Syntheses and Crystal Structures of Three Chiral Oxazolidinones with Different Ring Conformations

Funding: This research received no external funding. Acknowledgments: We thank the EPSRC National Crystallography Centre (University of Southampton) for the X-ray data collections.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Acceptability to patients, carers and clinicians of an mHealth platform for the management of Parkinson's disease (PD_Manager): study protocol for a pilot randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Parkinson's disease is a degenerative neurological condition causing multiple motor and non-motor symptoms that have a serious adverse effect on quality of life. Management is problematic due to the variable and fluctuating nature of symptoms, often hourly and daily. The PD_Manager mHealth platform aims to provide a continuous feed of data on symptoms to improve clinical understanding of the status of any individual patient and inform care planning. The objectives of this trial are to (1) assess patient (and family carer) perspectives of PD_Manager regarding comfort, acceptability and ease of use; (2) assess clinician views about the utility of the data generated by PD_Manager for clinical decision making and the acceptability of the system in clinical practice. METHODS/DESIGN: This trial is an unblinded, parallel, two-group, randomised controlled pilot study. A total of 200 persons with Parkinson's disease (Hoehn and Yahr stage 3, experiencing motor fluctuations at least 2 h per day), with primary family carers, in three countries (110 Rome, 50 Venice, Italy; 20 each in Ioannina, Greece and Surrey, England) will be recruited. Following informed consent, baseline information will be gathered, including the following: age, gender, education, attitudes to technology (patient and carer); time since Parkinson's diagnosis, symptom status and comorbidities (patient only). Randomisation will assign participants (1:1 in each country), to PD_Manager vs control, stratifying by age (1 ≤ 70 : 1 > 70) and gender (60% M: 40% F). The PD_Manager system captures continuous data on motor symptoms, sleep, activity, speech quality and emotional state using wearable devices (wristband, insoles) and a smartphone (with apps) for storing and transmitting the information. Control group participants will be asked to keep a symptom diary covering the same elements as PD_Manager records. After a minimum of two weeks, each participant will attend a consultation with a specialist doctor for review of the data gathered (by either means), and changes to management will be initiated as indicated. Patients, carers and clinicians will be asked for feedback on the acceptability and utility of the data collection methods. The PD_Manager intervention, compared to a symptom diary, will be evaluated in a cost-consequences framework. DISCUSSION: Information gathered will inform further development of the PD_Manager system and a larger effectiveness trial. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN Registry, ISRCTN17396879 . Registered on 15 March 2017

DBpedia Monument v3.9

The dataset contains RDF triples in NTriples format and was generated using the RDFSlice software. It is composed by the instances of class dbo:Monument from DBpedia 3.9 and their concise bounded description

CubeViz - Exploration and visualization of statistical linked data

CubeViz is a flexible exploration and visualization platform for statistical data represented adhering to the RDF Data Cube vocabulary. If statistical data is provided adhering to the Data Cube vocabulary, CubeViz exhibits a faceted browsing widget allowing to interactively filter observations to be visualized in charts. Based on the selected structural part, CubeViz offers suitable chart types and options for configuring the visualization by users. In this demo we present the CubeViz visualization architecture and components, sketch its underlying API and the libraries used to generate the desired output. By employing advanced introspection, analysis and visualization bootstrapping techniques CubeViz hides the schema complexity of the encoded data in order to support a user-friendly exploration experience

GLOSS, an infrastructure for the semantic annotation and mining of documents in the public security domain

Efficient access to information is crucial in the work of organizations that require decision taking in emergency situations. This paper gives an outline of GLOSS, an integrated system for the analysis and retrieval of data in the environmental and public security domain. We shall briefly present the GLOSS infrastructure and its use, and how semantic information of various kinds is integrated, annotated and made available to the final users

GloSS, an infracstructure for the semantic annotation and mining of documents in the public domain

GloSS, an infracstructure for the semantic annotation and mining of documents in the public domai

Chemico-physical characterization and sorption properties of reactive hydride composites for hydrogen storage

Borohydrides are promising materials for safe and efficient solid state hydrogen storage applications, due to their high theoretical hydrogen content. For this reason, they are intensely studied all over the world, in order to solve their drawbacks, which still hind their use, especially for on-board applications. In particular, operating temperatures, kinetics and reactions reversibility must be improved to make borohydride-based storage systems compatible with fuel cells technology. The addition of a second and/or a third hydride to these compounds, in the so-called reactive hydride composite (RHC) strategy, seems to help in both improving the reversibility of the systems and the sorption kinetics as well as decreasing the working sorption temperatures. In this view, the activity of our Hydrogen Lab in this period is focused on the preparation, characterization and optimization of binary and ternary borohydrides based RHC. In this work, we present our synthetic and characterization activities and we will focus in particular on two systems, i.e. the catalysed LiBH4-MgH2 and the ternary LiAlH4-LiBH4-MgH2 composite. These systems have been investigated in detail by combined manometric – calorimetric measurements, in-situ and ex-situ X-Ray Powder Diffraction analysis and in-situ Synchrotron Radiation Powder X-ray Diffraction (SR-PXD). Moreover, for the former system, combined manometric – optical microscope measurements have been performed on compacted samples to study the morphological evolution of the pellets surface upon heating, for the first time in literature. The former system is well known concerning the good reversibility of the sorption reactions and the high gravimetric capacity, while the latter one has been explored in one only paper concerning its hydrogen sorption properties. For both the composites, no chemico-physical characterization has been made up to now. For the former system, absorption and desorption enthalpies and activation energies have been determined, together with the heat capacity and the thermal conductivity, fundamental data for the sketching and the realization of a hydrogen storage tank. The already described sorption mechanism has been proved by in situ optical microscope investigations. The influence of the samples density on the sorption kinetics and on the thermal conductivity has been evaluated too. Concerning the second system, the sequence of phase transitions, melting and decomposition is richer and more complicated. Studies on the sorption reaction mechanism and on the reversibility of the system are in progress

Thermodynamic and kinetic properties of the LiBH4 – MgH2 and LiBH4 – MgH2 – LiAlH4 systems for solid state hydrogen storage

In the last 20 years, enormous efforts have been devoted to the research and development of materials having, at the same time, high hydrogen gravimetric and volumetric capacities and favourable thermodynamic and kinetic sorption properties for practical applications as hydrogen tank. In particular, the quest to find a high capacity reversible hydride has shifted the interest towards alanate, amide and borohydride compounds. Currently, alkaline and alkaline-earth metal borohydrides are considered the most attractive materials for automotive applications. Despite a high gravimetric and volumetric capacity, the thermodynamics of the reversible dehydrogenation of many complex borohydrides doesn't meet the targets required for a practical on board hydrogen carrier. Moreover, all of these materials are plagued by high kinetics barriers to dehydrogenation and/or rehydrogenation in the solid state. Therefore, a valid approach was established in order to tune the dehydrogenation thermodynamic properties (i.e. reducing decomposition enthalpy) of the borohydrides, by incorporating a second or third specie into the reaction to stabilize the reaction products. In this study, the kinetic and thermodynamic properties of the sorption steps characterizing the binary LiBH4-MgH2 system and the ternary LiAlH4-LiBH4-MgH2 composite have been investigated in detail by combined manometric – calorimetric measurements, in situ and ex situ X-Ray powder diffraction analyses and in-situ Synchrotron Radiation Powder X-ray Diffraction (SR-PXD). The first system is well known in literature concerning the good reversibility of the sorption reaction and the high gravimetric capacity, while the second one has been explored in one only paper concerning its hydrogen sorption properties. For both the composites, no chemico-physical characterization has been made up to now. For the first system, LiBH4 phase transition and melting take place (at 100 °C and 240 °C respectively) before any dehydrogenation step. Subsequently, MgH2 decomposes (at around 320 °C) and free Mg reacts with the borohydride to give MgB2 (380 °C). This last compound re-hydrogenates in one step giving, through the simultaneous reaction with LiH, the two starting hydrides. The total gravimetric capacity is 9 wt %. Absorption and desorption enthalpies and activation energies have been determined, together with the heat capacity and the thermal conductivity, fundamental data for the sketching and the realization of the hydrogen storage tank. The influence of the density of the samples on the hydrogen sorption properties and on the thermal conductivity has been evaluated too. Concerning the second system, the sequence of phase transitions, melting and decomposition is richer and more complicated. The first hydrogen release is already at 165 °C (due to the alanate decomposition). MgH2 decomposes at 260 °C and LiBH4 at 320 °C, i.e. at temperature appreciably lower than in the binary system. Studies on the reversibility of the system are in progress