184 research outputs found
Motor complications in an incident Parkinson’s disease cohort
No full textAcknowledgements We acknowledge funding for the PINE study from Parkinson's UK, the Scottish Chief Scientist Office, the BMA Doris Hillier Award, RS Macdonald Trust, the BUPA Foundation, NHS Grampian Endowments and SPRING. We thank the patients for their participation and the research staff who collected data and supported the study database. Nicholas W Scott: no financial disclosures. Angus D Macleod: funded by a Clinical Academic Fellowship from the Scottish Chief Scientist Office; also received research funding from Parkinson's UK. Carl E Counsell: research funding from Parkinson's UK, Scottish Chief Scientist Office, National Institute of Health Research, and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.Peer reviewe
Gender and the culture of the English alehouse in late Stuart England
No full textThe world of the alehouse and tavern in early modern England has generally been
regarded as primarily male, a view that was deeply embedded in the period itself.
This essay explores the place of women within the public house, in serving, buying
and consuming alcohol, and the unwritten conventions that underpinned social
practice. It argues that while some female customers matched their contemporary
image, as disorderly, immoral and dishonest, it was also possible for respectable
women to visit a tavern or alehouse without risking their good name, provided they
adhered to the conventions. Middling-sort and elite women might drink and dine in
London taverns with their husbands, or in mixed parties; throughout England married
couples, and mixed groups of young folk, might drink, dance, and socialise; marketwomen
might assemble at the end of the day, and chapwomen often lodged overnight.
And, at least in London, respectable women might enter a public house alone, by
day, without meeting disapproval. Many establishments provided private as well as
public rooms, and these created social spaces for female customers, couples and
mixed parties, serving different needs than those met within the main public space
Randomized trial of erlotinib plus whole-brain radiotherapy for NSCLC patients with multiple brain metastases
No full textBackground: Median survival of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with brain metastases is poor. We examined concurrent erlotinib and whole brain radiotherapy (WBRT) followed by maintenance erlotinib in patients with untreated brain metastases, given the potential radiosensitizing properties of erlotinib and its direct effect on brain metastases and systemic activity.Methods: Eighty NSCLC patients with KPS of 70 and greater and multiple brain metastases were randomly assigned to placebo (n = 40) or erlotinib (100mg, n = 40) given concurrently with WBRT (20 Gy in 5 fractions). Following WBRT, patients continued with placebo or erlotinib (150mg) until disease progression. The primary end point was neurological progression-free survival (nPFS); hazard ratios (HRs) were calculated using Cox regression. All P values were two-sided.Results: Fifteen patients (37.5%) from each arm were alive and without neurological progression 2 months after WBRT. Median nPFS was 1.6 months in both arms; nPFS HR 0.95 (95% CI = 0.59 to1.54; P = .84). Median overall survival (OS) was 2.9 and 3.4 months in the placebo and erlotinib arms; HR 0.95 (95% CI = 0.58 to 1.55; P = .83). The frequency of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations was low with only 1 of 35 (2.9%) patients with available samples had activating EGFR-mutations. Grade 3/4 adverse event rates were similar between the two groups (70.0% in each arm), except for rash 20.0% (erlotinib) vs 5.0% (placebo), and fatigue 17.5% vs 35.0%. No statistically significant quality of life differences were found.Conclusions: Our study showed no advantage in nPFS or OS for concurrent erlotinib and WBRT followed by maintenance erlotinib in patients with predominantly EGFR wild-type NSCLC and multiple brain metastases compared to placebo. Future studies should focus on the role of erlotinib with or without WBRT in patients with EGFR mutations.Up to 40% of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) develop brain metastases (BM), which are associated with poor outcome (median survival <5 months) (1–3). Treatment options include whole-brain radiotherapy (WBRT) with or without corticosteroids. Modifying the radiation dose or fractionation or combining radiotherapy with radiosensitizers have not substantially improved prognosis (4–10). More than half of patients treated with WBRT ultimately die of progressive systemic disease (11–13).Erlotinib, an epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) pathway inhibitor, is currently approved as first-line treatment for advanced NSCLC patients harboring EGFR mutations, and, as maintenance, second-line or third-line treatments following chemotherapy (14–17). Pre-clinical data show that erlotinib enhances the inhibitory effect of ionizing radiation in lung cancer, and it crosses the blood-brain barrier, so it could be used to provide sufficient radiosensitizing and therapeutic level in the brain (18–22).To exploit the potential radiosensitizing properties, the direct effect on brain metastases, and systemic activity of erlotinib, we examined the role of erlotinib given concurrently with WBRT, then as maintenance
Age-related selection bias in Parkinson's disease research : are we recruiting the right participants?
No full textAcknowledgements We acknowledge the earlier work of Dr Kate Taylor and Dr Dominique Twelves on the previous systematic review of incidence studies in Parkinson’s disease. Funding This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. Authors report the following funding received during the conduct of this study: Dr Macleod: fellowship funding from the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government and NHS Education for Scotland; grant funding Parkinson’s UK, the Academy of Medical Sciences, NHS Grampian Endowments, the Wellcome Trust, the University of Aberdeen. Dr Henery: financial support from the University of Aberdeen Dr Nwajiugo: none Dr Scott: none Dr Caslake: grant funding from Parkinson’s UK Dr Counsell: grant funding from the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government, the PSP Association, and NHS Grampian Endowments.Peer reviewe
From LIDAR data towards HBIM for energy analysis
No full textKnowledge about heritage buildings and structures is interesting for a wide variety of stakeholders,
ranging from architects to operators or the public administration. Such knowledge includes a large
variety of physical and functional characteristics of the building. Laser scanning allows efficient and
accurate 3D digitalization of heritage sites and subsequent data processing towards the creation of
geometrically and semantically rich models.
Parameterization and semantic enrichment of heritage building representations towards the creation
of Heritage Building Information Models (HBIM) generally involves the use of point clouds
and images as templates for manual mapping procedures in commercial software. Indeed, the information
to include in BIM models depends on the requirements of the application it is intended to
serve. In view of that, the applications presented in this chapter pertain to automated techniques
that were implemented to parameterize point clouds towards models suitable for energy analysis
purposes.
The challenge in automating the reconstruction of heritage buildings is to deal with their geometrical
complexity and irregularity, meaning that the methodologies selected should be robust and
efficient under these conditions. The resulting 3D semantically rich model enhances the knowledge
of the heritage building, complementing other representations of the facility such as point clouds or
handmade HBIM. The procedure is implemented and validated in a real case study: the Ducal Palace
in Guimarães (Portugal).The authors would like to thank the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Gobierno de
España) for the financial support given through their human resources grant (FPU AP2010–2969,
ENE2013–48015-C3–1-R).
IACOBUS program and by FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology), within
ISISE, project UID/ECI/04029/2013. The authors would also like to thank all the institutions and
companies that have been involved in supporting and contributing to the development of this study,
in particular, Isabel Fernandes and Flávio Vieira, director and staff member of Bragança Ducal Palace.
Research of the second and fourth author is supported by a National Priority Research Program
NPRP award (NPRP-06–1208–2–492) from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of the
Qatar Foundation). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Towards a catalog format for software metrics
No full textIn the past two decades both the industry and the research community have proposed hundreds of metrics to track software projects, evaluate quality or estimate effort. Unfortunately, it is not always clear which metric works best in a particular context. Even worse, for some metrics there is little evidence whether the metric measures the attribute it was designed to measure. In this paper we propose a catalog format for software metrics as a first step towards a consolidated overview of available software metrics. This format is designed to provide an overview of the status of a metric in a glance, while providing enough information to make an informed decision about the use of the metric. We envision this format to be implemented in a (semantic) wiki to ensure that relationships between metrics can be followed with ease. Preprint accepted for publication in the 5th International Workshop on Emerging Trends in Software Metrics (WETSoM 2014), Hyderabad (India), June 3, 2014Software TechnologyElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
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