Recent advances in understanding idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis

Despite major research efforts leading to the recent approval of pirfenidone and nintedanib, the dismal prognosis of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) remains unchanged. The elaboration of international diagnostic criteria and disease stratification models based on clinical, physiological, radiological, and histopathological features has improved the accuracy of IPF diagnosis and prediction of mortality risk. Nevertheless, given the marked heterogeneity in clinical phenotype and the considerable overlap of IPF with other fibrotic interstitial lung diseases (ILDs), about 10% of cases of pulmonary fibrosis remain unclassifiable. Moreover, currently available tools fail to detect early IPF, predict the highly variable course of the disease, and assess response to antifibrotic drugs. Recent advances in understanding the multiple interrelated pathogenic pathways underlying IPF have identified various molecular phenotypes resulting from complex interactions among genetic, epigenetic, transcriptional, post-transcriptional, metabolic, and environmental factors. These different disease endotypes appear to confer variable susceptibility to the condition, differing risks of rapid progression, and, possibly, altered responses to therapy. The development and validation of diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers are necessary to enable a more precise and earlier diagnosis of IPF and to improve prediction of future disease behaviour. The availability of approved antifibrotic therapies together with potential new drugs currently under evaluation also highlights the need for biomarkers able to predict and assess treatment responsiveness, thereby allowing individualised treatment based on risk of progression and drug response. This approach of disease stratification and personalised medicine is already used in the routine management of many cancers and provides a potential road map for guiding clinical care in IPF

On the Experimental Estimation of Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) Cross Sections by Vibrational Pumping

We present an in-depth analysis of the experimental estimation of cross sections in Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) by vibrational pumping. The paper highlights the advantages and disadvantages of the technique, pinpoints the main aspects and limitations, and provides the underlying physical concepts to interpret the experimental results. Examples for several commonly used SERS probes are given, and a discussion on future possible developments is also presented.Comment: To be submitted to J. Phys. Chem.

Enabling adaptive scientific workflows via trigger detection

Next generation architectures necessitate a shift away from traditional workflows in which the simulation state is saved at prescribed frequencies for post-processing analysis. While the need to shift to in~situ workflows has been acknowledged for some time, much of the current research is focused on static workflows, where the analysis that would have been done as a post-process is performed concurrently with the simulation at user-prescribed frequencies. Recently, research efforts are striving to enable adaptive workflows, in which the frequency, composition, and execution of computational and data manipulation steps dynamically depend on the state of the simulation. Adapting the workflow to the state of simulation in such a data-driven fashion puts extremely strict efficiency requirements on the analysis capabilities that are used to identify the transitions in the workflow. In this paper we build upon earlier work on trigger detection using sublinear techniques to drive adaptive workflows. Here we propose a methodology to detect the time when sudden heat release occurs in simulations of turbulent combustion. Our proposed method provides an alternative metric that can be used along with our former metric to increase the robustness of trigger detection. We show the effectiveness of our metric empirically for predicting heat release for two use cases.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1506.0825

Effect of Peat Grade, Irrigation System and Nutrition on the Production of Nursery Stock in Closed Systems

End of Project ReportContainerised nursery stock plants in Ireland are almost exclusively produced in peat growing media using controlled release fertilisers and are irrigated by means of overhead spraylines with the drainage water going to waste. Concern about nutrient pollution and the need to use water and nutrients more efficiently may lead in the future to regulations about capturing and re-cycling drainage water. This would particularly apply where nutrients are incorporated in the irrigation as in liquid feeding or where hard water is being acidified to neutralise bicarbonate. These experiments were started to study the performance of nursery stock plants in closed systems and to compare ebb and flood and capillary irrigation with overhead spraylines. A comparison of a liquid feeding regime as against the use of controlled release fertilisers was also included. The use of fractionated peat allows peat substrates with a wide range of physical properties to be prepared by using graded fractions or blends. It was thought desirable to include these in the experiments as there may well be interactions between irrigation systems and substrate propertiesEuropean Union Structural Funds (EAGGF