The cost of systemic corticosteroid-induced morbidity in severe asthma : a health economic analysis

The study data-set was supported by the Respiratory Effectiveness Group through their academic partnership with Optimum Patient Care. Ciaran O'Neill was funded under a HRB Research Leader Award (RL/13/16).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Intra-assessor consistency in question answering

In this paper we investigate the consistency of answer assessment in a complex question answering task examining features of assessor consistency, types of answers and question type

Contextual information and assessor characteristics in complex question answering

The ciqa track investigates the role of interaction in answering complex questions: questions that relate two or more entities by some specified relationship. In our submission to the first ciqa track we were interested in the interplay between groups of variables: variables describing the question creators, the questions asked and the presentation of answers to the questions. We used two interaction forms - html questionnaires completed before answer assessment - to gain contextual information from the answer assessors to better understand what factors influence assessors when judging retrieved answers to complex questions. Our results indicate the importance of understanding the assessor's personal relationship to the question - their existing topical knowledge for example - and also the presentation of the answers - contextual information about the answer to aid in the assessment of the answer

The Removal of Flourides from Water by Ionic Exchange

Mottled enamel is the term originated by McKay to describe the disfigurement of teeth which Smith and others discovered was caused by the presence of fluorides in drinking water. Since then considerable time, energy and money have been spent in an effort to find an economical method of removing fluorides from drinking water. At first the use of activated carbon and activated alumina were rather promising; but more recently the use of tricalcium phosphate to remove fluorides from water has been developed (2). A patent by Adams and Holmes (1), wherein it was claimed that the sulphate ion concentration could be reduced nearly to zero, suggested that the fluoride content of water might be reduced to a permissible value by anionic exchange. Such a method of fluoride removal was investigated as a part of the research program concerning water treatment which has been in progress for many years at Iowa State College

Not a “Mom Thing”: Predictors of Gatekeeping in SameSex and Heterosexual Parent Families

The current study is the first to examine parental gatekeeping in both same-sex (57 female, 51 male) and heterosexual (n 82) couples, all of whom became parents via adoption. Aspects of the individual, the couple, and the work context, measured preadoption, were examined as predictors of gatekeeping. Gatekeeping refers to attitudes and behaviors aimed at regulating and limiting the involvement of the other parent in housework and child care and was measured 2 years postadoption. Findings revealed that women in heterosexual relationships reported higher gatekeeping compared with all other groups, and men in same-sex relationships reported higher gatekeeping compared with women in same-sex relationships and men in heterosexual relationships. Across the full sample, lower job autonomy predicted higher gatekeeping in both housework and child care, whereas greater relationship ambivalence, greater perceived parenting skill, and lower perceived partner parenting skill predicted higher gatekeeping in child care. Findings provide insight into how gatekeeping behaviors and beliefs are enacted in diverse types of couples and suggest that work factors should be taken into account when conducting research on, and seeking to improve, coparenting relationships

Environmental monitoring of Mycobacterium bovis in badger feces and badger sett soil by real-time PCR, as confirmed by immunofluorescence, immunocapture, and cultivation

Real-time PCR was used to detect and quantify Mycobacterium bovis cells in naturally infected soil and badger faeces. Immunomagnetic capture, immunofluorescence and selective culture confirmed species identification and cell viability. These techniques will prove useful for monitoring M. bovis in the environment and for elucidating transmission routes between wildlife and cattle

Performance of an environmental test to detect Mycobacterium bovis infection in badger social groups

A study by Courtenay and others (2006) demonstrated that the probability of detecting Mycobacterium bovis by PCR in soil samples from the spoil heaps of main badger setts correlated with the prevalence of excretion (infectiousness) of captured badgers belonging to the social group. It has been proposed that such a test could be used to target badger culling to setts containing infectious animals (Anon 2007). This short communication discusses the issues surrounding this concept, with the intention of dispelling any misconceptions among relevant stakeholders (farmers, policy makers and conservationists)

On the Complexity of tt-Closeness Anonymization and Related Problems

An important issue in releasing individual data is to protect the sensitive information from being leaked and maliciously utilized. Famous privacy preserving principles that aim to ensure both data privacy and data integrity, such as $k$-anonymity and $l$-diversity, have been extensively studied both theoretically and empirically. Nonetheless, these widely-adopted principles are still insufficient to prevent attribute disclosure if the attacker has partial knowledge about the overall sensitive data distribution. The $t$-closeness principle has been proposed to fix this, which also has the benefit of supporting numerical sensitive attributes. However, in contrast to $k$-anonymity and $l$-diversity, the theoretical aspect of $t$-closeness has not been well investigated. We initiate the first systematic theoretical study on the $t$-closeness principle under the commonly-used attribute suppression model. We prove that for every constant $t$ such that $0\leq t<1$, it is NP-hard to find an optimal $t$-closeness generalization of a given table. The proof consists of several reductions each of which works for different values of $t$, which together cover the full range. To complement this negative result, we also provide exact and fixed-parameter algorithms. Finally, we answer some open questions regarding the complexity of $k$-anonymity and $l$-diversity left in the literature.Comment: An extended abstract to appear in DASFAA 201

Threshold Effect In Mg-doped Lithium Niobate

Optical absorption spectra were obtained after reducing (i.e., vacuum annealing) a series of LiNbO3 crystals grown from melts having various Mg concentrations and Li/Nb ratios. A band peaking at 500 nm, and assigned to oxygen vacancies containing two electrons, was the only absorption present in one set of crystals following reduction. In contrast, two overlapping bands peaking near 1200 and 760 nm were present in the other set of crystals immediately after the reduction. The 1200-nm band is assigned to a previously unreported electron trap and the 760-nm band to oxygen vacancies containing only one electron. These data are interpreted in terms of a threshold level for Mg doping; however, the threshold Mg doping level is not a constant but depends on the ratio of Mg ions to Li vacancies