Bioactivity and dissipation of pyroxasulfone herbicide in Saskatchewan soils

Non-Peer Reviewe

A bioassay for detection of group 2 herbicides

Non-Peer Reviewe

Using electronic health records to support clinical trials: a report on stakeholder engagement for EHR4CR

Background. The conduct of clinical trials is increasingly challenging due to greater complexity and governance requirements as well as difficulties with recruitment and retention. Electronic Health Records for Clinical Research (EHR4CR) aims at improving the conduct of trials by using existing routinely collected data, but little is known about stakeholder views on data availability, information governance, and acceptable working practices. Methods. Senior figures in healthcare organisations across Europe were provided with a description of the project and structured interviews were subsequently conducted to elicit their views. Results. 37 structured interviewees in Germany, UK, Switzerland, and France indicated strong support for the proposed EHR4CR platform. All interviewees reported that using the platform for assessing feasibility would enhance the conduct of clinical trials and the majority also felt it would reduce workloads. Interviewees felt the platform could enhance trial recruitment and adverse event reporting but also felt it could raise either ethical or information governance concerns in their country. Conclusions. There was clear support for EHR4CR and a belief that it could reduce workloads and improve the conduct and quality of trials. However data security, privacy, and information governance issues would need to be carefully managed in the development of the platform

Moment determinants as isomonodromic tau functions

We consider a wide class of determinants whose entries are moments of the so-called semiclassical functionals and we show that they are tau functions for an appropriate isomonodromic family which depends on the parameters of the symbols for the functionals. This shows that the vanishing of the tau-function for those systems is the obstruction to the solvability of a Riemann-Hilbert problem associated to certain classes of (multiple) orthogonal polynomials. The determinants include Haenkel, Toeplitz and shifted-Toeplitz determinants as well as determinants of bimoment functionals and the determinants arising in the study of multiple orthogonality. Some of these determinants appear also as partition functions of random matrix models, including an instance of a two-matrix model.Comment: 24 page

Strong asymptotics for Cauchy biorthogonal polynomials with application to the Cauchy two--matrix model

We apply the nonlinear steepest descent method to a class of 3x3 Riemann-Hilbert problems introduced in connection with the Cauchy two-matrix random model. The general case of two equilibrium measures supported on an arbitrary number of intervals is considered. In this case, we solve the Riemann-Hilbert problem for the outer parametrix in terms of sections of a spinorial line bundle on a three-sheeted Riemann surface of arbitrary genus and establish strong asymptotic results for the Cauchy biorthogonal polynomials.Comment: 31 pages, 12 figures. V2; typos corrected, added reference

Competition of IL-1 and IL-1ra determines lymphocyte response to delayed stimulation with PHA.

BACKGROUND: Human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) left in microcultures for 24h without mitogen do not respond to subsequent stimulation with PHA. They regain reactivity if the native culture medium is absorbed with other party lymphocytes or partially replaced with the medium from a PHA-stimulated culture. The observations suggest that, during the incubation, some inhibitory agent had accumulated in the culture medium. AIM: The study was performed to determine the nature of the observed phenomenon in respect of the possible role of monocytes and their products IL-1 and IL-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1ra), and to test for immunodiagnostic purposes the significance of quantifying the lymphocyte response to delayed stimulation with PHA in patients suffering from inflammatory prosesses. METHODS: Lymphocyte response to delayed stimulation with PHA, calculated as the lymphocyte-monokine interaction (LM) index, was determined in the microcultures of PBMC isolated from the blood of healthy donors or of patients with acute tonsilitis. The values of LM indices were compared with the ratios of IL-1ra/IL-1beta concentration estimated by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay method in the culture supernatants. The influences of exogenous IL-1beta, IL-1ra, anti-IL1ra antibodies and antibiotic cefaclor on the monokine concentrations and on the values of LM index were tested. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: The results show that the level of lymphocyte response to delayed stimulation with PHA (LM index) is inversely proportional to the ratio of IL-1ra/IL-1beta concentration in the culture. The low LM values at high IL-1ra/IL-1beta ratios in PBMC cultures from healthy donors, reversed proportions found in patients' PBMC (acute tonsilitis), and the cefaclor-induced reduction of LM value with correlated increase of the IL-1ra/IL-1beta ratio suggest that the LM assay may prove to be useful for immunodiagnostic purposes

Inverse problems associated with integrable equations of Camassa-Holm type; explicit formulas on the real axis, I

The inverse problem which arises in the Camassa--Holm equation is revisited for the class of discrete densities. The method of solution relies on the use of orthogonal polynomials. The explicit formulas are obtained directly from the analysis on the real axis without any additional transformation to a "string" type boundary value problem known from prior works

Using electronic health records to support clinical trials : a report on stakeholder engagement for EHR4CR

The research leading to these results has received support from the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking under grant agreement number 115189, resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) and EFPIA companies’ in kind contribution.BACKGROUND: The conduct of clinical trials is increasingly challenging due to greater complexity and governance requirements as well as difficulties with recruitment and retention. Electronic Health Records for Clinical Research (EHR4CR) aims at improving the conduct of trials by using existing routinely collected data, but little is known about stakeholder views on data availability, information governance, and acceptable working practices. METHODS: Senior figures in healthcare organisations across Europe were provided with a description of the project and structured interviews were subsequently conducted to elicit their views. RESULTS: 37 structured interviewees in Germany, UK, Switzerland, and France indicated strong support for the proposed EHR4CR platform. All interviewees reported that using the platform for assessing feasibility would enhance the conduct of clinical trials and the majority also felt it would reduce workloads. Interviewees felt the platform could enhance trial recruitment and adverse event reporting but also felt it could raise either ethical or information governance concerns in their country. CONCLUSIONS: There was clear support for EHR4CR and a belief that it could reduce workloads and improve the conduct and quality of trials. However data security, privacy, and information governance issues would need to be carefully managed in the development of the platform.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Reactive intermediates revealed in secondary organic aerosol formation from isoprene

Isoprene is a significant source of atmospheric organic aerosol; however, the oxidation pathways that lead to secondary organic aerosol (SOA) have remained elusive. Here, we identify the role of two key reactive intermediates, epoxydiols of isoprene (IEPOX = β-IEPOX + δ-IEPOX) and methacryloylperoxynitrate (MPAN), which are formed during isoprene oxidation under low- and high-NO_x conditions, respectively. Isoprene low-NO_x SOA is enhanced in the presence of acidified sulfate seed aerosol (mass yield 28.6%) over that in the presence of neutral aerosol (mass yield 1.3%). Increased uptake of IEPOX by acid-catalyzed particle-phase reactions is shown to explain this enhancement. Under high-NO_x conditions, isoprene SOA formation occurs through oxidation of its second-generation product, MPAN. The similarity of the composition of SOA formed from the photooxidation of MPAN to that formed from isoprene and methacrolein demonstrates the role of MPAN in the formation of isoprene high-NO_x SOA. Reactions of IEPOX and MPAN in the presence of anthropogenic pollutants (i.e., acidic aerosol produced from the oxidation of SO_2 and NO_2, respectively) could be a substantial source of “missing urban SOA” not included in current atmospheric models

A Riemann-Hilbert Problem for an Energy Dependent Schr\"odinger Operator

\We consider an inverse scattering problem for Schr\"odinger operators with energy dependent potentials. The inverse problem is formulated as a Riemann-Hilbert problem on a Riemann surface. A vanishing lemma is proved for two distinct symmetry classes. As an application we prove global existence theorems for the two distinct systems of partial differential equations $u_t+(u^2/2+w)_x=0, w_t\pm u_{xxx}+(uw)_x=0$ for suitably restricted, complementary classes of initial data