4,034 research outputs found
Drugs, dogs, and driving: the potential for year-round thermal stress in UK vehicles
Background: Dogs are regularly transported or housed in vehicles, with guidelines for housing dogs suggesting that the ambient temperature should be maintained between 15°C and 24°C. Veterinary drugs are routinely stored and carried in vehicles providing ambulatory veterinary care. Non-refrigerated medications typically require storage between 8°C and 25°C.
Aim: This study aims to investigate the potential for thermal stress associated with vehicular storage and transportation of drugs and dogs in a temperate climate, such as the United Kingdom.
Methods: The study used data loggers to continuously record internal temperatures of four vehicles at 15-minute intervals over a two-year period, to investigate the effect of seasonality and time of day on the internal car temperature.
Results: The internal car temperature ranged from â7.4°C to 54.5°C during the study period. Temperatures fell below 8°C every month, except June and July. The internal car temperature exceeded typical drug storage recommendations (>25°C) during every month, and exceeded the canine thermoneutral zone (>35°C) from April to September. Peak temperatures occurred between 14:00 and 17:00 hours.
Conclusion: The results demonstrate the year-round potential for thermal stress of both dogs and drugs left in cars. Public awareness campaigns highlighting the risks of leaving dogs in hot cars are typically launched in late spring, but should consider launching earlier in light of these findings. Veterinary surgeons transporting drugs should take measures to ensure that drugs are stored within the manufacturerâs temperature range year-round. This will limit the potential for drug degradation and decreased efficacy
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Partially Saturated Bicyclic Heteroaromatics as an spÂł-Enriched Fragment Collection.
Fragment-based lead generation has proven to be an effective means of identifying high-quality lead compounds for drug discovery programs. However, the fragment screening sets often used are principally comprised of spÂČ-rich aromatic compounds, which limits the structural (and hence biological) diversity of the library. Herein, we describe strategies for the synthesis of a series of partially saturated bicyclic heteroaromatic scaffolds with enhanced spÂł character. Subsequent derivatization led to a fragment collection featuring regio- and stereo-controlled introduction of substituents on the saturated ring system, often with formation of new stereocenters.EPSRC
BBSRC
MRC
Wellcome Trust
D.G.T. thanks AstraZeneca for funding. S.L.M. thanks BASF for funding.
Predicting bovine tuberculosis status of dairy cows from mid-infrared spectral data of milk using deep learning
The relationship between web enjoyment and student perceptions and learning using a web-based tutorial
Web enjoyment has been regarded as a component of system experience. However, there has been little targeted research considering the role of web enjoyment alone in student learning using web-based systems. To address this gap, this study aims to examine the influence of web enjoyment on learning performance and perceptions by controlling system experience as a variable in the study. 74 students participated in the study, using a web-based tutorial covering subject matter in the area of 'Computation and algorithms'. Their learning performance was assessed with a pre-test and a post-test and their learning perceptions were evaluated with a questionnaire. The results indicated that there are positive relationships between the levels of web enjoyment and perceived usefulness and non-linear navigation for users with similar, significant levels of system experience. The implications of these findings in relation to web-based learning are explored and ways in which the needs of students who report different levels of web enjoyment might be met are discussed
The IBMAP approach for Markov networks structure learning
In this work we consider the problem of learning the structure of Markov
networks from data. We present an approach for tackling this problem called
IBMAP, together with an efficient instantiation of the approach: the IBMAP-HC
algorithm, designed for avoiding important limitations of existing
independence-based algorithms. These algorithms proceed by performing
statistical independence tests on data, trusting completely the outcome of each
test. In practice tests may be incorrect, resulting in potential cascading
errors and the consequent reduction in the quality of the structures learned.
IBMAP contemplates this uncertainty in the outcome of the tests through a
probabilistic maximum-a-posteriori approach. The approach is instantiated in
the IBMAP-HC algorithm, a structure selection strategy that performs a
polynomial heuristic local search in the space of possible structures. We
present an extensive empirical evaluation on synthetic and real data, showing
that our algorithm outperforms significantly the current independence-based
algorithms, in terms of data efficiency and quality of learned structures, with
equivalent computational complexities. We also show the performance of IBMAP-HC
in a real-world application of knowledge discovery: EDAs, which are
evolutionary algorithms that use structure learning on each generation for
modeling the distribution of populations. The experiments show that when
IBMAP-HC is used to learn the structure, EDAs improve the convergence to the
optimum
Male breast cancer in BRCA1 and BRCA1 mutation carriers: pathology data from the consortium of investigators of Modifiers of BRCA1/2
published_or_final_versio
Flood realities, perceptions, and the depth of divisions on climate
Research has led to broad agreement among scientists that anthropogenic climate change is happening now and likely to worsen. In contrast to scientific agreement, US public views remain deeply divided, largely along ideological lines. Science communication has been neutralised in some arenas by intense counter-messaging, but as adverse climate impacts become manifest they might intervene more persuasively in local perceptions. We look for evidence of this occurring with regard to realities and perceptions of flooding in the northeastern US state of New Hampshire. Although precipitation and flood damage have increased, with ample news coverage, most residents do not see a trend. Nor do perceptions about past and future local flooding correlate with regional impacts or vulnerability. Instead, such perceptions follow ideological patterns resembling those of global climate change. That information about the physical world can be substantially filtered by ideology is a common finding from sociological environment/society research
Context, mechanisms and outcomes in end of life care for people with advanced dementia
yesBackground: The majority of people with dementia in the UK die in care homes. The quality of end of life care in
these environments is often suboptimal. The aim of the present study was to explore the context, mechanisms and
outcomes for providing good palliative care to people with advanced dementia residing in UK care homes from
the perspective of health and social care providers.
Method: The design of the study was qualitative which involved purposive sampling of health care professionals to
undertake interactive interviews within a realist framework. Interviews were completed between September 2012
and October 2013 and were thematically analysed and then conceptualised according to context, mechanisms and
outcomes. The settings were private care homes and services provided by the National Health Service including
memory clinics, mental health and commissioning services in London, United Kingdom. The participants included
14 health and social care professionals including health care assistants, care home managers, commissioners for
older adultsâ services and nursing staff.
Results: Good palliative care for people with advanced dementia is underpinned by the prioritisation of
psychosocial and spiritual care, developing relationships with family carers, addressing physical needs including
symptom management and continuous, integrated care provided by a multidisciplinary team. Contextual factors
that detract from good end of life care included: an emphasis on financial efficiency over person-centred care; a
complex health and social care system, societal and family attitudes towards staff; staff training and experience,
governance and bureaucratisation; complexity of dementia; advance care planning and staff characteristics.
Mechanisms that influence the quality of end of life care include: level of health care professionalsâ confidence,
family uncertainty about end of life care, resources for improving end of life care and supporting families, and
uncertainty about whether dementia specific palliative care is required.
Conclusions: Contextual factors regarding the care home environment may be obdurate and tend to negatively
impact on the quality of end of life dementia care. Local level mechanisms may be more amenable to
improvement. However, systemic changes to the care home environment are necessary to promote consistent,
equitable and sustainable high quality end of life dementia care across the UK care home secto
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