Clusters of PCs are an attractive platform for parallel applications because of their cost effectiveness. We have implemented an interoperable runtime system called Converse on a cluster of Linux PCs connected by an inexpensive switched Fast Ethernet. This paper presents our implementation and its performance evaluation. We consider the question of the performance impact of using inexpensive co...

PURPOSE The use of anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) therapy, with drugs such as ranibizumab and bevacizumab, to treat neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) produces an effective but widely variable response. Identifying markers that predict differentiated response could serve as a valuable assay in developing more personalized medicine. This study aimed to ident...

BACKGROUND With increasing experience using anti-VEGF therapy for the treatment of neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD), ophthalmologists have shifted away from a "one size fits all" to an "individualised" approach based on disease activity with the aim of achieving a fluid-free retina. The FLUID study investigates the non-inferiority of a Treat and Extend (T&E) protocol of 0.5 m...

BACKGROUND Age-related macular degeneration is the most common cause of sight impairment in the UK. In neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD), vision worsens rapidly (over weeks) due to abnormal blood vessels developing that leak fluid and blood at the macula. OBJECTIVES To determine the optimal role of optical coherence tomography (OCT) in diagnosing people newly presenting with...

Background: The purposes of this pilot retrospective observational cohort study are to determine: 1) the safety and efficacy corneal photovitrification (CPV), a laser procedure, for vision improvement in patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) other retinal disorders involving central loss, 2) correlation between post-treatment (post-treatme...

The effective exploitation of current high performance computing (HPC) platforms in molecular simulation relies on the ability of the present generation of parallel molecular dynamics code to make effective utilisation of these platforms and their components, including CPUs and memory. In this paper, we investigate the efficiency and scaling of a series of popular molecular dynamics codes on th...

The Adaptive Poisson-Boltzmann Solver (APBS) is a state-of-the-art suite for performing Poisson-Boltzmann electrostatic calculations on biomolecules. The iAPBS package provides a modular programmatic interface to the APBS library of electrostatic calculation routines. The iAPBS interface library can be linked with a FORTRAN or C/C++ program thus making all of the APBS functionality available fr...

This paper presents a molecular mechanics study using a molecular dynamics software (NAMD) coupled to virtual reality techniques for intuitive bio-nanorobotic prototyping. Using molecular dynamic simulations the operator can design, characterize and prototype the behavior of bio-nanorobotic components and structures. The main novelty of the proposed simulations is based on the characterization ...

PURPOSE To assess the test-retest variability of central and sectorial macular thickness measurements obtained by Cirrus HD-OCT (Carl Zeiss Meditec, Dublin, CA) in neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD). METHODS Macular thickness measurements of nine standard ETDRS subfields were obtained and analyzed. The repeatability of macular thickness measurements by Cirrus HD-OCT was asses...