Infliximab for the treatment of plaque psoriasis

Infliximab is a monoclonal antibody that targets tumor necrosis factor-α (TNFα). It is used in the treatment of a number of inflammatory disorders including severe plaque psoriasis. TNFα is thought to have a major role in psoriasis by promoting an inflammatory infiltrate into the skin and inducing keratinocyte proliferation and preventing keratinocyte apoptosis, which directly contributes to the characteristic plaque skin lesions. Based on four randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trials and nine open-label uncontrolled trials of the use of infliximab in plaque psoriasis, it was found that infliximab is a highly efficacious, rapid, sustainable, and relatively safe therapy. Yet as with any biologic, caution is recommended in its use as infusion reactions, lupus-like syndromes, infections, malignancies including lymphomas, as well as other rare events have been reported

Ustekinumab in the therapy of chronic plaque psoriasis

Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory disorder characterized by T cell dysregulation and a chronic inflammatory infiltrate within the epidermis. Several cytokines play an important role in the pathogenesis of psoriasis, including interleukin-12 (IL-12) and IL-23. These cytokines act via induction of pro-inflammatory cytokines which promote chronic inflammation and auto-reactivity. Ustekinumab is a fully human monoclonal antibody against the common p40 subunit of IL-12 and IL-23. Two randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials of ustekinumab have demonstrated significant and prolonged efficacy in the treatment of plaque psoriasis. Adverse events were generally similar across treatment and control groups. Studies are ongoing to assess the long term safety and efficacy profiles of ustekinumab

Oxygen-related traps in pentacene thin films: Energetic position and implications for transistor performance

We studied the influence of oxygen on the electronic trap states in a pentacene thin film. This was done by carrying out gated four-terminal measurements on thin-film transistors as a function of temperature and without ever exposing the samples to ambient air. Photooxidation of pentacene is shown to lead to a peak of trap states centered at 0.28 eV from the mobility edge, with trap densities of the order of 10(18) cm(-3). These trap states need to be occupied at first and cause a reduction in the number of free carriers, i.e. a consistent shift of the density of free holes as a function of gate voltage. Moreover, the exposure to oxygen reduces the mobility of the charge carriers above the mobility edge. We correlate the change of these transport parameters with the change of the essential device parameters, i.e. subthreshold performance and effective field-effect mobility. This study supports the assumption of a mobility edge for charge transport, and contributes to a detailed understanding of an important degradation mechanism of organic field-effect transistors. Deep traps in an organic field-effect transistor reduce the effective field-effect mobility by reducing the number of free carriers and their mobility above the mobility edge.Comment: 13 pages, 14 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.

BlogForever D3.2: Interoperability Prospects

This report evaluates the interoperability prospects of the BlogForever platform. Therefore, existing interoperability models are reviewed, a Delphi study to identify crucial aspects for the interoperability of web archives and digital libraries is conducted, technical interoperability standards and protocols are reviewed regarding their relevance for BlogForever, a simple approach to consider interoperability in specific usage scenarios is proposed, and a tangible approach to develop a succession plan that would allow a reliable transfer of content from the current digital archive to other digital repositories is presented

Defect healing at room temperature in pentacene thin films and improved transistor performance

We report on a healing of defects at room temperature in the organic semiconductor pentacene. This peculiar effect is a direct consequence of the weak intermolecular interaction which is characteristic of organic semiconductors. Pentacene thin-film transistors were fabricated and characterized by in situ gated four-terminal measurements. Under high vacuum conditions (base pressure of order 10E-8 mbar), the device performance is found to improve with time. The effective field-effect mobility increases by as much as a factor of two and mobilities up to 0.45 cm2/Vs were achieved. In addition, the contact resistance decreases by more than an order of magnitude and there is a significant reduction in current hysteresis. Oxygen/nitrogen exposure and annealing experiments show the improvement of the electronic parameters to be driven by a thermally promoted process and not by chemical doping. In order to extract the spectral density of trap states from the transistor characteristics, we have implemented a powerful scheme which allows for a calculation of the trap densities with high accuracy in a straightforward fashion. We show the performance improvement to be due to a reduction in the density of shallow traps <0.15 eV from the valence band edge, while the energetically deeper traps are essentially unaffected. This work contributes to an understanding of the shallow traps in organic semiconductors and identifies structural point defects within the grains of the polycrystalline thin films as a major cause.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.

MODIS Technical Report Series. Volume 4: MODIS data access user's guide: Scan cube format

The software described in this document provides I/O functions to be used with Moderate Resolution Spectroradiometer (MODIS) level 1 and 2 data, and could be easily extended to other data sources. This data is in a scan cube data format: a 3-dimensional ragged array containing multiple bands which have resolutions ranging from 250 to 1000 meters. The complexity of the data structure is handled internally by the library. The I/O calls allow the user to access any pixel in any band through 'C' structure syntax. The high MODIS data volume (approaching half a terabyte per day) has been a driving factor in the library design. To avoid recopying data for user access, all I/O is performed through dynamic 'C' pointer manipulation. This manual contains background material on MODIS, several coding examples of library usage, in-depth discussions of each function, reference 'man' type pages, and several appendices with details of the included files used to customize a user's data product for use with the library

Ensemble of Vortex Loops in the Abelian-Projected SU(3)-Gluodynamics

Grand canonical ensemble of small vortex loops emerging in the London limit of the effective Abelian-projected theory of the SU(3)-gluodynamics is investigated in the dilute gas approximation. An essential difference of this system from the SU(2)-case is the presence of two interacting gases of vortex loops. Two alternative representations for the partition function of such a grand canonical ensemble are derived, and one of them, which is a representation in terms of the integrals over vortex loops, is employed for the evaluation of the correlators of both kinds of loops in the low-energy limit.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX2e, no figures, minor corrections, to appear in Mod. Phys. Lett.