The CCD and readout electronics for the OMC instrument on Integral

The Optical Monitoring Camera (OMC) on ESA's Integral gamma-ray astronomy satellite is devoted to optical wavelength observations simultaneously covering the same field-of-view as the gamma-ray and X-ray instruments. The OMC consists of a refracting telescope with a CCD as the imaging device in the focal plane. Here we describe the CCD and its associated readout electronics, in particular pointing out features of interest to users of the OMC instrument and its data

DNA methylation governs the dynamic regulation of inflammation by apoptotic cells during efferocytosis

Efficient clearance of apoptotic cells (AC) is pivotal in preventing autoimmunity and is a potent immunosuppressive stimulus. However, activation of cells prior to apoptosis abolishes their immunoregulatory properties. Here we show using the antigen-induced model of arthritis that the degree of DNA methylation within AC confers their immunomodulatory plasticity. DNA isolated from resting and activated AC mimicked their respective immune effects. Demethylation of DNA abrogated the protective effect of AC whereas remethylation of AC DNA reversed the effects of activation and restored the ability to inhibit inflammation. Disease suppression or lack thereof was associated with TGFβ and IL-6 production respectively. Apoptotic CD4+ T cells from patients with rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus were demethylated compared to healthy controls and favoured production of IL-6 when cultured with healthy macrophages, in contrast to the TGFβ produced in response to healthy AC. Our data implicate AC DNA methylation as the molecular switch that imprints their regulatory properties

Label-Dependencies Aware Recurrent Neural Networks

In the last few years, Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) have proved effective on several NLP tasks. Despite such great success, their ability to model \emph{sequence labeling} is still limited. This lead research toward solutions where RNNs are combined with models which already proved effective in this domain, such as CRFs. In this work we propose a solution far simpler but very effective: an evolution of the simple Jordan RNN, where labels are re-injected as input into the network, and converted into embeddings, in the same way as words. We compare this RNN variant to all the other RNN models, Elman and Jordan RNN, LSTM and GRU, on two well-known tasks of Spoken Language Understanding (SLU). Thanks to label embeddings and their combination at the hidden layer, the proposed variant, which uses more parameters than Elman and Jordan RNNs, but far fewer than LSTM and GRU, is more effective than other RNNs, but also outperforms sophisticated CRF models.Comment: 22 pages, 3 figures. Accepted at CICling 2017 conference. Best Verifiability, Reproducibility, and Working Description awar

Evidence for strategies that improve recruitment and retention of adults aged 65 years and over in randomised trials and observational studies: a systematic review

Background: adults aged ≥65 years are often excluded from health research studies. Lack of representation reduces generalisability of treatments for this age group. Objective: to evaluate the effectiveness of strategies that improve recruitment and retention of adults aged ≥65 in observational studies and randomised controlled trials (RCTs). Methods: searches conducted in 10 databases for RCTs of recruitment and retention strategies in RCTs or observational studies. Two reviewers screened abstracts and full-text articles for eligibility and extracted data. Studies without separate data for adults aged ≥65 were discarded. Risk of bias assessed using the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool. Results were synthesised narratively. Results: thirty-two studies were included in the review (n = 75,444). Twelve studies had low risk of bias, of which 10 had successful strategies including: Opt-out versus opt-in increased recruitment (13.6% (n = 261)-18.7% (n = 36) difference; two studies); Advance notification increased retention (1.6% difference, OR 1.45; 95% CI 1.01, 2.10, one study (n = 2,686); 9.1% difference at 4 months, 1.44; 1.08, 1.92, one study (n = 753)); Hand-delivered versus postal surveys increased response (25.1% difference; X2 = 11.40, P < 0.01; one study (n = 139)); Open randomised design versus blinded RCT increased recruitment (1.56; 1.05, 2.33) and retention (13.9% difference; 3.1%, 24.6%) in one study (n = 538). Risk of bias was high/unclear for studies in which incentives or shorter length questionnaires increased response. Discussion: in low risk of bias studies, few of the strategies that improved participation in older adults had been tested in ≥1 study. Opt-out and advance notification strategies improved recruitment and retention, respectively, although an opt-out approach may have ethical limitations. Evidence from single studies limits the generalisability of other strategies

Pain assessment and pain treatment for community-dwelling people with dementia: A systematic review and narrative synthesis.

OBJECTIVES: To describe the current literature on pain assessment and pain treatment for community-dwelling people with dementia. METHOD: A comprehensive systematic search of the literature with narrative synthesis was conducted. Eight major bibliographic databases were searched in October 2018. Titles, abstracts, and full-text articles were sequentially screened. Standardised data extraction and quality appraisal exercises were conducted. RESULTS: 32 studies were included in the review, 11 reporting findings on pain assessment tools or methods, and 27 reporting findings on treatments for pain. In regard to pain assessment, a large proportion of people with moderate to severe dementia were unable to complete a self-report pain instrument. Pain was more commonly reported by informal caregivers than the person with dementia themselves. Limited evidence was available for pain focused behavioural observation assessment. In regard to pain treatment, paracetamol use was more common in community-dwelling people with dementia compared to people without dementia. However, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) were used less. For stronger analgesics, community-dwelling people with dementia were more likely to receive strong opioids (e.g. fentanyl) than people without dementia. CONCLUSION: This review identifies a dearth of high quality studies exploring pain assessment and/or treatment for community-dwelling people with dementia, not least into non-pharmacological interventions. The consequences of this lack of evidence, given the current and projected prevalence of the disease, are very serious and require urgent redress. In the meantime, clinicians should adopt a patient and caregiver centred, multi-dimensional, longitudinal approach to pain assessment and pain treatment for this population