Safety and Pharmacokinetics of Multiple Doses of Intravenous Ofloxacin in Healthy Volunteers

The safety and pharmacokinetics of ofloxacin in 48 healthy male volunteers were studied in a two-center, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Ofloxacin (200 or 400 mg) or placebo was administered as 1-h infusions every 12 h for 7 days. Plasma ofloxacin concentrations were measured by high-performance liquid chromatography. Mean harmonic half-lives ranged from 4.28 to 4.98 h in the 200-mg dosing group and from 5.06 to 6.67 h in the 400-mg dosing group. Intragroup comparisons of trough plasma concentration-versus-time data from study days 2 through 7 revealed that steady state was achieved by day 2 of both multiple-dose regimens. Intergroup comparisons of mean harmonic half-lives, the areas under the concentration-time curve from 0 to 12 and 0 to 60 h, clearance, and apparent volume of distribution (area method) revealed that the pharmacokinetics of ofloxacin are dose independent. Both ofloxacin dosage regimens appeared to be reasonably well tolerated. The two dosage regimens of ofloxacin, 200 or 400 mg every 12 h, appear to be safe and provide serum drug concentrations in excess of the MICs for most susceptible pathogens over the entire dosing interval

Supporting Advocacy, Deliberation, and Civic Learning in the Classroom

We live, teach and learn in complicated times. As faculty in higher education, we have the opportunity to help uphold the civic purpose of higher education. We are accustomed to helping students navigate academic information, and to equipping them for more standard academic tasks. Through thoughtful course design, we can also help our students become better consumers and evaluators of less traditionally academic information: from critically interpreting what they read and see in the news media, to engaging the arguments of their friends, peers and family members. Further, we can challenge our students to use these evaluative skills to engage in debate and advocacy activities around critical issues of the day

TVB-EduPack: An interactive learning and scripting platform for The Virtual Brain

The Virtual Brain (TVB; thevirtualbrain.org) is a neuroinformatics platform for full brain network simulation based on individual anatomical connectivity data. The framework addresses clinical and neuroscientific questions by simulating multi-scale neural dynamics that range from local population activity to large-scale brain function and related macroscopic signals like electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging. TVB is equipped with a graphical and a command-line interface to create models that capture the characteristic biological variability to predict the brain activity of individual subjects. To enable researchers from various backgrounds a quick start into TVB and brain network modeling in general, we developed an educational module: TVB-EduPack. EduPack offers two educational functionalities that seamlessly integrate into TVB's graphical user interface (GUI): (i) interactive tutorials introduce GUI elements, guide through the basic mechanics of software usage and develop complex use-case scenarios; animations, videos and textual descriptions transport essential principles of computational neuroscience and brain modeling; (ii) an automatic script generator records model parameters and produces input files for TVB's Python programming interface; thereby, simulation configurations can be exported as scripts that allow flexible customization of the modeling process and self-defined batch- and post-processing applications while benefitting from the full power of the Python language and its toolboxes. This article covers the implementation of TVB-EduPack and its integration into TVB architecture. Like TVB, EduPack is an open source community project that lives from the participation and contribution of its users. TVB-EduPack can be obtained as part of TVB from thevirtualbrain.org

Smart Libraries: Best SQE Practices for Libraries with an Emphasis on Scientific Computing

As scientific computing applications grow in complexity, more and more functionality is being packaged in independently developed libraries. Worse, as the computing environments in which these applications run grow in complexity, it gets easier to make mistakes in building, installing and using libraries as well as the applications that depend on them. Unfortunately, SQA standards so far developed focus primarily on applications, not libraries. We show that SQA standards for libraries differ from applications in many respects. We introduce and describe a variety of practices aimed at minimizing the likelihood of making mistakes in using libraries and at maximizing users' ability to diagnose and correct them when they occur. We introduce the term Smart Library to refer to a library that is developed with these basic principles in mind. We draw upon specific examples from existing products we believe incorporate smart features: MPI, a parallel message passing library, and HDF5 and SAF, both of which are parallel I/O libraries supporting scientific computing applications. We conclude with a narrative of some real-world experiences in using smart libraries with Ale3d, VisIt and SAF

Spectrally Enhanced Lighting Program Implementation for Energy Savings: Field Evaluation

This report provides results from an evaluation PNNL conducted of a spectrally enhanced lighting demonstration project. PNNL performed field measurements and occupant surveys at three office buildings in California before and after lighting retrofits were made in August and December 2005. PNNL measured the following Overhead lighting electricity demand and consumption, Light levels in the workspace, Task lighting use, and Occupant ratings of satisfaction with the lighting. Existing lighting, which varied in each building, was replaced with lamps with correlated color temperature (CCT) of 5000 Kelvin, color rendering index (CRI) of 85, of varying wattages, and lower ballast factor electronic ballasts. The demonstrations were designed to decrease lighting power loads in the three buildings by 22-50 percent, depending on the existing installed lamps and ballasts. The project designers hypothesized that this reduction in electrical loads could be achieved by the change to higher CCT lamps without decreasing occupant satisfaction with the lighting

Role of Defect Interaction in Boundary Mobility and Cation Diffusivity of CeO 2

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/65842/1/j.1151-2916.1994.tb04596.x.pd

JASP: Graphical Statistical Software for Common Statistical Designs

This paper introduces JASP, a free graphical software package for basic statistical procedures such as t tests, ANOVAs, linear regression models, and analyses of contingency tables. JASP is open-source and differentiates itself from existing open-source solutions in two ways. First, JASP provides several innovations in user interface design; specifically, results are provided immediately as the user makes changes to options, output is attractive, minimalist, and designed around the principle of progressive disclosure, and analyses can be peer reviewed without requiring a "syntax". Second, JASP provides some of the recent developments in Bayesian hypothesis testing and Bayesian parameter estimation. The ease with which these relatively complex Bayesian techniques are available in JASP encourages their broader adoption and furthers a more inclusive statistical reporting practice. The JASP analyses are implemented in R and a series of R packages

Interferon β-1a in relapsing multiple sclerosis: four-year extension of the European IFNβ-1a Dose-C omparison Study

Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic disease requiring long-term monitoring of treatment. Objective: To assess the four-year clinical efficacy of intramuscular (IM) IFNb-1a in patients with relapsing MS from the European IFNb-1a Dose-C omparison Study. Methods: Patients who completed 36 months of treatment (Part 1) of the European IFNb-1a Dose-C omparison Study were given the option to continue double-blind treatment with IFNb-1a 30 mcg or 60 mcg IM once weekly (Part 2). Analyses of 48-month data were performed on sustained disability progression, relapses, and neutralizing antibody (NA b) formation. Results: O f 608/802 subjects who completed 36 months of treatment, 493 subjects continued treatment and 446 completed 48 months of treatment and follow-up. IFNb-1a 30 mcg and 60 mcg IM once weekly were equally effective for up to 48 months. There were no significant differences between doses over 48 months on any of the clinical endpoints, including rate of disability progression, cumulative percentage of patients who progressed (48 and 43, respectively), and annual relapse rates; relapses tended to decrease over 48 months. The incidence of patients who were positive for NAbs at any time during the study was low in both treatment groups. Conclusion: C ompared with 60-mcg IM IFNb-1a once weekly, a dose of 30 mcg IM IFNb-1a once weekly maintains the same clinical efficacy over four years