The selective dynamical downscaling method for extreme‐wind atlases

A selective dynamical downscaling method is developed to obtain extreme‐wind atlases for large areas. The method is general, efficient and flexible. The method consists of three steps: (i) identifying storm episodes for a particular area, (ii) downscaling of the storms using mesoscale modelling and (iii) post‐processing. The post‐processing generalizes the winds from the mesoscale modelling to standard conditions, i.e. 10‐m height over a homogeneous surface with roughness length of 5 cm. The generalized winds are then used to calculate the 50‐year wind using the annual maximum method for each mesoscale grid point. The generalization of the mesoscale winds through the post‐processing provides a framework for data validation and for applying further the mesoscale extreme winds at specific places using microscale modelling. The results are compared with measurements from two areas with different types of extreme‐wind climates, and the results are promising. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

S-phase induction by interleukin-6 followed by chemotherapy in patients with refractory multiple myeloma

The plasma cell labeling index (PCLI) in patients with multiple myeloma (MM) is relatively low and this has been associated with the low rate of remission following chemotherapy. Interleukin-6 (IL-6) has been demonstrated to be a major growth factor of myeloma cells. In order to increase the S-phase proportion of myeloma cells, which might increase the sensitivity to chemotherapy, we gave rhIL-6 followed by chemotherapy to 15 myeloma patients with refractory disease. A total of 25 treatment cycles were administered since ten patients had two cycles. The rhIL-6 dose was 2.5 (n = 3), 5.0 (n = 6) and 10.0 microg/kg (n = 6) by subcutaneous injection once daily for 5 days and chemotherapy was administered on the last day of rhIL-6 injection. The effect of rhIL-6 treatment on labeling index (LI) was heterogeneous, but no statistically significant change was noted for this particular group as a whole. In two patients an increase (mean 7.7%) in LI of mononuclear bone marrow cells during the rhIL-6 treatment was demonstrated and in one patient a decrease of 2.8% was seen. Assessment of PCLI demonstrated an increase of 2.9% in one out of six patients and a decrease of 1.9% in one out of six patients. None of the 15 patients achieved remission according to standard criteria. During the rhIL-6 treatment, 14 of the 15 patients developed mild constitutional adverse events (AE) well known in patients treated with IL-6, and none of the AE in the subsequent chemotherapy phase were related to IL-6. In conclusion, our study demonstrated that rhIL-6 can be administered safely to patients with refractory MM, but the cell cycle recruitment approach was not sufficiently effective to be of clinical value.     

CHP development in Denmark Role and results

Energy conservation and restructuring towards more energy-efficient technology have been keywords in Danish energy policy in the 1970s and 1980s. This has been reflected especially in domestic heating, where gross energy consumption per square metre has dropped approximately 45% from the early 1970s onwards. This drop is directly related to the massive expansion of combined generation of heat and power (CHP) effected in the same period. Consequently, some 30% of Danish heat requirements are now met by CHP. The intention is to increase this share by a further 7% over the next decade, resulting in a 37% share of Denmark's total heat requirements by CHP in the year 2000.     

Risk of atrioventricular block during adenosine pharmacologic stress testing in heart transplant recipients

Pharmacologic stress testing with adenosine in heart transplant recipients implies a high risk of atrioventricular block. Dipyridamole is preferable as a coronary vasodilator.     

Insulin management and metabolic control of type 1 diabetes mellitus in childhood and adolescence in 18 countries. Hvid?re Study Group on Childhood Diabetes

Insulin regimens and metabolic control in children and adolescents with Type 1 diabetes mellitus were evaluated in a cross-sectional, non-population-based investigation, involving 22 paediatric departments, from 18 countries in Europe, Japan, and North America. Blood samples and information were collected from 2873 children from March to August 1995. HbA1c was determined once and analysed centrally (normal range 4.4-6.3%, mean 5.4%). Year of birth, sex, duration of diabetes, height, body weight, number of daily insulin injections, types and doses of insulin were recorded. Average HbA1c in children under 11 years was 8.3 +/- 1.3% (mean +/- SD) compared with 8.9 +/- 1.8% in those aged 12-18 years. The average insulin dose per kg body weight was almost constant (0.65 U kg(-1) 24 h(-1)) in children aged 2-9 years for both sexes, but there was a sharp increase during the pubertal years, particularly in girls. The increase in BMI of children with diabetes was much faster during adolescence compared to healthy children, especially in females. Sixty per cent of the children (n = 1707) used two daily insulin injections while 37% (n = 1071) used three or more. Of those on two or three injections daily, 37% used pre-mixed insulins, either alone or in combination with short- and intermediate-acting insulin. Pre-adolescent children on pre-mixed insulin showed similar HbA1c levels to those on a combination of short- and long-acting insulins, whereas in adolescents significantly better HbA1c values were achieved with individual combinations. Very young children were treated with a higher proportion of long-acting insulin. Among adolescent boys, lower HbA1c was related to use of more short-acting insulin. This association was not found in girls. We conclude that numerous insulin injection regimens are currently used in paediatric diabetes centres around the world, with an increasing tendency towards intensive diabetes management, particularly in older adolescents. Nevertheless, the goal of near normoglycaemia is achieved in only a few.     

Human rectal absorption of short- and medium-chain C2-C10 fatty acids

PURPOSE: To study the effects of running suture adjustment for reduction of astigmatism after penetrating keratoplasty. Suture adjustments performed during surgery and during the early postoperative and late postoperative periods were retrospectively compared. METHODS: We studied 53 patients who received running suture adjustment after penetrating keratoplasty, either intraoperatively (ISA group, n = 18), early (< 2 weeks) postoperatively (EPSA group, n = 19), or late (> 1 month) postoperatively (LPSA group, n = 16). Refractive and topographic astigmatism and corneal topography were examined at 1, 3, and 6 months after surgery. RESULTS: Overall mean refractive astigmatism and topographic astigmatism at 6 months were 2.55 +/- 1.61 D and 3.12 +/- 1.89 D, respectively (mean +/- SD). The mean refractive astigmatism and topographic astigmatism were 1.88 +/- 1.04 D and 2.35 +/- 1.35 D in the ISA group, 2.32 +/- 1.17 D and 2.70 +/- 1.21 D in the EPSA group, and 3.01 +/- 1.62 D and 4.62 +/- 2.51 D in the LPSA group, respectively (mean +/- SD). The LPSA group demonstrated significantly increased topographic astigmatism compared to the ISA group (p = 0.0048) and the EPSA group (p = 0.015). Although 31.6 and 25.0% of the EPSA and LPSA groups, respectively, did not require postoperative suture adjustments, more eyes (10/18 eyes, 55.6%) in the ISA group did not require the procedure. CONCLUSIONS: Early postoperative suture adjustment was more effective than late postoperative adjustment. Intraoperative suture adjustment may further reduce final astigmatism and the necessity for postoperative suture manipulation.     

Interface structure in infiltrated composites of aluminum reinforced with alumina-silica fiber preforms

Formerly Graduate Student, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology     

The face in the crowd effect unconfounded: Happy faces, not angry faces, are more efficiently detected in single- and multiple-target visual search tasks.

Is it easier to detect angry or happy facial expressions in crowds of faces? The present studies used several variations of the visual search task to assess whether people selectively attend to expressive faces. Contrary to widely cited studies (e.g., ?hman, Lundqvist, & Esteves, 2001) that suggest angry faces “pop out” of crowds, our review of the literature found inconsistent evidence for the effect and suggested that low-level visual confounds could not be ruled out as the driving force behind the anger superiority effect. We then conducted 7 experiments, carefully designed to eliminate many of the confounding variables present in past demonstrations. These experiments showed no evidence that angry faces popped out of crowds or even that they were efficiently detected. These experiments instead revealed a search asymmetry favoring happy faces. Moreover, in contrast to most previous studies, the happiness superiority effect was shown to be robust even when obvious perceptual confounds—like the contrast of white exposed teeth that are typically displayed in smiling faces—were eliminated in the happy targets. Rather than attribute this effect to the existence of innate happiness detectors, we speculate that the human expression of happiness has evolved to be more visually discriminable because its communicative intent is less ambiguous than other facial expressions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Design and performance characterization of electronic structure calculations on massively parallel supercomputers: a case study of GPAW on the Blue Gene/P architecture

Density function theory (DFT) is the most widely employed electronic structure method because of its favorable scaling with system size and accuracy for a broad range of molecular and condensed‐phase systems. The advent of massively parallel supercomputers has enhanced the scientific community's ability to study larger system sizes. Ground‐state DFT calculations on ∼ 10³ valence electrons using traditional algorithms can be routinely performed on present‐day supercomputers. The performance characteristics of these massively parallel DFT codes on > 10⁴ computer cores are not well understood. The GPAW code was ported an optimized for the Blue Gene/P architecture. We present our algorithmic parallelization strategy and interpret the results for a number of benchmark test cases.Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.