Paper Session III-A - Overview of Space Station Freedom Avionics Design for Critical Functions

Space Station Freedom will be an orbiting laboratory facility resulting from a major investment by the United States and its International Partners. It is imperative that Space Station Freedom\u27s avionics system be designed to be robust and capable of performing the critical functions necessary to protect our investment in this unique resource. This paper provides an overview of the design of the avionics system with regard to its resilient failure tolerant architecture

Relation of land quality to the agricultural economy of Knox County

The purpose of this study Is to present data on the general agricultural economy of Knox County, Tennessee, more particularly the relationship of men to the land. An attempt has been made to evaluate the factor of the land base quality as a measure in analyzing the economy of the county. From a generalized land classification scheme, data were organized to discover the relation between quality of the lend base and its economic use. The study seeks to determine the practicability of an analysis of the agricultural economy by use of a generalized method of farm land appraisement strictly on the basis of the physical quality of the land. In addition, the efforts of the Federal Government in attacking the economic problems of Knox County have been reviewed in an endeavor to show not only the method of approach of the government, but to indicate in a limited manner some of the spheres of activity and their probable influence on the present economy

A Dynamic Programming Approach to De Novo Peptide Sequencing via Tandem Mass Spectrometry

The tandem mass spectrometry fragments a large number of molecules of the same peptide sequence into charged prefix and suffix subsequences, and then measures mass/charge ratios of these ions. The de novo peptide sequencing problem is to reconstruct the peptide sequence from a given tandem mass spectral data of k ions. By implicitly transforming the spectral data into an NC-spectrum graph G=(V,E) where |V|=2k+2, we can solve this problem in O(|V|+|E|) time and O(|V|) space using dynamic programming. Our approach can be further used to discover a modified amino acid in O(|V||E|) time and to analyze data with other types of noise in O(|V||E|) time. Our algorithms have been implemented and tested on actual experimental data.Comment: A preliminary version appeared in Proceedings of the 11th Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, pages 389--398, 200

Feline Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy: A Spontaneous Large Animal Model of Human HCM.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a common disease in pet cats, affecting 10-15% of the pet cat population. The similarity to human HCM, the rapid progression of disease, and the defined and readily determined endpoints of feline HCM make it an excellent natural model that is genotypically and phenotypically similar to human HCM. The Maine Coon and Ragdoll cats are particularly valuable models of HCM because of myosin binding protein-C mutations and even higher disease incidence compared to the overall feline population. The cat overcomes many of the limitations of rodent HCM models, and can provide enhanced translation of information from in vitro and induced small animal models to human clinical trials. Physicians and veterinarians working together in a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach can accelerate the discovery of more effective treatments for this and other cardiovascular diseases affecting human and veterinary patients

Crisis-driven innovation: The case of humanitarian innovation

Innovation is often presented as a survival issue and this provides a powerful metaphor to focus attention on the need to manage it effectively. But in the humanitarian context it takes on a very literal meaning. Crises, whether natural or man-made, require rapid problem solving if agencies and aid workers are to avoid the huge negative impacts of such disasters. That makes consideration of how innovation takes place in this sector an urgent challenge. How can the humanitarian sector best organize to enable innovation and what are the roles for key actors – donors, agencies, and most importantly ‘users’? Our paper summarizes the nature of the challenge and reviews experience so far in humanitarian innovation (HI).  There is a second issue which we also explore. Arguably crisis conditions provide a ‘laboratory’ for exploring alternative approaches and generating novel innovation trajectories which might diffuse more widely – the concept of ‘reverse innovation’. Are there lessons which could be learned for mainstream innovation management? And if so, what are the mechanisms which might enable such learning and experience exchange to take place

Association is not causation: treatment effects cannot be estimated from observational data in heart failure

Aims: Treatment ‘effects’ are often inferred from non-randomized and observational studies. These studies have inherent biases and limitations, which may make therapeutic inferences based on their results unreliable. We compared the conflicting findings of these studies to those of prospective randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in relation to pharmacological treatments for heart failure (HF). Methods and results: We searched Medline and Embase to identify studies of the association between non-randomized drug therapy and all-cause mortality in patients with HF until 31 December 2017. The treatments of interest were: angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers, beta-blockers, mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists (MRAs), statins, and digoxin. We compared the findings of these observational studies with those of relevant RCTs. We identified 92 publications, reporting 94 non-randomized studies, describing 158 estimates of the ‘effect’ of the six treatments of interest on all-cause mortality, i.e. some studies examined more than one treatment and/or HF phenotype. These six treatments had been tested in 25 RCTs. For example, two pivotal RCTs showed that MRAs reduced mortality in patients with HF with reduced ejection fraction. However, only one of 12 non-randomized studies found that MRAs were of benefit, with 10 finding a neutral effect, and one a harmful effect. Conclusion: This comprehensive comparison of studies of non-randomized data with the findings of RCTs in HF shows that it is not possible to make reliable therapeutic inferences from observational associations. While trials undoubtedly leave gaps in evidence and enrol selected participants, they clearly remain the best guide to the treatment of patients