Meta-analysis of type 2 Diabetes in African Americans Consortium

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is more prevalent in African Americans than in Europeans. However, little is known about the genetic risk in African Americans despite the recent identification of more than 70 T2D loci primarily by genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in individuals of European ancestry. In order to investigate the genetic architecture of T2D in African Americans, the MEta-analysis of type 2 DIabetes in African Americans (MEDIA) Consortium examined 17 GWAS on T2D comprising 8,284 cases and 15,543 controls in African Americans in stage 1 analysis. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) association analysis was conducted in each study under the additive model after adjustment for age, sex, study site, and principal components. Meta-analysis of approximately 2.6 million genotyped and imputed SNPs in all studies was conducted using an inverse variance-weighted fixed effect model. Replications were performed to follow up 21 loci in up to 6,061 cases and 5,483 controls in African Americans, and 8,130 cases and 38,987 controls of European ancestry. We identified three known loci (TCF7L2, HMGA2 and KCNQ1) and two novel loci (HLA-B and INS-IGF2) at genome-wide significance (4.15 × 10(-94)<P<5 × 10(-8), odds ratio (OR)  = 1.09 to 1.36). Fine-mapping revealed that 88 of 158 previously identified T2D or glucose homeostasis loci demonstrated nominal to highly significant association (2.2 × 10(-23) < locus-wide P<0.05). These novel and previously identified loci yielded a sibling relative risk of 1.19, explaining 17.5% of the phenotypic variance of T2D on the liability scale in African Americans. Overall, this study identified two novel susceptibility loci for T2D in African Americans. A substantial number of previously reported loci are transferable to African Americans after accounting for linkage disequilibrium, enabling fine mapping of causal variants in trans-ethnic meta-analysis studies.Peer reviewe

Multicore Scheduling for Lightweight Communicating Processes

Process-oriented programming is a design methodology in which software applications are constructed from communicating concurrent processes. A process-oriented design is typically composed of a large number of small isolated concurrent components. These components allow for the scalable parallel execution of the resulting application on both shared-memory and distributed-memory architectures. In this paper we present a runtime designed to support process-oriented programming by providing lightweight processes and communication primitives. Our run-time scheduler, implemented using lock-free algorithms, automatically executes concurrent components in parallel on multicore systems. Run-time heuristics dynamically group processes into cache-affine work units based on communication patterns. Work units are then distributed via wait-free work-stealing. Initial performance analysis shows that, using the algorithms presented in this paper, process-oriented software can execute with an efficiency approaching that of optimised sequential and coarse-grain threaded designs

Pollution prevention in the pharmaceutical industry

The pharmaceutical industry traditionally uses complex batch-type processes in the manufacture of medicines, although the production of specific medicines by continuous processes is currently envisaged. Due to the diversity of these processes, it is difficult to define a general set of waste prevention guidelines that would apply to all drug manufacturing. The most applicable methods of prevention can, however, be delineated for each of the five steps in the pharmaceutical manufacturing, i.e. (i) research and development, (ii) chemical synthesis, (iii) natural product extraction, (iv) fermentation and (v) product formulation. Waste streams generally arise from cleaning and sterilising equipment, chemical spills, rejected by-products and the processes themselves. Prevention mainly involves waste reduction by materials substitution, process modification/optimisation, waste stream segregation and solvent waste recycling. These measures are assessed and lead to guidelines for waste minimisation methods according to the waste streams under scrutiny

Fate of Common (Sterna hirundo) and Roseate Terns (S. dougallii) with Satellite Transmitters Attached with Backpack Harnesses

Miniature transmitters now permit ornithologists to track the annual cycle of smaller (\u3c 150 g) marine birds. To assess annual movements of Common Terns (Sterna hirundo) and endangered Roseate Terns (S. dougallii), 2.5 g satellite transmitters were attached with backpack harnesses. Using the same capture techniques and investigator to fit harnesses, five Common Terns were tagged in Maine in 2017, and 10 Roseate Terns in New York, USA in 2018. Common Terns were tracked from 102-652 days to destinations as far as Brazil with no documented adverse impacts. Three of five Common Terns returned to Maine, USA one year after tagging, and non-functioning tags were recovered from two Common Terns in 2018 and 2019. In contrast, Roseate Terns were tracked for only 1-72 days before transmissions ceased, with only two birds tracked for \u3e 7 days. We detected three Roseate Terns with their bill stuck in the harness material, with one documented mortality. Common Terns tolerated the tags and provided useful data on annual movements but were not a suitable surrogate for predicting the effects of backpack mounted transmitters on Roseate Terns. Researchers considering tracking Roseate Terns should avoid using backpack harnesses