Sgarbossa Criteria are Highly Specific for Acute Myocardial Infarction with Pacemakers

Objective: In 1996 Sgarbossa reviewed 17 ventricular-paced electrocardiograms (ECGs) in acute myocardial infarction (AMI) for signs of ischemia. Several characteristics of the paced ECG were predictive of AMI. We sought to evaluate the criteria in ventricular-paced ECGs in an emergency department (ED) cohort.Methods: Ventricular-paced ECGs in patients with elevated cardiac markers within 12 hours of the ED ECG and a diagnosis of AMI were identified retrospectively (n=57) and compared with a control group of patients with ventricular-paced ECGs and negative cardiac markers (n=99). A blinded board certified cardiologist reviewed all ECGs for Sgarbossa criteria. This study was approved by the institutional review board.Results: Application of Sgarbossa’s criteria to the paced ECGs revealed the following: 1) The sensitivity of “ST-segment elevation of 1 mm concordant with the QRS complex” was unable to be calculated as no ECG fit this criterion; 2) For “ST-segment depression of 1 mm in lead V1, V2, or V3,” the sensitivity was 19% (95% CI 11-31%), specificity 81% (95% CI 72-87%), with a likelihood ratio of 1.06 (0.63-1.64); 3) For “ST-segment elevation >5mm discordant with the QRS complex,” the sensitivity was 10% (95% CI 5-21%), specificity 99% (95% CI 93-99%), with a likelihood ratio of 5.2 (1.3 - 21).Conclusion: In our review of ventricular-paced ECGs, the most clinically useful Sgarbossa criterion in identifying AMI was ST-segment elevation >5mm discordant with the QRS complex. This characteristic may prove helpful in identifying patients who may ultimately benefit from early aggressive AMI treatment strategies. [West J Emerg Med. 2010; 11(4):354-357.

Killarney Visitor Survey 2010

The DIT-ACHIEV Model for the Sustainable Management of Tourism has been developed by the School of Hospitality Management and Tourism, Technological University Dublin and is endorsed by the Environmental Protection Agency and Fáilte Ireland. It explores six areas of investigation - Administration, Community, Heritage, Infrastructure, Enterprise and Visitor. The purpose of piloting this DITACHIEV model in Killarney is to test its use with the objective to refine and adjust its methodology, so that it can be applied in any Irish tourism destination. Early indications are that The Model will provide the Irish tourism industry with a valuable tool for making its product and management far more sustainable. In addi t i on to data such as e n v i r o nme n t al me as u r eme n t s , information on water, waste, energy, transport, examination of local cultural, environmental and employment statistics, the model requires the undertaking of three dedicated surveys: • A Resident Survey • A Business Survey • A Visitor Survey A survey of residents was undertaken at the outset of the year and the Business Survey was run during the latter part of the summer months. With the support of local volunteers and students, this yearlong Visitor Survey has taken place throughout Killarney. This report presents the main findings of 659 Visitor Surveys that were conducted between Nov 2009 and Oct 2010. The support of the surveyors is gratefully acknowledged, and it is hoped that the findings presented in this report will lead to much discussion and self analysis by the tourism industry in Killarney

2010 Killarney Business Survey

The DIT-ACHIEV Model for the Sustainable Management of Tourism has been developed by the School of Hospitality Management and Tourism, Technological University Dublin and is endorsed by the Environmental Protection Agency and Fáilte Ireland. It explores six areas of investigation - Administration, Community, Heritage, Infrastructure, Enterprise and Visitor. The purpose of piloting this DIT- ACHIEV model in Killarney is to test its use with the objective to refine and adjust its methodology, so that it can be applied in any Irish tourism destination. Early indications are that The Model will provide the Irish tourism Industry with a valuable tool for making its product and management far more sustainable. In addition to data such as environmental measurements, information on water, waste, energy, transport, examination of local cultural, environmental and employment statistics, the model requires the undertaking of three dedicated surveys: A Resident Survey A Business Survey A Visitor Survey With the support of local volunteers and students, a year-long Visitor Survey has taken place throughout Killarney. A survey of residents was undertaken at the outset of the year and this Business Survey was run during the latter part of the summer months. 250 businesses in Killarney Town and Valley were invited to participate and this publication presents the views of the 157 who completed the survey on-line and face-to-face. In almost all instances the respondents were owners / managers, and most respondents answered all of the questions. Thus, this report provides a good overall representation of the Killarney business community

Conceptualisation of an Efficient Particle-Based Simulation of a Twin-Screw Granulator

Discrete Element Method (DEM) simulations have the potential to provide particle-scale understanding of twin-screw granulators. This is difficult to obtain experimentally because of the closed, tightly confined geometry. An essential prerequisite for successful DEM modelling of a twin-screw granulator is making the simulations tractable, i.e., reducing the significant computational cost while retaining the key physics. Four methods are evaluated in this paper to achieve this goal: (i) develop reduced-scale periodic simulations to reduce the number of particles; (ii) further reduce this number by scaling particle sizes appropriately; (iii) adopt an adhesive, elasto-plastic contact model to capture the effect of the liquid binder rather than fluid coupling; (iv) identify the subset of model parameters that are influential for calibration. All DEM simulations considered a GEA ConsiGma™ 1 twin-screw granulator with a 60° rearward configuration for kneading elements. Periodic simulations yielded similar results to a full-scale simulation at significantly reduced computational cost. If the level of cohesion in the contact model is calibrated using laboratory testing, valid results can be obtained without fluid coupling. Friction between granules and the internal surfaces of the granulator is a very influential parameter because the response of this system is dominated by interactions with the geometry

Killarney Resident Survey 2010

The DIT-ACHIEV Model for the Sustainable Management of Tourism has been developed by the School of Hospitality Management and Tourism, Technological University Dublin and is endorsed by the Environmental Protection Agency and Fáilte Ireland. It explores six areas of interest - Administration, Community, Heritage, Infrastructure, Enterprise and Visitor. The purpose of piloting this DIT- ACHIEV model in Killarney is to test its use in an Irish tourism destination, with the objective to refine and adjust its methodology, so that it can be applied in any Irish tourism destination. Early indications are that the Model will provide the Irish Tourism Industry with a valuable tool for making its product and management far more sustainable. In addition to data such as environmental measurements, information on water, waste, energy, transport, examination of local cultural, landscape and employment statistics, the model requires the undertaking of three dedicated surveys: • A Resident Survey • A Business Survey • A Visitor Survey With the support of local volunteers, a Visitor Survey has been taking place throughout Killarney over the last 6 months, and results will be presented at the end of the season. A Business Survey will take place in the coming weeks, and this publication presents an overview of the findings from an on-line survey of 436 Killarney Town and Valley residents which took place in recent weeks. This report presents Killarney people’s attitudes and opinions regarding tourism and while some issues have emerged, the general response to the survey is that Killarney residents overwhelmingly support tourism

Post-processing and visualisation of large-scale DEM simulation data with the open-source VELaSSCo platform

Regardless of its origin, in the near future the challenge will not be how to generate data, but rather how to manage big and highly distributed data to make it more easily handled and more accessible by users on their personal devices. VELaSSCo (Visualization for Extremely Large-Scale Scientific Computing) is a platform developed to provide new visual analysis methods for large-scale simulations serving the petabyte era. The platform adopts Big Data tools/architectures to enable in-situ processing for analytics of engineering and scientific data and hardware-accelerated interactive visualization. In large-scale simulations, the domain is partitioned across several thousand nodes, and the data (mesh and results) are stored on those nodes in a distributed manner. The VELaSSCo platform accesses this distributed information, processes the raw data, and returns the results to the users for local visualization by their specific visualization clients and tools. The global goal of VELaSSCo is to provide Big Data tools for the engineering and scientific community, in order to better manipulate simulations with billions of distributed records. The ability to easily handle large amounts of data will also enable larger, higher resolution simulations, which will allow the scientific and engineering communities to garner new knowledge from simulations previously considered too large to handle. This paper shows, by means of selected Discrete Element Method (DEM) simulation use cases, that the VELaSSCo platform facilitates distributed post-processing and visualization of large engineering datasets

Transcriptional response to lactic acid stress in the hybrid yeast Zygosaccharomyces parabailii

Lactic acid has a wide range of applications starting from its undissociated form, and its production using cell factories requires stress-tolerant microbial hosts. The interspecies hybrid yeast Zygosaccharomyces parabailii has great potential to be exploited as a novel host for lactic acid production, due to high organic acid tolerance at low pH, and a fermentative metabolism with a fast growth rate. Here we used RNA-seq to analyze Z. parabailii's transcriptional response to lactic acid added exogenously, and we explore the biological mechanisms involved in tolerance. Z. parabailii contains two homeologous copies of most genes. Under lactic acid stress, the two genes in each homeolog pair tend to diverge in expression to a significantly greater extent than in control conditions, indicating that stress tolerance is facilitated by interactions between the two gene sets in the hybrid. Lactic acid induces downregulation of genes related to cell wall and plasma membrane functions, possibly altering the rate of diffusion of lactic acid into cells. Genes related to iron transport and redox processes were upregulated, suggesting an important role for respiratory functions and oxidative stress defense. We found differences in the expression profiles of genes putatively regulated by Haa1 and Aft1/2, previously described as lactic acid-responsive in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Furthermore, formate dehydrogenase (FDH) genes form a lactic acid-responsive gene family that has been specifically amplified in Z. parabailii as compared to other closely related species. Our study provides a useful starting point for the engineering of Z. parabailii as a host for lactic acid production.Importance Hybrid yeasts are important in biotechnology because of their tolerance to harsh industrial conditions. The molecular mechanisms of tolerance can be studied by analyzing differential gene expression in conditions of interest, and relating gene expression patterns to protein functions. However, hybrid organisms present a challenge to the standard use of mRNA sequencing (RNA-seq) to study transcriptional responses to stress, because their genomes contain two similar copies of almost every gene. Here we used stringent mapping methods and a high-quality genome sequence to study the transcriptional response to lactic acid stress in Zygosaccharomyces parabailii ATCC60483, a natural interspecies hybrid yeast that contains two complete subgenomes that are approximately 7% divergent in sequence. Beyond the insights we gained into lactic acid tolerance in this study, the methods we developed will be broadly applicable to other yeast hybrid strains

Impact of Diaspora Community on National and Global Politics

Annotated Bibliography based on a Survey of the Literature for the CIA Strategic Assessment Group Research Effor