Comorbid Conditions in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis: Recognition and Management.

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a fibrosing interstitial pneumonia of unknown etiology, primarily affects older adults and leads to a progressive decline in lung function and quality of life. With a median survival of 3-5 years, IPF is the most common and deadly of the idiopathic interstitial pneumonias. Despite the poor survivorship, there exists substantial variation in disease progression, making accurate prognostication difficult. Lung transplantation remains the sole curative intervention in IPF, but two anti-fibrotic therapies were recently shown to slow pulmonary function decline and are now approved for the treatment of IPF in many countries around the world. While the approval of these therapies represents an important first step in combatting of this devastating disease, a comprehensive approach to diagnosing and treating patients with IPF remains critically important. Included in this comprehensive assessment is the recognition and appropriate management of comorbid conditions. Though IPF is characterized by single organ involvement, many comorbid conditions occur within other organ systems. Common cardiovascular processes include coronary artery disease and pulmonary hypertension (PH), while gastroesophageal reflux and hiatal hernia are the most commonly encountered gastrointestinal disorders. Hematologic abnormalities appear to place patients with IPF at increased risk of venous thromboembolism, while diabetes mellitus (DM) and hypothyroidism are prevalent metabolic disorders. Several pulmonary comorbidities have also been linked to IPF, and include emphysema, lung cancer, and obstructive sleep apnea. While the treatment of some comorbid conditions, such as CAD, DM, and hypothyroidism is recommended irrespective of IPF, the benefit of treating others, such as gastroesophageal reflux and PH, remains unclear. In this review, we highlight common comorbid conditions encountered in IPF, discuss disease-specific diagnostic modalities, and review the current state of treatment data for several key comorbidities

The most massive galaxies in clusters are already fully grown at z∼0.5z \sim 0.5

By constructing scaling relations for galaxies in the massive cluster MACSJ0717.5 at $z=0.545$ and comparing with those of Coma, we model the luminosity evolution of the stellar populations and the structural evolution of the galaxies. We calculate magnitudes, surface brightnesses and effective radii using HST/ACS images and velocity dispersions using Gemini/GMOS spectra, and present a catalogue of our measurements for 17 galaxies. We also generate photometric catalogues for $\sim 3000$ galaxies from the HST imaging. With these, we construct the colour-magnitude relation, the fundamental plane, the mass-to-light versus mass relation, the mass-size relation and the mass-velocity dispersion relation for both clusters. We present a new, coherent way of modelling these scaling relations simultaneously using a simple physical model in order to infer the evolution in luminosity, size and velocity dispersion as a function of redshift, and show that the data can be fully accounted for with this model. We find that (a) the evolution in size and velocity dispersion undergone by these galaxies between $z \sim 0.5$ and $z \sim 0$ is mild, with $R_e(z) \sim (1+z)^{-0.40\pm0.32}$ and $\sigma(z) \sim (1+z)^{0.09 \pm 0.27}$, and (b) the stellar populations are old, $\sim 10$ Gyr, with a $\sim 3$ Gyr dispersion in age, and are consistent with evolving purely passively since $z \sim 0.5$ with $\Delta \log M/L_B = -0.55_{-0.07}^{+0.15} z$. The implication is that these galaxies formed their stars early and subsequently grew dissipationlessly so as to have their mass already in place by $z \sim 0.5$, and suggests a dominant role for dry mergers, which may have accelerated the growth in these high-density cluster environments.Comment: 20 pages; accepted for publication in MNRA

Not What It Was and Not What It Will Be: The Future of Job Design Research

This summary commentary explores the likely future directions of research and theory on the design of organizational work. We give special attention to the social aspects of contemporary work, the process by which jobholders craft their own jobs, the changing contexts within which work is performed, and the increasing prominence of work that is performed by teams rather than individualsPsycholog

Additions to the Vascular Flora of Ontario, Canada, from the Sutton Ridges, Hudson Bay Lowland Ecoregion

Field studies in the Hudson Bay Lowland ecoregion of northern Ontario during 2010 resulted in the discovery of four native vascular plant species not previously confirmed from the province: Arctic Bellflower (Campanula uniflora; Campanulaceae), Lapland Diapensia (Diapensia lapponica; Diapensiaceae), Alpine Azalea (Kalmia procumbens; Ericaceae), and Alpine Brook Saxifrage (Saxifraga rivularis; Saxifragaceae). These four species are widespread arctic plants occurring in both North America and Eurasia and were found on the Sutton Ridges, a Precambrian bedrock inlier surrounded by the extensive wetlands of the Hudson Bay Lowland

Noise-free high-efficiency photon-number-resolving detectors

High-efficiency optical detectors that can determine the number of photons in a pulse of monochromatic light have applications in a variety of physics studies, including post-selection-based entanglement protocols for linear optics quantum computing and experiments that simultaneously close the detection and communication loopholes of Bell's inequalities. Here we report on our demonstration of fiber-coupled, noise-free, photon-number-resolving transition-edge sensors with 88% efficiency at 1550 nm. The efficiency of these sensors could be made even higher at any wavelength in the visible and near-infrared spectrum without resulting in a higher dark-count rate or degraded photon-number resolution.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures Published in Physical Review A, Rapid Communications, 17 June 200

JTRS/SCA and Custom/SDR Waveform Comparison

This paper compares two waveform implementations generating the same RF signal using the same SDR development system. Both waveforms implement a satellite modem using QPSK modulation at 1M BPS data rates with one half rate convolutional encoding. Both waveforms are partitioned the same across the general purpose processor (GPP) and the field programmable gate array (FPGA). Both waveforms implement the same equivalent set of radio functions on the GPP and FPGA. The GPP implements the majority of the radio functions and the FPGA implements the final digital RF modulator stage. One waveform is implemented directly on the SDR development system and the second waveform is implemented using the JTRS/SCA model. This paper contrasts the amount of resources to implement both waveforms and demonstrates the importance of waveform partitioning across the SDR development system

Non-Markovian Levy diffusion in nonhomogeneous media

We study the diffusion equation with a position-dependent, power-law diffusion coefficient. The equation possesses the Riesz-Weyl fractional operator and includes a memory kernel. It is solved in the diffusion limit of small wave numbers. Two kernels are considered in detail: the exponential kernel, for which the problem resolves itself to the telegrapher's equation, and the power-law one. The resulting distributions have the form of the L\'evy process for any kernel. The renormalized fractional moment is introduced to compare different cases with respect to the diffusion properties of the system.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Insights from the x-ray crystal structure of coral 8R-lipoxygenase: Calcium activation via a C2-like domain and a structural basis of product chirality

Lipoxygenases (LOXs) catalyze the regio- and stereospecific dioxygenation of polyunsaturated membrane-embedded fatty acids. We report here the 3.2 Å resolution structure of 8R-LOX from the Caribbean sea whip coral Plexaura homomalla, a LOX isozyme with calcium dependence and the uncommon R chiral stereospecificity. Structural and spectroscopic analyses demonstrated calcium binding in a C2-like membrane-binding domain, illuminating the function of similar amino acids in calcium-activated mammalian 5-LOX, the key enzyme in the pathway to the pro-inflammatory leukotrienes. Mutation of Ca2+- ligating amino acids in 8R-LOX resulted not only in a diminished capacity to bind membranes, as monitored by fluorescence resonance energy transfer, but also in an associated loss of Ca2+-regulated enzyme activity. Moreover, a structural basis for R chiral specificity is also revealed; creation of a small oxygen pocket next to Gly428 (Ala in all S-LOX isozymes) promoted C-8 oxygenation with R chirality on the activated fatty acid substrate. © 2005 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc

Fractional derivatives of random walks: Time series with long-time memory

We review statistical properties of models generated by the application of a (positive and negative order) fractional derivative operator to a standard random walk and show that the resulting stochastic walks display slowly-decaying autocorrelation functions. The relation between these correlated walks and the well-known fractionally integrated autoregressive (FIGARCH) models, commonly used in econometric studies, is discussed. The application of correlated random walks to simulate empirical financial times series is considered and compared with the predictions from FIGARCH and the simpler FIARCH processes. A comparison with empirical data is performed.Comment: 10 pages, 14 figure

Attrition in School Rowing in New Zealand: A Qualitative Descriptive Study

It is widely acknowledged that involvement in sport has positive physical and psychosocial benefits for adolescents. However, concerns have been expressed, both in New Zealand and internationally, about the relatively high attrition rates in youth sport. This qualitative study captured the experiences of eight (five male, three female) adolescents who were no longer participating in high school rowing programs in New Zealand. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews, and we conducted an inductive thematic analysis. A secondary analysis was then conducted using a self-determination and basic psychological needs framework that placed specific emphasis on need satisfaction and need thwarting. Key findings from this study suggest that participants’ experiences of rowing were initially positive but were subsequently influenced by dissatisfaction and thwarting of basic psychological needs. The findings confirm the significance of coaches and parents providing an environment that supports young athletes’ needs for relatedness. Concerns are also raised about the potentially damaging effects of weight-restricted sport for adolescents. By drawing upon athlete voice, it is hoped that the findings of this study can inform coach education and result in the development of more athlete-supportive rowing programs for adolescent athletes