842 research outputs found
Too Many Mouldy Joints â Marijuana and Chronic Pulmonary Aspergillosis
Chronic pulmonary aspergillosis is a progressive debilitating disease with multiple underlying pulmonary diseases described. Here we report the association of chronic pulmonary aspergillosis and long term marijuana smoking in 2 patients and review the literature related to invasive and allergic aspergillosis
Landscape preservation under postâEuropean settlement alluvium in the southâeastern Australian tablelands, inferred from portable OSL reader data
Human landâuse changes leading to widespread erosion and gully incision have been well studied, but the effects that erosion and sediment mixing, which accompany the deposition of postâ(European) settlement alluvium (PSA), have in valley bottoms and wetlands receive considerably less attention. PSA overlying preâdisturbance swampy meadow (SM) wetland sediments is commonly exposed along incised stream channel gully walls throughout the southâeastern Australian Tablelands, providing an ideal setting in which to assess and understand better how PSA deposition affects valley bottoms and the wetland environments that often occupy them. Portable optically stimulated luminescence (pOSL) reader data were measured on bulk sediment samples from SMâPSA stratigraphies at 16 locations throughout the southâeastern Australian Tablelands to assess the effects of erosion and sediment mixing at the SMâPSA boundary. Trends of pOSL data with depth at each profile were used in conjunction with visual profile descriptions to identify the stratigraphic boundary between SM and PSA sediment and to infer the degree of valley bottom erosion and sediment mixing during PSA deposition. At most sites, SM sediments experienced minimal, if any, disturbance during PSA deposition, and we refer to these as nonâeroded sites. Many sites, however, experienced a significant degree of erosion and sediment mixing â eroded sites â often corresponding to visually diffuse sedimentary boundaries between the two stratigraphic units. Our findings demonstrate that SM landscapes in the Tablelands can be preserved with minimal disturbance under PSA at nonâeroded sites and are preserved beneath a mixing zone at all eroded sites. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134129/1/esp3942.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134129/2/esp3942_am.pd
The beginnings of geography teaching and research in the University of Glasgow: the impact of J.W. Gregory
J.W. Gregory arrived in Glasgow from Melbourne in 1904 to take up the post of foundation Professor of Geology in the University of Glasgow. Soon after his arrival in Glasgow he began to push for the setting up of teaching in Geography in Glasgow, which came to pass in 1909 with the appointment of a Lecturer in Geography. This lecturer was based in the Department of Geology in the University's East Quad. Gregory's active promotion of Geography in the University was matched by his extensive writing in the area, in textbooks, journal articles and popular books. His prodigious output across a wide range of subject areas is variably accepted today, with much of his geomorphological work being judged as misguided to varying degrees. His 'social science' publications - in the areas of race, migration, colonisation and economic development of Africa and Australia - espouse a viewpoint that is unacceptable in the twenty-first century. Nonetheless, that viewpoint sits squarely within the social and economic traditions of Gregory's era, and he was clearly a key 'Establishment' figure in natural and social sciences research in the first half of the twentieth century. The establishment of Geography in the University of Glasgow remains enduring testimony of J.W. Gregory's energy, dedication and foresight
Aspergillus nodules; another presentation of Chronic Pulmonary Aspergillosis
BACKGROUND: There are a number of different manifestations of pulmonary aspergillosis. This study aims to review the radiology, presentation, and histological features of lung nodules caused by Aspergillus spp. METHODS: Patients were identified from a cohort attending our specialist Chronic Pulmonary Aspergillosis clinic. Patients with cavitating lung lesions, with or without fibrosis and those with aspergillomas or a diagnosis of invasive aspergillosis were excluded. Demographic, laboratory, and clinical data and radiologic findings were recorded. RESULTS: Thirty-three patients with pulmonary nodules and diagnostic features of aspergillosis (histology and/or laboratory findings) were identified. Eighteen (54.5Â %) were male, mean age 58Â years (range 27â80 years). 19 (57.6Â %) were former or current smokers. The median Charleston co-morbidity index was 3 (range 0â7). All complained of a least one of; dyspnoea, cough, haemoptysis, or weight loss. None reported fever. Ten patients (31Â %) did not have an elevated Aspergillus IgG, and only 4 patients had elevated Aspergillus precipitins. Twelve patients (36Â %) had a single nodule, six patients (18Â %) had between 2 and 5 nodules, 2 (6Â %) between 6 and 10 nodules and 13 (39Â %) had more than 10 nodules. The mean size of the nodules was 21Â mm, with a maximum size ranging between 5â50Â mm. No nodules had cavitation radiographically. The upper lobes were most commonly involved. Histology was available for 18 patients and showed evidence of granulation tissue, fibrosis, and visualisation of fungal hyphae. CONCLUSION: Pulmonary nodules are a less common manifestation of aspergillosis in immunocompetent patients. Distinguishing these nodules from other lung pathology may be difficult on CT findings alone
Topical recombinant thrombin at a concentration of 1000Â IU/mL reliably shortens in vivo TTH and delivers durable hemostasis in the presence of heparin anticoagulation and clopidogrel platelet inhibition in a rabbit model of vascular bleeding
A self-consistent perturbative evaluation of ground state energies: application to cohesive energies of spin lattices
The work presents a simple formalism which proposes an estimate of the ground
state energy from a single reference function. It is based on a perturbative
expansion but leads to non linear coupled equations. It can be viewed as well
as a modified coupled cluster formulation. Applied to a series of spin lattices
governed by model Hamiltonians the method leads to simple analytic solutions.
The so-calculated cohesive energies are surprisingly accurate. Two examples
illustrate its applicability to locate phase transition.Comment: Accepted by Phys. Rev.
Evidence for conservation in antigen gene sequences combined with extensive polymorphism at VNTR loci
Theileria parva is a tickâtransmitted apicomplexan protozoan parasite that infects lymphocytes of cattle and African Cape buffalo (Syncerus caffer), causing a frequently fatal disease of cattle in eastern, central and southern Africa. A live vaccination procedure, known as infection and treatment method (ITM), the most frequently used version of which comprises the Muguga, Serengetiâtransformed and Kiambu 5 stocks of T. parva, delivered as a trivalent cocktail, is generally effective. However, it does not always induce 100% protection against heterologous parasite challenge. Knowledge of the genetic diversity of T. parva in target cattle populations is therefore important prior to extensive vaccine deployment. This study investigated the extent of genetic diversity within T. parva field isolates derived from Ankole (Bos taurus) cattle in southâwestern Uganda using 14 variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) satellite loci and the sequences of two antigenâencoding genes that are targets of CD8+Tâcell responses induced by ITM, designated Tp1 and Tp2. The findings revealed a T. parva prevalence of 51% confirming endemicity of the parasite in southâwestern Uganda. Cattleâderived T. parva VNTR genotypes revealed a high degree of polymorphism. However, all of the T. parva Tp1 and Tp2 alleles identified in this study have been reported previously, indicating that they are widespread geographically in East Africa and highly conserved
Probabilistic classification of acute myocardial infarction from multiple cardiac markers
Logistic regression and Gaussian mixture model (GMM) classifiers have been trained to estimate the probability of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in patients based upon the concentrations of a panel of cardiac markers. The panel consists of two new markers, fatty acid binding protein (FABP) and glycogen phosphorylase BB (GPBB), in addition to the traditional cardiac troponin I (cTnI), creatine kinase MB (CKMB) and myoglobin. The effect of using principal component analysis (PCA) and Fisher discriminant analysis (FDA) to preprocess the marker concentrations was also investigated. The need for classifiers to give an accurate estimate of the probability of AMI is argued and three categories of performance measure are described, namely discriminatory ability, sharpness, and reliability. Numerical performance measures for each category are given and applied. The optimum classifier, based solely upon the samples take on admission, was the logistic regression classifier using FDA preprocessing. This gave an accuracy of 0.85 (95% confidence interval: 0.78â0.91) and a normalised Brier score of 0.89. When samples at both admission and a further time, 1â6 h later, were included, the performance increased significantly, showing that logistic regression classifiers can indeed use the information from the five cardiac markers to accurately and reliably estimate the probability AMI
Baby with neonatal systemic juvenile xanthogranuloma born within a cross-cousin marriage
AbstractJuvenile xanthogranuloma is a non-Langerhans cell histiocytosis seen most commonly in childhood and adolescence. Extracutaneous involvement is rare. We report an interesting and extremely rare case of systemic (skin, lung, spleen, and colon) âjuvenile xanthogranulomaâ in the neonatal period. Our case was the first ever reported case born to a cross-cousin marriage
Regression with input-dependent noise: A Gaussian process treatment
Gaussian processes provide natural non-parametric prior distributions over regression functions. In this paper we consider regression problems where there is noise on the output, and the variance of the noise depends on the inputs. If we assume that the noise is a smooth function of the inputs, then it is natural to model the noise variance using a second Gaussian process, in addition to the Gaussian process governing the noise-free output value. We show that prior uncertainty about the parameters controlling both processes can be handled and that the posterior distribution of the noise rate can be sampled from using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. Our results on a synthetic data set give a posterior noise variance that well-approximates the true variance
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