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

A Holistic Approach to Leading in Dangerous Situations

Dangerous contexts place unique psychological, physical, and social demands on leaders and organizations. To prepare for these unique demands, leaders, group members, and organizations need to develop greater levels of trustworthiness, psychological hardiness, and cohesion and stronger leader-follower partnership relationships compared to leaders and organizations that operate in non-dangerous contexts. Given that the demands of dangerous contexts affect all individuals and their relationships with the group and the organization\u27s systems, a systems-based perspective seems to be a logical foundation for fostering holistic development to prepare for the unique challenges of leading and operating in dangerous situations

Extended charge banking model of dual path shocks for implantable cardioverter defibrillators

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Single path defibrillation shock methods have been improved through the use of the Charge Banking Model of defibrillation, which predicts the response of the heart to shocks as a simple resistor-capacitor (RC) circuit. While dual path defibrillation configurations have significantly reduced defibrillation thresholds, improvements to dual path defibrillation techniques have been limited to experimental observations without a practical model to aid in improving dual path defibrillation techniques.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The Charge Banking Model has been extended into a new Extended Charge Banking Model of defibrillation that represents small sections of the heart as separate RC circuits, uses a weighting factor based on published defibrillation shock field gradient measures, and implements a critical mass criteria to predict the relative efficacy of single and dual path defibrillation shocks.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The new model reproduced the results from several published experimental protocols that demonstrated the relative efficacy of dual path defibrillation shocks. The model predicts that time between phases or pulses of dual path defibrillation shock configurations should be minimized to maximize shock efficacy.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Through this approach the Extended Charge Banking Model predictions may be used to improve dual path and multi-pulse defibrillation techniques, which have been shown experimentally to lower defibrillation thresholds substantially. The new model may be a useful tool to help in further improving dual path and multiple pulse defibrillation techniques by predicting optimal pulse durations and shock timing parameters.</p

Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium Fertilization for Newly Established Tall Fescue

First-year spring yields of tall fescue in 2013 responded to phosphorus (P) fertilization, but lodging at the R5 growth stage in the spring with higher P fertilization rates may have influenced subsequent fall harvest yields, which declined with increasing P rates. As N rates increased, R5 yields declined but fall harvest yields increased

On the Unicity of Smartphone Applications

Prior works have shown that the list of apps installed by a user reveal a lot about user interests and behavior. These works rely on the semantics of the installed apps and show that various user traits could be learnt automatically using off-the-shelf machine-learning techniques. In this work, we focus on the re-identifiability issue and thoroughly study the unicity of smartphone apps on a dataset containing 54,893 Android users collected over a period of 7 months. Our study finds that any 4 apps installed by a user are enough (more than 95% times) for the re-identification of the user in our dataset. As the complete list of installed apps is unique for 99% of the users in our dataset, it can be easily used to track/profile the users by a service such as Twitter that has access to the whole list of installed apps of users. As our analyzed dataset is small as compared to the total population of Android users, we also study how unicity would vary with larger datasets. This work emphasizes the need of better privacy guards against collection, use and release of the list of installed apps.Comment: 10 pages, 9 Figures, Appeared at ACM CCS Workshop on Privacy in Electronic Society (WPES) 201

Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium Fertilization for Newly Established Tall Fescue

First-year production of tall fescue (Site 1 in 2013 and Site 2 in 2014) was affected by nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) but not potassium (K) fertilization. Environmental conditions likely influenced the growth of the fescue and the response to fertilizer N and P in the first year of production at the two sites

Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium Fertilization for Newly Established Tall Fescue

(Abstract only. Link to: http://newprairiepress.org/kaesrr/vol1/iss4/1/) Article is nearly identical to Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium Fertilization for Newly Established Tall Fescue previously published in Southeast Agricultural Research Center 2015, included in this PDF. First-year production of tall fescue (Site 1 in 2013 and Site 2 in 2014) was affected by nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), but not potassium (K) fertilization. Environmental conditions likely influenced the growth of the fescue and the response to fertilizer N and P in the first year of production at the two sites

Rapid and efficient stable gene transfer to mesenchymal stromal cells using a modified foamy virus vector

Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) hold great promise for regenerative medicine. Stable ex vivo gene transfer to MSCs could improve the outcome and scope of MSC therapy, but current vectors require multiple rounds of transduction, involve genotoxic viral promoters and/or the addition of cytotoxic cationic polymers in order to achieve efficient transduction. We describe a self-inactivating foamy virus vector (FVV), incorporating the simian macaque foamy virus envelope and using physiological promoters, which efficiently transduces murine MSCs (mMSCs) in a single-round. High and sustained expression of the transgene, whether GFP or the lysosomal enzyme, arylsulphatase A (ARSA), was achieved. Defining MSC characteristics (surface marker expression and differentiation potential), as well as long-term engraftment and distribution in the murine brain following intracerebroventricular delivery, are unaffected by FVV transduction. Similarly, greater than 95% of human MSCs (hMSCs) were stably transduced using the same vector, facilitating human application. This work describes the best stable gene transfer vector available for mMSCs and hMSCs