Chemical trends in the Galactic halo from APOGEE data

Indexación: Web of Science; Scopus.The galaxy formation process in the A cold dark matter scenario can be constrained from the analysis of stars in the Milky Way's halo system. We examine the variation of chemical abundances in distant halo stars observed by the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment ( APOGEE), as a function of distance from the Galactic Centre ( r) and iron abundance ([M/H]), in the range 5 less than or similar to r less than or similar to 30 kpc and - 2.5 15 kpc and [M/H] > - 1.1 (larger in the case of O, Mg, and S) with respect to the nearest halo stars. This result confirms previous claims for low-alpha stars found at larger distances. Chemical differences in elements with other nucleosynthetic origins (Ni, K, Na, and Al) are also detected. C and N do not provide reliable information about the interstellar medium from which stars formed because our sample comprises red giant branch and asymptotic giant branch stars and can experience mixing of material to their surfaces.https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/mnras/stw286

The quality of industrially manufactured medicines in Spain between 1944 and 1992. Review of the quality requirements for the authorisation of medicines during this period.

Objetivo: Estudiar la evolución de los requerimientos de calidad para la solicitud de autorización de los medicamentos y los avances en la calidad de los mismos en el periodo comprendido entre 1944 y 1992. Como objetivo secundario evidenciar la influencia en los requerimientos de calidad de circunstancias excepcionales acaecidas en la propia sociedad o en los medicamentos.Material y Métodos: Análisis de la legislación publicada en España referente al registro farmacéutico desde 1944 hasta 1992, extrayendo y comparando las referencias de calidad a fin de destacar lo que representa un avance. Consulta de revistas especializadas y documentos no publicados relacionados con la industria farmacéutica. Discusión de los avances en calidad relacionándolos con el contexto político-social del país.Resultados y conclusiones: Los primeros años de este período siguieron la tónica del final del período anterior, años comprendidos entre 1850-1950, y que fue analizado en un artículo publicado anteriormente, es decir muy pocos avances en calidad. Únicamente cabe destacar, en 1954, el establecimiento de la visita de inspección al laboratorio previa a la autorización del medicamento. El Decreto 2464/1963 representó el primer gran avance en las exigencias de calidad para el registro desde 1919. Entre 1963 y 1973 no se produjo ningún cambio significativo en el contenido de los expedientes de registro. Finalmente el Decreto 1416/1973 introdujo cambios importantes en la tramitación de los expedientes que pasaron a tener dos fases: la primera consistía en la revisión de la documentación y concluía con una autorización (denominada Conforme Sanitario) para elaborar un primer lote del medicamento, la segunda fase implicaba el análisis de dicho lote por el Centro Nacional de Farmacobiología y comportaba la autorización o denegación del registro solicitado. La adaptación de los Laboratorios a esta nueva normativa especialmente en lo que se refería al contenido técnico y presentación de los expedientes no fue fácil puesto que en dichos expedientes se evidenciaron deficiencias durante bastante tiempo. Durante los años finales de este período, en puertas de la entrada de España en la Comunidad Europea, la legislación intentaba recoger o al menos no contradecir la normativa europea vigente. La publicación de la Ley 25/90 del medicamento introdujo, desde el punto de vista general, el Concepto de Garantía para asegurar la calidad, eficacia y seguridad e incluyó la exigencia de los avales de un experto para las informaciones contenidas en los expedientes, iniciándose así un cambio en las responsabilidades: el experto toma sobre sí la responsabilidad de la revisión de la documentación. En resumen, periodo con muchos cambios en la calidad en el contexto mundial. En la legislación española, dos importantes Decretos en 1963 y 1973. En los años finales de este periodo la legislación española se empezó a preparar para la transposición de la normativa europea referente a los medicamentos debía que tener lugar en 1992.Aim: The aim is to study the evolution of quality requirements in the application file for approval of drug products and their relationship with the quality of industrially manufactured drugs between 1944 and 1992. As a secondary objective, demonstrate the influence on the quality requirements of exceptional circumstances that occurred in the society or on drugsMaterials and Methods: The early years of this period continued the trend of the previous period with very little improvement in quality. Only in 1954 the establishment of the laboratory inspection prior to approval of the drug was an important change. Decreto 2464/1963, represented the first important advance in the quality requirements for registration since 1919. Between 1963 and 1973 there was no significant change in the content of the registration dossiers. Finally, Decreto 1416/1973 introduced new changes in the application process that happened to have two phases: first one, the review of the written information which concluded with an Authorisation (called Conforme Sanitario) to manufacture a first batch of the product. The second phase was the analysis of this batch. For the Laboratories was not easy to adapt to this new procedure and the registration documents remained deficient for a long time. During the final years of this period, just before the entrance of Spain in the European Community, all the new legislation attempted to collect or at least not contradict existing European legislation. The publication of Law 25/90 introduced, the concept of Quality Assurance to ensure the quality, efficiency and safety of drugs, and ordered the inclusion of an expert review for the information contained in the files. The responsibilities began to change: the expert takes upon himself the responsibility of reviewing the documentation. Summarizing: Period with many quality changes in the global context. Referring Spanish law, they were two important Decretos in 1963 and 1973. In the final years of this period the Spanish regulation began to prepare for implementation of the European legislation regarding drugs that should take place in 1992

The quality of industrially manufactured medicines in Spain between 1850 and 1950. Review of the quality requirements for the authorisation of medicines during this period

Objetivo: Estudiar la evolución de los requerimientos de calidad establecidos en los expedientes de solicitud de autorización de los medicamentos fabricados industrialmente desde 1850 a 1950 y su relación con la calidad de los mismos, teniendo en cuenta la influencia del contexto político-social.Material y métodos: Análisis de la legislación publicada en España referente al Registro Farmacéutico desde 1850 hasta 1950, comparando las referencias a la calidad de cada documento con las de la legislación inmediatamente anterior destacando lo que representa un avance. Consulta de revistas y documentos no publicados. Discusión de la evolución de la calidad de los medicamentos relacionándola con el contexto político-social del país.Resultados y conclusiones: Hasta 1855 no se podía hablar de medicamentos sino de remedios secretos. La Ley de 28 de Noviembre de 1855 estableció la obligación de declarar los remedios a la Autoridad Sanitaria. Posteriormente el Real Decreto de 1919 estableció el Registro Farmacéutico y la asignación del nº de registro. El Real Decreto de 1924 lo actualizaba sin avanzar en la calidad. Siguió un estancamiento tanto en normativa como en calidad, debido a la guerra civil y al bloqueo internacional. La Ley de Bases de 1944 anunciaba una reforma que aún tardó en producirse. En resumen período largo y cambiante con bastantes avances en organización y pocos en exigencias de calidad. Los expedientes de registro son un elemento de referencia fundamental para conocer la calidad de un medicamento en un momento determinado.Objectives: The aim is to study the evolution of quality requirements in the application file for approval of drug products and their relationship with the quality of industrially manufactured drugs between 1850 and 1950, taking into account the influence of political and social context.Materials and methods: Analysis of the legislation published in Spain referring to pharmaceutical registration from 1850 to 1950, comparing the quality benchmarks to highlight the improvement. Search of information in journals and unpublished documents. Discussion on quality progress related to the socio-political context of the country.Results and conclusions: Until 1855 drugs did not exist as such, there were only secret remedies. The Law of November 28, 1855 established the obligation to declare the remedies to the Health Authority. Since then there was an evolution until the Royal Decree of 1919 established the official register of medicines and assigned a registration number to each medicine. The Royal Decree of 1924 updated the 1919 Decree but no advance was done referring to quality. Then a period of stagnation followed in both the rules of registration and the quality due to the civil war and the international blockade. A Law Reform was announced in 1944 but it took a long time to be done. Summarizing: It was a long period, with advances in organization and little progress in quality requirements in the pharmaceutical registration. When quality requirements increased, drug quality also did. Application files for registration are an essential reference to know the quality at some time

Kernelization and Parameterized Algorithms for 3-Path Vertex Cover

A 3-path vertex cover in a graph is a vertex subset $C$ such that every path of three vertices contains at least one vertex from $C$. The parameterized 3-path vertex cover problem asks whether a graph has a 3-path vertex cover of size at most $k$. In this paper, we give a kernel of $5k$ vertices and an $O^*(1.7485^k)$-time and polynomial-space algorithm for this problem, both new results improve previous known bounds.Comment: in TAMC 2016, LNCS 9796, 201

Association Between Genetic Variants on Chromosome 15q25 Locus and Objective Measures of Tobacco Exposure

Background: Two single-nucleotide polymorphisms, rs1051730 and rs16969968, located within the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor gene cluster on chromosome 15q25 locus, are associated with heaviness of smoking, risk for lung cancer, and other smoking-related health outcomes. Previous studies have typically relied on self-reported smoking behavior, which may not fully capture interindividual variation in tobacco exposure. / Methods: We investigated the association of rs1051730 and rs16969968 genotype (referred to as rs1051730–rs16969968, because these are in perfect linkage disequilibrium and interchangeable) with both self-reported daily cigarette consumption and biochemically measured plasma or serum cotinine levels among cigarette smokers. Summary estimates and descriptive statistical data for 12 364 subjects were obtained from six independent studies, and 2932 smokers were included in the analyses. Linear regression was used to calculate the per-allele association of rs1051730–rs16969968 genotype with cigarette consumption and cotinine levels in current smokers for each study. Meta-analysis of per-allele associations was conducted using a random effects method. The likely resulting association between genotype and lung cancer risk was assessed using published data on the association between cotinine levels and lung cancer risk. All statistical tests were two-sided. / Results: Pooled per-allele associations showed that current smokers with one or two copies of the rs1051730–rs16969968 risk allele had increased self-reported cigarette consumption (mean increase in unadjusted number of cigarettes per day per allele = 1.0 cigarette, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.57 to 1.43 cigarettes, P = 5.22 × 10−6) and cotinine levels (mean increase in unadjusted cotinine levels per allele = 138.72 nmol/L, 95% CI = 97.91 to 179.53 nmol/L, P = 2.71 × 10−11). The increase in cotinine levels indicated an increased risk of lung cancer with each additional copy of the rs1051730–rs16969968 risk allele (per-allele odds ratio = 1.31, 95% CI = 1.21 to 1.42). / Conclusions: Our data show a stronger association of rs1051730–rs16969968 genotype with objective measures of tobacco exposure compared with self-reported cigarette consumption. The association of these variants with lung cancer risk is likely to be mediated largely, if not wholly, via tobacco exposure

Quality of life in the Iranian Blind War Survivors in 2007: a cross-sectional study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Quality of Life measurements are necessary tools for effectively evaluating health services. In the population of patients afflicted with war-related blindness in Iran, such measurements have yet to be documented and utilized. "The design and implementation of this study involved the determination of a baseline score for QOL in a population of Iranian blinded in the Iraq-Iran war in order to facilitate the design of interventions intended to improve the population's QOL."</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This was a cross-sectional study of a representative population of 250 war victims blind in both eyes at a 14-day recreational conference.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Participants had a mean age of 43.20(SD8.34) and their composition was 96.5% male and 3.5% female with a mean SF-36 QOL score of 59.20(SD22.80). An increasing level of education among the participants correlated with a higher QOL score (p = 0.006). The QOL also has a significant correlation to number of injuries (p < 0.0001). High systolic and diastolic blood pressure, hearing loss, and tinnitus had negative individual correlations to QOL (p = 0.016, 0.016, 0.005, p < 0.0001). The male sexual disorders of erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation both had significant correlations to QOL (p = 0.026, p < 0.0001). Hypercholesterolemia showed significant correlation to QOL (p = 0.021).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>As blind war survivors' age, they will present with a greater set of burdens despite their relatively better QOL in the physical component scale when compared with lower limb amputees. Risk factors of cardiovascular attack such as high blood pressure and hypercholesterolemia were present and need future interventions.</p> <p>Key words</p> <p>Quality of life, blindness, SF36, health</p

Tensor voting for robust color edge detection

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7584-8_9This chapter proposes two robust color edge detection methods based on tensor voting. The first method is a direct adaptation of the classical tensor voting to color images where tensors are initialized with either the gradient or the local color structure tensor. The second method is based on an extension of tensor voting in which the encoding and voting processes are specifically tailored to robust edge detection in color images. In this case, three tensors are used to encode local CIELAB color channels and edginess, while the voting process propagates both color and edginess by applying perception-based rules. Unlike the classical tensor voting, the second method considers the context in the voting process. Recall, discriminability, precision, false alarm rejection and robustness measurements with respect to three different ground-truths have been used to compare the proposed methods with the state-of-the-art. Experimental results show that the proposed methods are competitive, especially in robustness. Moreover, these experiments evidence the difficulty of proposing an edge detector with a perfect performance with respect to all features and fields of application.This research has been supported by the Swedish Research Council under the project VR 2012-3512

Role of Neural NO Synthase (nNOS) Uncoupling in the Dysfunctional Nitrergic Vasorelaxation of Penile Arteries from Insulin-Resistant Obese Zucker Rats

Objective: Erectile dysfunction (ED) is considered as an early sign of vascular disease due to its high prevalence in patients with cardiovascular risk factors. Endothelial and neural dysfunction involving nitric oxide (NO) are usually implicated in the pathophysiology of the diabetic ED, but the underlying mechanisms are unclear. The present study assessed the role of oxidative stress in the dysfunctional neural vasodilator responses of penile arteries in the obese Zucker rat (OZR), an experimental model of metabolic syndrome/prediabetes. Methods and Results: Electrical field stimulation (EFS) under non-adrenergic non-cholinergic (NANC) conditions evoked relaxations that were significantly reduced in penile arteries of OZR compared with those of lean Zucker rats (LZR). Blockade of NO synthase (NOS) inhibited neural relaxations in both LZR and OZR, while saturating concentrations of the NOS substrate L-arginine reversed the inhibition and restored relaxations in OZR to levels in arteries from LZR. nNOS expression was unchanged in arteries from OZR compared to LZR and nNOS selective inhibition decreased the EFS relaxations in LZR but not in OZR, while endothelium removal did not alter these responses in either strain. Superoxide anion production and nitro-tyrosine immunostaining were elevated in the erectile tissue from OZR. Treatment with the NADPH oxidase inhibitor apocynin or acute incubation with the NOS cofactor tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4) restored neural relaxations in OZR to levels in control arteries, while inhibition of the enzyme of BH4 synthesis GTP-cyclohydrolase (GCH) reduced neural relaxations i

Assessment of dizziness among older patients at a family practice clinic: a chart audit study

BACKGROUND: Dizziness is a common complaint among the elderly with a prevalence of over 30% in people over the age of 65. Although it is a common problem the assessment and management of dizziness in the elderly is challenging for family physicians. There is little published research which assesses the quality of dizziness assessment and management by family physicians. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective, chart audit study of patients with dizziness attending the Sunnybrook Family Practice Center of Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Center (SWCHSC) in Toronto. We audited a random sample of 50 charts of patients from 310 eligible charts. Quality indicators across all dizziness subtypes were assessed. These quality indicators included: onset and course of symptoms; symptoms in patients' own words; number of medications used; postural blood pressure changes; symptoms of depression or anxiety; falls; syncope; diagnosis; outcome; specialty referrals. Quality indicators specific to each dizziness subtype were also audited. RESULTS: 310 charts satisfied inclusion criteria with 20 charts excluded and 50 charts were randomly generated. Documentation of key quality indicators in the management of dizziness was sub-optimal. Charts documenting patients' dizziness symptoms in their own words were more likely to have a clinical diagnosis compared to charts without (P = 0.002). CONCLUSIONS: Documentation of selected key quality indicators could be improved, especially that of patients' symptoms in their own words