How to Grow Corn

A lot of things can make the difference between a good and poor corn crop. Some you can control - others you can\u27t. Here\u27s a roundup of present know-how about the factors you can\u27t control

Engineered Carrier with a Long Time of Flight (TOF) to Improve Drug Delivery From Dry Powder Inhalation Aerosols

A lactose carrier with long TOF was engineered to improve drug deposition from DPIs. The particles were engineered by contacting spray-dried particles with a solvent in which these have a poor solubility. The process increased the particles hollow volume without affecting their original shape. The long TOF was demonstrated by carrier deposition in the lower stage of the TSI, which was up to 9 -fold higher compared to the conventional lactose. The highest deposition of the long TOF carrier was obtained at the lowest inhalation flow rate (24 L/min). The % Fine Particle Fraction of salbutamol sulphate was up to 50% when long TOF carrier was used. Importantly, this study has shown that adhesion drug/carrier has no negative effect on drug deposition, when a long TOF carrier is used

Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of an educational intervention for practice teams to deliver problem focused therapy for insomnia: rationale and design of a pilot cluster randomised trial

Background: Sleep problems are common, affecting over a third of adults in the United Kingdom and leading to reduced productivity and impaired health-related quality of life. Many of those whose lives are affected seek medical help from primary care. Drug treatment is ineffective long term. Psychological methods for managing sleep problems, including cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBTi) have been shown to be effective and cost effective but have not been widely implemented or evaluated in a general practice setting where they are most likely to be needed and most appropriately delivered. This paper outlines the protocol for a pilot study designed to evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of an educational intervention for general practitioners, primary care nurses and other members of the primary care team to deliver problem focused therapy to adult patients presenting with sleep problems due to lifestyle causes, pain or mild to moderate depression or anxiety. Methods and design: This will be a pilot cluster randomised controlled trial of a complex intervention. General practices will be randomised to an educational intervention for problem focused therapy which includes a consultation approach comprising careful assessment (using assessment of secondary causes, sleep diaries and severity) and use of modified CBTi for insomnia in the consultation compared with usual care (general advice on sleep hygiene and pharmacotherapy with hypnotic drugs). Clinicians randomised to the intervention will receive an educational intervention (2 × 2 hours) to implement a complex intervention of problem focused therapy. Clinicians randomised to the control group will receive reinforcement of usual care with sleep hygiene advice. Outcomes will be assessed via self-completion questionnaires and telephone interviews of patients and staff as well as clinical records for interventions and prescribing. Discussion: Previous studies in adults have shown that psychological treatments for insomnia administered by specialist nurses to groups of patients can be effective within a primary care setting. This will be a pilot study to determine whether an educational intervention aimed at primary care teams to deliver problem focused therapy for insomnia can improve sleep management and outcomes for individual adult patients presenting to general practice. The study will also test procedures and collect information in preparation for a larger definitive cluster-randomised trial. The study is funded by The Health Foundation

Cloud-Scale Molecular Gas Properties in 15 Nearby Galaxies

We measure the velocity dispersion, $\sigma$, and surface density, $\Sigma$, of the molecular gas in nearby galaxies from CO spectral line cubes with spatial resolution $45$-$120$ pc, matched to the size of individual giant molecular clouds. Combining $11$ galaxies from the PHANGS-ALMA survey with $4$ targets from the literature, we characterize ${\sim}30,000$ independent sightlines where CO is detected at good significance. $\Sigma$ and $\sigma$ show a strong positive correlation, with the best-fit power law slope close to the expected value for resolved, self-gravitating clouds. This indicates only weak variation in the virial parameter $\alpha_\mathrm{vir}\propto\sigma^2/\Sigma$, which is ${\sim}1.5$-$3.0$ for most galaxies. We do, however, observe enormous variation in the internal turbulent pressure $P_\mathrm{turb}\propto\Sigma\,\sigma^2$, which spans ${\sim}5\rm\;dex$ across our sample. We find $\Sigma$, $\sigma$, and $P_\mathrm{turb}$ to be systematically larger in more massive galaxies. The same quantities appear enhanced in the central kpc of strongly barred galaxies relative to their disks. Based on sensitive maps of M31 and M33, the slope of the $\sigma$-$\Sigma$ relation flattens at $\Sigma\lesssim10\rm\;M_\odot\,pc^{-2}$, leading to high $\sigma$ for a given $\Sigma$ and high apparent $\alpha_\mathrm{vir}$. This echoes results found in the Milky Way, and likely originates from a combination of lower beam filling factors and a stronger influence of local environment on the dynamical state of molecular gas in the low density regime.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 45 pages, 11 figures, 8 tables, 4 Appendices; key results summarized in Figure 10. Machine-readable table can be downloaded at http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~sun.1608/datafile3.txt prior to publication. For a brief video describing the main results of this paper, please see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_eL7t1PVq8&

A z=0 Multi-wavelength Galaxy Synthesis I: A WISE and GALEX Atlas of Local Galaxies

We present an atlas of ultraviolet and infrared images of ~15,750 local (d < 50 Mpc) galaxies, as observed by NASA's WISE and GALEX missions. These maps have matched resolution (FWHM 7.5'' and 15''), matched astrometry, and a common procedure for background removal. We demonstrate that they agree well with resolved intensity measurements and integrated photometry from previous surveys. This atlas represents the first part of a program (the z=0 Multi-wavelength Galaxy Synthesis) to create a large, uniform database of resolved measurements of gas and dust in nearby galaxies. The images and associated catalogs are publicly available at the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive. This atlas allows us estimate local and integrated star formation rates (SFRs) and stellar masses (M$_\star$) across the local galaxy population in a uniform way. In the appendix, we use the population synthesis fits of Salim et al. (2016, 2018) to calibrate integrated M$_\star$ and SFR estimators based on GALEX and WISE. Because they leverage an SDSS-base training set of >100,000 galaxies, these calibrations have high precision and allow us to rigorously compare local galaxies to Sloan Digital Sky Survey results. We provide these SFR and M$_\star$ estimates for all galaxies in our sample and show that our results yield a "main sequence" of star forming galaxies comparable to previous work. We also show the distribution of intensities from resolved galaxies in NUV-to-WISE1 vs. WISE1-to-WISE3 space, which captures much of the key physics accessed by these bands.Comment: 46 pages, 27 figures, published in ApJS (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2019ApJS..244...24L/abstract ). See that version for full resolution figures and machine readable tables. Go download data for your favorite nearby galaxy here: https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/data/WISE/z0MGS/overview.html . The appendix presents detailed analysis of translations to physical quantitie

Giant Molecular Clouds in the Early-type Galaxy NGC 4526

D. Utomo, et al., “Giant Molecular Clouds in the Early-Type Galaxy NGC 4526”, The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 803(1), April 2015. © 2015. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present a high spatial resolution (≈20 pc) of 12CO(2 −1) observations of the lenticular galaxy NGC 4526. We identify 103 resolved giant molecular clouds (GMCs) and measure their properties: size R, velocity dispersion σv, and luminosity L. This is the first GMC catalog of an early-type galaxy. We find that the GMC population in NGC 4526 is gravitationally bound, with a virial parameter α ∼ 1. The mass distribution, dN/dM ∝ M−2.39 ± 0.03, is steeper than that for GMCs in the inner Milky Way, but comparable to that found in some late-type galaxies. We find no size–line width correlation for the NGC 4526 clouds, in contradiction to the expectation from Larson’s relation. In general, the GMCs in NGC 4526 are more luminous, denser, and have a higher velocity dispersion than equal-size GMCs in the Milky Way and other galaxies in the Local Group. These may be due to higher interstellar radiation field than in the Milky Way disk and weaker external pressure than in the Galactic center. In addition, a kinematic measurement of cloud rotation shows that the rotation is driven by the galactic shear. For the vast majority of the clouds, the rotational energy is less than the turbulent and gravitational energy, while the four innermost clouds are unbound and will likely be torn apart by the strong shear at the galactic center. We combine our data with the archival data of other galaxies to show that the surface density Σ of GMCs is not approximately constant, as previously believed, but varies by ∼3 orders of magnitude. We also show that the size and velocity dispersion of the GMC population across galaxies are related to the surface density, as expected from the gravitational and pressure equilibrium, i.e., σv R−1/2 ∝ Σ1/2.Peer reviewe

Do Spectroscopic Dense Gas Fractions Track Molecular Cloud Surface Densities?

We use ALMA and IRAM 30-m telescope data to investigate the relationship between the spectroscopically-traced dense gas fraction and the cloud-scale (120 pc) molecular gas surface density in five nearby, star-forming galaxies. We estimate the dense gas mass fraction at 650 pc and 2800 pc scales using the ratio of HCN (1-0) to CO (1-0) emission. We then use high resolution (120 pc) CO (2-1) maps to calculate the mass-weighted average molecular gas surface density within 650 pc or 2770 pc beam where the dense gas fraction is estimated. On average, the dense gas fraction correlates with the mass-weighted average molecular gas surface density. Thus, parts of a galaxy with higher mean cloud-scale gas surface density also appear to have a larger fraction of dense gas. The normalization and slope of the correlation do vary from galaxy to galaxy and with the size of the regions studied. This correlation is consistent with a scenario where the large-scale environment sets the gas volume density distribution, and this distribution manifests in both the cloud-scale surface density and the dense gas mass fraction.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letter

Strategies for improving patient recruitment to focus groups in primary care: a case study reflective paper using an analytical framework

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Recruiting to primary care studies is complex. With the current drive to increase numbers of patients involved in primary care studies, we need to know more about successful recruitment approaches. There is limited evidence on recruitment to focus group studies, particularly when no natural grouping exists and where participants do not regularly meet. The aim of this paper is to reflect on recruitment to a focus group study comparing the methods used with existing evidence using a resource for research recruitment, PROSPeR (Planning Recruitment Options: Strategies for Primary Care).</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The focus group formed part of modelling a complex intervention in primary care in the Resources for Effective Sleep Treatment (REST) study. Despite a considered approach at the design stage, there were a number of difficulties with recruitment. The recruitment strategy and subsequent revisions are detailed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The researchers' modifications to recruitment, justifications and evidence from the literature in support of them are presented. Contrary evidence is used to analyse why some aspects were unsuccessful and evidence is used to suggest improvements. Recruitment to focus group studies should be considered in two distinct phases; getting potential participants to contact the researcher, and converting those contacts into attendance. The difficulty of recruitment in primary care is underemphasised in the literature especially where people do not regularly come together, typified by this case study of patients with sleep problems.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We recommend training GPs and nurses to recruit patients during consultations. Multiple recruitment methods should be employed from the outset and the need to build topic related non-financial incentives into the group meeting should be considered. Recruitment should be monitored regularly with barriers addressed iteratively as a study progresses.</p