3,939 research outputs found
Value of systolic pulmonary arterial pressure as a prognostic factor of death in the systemic sclerosis EUSTAR population.
The aim of this study was to assess the prognostic value of systolic pulmonary artery pressure (sPAP) estimated by echocardiography in the multinational European League Against Rheumatism Scleroderma Trial and Research (EUSTAR) cohort.Data for patients with echocardiography documented between 1 January 2005 and 31 December 2011 were extracted from the EUSTAR database. Stepwise forward multivariable statistical Cox pulmonary hypertension analysis was used to examine the independent effect on survival of selected variables.Based on our selection criteria, 1476 patients were included in the analysis; 87\% of patients were female, with a mean age of 56.3 years (s.d. 13.5) and 31\% had diffuse SSc. The mean duration of follow-up was 2.0 years (s.d. 1.2, median 1.9). Taking index sPAP of 50 mmHg. In a multivariable Cox model, sPAP and the diffusing capacity for carbon monoxide (DLCO) were independently associated with the risk of death [HR 1.833 (95\% CI 1.035, 3.247) and HR 0.973 (95\% CI 0.955, 0.991), respectively]. sPAP was an independent risk factor for death with a HR of 3.02 (95\% CI 1.91, 4.78) for sPAP ≥36 mmHg.An estimated sPAP >36 mmHg at baseline echocardiography was significantly and independently associated with reduced survival, regardless of the presence of pulmonary hypertension based on right heart catheterization
Personhood, consciousness, and god : how to be a proper pantheist
© Springer Nature B.V. 2018In this paper I develop a theory of personhood which leaves open the possibility of construing the universe as a person. If successful, it removes one bar to endorsing pantheism. I do this by examining a rising school of thought on personhood, on which persons, or selves, are understood as identical to episodes of consciousness. Through a critique of this experiential approach to personhood, I develop a theory of self as constituted of qualitative mental contents, but where these contents are also capable of unconscious existence. On this theory, though we can be conscious of our selves, consciousness turns out to be inessential to personhood. This move, I then argue, provides resources for responding to the pantheist’s problem of God’s person.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio
Anomalous Couplings in Double Higgs Production
The process of gluon-initiated double Higgs production is sensitive to
non-linear interactions of the Higgs boson. In the context of the Standard
Model, studies of this process focused on the extraction of the Higgs trilinear
coupling. In a general parametrization of New Physics effects, however, an even
more interesting interaction that can be tested through this channel is the
(ttbar hh) coupling. This interaction vanishes in the Standard Model and is a
genuine signature of theories in which the Higgs boson emerges from a
strongly-interacting sector. In this paper we perform a model-independent
estimate of the LHC potential to detect anomalous Higgs couplings in
gluon-fusion double Higgs production. We find that while the sensitivity to the
trilinear is poor, the perspectives of measuring the new (ttbar hh) coupling
are rather promising.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures. v2: plots of Figs.8 and 9 redone to include
experimental uncertainty on the Higgs couplings, references adde
Association between Serum Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA) and Thyroid Disease in the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
addresses: Epidemiology and Public Health Group, eninsula Medical School, Exeter, United Kingdom.notes: PMCID: PMC2866686types: Journal Article'Reproduced with permission from Environmental Health Perspectives'Copyright © 2010 National Institute of Environmental Health SciencesPerfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA, also known as C8) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) are stable compounds with many industrial and consumer uses. Their persistence in the environment plus toxicity in animal models has raised concern over low-level chronic exposure effects on human health
The selective phosphodiesterase 4 inhibitor roflumilast and phosphodiesterase 3/4 inhibitor pumafentrine reduce clinical score and TNF expression in experimental colitis in mice.
The specific inhibition of phosphodiesterase (PDE)4 and dual inhibition of PDE3 and PDE4 has been shown to decrease inflammation by suppression of pro-inflammatory cytokine synthesis. We examined the effect of roflumilast, a selective PDE4 inhibitor marketed for severe COPD, and the investigational compound pumafentrine, a dual PDE3/PDE4 inhibitor, in the preventive dextran sodium sulfate (DSS)-induced colitis model. The clinical score, colon length, histologic score and colon cytokine production from mice with DSS-induced colitis (3.5% DSS in drinking water for 11 days) receiving either roflumilast (1 or 5 mg/kg body weight/d p.o.) or pumafentrine (1.5 or 5 mg/kg/d p.o.) were determined and compared to vehicle treated control mice. In the pumafentrine-treated animals, splenocytes were analyzed for interferon-γ (IFNγ) production and CD69 expression. Roflumilast treatment resulted in dose-dependent improvements of clinical score (weight loss, stool consistency and bleeding), colon length, and local tumor necrosis factor-α (TNFα) production in the colonic tissue. These findings, however, were not associated with an improvement of the histologic score. Administration of pumafentrine at 5 mg/kg/d alleviated the clinical score, the colon length shortening, and local TNFα production. In vitro stimulated splenocytes after in vivo treatment with pumafentrine showed a significantly lower state of activation and production of IFNγ compared to no treatment in vivo. These series of experiments document the ameliorating effect of roflumilast and pumafentrine on the clinical score and TNF expression of experimental colitis in mice
Machine-Part cell formation through visual decipherable clustering of Self Organizing Map
Machine-part cell formation is used in cellular manufacturing in order to
process a large variety, quality, lower work in process levels, reducing
manufacturing lead-time and customer response time while retaining flexibility
for new products. This paper presents a new and novel approach for obtaining
machine cells and part families. In the cellular manufacturing the fundamental
problem is the formation of part families and machine cells. The present paper
deals with the Self Organising Map (SOM) method an unsupervised learning
algorithm in Artificial Intelligence, and has been used as a visually
decipherable clustering tool of machine-part cell formation. The objective of
the paper is to cluster the binary machine-part matrix through visually
decipherable cluster of SOM color-coding and labelling via the SOM map nodes in
such a way that the part families are processed in that machine cells. The
Umatrix, component plane, principal component projection, scatter plot and
histogram of SOM have been reported in the present work for the successful
visualization of the machine-part cell formation. Computational result with the
proposed algorithm on a set of group technology problems available in the
literature is also presented. The proposed SOM approach produced solutions with
a grouping efficacy that is at least as good as any results earlier reported in
the literature and improved the grouping efficacy for 70% of the problems and
found immensely useful to both industry practitioners and researchers.Comment: 18 pages,3 table, 4 figure
Back reaction, covariant anomaly and effective action
In the presence of back reaction, we first produce the one-loop corrections
for the event horizon and Hawking temperature of the Reissner-Nordstr\"om black
hole. Then, based on the covariant anomaly cancelation method and the effective
action technique, the modified expressions for the fluxes of gauge current and
energy momentum tensor, due to the effect of back reaction, are obtained. The
results are consistent with the Hawking fluxes of a (1+1)-dimensional blackbody
at the temperature with quantum corrections, thus confirming the robustness of
the covariant anomaly cancelation method and the effective action technique for
black holes with back reaction.Comment: 17 page
Higgs Low-Energy Theorem (and its corrections) in Composite Models
The Higgs low-energy theorem gives a simple and elegant way to estimate the
couplings of the Higgs boson to massless gluons and photons induced by loops of
heavy particles. We extend this theorem to take into account possible nonlinear
Higgs interactions resulting from a strong dynamics at the origin of the
breaking of the electroweak symmetry. We show that, while it approximates with
an accuracy of order a few percents single Higgs production, it receives
corrections of order 50% for double Higgs production. A full one-loop
computation of the gg->hh cross section is explicitly performed in MCHM5, the
minimal composite Higgs model based on the SO(5)/SO(4) coset with the Standard
Model fermions embedded into the fundamental representation of SO(5). In
particular we take into account the contributions of all fermionic resonances,
which give sizeable (negative) corrections to the result obtained considering
only the Higgs nonlinearities. Constraints from electroweak precision and
flavor data on the top partners are analyzed in detail, as well as direct
searches at the LHC for these new fermions called to play a crucial role in the
electroweak symmetry breaking dynamics.Comment: 30 pages + appendices and references, 12 figures. v2: discussion of
flavor constraints improved; references added; electroweak fit updated,
results unchanged. Matches published versio
Robust Detection of Hierarchical Communities from Escherichia coli Gene Expression Data
Determining the functional structure of biological networks is a central goal
of systems biology. One approach is to analyze gene expression data to infer a
network of gene interactions on the basis of their correlated responses to
environmental and genetic perturbations. The inferred network can then be
analyzed to identify functional communities. However, commonly used algorithms
can yield unreliable results due to experimental noise, algorithmic
stochasticity, and the influence of arbitrarily chosen parameter values.
Furthermore, the results obtained typically provide only a simplistic view of
the network partitioned into disjoint communities and provide no information of
the relationship between communities. Here, we present methods to robustly
detect coregulated and functionally enriched gene communities and demonstrate
their application and validity for Escherichia coli gene expression data.
Applying a recently developed community detection algorithm to the network of
interactions identified with the context likelihood of relatedness (CLR)
method, we show that a hierarchy of network communities can be identified.
These communities significantly enrich for gene ontology (GO) terms, consistent
with them representing biologically meaningful groups. Further, analysis of the
most significantly enriched communities identified several candidate new
regulatory interactions. The robustness of our methods is demonstrated by
showing that a core set of functional communities is reliably found when
artificial noise, modeling experimental noise, is added to the data. We find
that noise mainly acts conservatively, increasing the relatedness required for
a network link to be reliably assigned and decreasing the size of the core
communities, rather than causing association of genes into new communities.Comment: Due to appear in PLoS Computational Biology. Supplementary Figure S1
was not uploaded but is available by contacting the author. 27 pages, 5
figures, 15 supplementary file
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