Immunoregulatory soluble CTLA-4 modifies effector T cell responses in systemic lupus erythematosus

Acknowledgments This work was supported by Arthritis Research UK (Grant no. 19282). We are grateful to Dr. Nick Fluck for his invaluable support in recruiting patients for the study, and Mrs. Vivien Vaughan for her invaluable expertise in recruiting study participants and maintaining ethical documentation.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

On the Study of Wireless Signal Noise for Designing Network Infrastructure of Knowledge Management Systems

Copyright © 2015 IEEEKnowledge and information management systems are usually supported by wireless networks that strongly rely on reliable received signal strength. The interruption and outage of such system may lead to significant performance disruption. In order to deal with one of the major contributors: noise, this paper investigates the fundamentals of wireless signals and proposes a method to identify and model the noise components quantitatively. We investigate the theoretical method and empirically study two wireless system configurations - one with omnidirectional antennas and one with directional antennas. Results based on real-world experiments confirm the existence and exact contributions of coloured noise components. Based on the preliminary results of this study, future information management systems can be designed with enhanced network support to cope with the variation of signals for improved performance.This paper is sponsored by the Research Councils UK Digital Economy Theme Sustainable Society Network+ and Royal Society-NSFC Grant No. IE131036, and partially supported by DHI Scotland through the Smartcough/Macmasters project

X-ray and Synchrotron FTIR Studies of Partially Decomposed Magnesium Borohydride

Magnesium borohydride (Mg(BH4)(2)) is an attractive compound for solid-state hydrogen storage due to its lucratively high hydrogen densities and theoretically low operational temperature. Hydrogen release from Mg(BH4)(2) occurs through several steps. The reaction intermediates formed at these steps have been extensively studied for a decade. In this work, we apply spectroscopic methods that have rarely been used in such studies to provide alternative insights into the nature of the reaction intermediates. The commercially obtained sample was decomposed in argon flow during thermogravimetric analysis combined with differential scanning calorimetry (TGA-DSC) to differentiate between the H-2-desorption reaction steps. The reaction products were analyzed by powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), near edge soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy at boron K-edge (NEXAFS), and synchrotron infrared (IR) spectroscopy in mid- and far-IR ranges (SR-FTIR). Up to 12 wt% of H-2 desorption was observed in the gravimetric measurements. PXRD showed no crystalline decomposition products when heated at 260-280 degrees C, the formation of MgH2 above 300 degrees C, and Mg above 320 degrees C. The qualitative analysis of the NEXAFS data showed the presence of boron in lower oxidation states than in (BH4)(-). The NEXAFS data also indicated the presence of amorphous boron at and above 340 degrees C. This study provides additional insights into the decomposition reaction of Mg(BH4)(2)

A Review Over Genetic Algorithm and Application of Wireless Network Systems

AbstractTele-communication and network industry are becoming extremely fascinated by the use of evolutionary smart sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks. This technology promises to overcome several challenges within WSNs needed for real time data protection via optimization technique: Genetic Algorithm. This paper reviewedthe use of Genetic Algorithms (GAs) to solve certain limitation of wireless sensor networks. It further presents major application areas of wireless sensors networks. Longerdistance gap between a sensor and destination in a sensor network can remarkably reduce the energy of sensors and can degrade the life of a network. GA can prolong the network lifetime by minimizing the total communication distance

A Global Map Of Species Terrestrial Habitat Types

The loss of species habitat - described as the entirety of the physical conditions, e.g. land cover and climate - is one of the primary causes of biodiversity decline globally. Knowledge about species habitats is critical to design landscape management plans and conservation prioritizations. Here, we provide a global spatial-explicit characterization of 47 terrestrial habitat types directly relevant to biodiversity conservation. These habitat types broadly follow the standard habitat classification system defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which is widely used for assessments of species extinction risk. This habitat type map was produced by intersecting currently best available data on land-cover, climate and land use from a variety of ancillary datasets. We furthermore validate this map using independently derived estimates of observed habitats from biodiversity occurrence records. Overall, these data broaden our knowledge of habitat types globally and will be highly useful for broad-scale ecological studies and a spatial guide for upcoming IUCN redlist assessments. We hope that this data will spur further development of biodiversity-relevant habitat type maps on a global scale

Palliative Care Consultations in Nursing Homes and End-of-Life Hospitalizations

While specialty palliative care in hospital and outpatient settings is associated with lower acute care use, its impact in U.S. nursing homes (NHs) is unknown

Enhancing Informative Frame Filtering by Water and Bubble Detection in Colonoscopy Videos

Colonoscopy has contributed to a marked decline in the number of colorectal cancer related deaths. However, recent data suggest that there is a significant (4-12%) miss-rate for the detection of even large polyps and cancers. To address this, we have been investigating an ‘automated feedback system’ which informs the endoscopist of possible sub-optimal inspection during colonoscopy. A fundamental step of this system is to distinguish non-informative frames from informative ones. Existing methods for this cannot classify water/bubble frames as non-informative even though they do not carry any useful visual information of the colon mucosa. In this paper, we propose a novel texture feature based on accumulation of pixel differences, which can detect water and bubble frames with very high accuracy with significantly less processing time. The experimental results show the proposed feature can achieve more than 93% overall accuracy in almost half of the processing time the existing methods take

Hazard-Independent Stability Sensitivity Study of Steel and RC Frame Structures

Structural stability relates directly to the robustness of the system even against the abnormally large load or an unexpected event which might cause perturbation- changes from the normal state of the structural system- from significant damage. This study aims to examine the sensitivity of frame systems (primarily steel moment resisting frame systems) to the initial damage and second-order geometric effects, that may arise as a result of the design load and abnormally large load coming from the unexpected event. Incremental analysis is used to track the development of second-order effects. Planar Frame models are first examined to establish the patterns of the stiffness losses occurred with various cases of hazard-independent damages. The comparison of the anticipated behavior on Reinforced Concrete (RC) frame systems is investigated through buckling analysis of steel and RC frame systems. Observing the patterns, the study is extended to a 3D model, four-story moment frame structure, located in a coastal area and exposed to a design hurricane event, thereby addressing multi-hazard issues. The impact from the amount and location of the hazard-independent damage as well as the complexity of the frame system is studied for steel frame system which generates the overall idea of individual member perturbations and stability failure of the system, as a whole