BACKGROUND Sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) is a potential efficacious and safe treatment option for patients with respiratory, IgE-mediated allergic diseases. A combined tolerability, dose-finding study with a sublingual liquid birch pollen preparation (SB) was conducted. METHODS Two hundred and sixty-nine adults with birch-pollen-induced AR were randomized to placebo, SB: 3333, 10,000, 20,00...

BACKGROUND In prospective studies, the relationship of self-reported consumption of dairy foods with risk of diabetes mellitus is inconsistent. Few studies have assessed dairy fat, using circulating biomarkers, and incident diabetes mellitus. We tested the hypothesis that circulating fatty acid biomarkers of dairy fat, 15:0, 17:0, and t-16:1n-7, are associated with lower incident diabetes melli...

In this paper, cyber attack detection and isolation is studied on a network of UAVs in a formation flying setup. As the UAVs communicate to reach consensus on their states while making the formation, the communication network among the UAVs makes them vulnerable to a potential attack from malicious adversaries. Two types of attacks pertinent to a network of UAVs have been considered: a node att...

Thyroid hormones, which influence body metabolism and development, could be affected by persistent organic pollutants. We sought to examine the relationship between polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and thyroid disease. We employed incidence density sampling to perform a nested case control analysis of the Michigan Long-Term PBB Cohort. Cohort members (n=3333)...

The use of copper based metal organic frameworks as a vehicle for the storage and delivery of chemically stored nitric oxide has been proposed based on recent experiments [J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2012, 134, 3330-3333]. In these experiments copper based metal organic frameworks (MOFs) suspended in ethanol catalytically convert chemically stored nitric oxide (in the S-nitrosothiol or RSNO form) to fre...

This paper presents an algorithm for labeling curvilinear structure at multiple scales in line drawings and edge images Symbolic CURVE-ELEMENT tokens residing in a spatially-indexed and scale-indexed data structure denote circular arcs fit to image data. Tokens are computed via a small-to-large scale grouping procedure employing a “greedy”, best-first, strategy for choosing the support of new t...

Nowadays, customers have become more interested in the quality of service (QoS) that organizations can provide them. Services provided by different vendors are not highly distinguished which increases competition between organizations to maintain and increase their QoS. Customer Relationship Management systems are used to enable organizations to acquire new customers, establish a continuous rel...

Power law mass-size and linewidth-size correlations, two of “Larson’s laws,” are often studied to assess the dynamical state of clumps within molecular clouds. Using the result of a hydrodynamic simulation of a molecular cloud, we investigate how geometric projection may affect the derived Larson relationships. We find that large scale structures in the column density map have similar masses an...

OBJECTIVES To assess the effects of taking an intercalated degree (BSc) on the study habits and learning styles of medical students and on their interest in a career in medical research. DESIGN Longitudinal questionnaire study of medical students at application to medical school and in their final year. SETTING All UK medical schools. PARTICIPANTS 6901 medical school applicants for admiss...

BACKGROUND The data contribute to a better understanding of the circulation of influenza viruses especially in North-Africa. OBJECTIVE The objective of this surveillance was to detect severe influenza cases, identify their epidemiological and virological characteristics and assess their impact on the healthcare system. METHOD We describe in this report the findings of laboratory-based surve...