BACKGROUND Tiotropium (TIO) is a well-established bronchodilator, LAMA (long-acting anticholinergic), for the treatment of moderate to very severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Clinical evidence suggests that tiotropium is superior to usual non-LAMA care (UC) but may also have benefits compared to other LAMAs in preventing and limiting the effects of severe exacerbations. The pr...

BACKGROUND Dual bronchodilation combining a long-acting β2-agonist (LABA) and a long-acting muscarinic antagonist (LAMA) is the preferred choice of treatment recommended by the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) 2017 guidelines for the management of patients with moderate-to-severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The once-daily (q.d.) fixed-dose combinat...

We have analyzed a locus on the annotated Lactobacillus plantarum WCFS1 genome that showed homology to the staphylococcal agr quorum-sensing system and designated it lam for Lactobacillus agr-like module. Production of the lamBDCA transcript was shown to be growth phase dependent. Analysis of a response regulator-defective mutant (Delta)lamA) in an adherence assay showed that lam regulates adhe...

When there are no randomised clinical trials directly comparing all relevant treatment options, an indirect treatment comparison via meta-analysis of the available clinical evidence is an acceptable alternative. However, meta-analyses may be very misleading if not adequately performed. Here, we propose and validate a simple and effective approach to meta-analysis for exploring the effectiveness...

Three long-acting muscarinic antagonists (LAMAs) are now available in Europe, providing clinicians and patients with a choice of interventions, which is important in COPD, which is clinically a heterogeneous disease. The first LAMA, tiotropium, has been widely used over the last decade as a once-daily maintenance therapy in stable COPD to improve patients' health-related quality of life and to ...

BACKGROUND Bronchodilators such as long-acting muscarinic antagonists (LAMAs) and long-acting β2-agonists (LABAs) are central to the pharmacological management of COPD. Dual bronchodilation with umeclidinium/vilanterol (UMEC/VI; 62.5/25 μg) is a novel LAMA/LABA combination approved for maintenance treatment for patients with COPD. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to assess the cost-e...

Control of a helicopter is complex, and includes cross coupling of forces and balancing of forces. While sophisticated and advanced controllers can achieve stable control, good mechanical design can reduce the problems and hence make tuning the control loops easier. In this paper, we argue that a coaxial-rotor design solves a number of problems that make control of a four-rotor helicopter diffi...

Greedy Best-First Search (GBFS) is a powerful algorithm at the heart of many state of the art satisficing planners. One major weakness of GBFS is its behavior in so-called uninformative heuristic regions (UHRs) parts of the search space in which no heuristic provides guidance towards states with improved heuristic values. This work analyzes the problem of UHRs in planning in detail, and propose...