Using fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) to diagnose steroid-responsive disease and guide asthma management in routine care

Acknowledgements We thank Robin Taylor for his informative thinking and publications on FeNO, which have helped to influence and direct the thinking of the authors. Funding Extraction of the real-life dataset was funded by Research in Real Life Limited, the analysis of the dataset and the writing of this manuscript were co-funded (50:50) by Research in Real Life Limited and Aerocrine.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A Survey on the Krein-von Neumann Extension, the corresponding Abstract Buckling Problem, and Weyl-Type Spectral Asymptotics for Perturbed Krein Laplacians in Nonsmooth Domains

In the first (and abstract) part of this survey we prove the unitary equivalence of the inverse of the Krein--von Neumann extension (on the orthogonal complement of its kernel) of a densely defined, closed, strictly positive operator, $S\geq \varepsilon I_{\mathcal{H}}$ for some $\varepsilon >0$ in a Hilbert space $\mathcal{H}$ to an abstract buckling problem operator. This establishes the Krein extension as a natural object in elasticity theory (in analogy to the Friedrichs extension, which found natural applications in quantum mechanics, elasticity, etc.). In the second, and principal part of this survey, we study spectral properties for $H_{K,\Omega}$, the Krein--von Neumann extension of the perturbed Laplacian $-\Delta+V$ (in short, the perturbed Krein Laplacian) defined on $C^\infty_0(\Omega)$, where $V$ is measurable, bounded and nonnegative, in a bounded open set $\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^n$ belonging to a class of nonsmooth domains which contains all convex domains, along with all domains of class $C^{1,r}$, $r>1/2$.Comment: 68 pages. arXiv admin note: extreme text overlap with arXiv:0907.144

Galactic and Extragalactic Samples of Supernova Remnants: How They Are Identified and What They Tell Us

Supernova remnants (SNRs) arise from the interaction between the ejecta of a supernova (SN) explosion and the surrounding circumstellar and interstellar medium. Some SNRs, mostly nearby SNRs, can be studied in great detail. However, to understand SNRs as a whole, large samples of SNRs must be assembled and studied. Here, we describe the radio, optical, and X-ray techniques which have been used to identify and characterize almost 300 Galactic SNRs and more than 1200 extragalactic SNRs. We then discuss which types of SNRs are being found and which are not. We examine the degree to which the luminosity functions, surface-brightness distributions and multi-wavelength comparisons of the samples can be interpreted to determine the class properties of SNRs and describe efforts to establish the type of SN explosion associated with a SNR. We conclude that in order to better understand the class properties of SNRs, it is more important to study (and obtain additional data on) the SNRs in galaxies with extant samples at multiple wavelength bands than it is to obtain samples of SNRs in other galaxiesComment: Final 2016 draft of a chapter in "Handbook of Supernovae" edited by Athem W. Alsabti and Paul Murdin. Final version available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20794-0_90-

Characterizing HMW-GS alleles of decaploid Agropyron elongatum in relation to evolution and wheat breeding

Bread wheat quality is mainly correlated with high molecular weight glutenin subunits (HMW-GS) of endosperm. The number of HMW-GS alleles with good processing quality is limited in bread wheat cultivars, while there are plenty of HMW-GS alleles in wheat-related grasses to exploit. We report here on the cloning and characterization of HMW-GS alleles from the decaploid Agropyron elongatum. Eleven novel HMW-GS alleles were cloned from the grass. Of them, five are x-type and six y-type glutenin subunit genes. Three alleles Aex4, Aey7, and Aey9 showed high similarity with another three alleles from the diploid Lophopyrum elongatum, which provided direct evidence for the Ee genome origination of A. elongatum. It was noted that C-terminal regions of three alleles of the y-type genes Aey8, Aey9, and Aey10 showed more similarity with x-type genes than with other y-type genes. This demonstrates that there is a kind of intermediate state that appeared in the divergence between x- and y-type genes in the HMW-GS evolution. One x-type subunit, Aex4, with an additional cysteine residue, was speculated to be correlated with the good processing quality of wheat introgression lines. Aey4 was deduced to be a chimeric gene from the recombination between another two genes. How the HMW-GS genes of A. elongatum may contribute to the improvement of wheat processing quality are discussed

Gravitational waves from single neutron stars: an advanced detector era survey

With the doors beginning to swing open on the new gravitational wave astronomy, this review provides an up-to-date survey of the most important physical mechanisms that could lead to emission of potentially detectable gravitational radiation from isolated and accreting neutron stars. In particular we discuss the gravitational wave-driven instability and asteroseismology formalism of the f- and r-modes, the different ways that a neutron star could form and sustain a non-axisymmetric quadrupolar "mountain" deformation, the excitation of oscillations during magnetar flares and the possible gravitational wave signature of pulsar glitches. We focus on progress made in the recent years in each topic, make a fresh assessment of the gravitational wave detectability of each mechanism and, finally, highlight key problems and desiderata for future work.Comment: 39 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables. Chapter of the book "Physics and Astrophysics of Neutron Stars", NewCompStar COST Action 1304. Minor corrections to match published versio

Consumer perceptions of co-branding alliances: Organizational dissimilarity signals and brand fit

This study explores how consumers evaluate co-branding alliances between dissimilar partner firms. Customers are well aware that different firms are behind a co-branded product and observe the partner firms’ characteristics. Drawing on signaling theory, we assert that consumers use organizational characteristics as signals in their assessment of brand fit and for their purchasing decisions. Some organizational signals are beyond the control of the co-branding partners or at least they cannot alter them on short notice. We use a quasi-experimental design and test how co-branding partner dissimilarity affects brand fit perception. The results show that co-branding partner dissimilarity in terms of firm size, industry scope, and country-of-origin image negatively affects brand fit perception. Firm age dissimilarity does not exert significant influence. Because brand fit generally fosters a benevolent consumer attitude towards a co-branding alliance, the findings suggest that high partner dissimilarity may reduce overall co-branding alliance performance

Common Variants at 10 Genomic Loci Influence Hemoglobin A(1C) Levels via Glycemic and Nonglycemic Pathways

OBJECTIVE-Glycated hemoglobin (HbA(1c)), used to monitor and diagnose diabetes, is influenced by average glycemia over a 2- to 3-month period. Genetic factors affecting expression, turnover, and abnormal glycation of hemoglobin could also be associated with increased levels of HbA(1c). We aimed to identify such genetic factors and investigate the extent to which they influence diabetes classification based on HbA(1c) levels.RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS-We studied associations with HbA(1c) in up to 46,368 nondiabetic adults of European descent from 23 genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and 8 cohorts with de novo genotyped single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). We combined studies using inverse-variance meta-analysis and tested mediation by glycemia using conditional analyses. We estimated the global effect of HbA(1c) loci using a multilocus risk score, and used net reclassification to estimate genetic effects on diabetes screening.RESULTS-Ten loci reached genome-wide significant association with HbA(1c), including six new loci near FN3K (lead SNP/P value, rs1046896/P = 1.6 x 10(-26)), HFE (rs1800562/P = 2.6 x 10(-20)), TMPRSS6 (rs855791/P = 2.7 x 10(-14)), ANK1 (rs4737009/P = 6.1 x 10(-12)), SPTA1 (rs2779116/P = 2.8 x 10(-9)) and ATP11A/TUBGCP3 (rs7998202/P = 5.2 x 10(-9)), and four known HbA(1c) loci: HK1 (rs16926246/P = 3.1 x 10(-54)), MTNR1B (rs1387153/P = 4.0 X 10(-11)), GCK (rs1799884/P = 1.5 x 10(-20)) and G6PC2/ABCB11 (rs552976/P = 8.2 x 10(-18)). We show that associations with HbA(1c) are partly a function of hyperglycemia associated with 3 of the 10 loci (GCK, G6PC2 and MTNR1B). The seven nonglycemic loci accounted for a 0.19 (%HbA(1c)) difference between the extreme 10% tails of the risk score, and would reclassify similar to 2% of a general white population screened for diabetes with HbA(1c).CONCLUSIONS-GWAS identified 10 genetic loci reproducibly associated with HbA(1c). Six are novel and seven map to loci where rarer variants cause hereditary anemias and iron storage disorders. Common variants at these loci likely influence HbA(1c) levels via erythrocyte biology, and confer a small but detectable reclassification of diabetes diagnosis by HbA(1c) Diabetes 59: 3229-3239, 201

A Long Baseline Neutrino Oscillation Experiment Using J-PARC Neutrino Beam and Hyper-Kamiokande

Document submitted to 18th J-PARC PAC meeting in May 2014. 50 pages, 41 figuresDocument submitted to 18th J-PARC PAC meeting in May 2014. 50 pages, 41 figuresDocument submitted to 18th J-PARC PAC meeting in May 2014. 50 pages, 41 figuresHyper-Kamiokande will be a next generation underground water Cherenkov detector with a total (fiducial) mass of 0.99 (0.56) million metric tons, approximately 20 (25) times larger than that of Super-Kamiokande. One of the main goals of Hyper-Kamiokande is the study of $CP$ asymmetry in the lepton sector using accelerator neutrino and anti-neutrino beams. In this document, the physics potential of a long baseline neutrino experiment using the Hyper-Kamiokande detector and a neutrino beam from the J-PARC proton synchrotron is presented. The analysis has been updated from the previous Letter of Intent [K. Abe et al., arXiv:1109.3262 [hep-ex]], based on the experience gained from the ongoing T2K experiment. With a total exposure of 7.5 MW $\times$ 10$^7$ sec integrated proton beam power (corresponding to $1.56\times10^{22}$ protons on target with a 30 GeV proton beam) to a $2.5$-degree off-axis neutrino beam produced by the J-PARC proton synchrotron, it is expected that the $CP$ phase $\delta_{CP}$ can be determined to better than 19 degrees for all possible values of $\delta_{CP}$, and $CP$ violation can be established with a statistical significance of more than $3\,\sigma$ ($5\,\sigma$) for $76$ ($58$) of the $\delta_{CP}$ parameter space