Pharmacy intervention at an intensive care rehabilitation clinic

Introduction: During an intensive care stay, patients often have their chronic medications withheld for a variety of reasons and new drugs commenced [1]. As patients are often under the care of a number of different medical teams during their admission there is potential for these changes to be inadvertently continued [2]. Intensive Care Syndrome: Promoting Independence and Return to Employment (InS:PIRE) is a five week rehabilitation programme for patients and their caregivers after ICU (Intensive Care Unit) discharge at Glasgow Royal Infirmary. Within this programme a medication review by the critical care pharmacist provided an opportunity to identify and resolve any pharmaceutical care issues and also an opportunity to educate patients and their caregivers about changes to their medication. Methods: During the medication review we identified ongoing pharmaceutical care issues which were communicated to the patient’s primary care physician (GP) by letter or a telephone call. The patients were also encouraged to discuss any issues raised with their GP. The significance of the interventions was classified from those not likely to be of clinical benefit to the patient, to those which prevented serious therapeutic failure. Results: Data was collected from 47 of the 48 patients who attended the clinic (median age was 52 (IQR, 44-57) median ICU LOS was 15 (IQR 9-25), median APACHE II was 23 (IQR 18-27) and 32 of the patients were men (67%). The pharmacist made 69 recommendations; including 20 relating to drugs which had been withheld and not restarted, dose adjustments were suggested on 13 occasions and new drug recommendations were made for 10 patients. Duration of treatment for new medications started during hospital admission was clarified on 12 occasions. Lastly adverse drug effects were reported on 4 occasions and the incorrect drug was prescribed on 2 occasions. Of the interventions made 58% were considered to be of moderate to high impact. Conclusions: The pharmacist identified pharmaceutical care issues with 18.6% of the prescribed medications. Just over half of the patients reported that they were not made aware of any alterations to their prescribed medication on discharge. Therefore a pharmacy intervention is an essential part of an intensive care rehabilitation programme to address any medication related problems, provide education and to ensure patients gain optimal benefit from their medication

Neutrino mass constraint from CMB and its degeneracy with other cosmological parameters

We show that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) data of WMAP can give subelectronvolt limit on the neutrino mass: m_nu < 0.63 eV (95% CL). We also investigate its degeneracy with other cosmological parameters. In particular, we show the Hubble constant derived from the WMAP data decreases considerably when the neutrino mass is a few times 0.1 eV.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, prepared for the TAUP2007 Proceeding

Deposit-feeding sea cucumbers enhance mineralization and nutrient cycling in organically-enriched coastal sediments

Bioturbators affect multiple biogeochemical interactions and have been suggested as suitable candidates to mitigate organic matter loading in marine sediments. However, predicting the effects of bioturbators at an ecosystem level can be difficult due to their complex positive and negative interactions with the microbial community

EChOSim: The Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory software simulator

EChOSim is the end-to-end time-domain simulator of the Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory (EChO) space mission. EChOSim has been developed to assess the capability EChO has to detect and characterize the atmospheres of transiting exoplanets, and through this revolutionize the knowledge we have of the Milky Way and of our place in the Galaxy. Here we discuss the details of the EChOSim implementation and describe the models used to represent the instrument and to simulate the detection. Software simulators have assumed a central role in the design of new instrumentation and in assessing the level of systematics affecting the measurements of existing experiments. Thanks to its high modularity, EChOSim can simulate basic aspects of several existing and proposed spectrometers for exoplanet transits, including instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer, or ground-based and balloon borne experiments. A discussion of different uses of EChOSim is given, including examples of simulations performed to assess the EChO mission

Enhancement of vaccinia virus based oncolysis with histone deacetylase inhibitors

Histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDI) dampen cellular innate immune response by decreasing interferon production and have been shown to increase the growth of vesicular stomatitis virus and HSV. As attenuated tumour-selective oncolytic vaccinia viruses (VV) are already undergoing clinical evaluation, the goal of this study is to determine whether HDI can also enhance the potency of these poxviruses in infection-resistant cancer cell lines. Multiple HDIs were tested and Trichostatin A (TSA) was found to potently enhance the spread and replication of a tumour selective vaccinia virus in several infection-resistant cancer cell lines. TSA significantly decreased the number of lung metastases in a syngeneic B16F10LacZ lung metastasis model yet did not increase the replication of vaccinia in normal tissues. The combination of TSA and VV increased survival of mice harbouring human HCT116 colon tumour xenografts as compared to mice treated with either agent alone. We conclude that TSA can selectively and effectively enhance the replication and spread of oncolytic vaccinia virus in cancer cells. © 2010 MacTavish et al

Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization

Cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy is our richest source of cosmological information; the standard cosmological model was largely established thanks to study of the temperature anisotropies. By the end of the decade, the Planck satellite will close this important chapter and move us deeper into the new frontier of polarization measurements. Numerous ground--based and balloon--borne experiments are already forging into this new territory. Besides providing new and independent information on the primordial density perturbations and cosmological parameters, polarization measurements offer the potential to detect primordial gravity waves, constrain dark energy and measure the neutrino mass scale. A vigorous experimental program is underway worldwide and heading towards a new satellite mission dedicated to CMB polarization.Comment: Review given at TAUP 2005; References added; Additional reference

Instrumental and Analytic Methods for Bolometric Polarimetry

We discuss instrumental and analytic methods that have been developed for the first generation of bolometric cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarimeters. The design, characterization, and analysis of data obtained using Polarization Sensitive Bolometers (PSBs) are described in detail. This is followed by a brief study of the effect of various polarization modulation techniques on the recovery of sky polarization from scanning polarimeter data. Having been successfully implemented on the sub-orbital Boomerang experiment, PSBs are currently operational in two terrestrial CMB polarization experiments (QUaD and the Robinson Telescope). We investigate two approaches to the analysis of data from these experiments, using realistic simulations of time ordered data to illustrate the impact of instrumental effects on the fidelity of the recovered polarization signal. We find that the analysis of difference time streams takes full advantage of the high degree of common mode rejection afforded by the PSB design. In addition to the observational efforts currently underway, this discussion is directly applicable to the PSBs that constitute the polarized capability of the Planck HFI instrument.Comment: 23 pages, 11 figures. for submission to A&

Spider Optimization: Probing the Systematics of a Large Scale B-Mode Experiment

Spider is a long-duration, balloon-borne polarimeter designed to measure large scale Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization with very high sensitivity and control of systematics. The instrument will map over half the sky with degree angular resolution in I, Q and U Stokes parameters, in four frequency bands from 96 to 275 GHz. Spider's ultimate goal is to detect the primordial gravity wave signal imprinted on the CMB B-mode polarization. One of the challenges in achieving this goal is the minimization of the contamination of B-modes by systematic effects. This paper explores a number of instrument systematics and observing strategies in order to optimize B-mode sensitivity. This is done by injecting realistic-amplitude, time-varying systematics in a set of simulated time-streams. Tests of the impact of detector noise characteristics, pointing jitter, payload pendulations, polarization angle offsets, beam systematics and receiver gain drifts are shown. Spider's default observing strategy is to spin continuously in azimuth, with polarization modulation achieved by either a rapidly spinning half-wave plate or a rapidly spinning gondola and a slowly stepped half-wave plate. Although the latter is more susceptible to systematics, results shown here indicate that either mode of operation can be used by Spider.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figs, version with full resolution figs available here http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~lgg/spider_front.ht

Probing for cosmological parameters with LAMOST measurement

In this paper we study the sensitivity of the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) project to the determination of cosmological parameters, employing the Monte Carlo Markov Chains (MCMC) method. For comparison, we first analyze the constraints on cosmological parameters from current observational data, including WMAP, SDSS and SN Ia. We then simulate the 3D matter power spectrum data expected from LAMOST, together with the simulated CMB data for PLANCK and the SN Ia from 5-year Supernovae Legacy Survey (SNLS). With the simulated data, we investigate the future improvement on cosmological parameter constraints, emphasizing the role of LAMOST. Our results show the potential of LAMOST in probing for the cosmological parameters, especially in constraining the equation-of-state (EoS) of the dark energy and the neutrino mass.Comment: 7 pages and 3 figures. Replaced with version accepted for publication in JCA

Design and construction of a carbon fiber gondola for the SPIDER balloon-borne telescope

We introduce the light-weight carbon fiber and aluminum gondola designed for the SPIDER balloon-borne telescope. SPIDER is designed to measure the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation with unprecedented sensitivity and control of systematics in search of the imprint of inflation: a period of exponential expansion in the early Universe. The requirements of this balloon-borne instrument put tight constrains on the mass budget of the payload. The SPIDER gondola is designed to house the experiment and guarantee its operational and structural integrity during its balloon-borne flight, while using less than 10% of the total mass of the payload. We present a construction method for the gondola based on carbon fiber reinforced polymer tubes with aluminum inserts and aluminum multi-tube joints. We describe the validation of the model through Finite Element Analysis and mechanical tests.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures. Presented at SPIE Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes V, June 23, 2014. To be published in Proceedings of SPIE Volume 914