skin-care advice plus emollients with advice to apply daily to the infant for the first year of life. Families will not be blinded to treatment allocation. The primary outcome will be a blinded assessment of AE at 24Â months of age using the UK Working Party Diagnostic Criteria for Atopic Eczema. Secondary outcomes are other definitions of AE, time to AE onset, severity of AE (EASI and POEM), presence of other allergic diseases including food allergy, asthma and hay fever, allergic sensitisation, quality of life, cost-effectiveness and safety of the emollients. Subgroup analyses are planned for the primary outcome according to filaggrin genotype and the number of first-degree relatives with AE and other atopic diseases. Families will be followed up by online and postal questionnaire at 3, 6, 12 and 18Â months with a face-to-face visit at 24Â months. Long-term follow-up until 60Â months will be via annual questionnaires. DISCUSSION: This trial will demonstrate whether skin-barrier enhancement through daily emollient for the first year of life can prevent AE from developing in high-risk infants. If effective, this simple and cheap intervention has the potential to result in significant cost savings for health care providers throughout the world by preventing AE and possibly other associated allergic diseases. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN registry; ID: ISRCTN21528841 . Registered on 25 July 2014
The TeraGyroid Experiment
The TeraGyroid experiment at SC 03 addressed a large-scale problem of genuine scientific interest at the same time as showing how intercontinental grids enable new paradigms for collaborative computational science that can dramatically reduce the time to insight. TeraGyroid used computational steering to accelerate the exploration of parameter space in condensed matter simulations. The scientific objective was to study the self-assembly, defect pathways and dynamics of liquid crystalline cubic gyroid mesophases using the largest set of lattice-Boltzmann (LB) simulations ever performed, involving in some cases lattices of over one billion sites and for highly extended simulation times. We describe the application in sufficient detail to reveal how it uses the grid to support interactions between its distributed parts, where the interfaces exist between the application and the middleware infrastructure, what grid services and capabilities are used, and why important design decisions were made. We also describe how the resources of highend computing services were federated with the UK e-Science Grid and the US TeraGrid to form the TeraGyroid testbed, and summarise the lessons learned during the experiment
Far-Ultraviolet and Far-Infrared Bivariate Luminosity Function of Galaxies: Complex Relation between Stellar and Dust Emission
Far-ultraviolet (FUV) and far-infrared (FIR) luminosity functions (LFs) of
galaxies show a strong evolution from to , but the FIR LF
evolves much stronger than the FUV one. The FUV is dominantly radiated from
newly formed short-lived OB stars, while the FIR is emitted by dust grains
heated by the FUV radiation field. It is known that dust is always associated
with star formation activity. Thus, both FUV and FIR are tightly related to the
star formation in galaxies, but in a very complicated manner. In order to
disentangle the relation between FUV and FIR emissions, we estimate the UV-IR
bivariate LF (BLF) of galaxies with {\sl GALEX} and {\sl AKARI} All-Sky Survey
datasets. Recently we invented a new mathematical method to construct the BLF
with given marginals and prescribed correlation coefficient. This method makes
use of a tool from mathematical statistics, so called "copula". The copula
enables us to construct a bivariate distribution function from given marginal
distributions with prescribed correlation and/or dependence structure. With
this new formulation and FUV and FIR univariate LFs, we analyze various FUV and
FIR data with {\sl GALEX}, {\sl Spitzer}, and {\sl AKARI} to estimate the UV-IR
BLF. The obtained BLFs naturally explain the nonlinear complicated relation
between FUV and FIR emission from star-forming galaxies. Though the faint-end
of the BLF was not well constrained for high- samples, the estimated linear
correlation coefficient was found to be very high, and is remarkably
stable with redshifts (from 0.95 at to 0.85 at ). This implies
the evolution of the UV-IR BLF is mainly due to the different evolution of the
univariate LFs, and may not be controlled by the dependence structure.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, Earth, Planets and Space, in pres
Lubricated revolute joints in rigid multibody systems
The main purpose of this work is to present a general methodology for modeling lubricated revolute joints in constrained rigid multibody systems. In the dynamic analysis of journal-bearings, the hydrodynamic forces, which include both squeeze and wedge effects, generated by the lubricant fluid, oppose the journal motion. The hydrodynamic forces are obtained by integrating the pressure distribution evaluated with the aid of Reynoldsâ equation, written for the dynamic regime. The hydrodynamic forces built up by the lubricant fluid are evaluated from the system state variables and included into the equations of motion of the multibody system. Numerical examples are presented in order to demonstrate the use of the methodologies and procedures described in this work.Fundação para a CiĂȘncia e a Tecnologia (FCT
Calibration of Super-Kamiokande Using an Electron Linac
In order to calibrate the Super-Kamiokande experiment for solar neutrino
measurements, a linear accelerator (LINAC) for electrons was installed at the
detector. LINAC data were taken at various positions in the detector volume,
tracking the detector response in the variables relevant to solar neutrino
analysis. In particular, the absolute energy scale is now known with less than
1 percent uncertainty.Comment: 24 pages, 16 figures, Submitted to NIM
Measurement of radon concentrations at Super-Kamiokande
Radioactivity from radon is a major background for observing solar neutrinos
at Super-Kamiokande. In this paper, we describe the measurement of radon
concentrations at Super-Kamiokande, the method of radon reduction, and the
radon monitoring system. The measurement shows that the current low-energy
event rate between 5.0 MeV and 6.5 MeV implies a radon concentration in the
Super-Kamiokande water of less than 1.4 mBq/m.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure
Search for Neutral Q-balls in Super-Kamiokande II
A search for Q-balls induced groups of successive contained events has been
carried out in Super-Kamiokande II with 541.7 days of live time.
Neutral Q-balls would emit pions when colliding with nuclei, generating a
signal of successive contained pion events along a track. No candidate for
successive contained event groups has been found in Super-Kamiokande II, so
upper limits on the possible flux of such Q-balls have been obtained.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, Submitted to Phys. Lett.
Measurement of the branching fraction
The branching fraction is measured in a data sample
corresponding to 0.41 of integrated luminosity collected with the LHCb
detector at the LHC. This channel is sensitive to the penguin contributions
affecting the sin2 measurement from The
time-integrated branching fraction is measured to be . This is the most precise measurement to
date
Model-independent search for CP violation in D0âKâK+ÏâÏ+ and D0âÏâÏ+Ï+Ïâ decays
A search for CP violation in the phase-space structures of D0 and View the MathML source decays to the final states KâK+ÏâÏ+ and ÏâÏ+Ï+Ïâ is presented. The search is carried out with a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.0 fbâ1 collected in 2011 by the LHCb experiment in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. For the KâK+ÏâÏ+ final state, the four-body phase space is divided into 32 bins, each bin with approximately 1800 decays. The p-value under the hypothesis of no CP violation is 9.1%, and in no bin is a CP asymmetry greater than 6.5% observed. The phase space of the ÏâÏ+Ï+Ïâ final state is partitioned into 128 bins, each bin with approximately 2500 decays. The p-value under the hypothesis of no CP violation is 41%, and in no bin is a CP asymmetry greater than 5.5% observed. All results are consistent with the hypothesis of no CP violation at the current sensitivity
Measurement of the CP-violating phase \phi s in Bs->J/\psi\pi+\pi- decays
Measurement of the mixing-induced CP-violating phase phi_s in Bs decays is of
prime importance in probing new physics. Here 7421 +/- 105 signal events from
the dominantly CP-odd final state J/\psi pi+ pi- are selected in 1/fb of pp
collision data collected at sqrt{s} = 7 TeV with the LHCb detector. A
time-dependent fit to the data yields a value of
phi_s=-0.019^{+0.173+0.004}_{-0.174-0.003} rad, consistent with the Standard
Model expectation. No evidence of direct CP violation is found.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures; minor revisions on May 23, 201
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