A Model to Assist Planning the Provision of Hospital Services

One of the most important health service issues concerns the level of provision of acute hospital beds. To assist resolution of this issue, a model is proposed which simulates how hospital beds are used in terms of admission rates and lengths of stay for different categories of disease. The model can be used to predict the likely effects of changes in the provision of beds. Thus if it is proposed to increase the supply of beds the model will estimate, by disease type, how much of an increase this will cause in admission rates and lengths of stay. The ability of the model to accurately simulate this type of behavior is illustrated by an application in Quebec Province, Canada

Common iliac aneurysms with short or absent proximal necks: Endoluminal repair with a covered endoprosthesis

AbstractEur J Vasc Endovasc Surg 26, 334-336 (2003

Pharmacokinetic analysis of diazepam liberation from avizafone in healthy volunteers : Non-compartmental approach and compartmental modeling

Date du colloque&nbsp;: 04/2009</p

Pharmacokinetic analysis of pralidoxime after its intramuscular injection alone or in combination with atropine-avizafone in healthy volunteers

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Treatment of organophosphate poisoning with pralidoxime needs to be improved. Here we have studied the pharmacokinetics of pralidoxime after its intramuscular injection alone or in combination with avizafone and atropine using an auto-injector device. EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH The study was conducted in an open, randomized, single-dose, two-way, cross-over design. At each period, each subject received either intramuscular injections of pralidoxime (700 mg), or two injections of the combination: pralidoxime (350 mg), atropine (2 mg), avizafone (20 mg). Pralidoxime concentrations were quantified using a validated LC/MS-MS method. Two approaches were used to analyse these data: (i) a non-compartmental approach; and (ii) a compartmental modelling approach. KEY RESULTS The injection of pralidoxime combination with atropine and avizafone provided a higher pralidoxime maximal concentration than that obtained after the injection of pralidoxime alone (out of bioequivalence range), while pralidoxime AUC values were equivalent. Pralidoxime concentrations reached their maximal value earlier after the injection of the combination. According to Akaike and to goodness of fit criteria, the best model describing the pharmacokinetics of pralidoxime was a two-compartment with a zero-order absorption model. When avizafone and atropine were injected with pralidoxime, the best model describing pralidoxime pharmacokinetics becomes a two-compartment with a first-order absorption model. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS The two approaches, non-compartmental and compartmental, showed that the administration of avizafone and atropine with pralidoxime results in a faster absorption into the general circulation and higher maximal concentrations, compared with the administration of pralidoxime alone

Un critère informationnel en imagerie pour l’échelle optimale d’observation d’une scène bruitée

En imagerie, la question de l\u27échelle d\u27observation d\u27une scène estconventionnellement laissée à l\u27appréciation de l\u27expérimentateur qui a seul la charge du choix du grossissement du système imageur. De façon souvent découplée, le traiteur de données récupère les images après acquisition et, à partir de là, cherche à extraire aux mieux les informations dans la scène. Dans ce travail, nous illustrons sur un exemple l\u27intérêt d\u27une approche acquisition-traitement conjoint. Nous montrons au moyen d\u27outils quantitatifs issus de la théorie statistique de l\u27information comment le choix de l\u27échelle d\u27observation en imagerie peut être directement relié aux performances de la tâche finale de traitement de l\u27information. Le propos est illustré sur des systèmes d\u27imagerie bruitée utiles pour le domaine biomédical et l\u27instrumentation en optique cohérente

Childhood cognitive ability accounts for associations between cognitive ability and brain cortical thickness in old age

Associations between brain cortical tissue volume and cognitive function in old age are frequently interpreted as suggesting that preservation of cortical tissue is the foundation of successful cognitive aging. However, this association could also, in part, reflect a lifelong association between cognitive ability and cortical tissue. We analyzed data on 588 subjects from the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 who had intelligence quotient (IQ) scores from the same cognitive test available at both 11 and 70 years of age as well as high-resolution brain magnetic resonance imaging data obtained at approximately 73 years of age. Cortical thickness was estimated at 81 924 sampling points across the cortex for each subject using an automated pipeline. Multiple regression was used to assess associations between cortical thickness and the IQ measures at 11 and 70 years. Childhood IQ accounted for more than two-third of the association between IQ at 70 years and cortical thickness measured at age 73 years. This warns against ascribing a causal interpretation to the association between cognitive ability and cortical tissue in old age based on assumptions about, and exclusive reference to, the aging process and any associated disease. Without early-life measures of cognitive ability, it would have been tempting to conclude that preservation of cortical thickness in old age is a foundation for successful cognitive aging when, instead, it is a lifelong association. This being said, results should not be construed as meaning that all studies on aging require direct measures of childhood IQ, but as suggesting that proxy measures of prior cognitive function can be useful to take into consideration

Targeting Potential Drivers of COVID-19: Neutrophil Extracellular Traps

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a novel, viral-induced respiratory disease that in ∼10-15% of patients progresses to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) triggered by a cytokine storm. In this Perspective, autopsy results and literature are presented supporting the hypothesis that a little known yet powerful function of neutrophils-the ability to form neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs)-may contribute to organ damage and mortality in COVID-19. We show lung infiltration of neutrophils in an autopsy specimen from a patient who succumbed to COVID-19. We discuss prior reports linking aberrant NET formation to pulmonary diseases, thrombosis, mucous secretions in the airways, and cytokine production. If our hypothesis is correct, targeting NETs directly and/or indirectly with existing drugs may reduce the clinical severity of COVID-19

Optical spectroscopic study of the interplay of spin and charge in NaV2O5

We investigate the temperature dependent optical properties of NaV2O5, in the energy range 4meV-4eV. The symmetry of the system is discussed on the basis of infrared phonon spectra. By analyzing the optically allowed phonons at temperatures below and above the phase transition, we conclude that a second-order change to a larger unit cell takes place below 34 K, with a fluctuation regime extending over a broad temperature range. In the high temperature undistorted phase, we find good agreement with the recently proposed centrosymmetric space group Pmmn. On the other hand, the detailed analysis of the electronic excitations detected in the optical conductivity, provides direct evidence for a charge disproportionated electronic ground-state, at least on a locale scale: A consistent interpretation of both structural and optical conductivity data requires an asymmetrical charge distribution on each rung, without any long range order. We show that, because of the locally broken symmetry, spin-flip excitations carry a finite electric dipole moment, which is responsible for the detection of direct two-magnon optical absorption processes for E parallel to the a axis. The charged-magnon model, developed to interpret the optical conductivity of NaV2O5, is described in detail, and its relevance to other strongly correlated electron systems, where the interplay of spin and charge plays a crucial role in determining the low energy electrodynamics, is discussed.Comment: Revtex, 19 pages, 16 postscript pictures embedded in the text, submitted to PRB. Find more stuff at http://www.stanford.edu/~damascel/andreaphd.html or http://www.ub.rug.nl/eldoc/dis/science/a.damascelli

12C nuclear reaction measurements for hadrontherapy

International audienceHadrontherapy treatments require a very high precision on the dose deposition ( 2.5% and 1-2mm) in order to keep the benefits of the precise ions' ballistic. The largest uncertainty on the physical dose deposition is due to ion fragmentation. Up to now, the simulation codes are not able to reproduce the fragmentation process with the required precision. To constraint the nuclear models and complete fragmentation cross sections databases; our collaboration has performed an experiment on May 2008 at GANIL with a 95 MeV/u 12C beam. We have measured the fluence, energy and angular distributions of charged fragments and neutrons coming from nuclear reactions of incident 12C on thick water-like PMMA targets. Preliminary comparisons between GEANT4 (G4BinaryLightIonReaction) simulations and experimental data show huge discrepancies