Effects of alirocumab on types of myocardial infarction: insights from the ODYSSEY OUTCOMES trial

Aims  The third Universal Definition of Myocardial Infarction (MI) Task Force classified MIs into five types: Type 1, spontaneous; Type 2, related to oxygen supply/demand imbalance; Type 3, fatal without ascertainment of cardiac biomarkers; Type 4, related to percutaneous coronary intervention; and Type 5, related to coronary artery bypass surgery. Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) reduction with statins and proprotein convertase subtilisin–kexin Type 9 (PCSK9) inhibitors reduces risk of MI, but less is known about effects on types of MI. ODYSSEY OUTCOMES compared the PCSK9 inhibitor alirocumab with placebo in 18 924 patients with recent acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and elevated LDL-C (≥1.8 mmol/L) despite intensive statin therapy. In a pre-specified analysis, we assessed the effects of alirocumab on types of MI. Methods and results  Median follow-up was 2.8 years. Myocardial infarction types were prospectively adjudicated and classified. Of 1860 total MIs, 1223 (65.8%) were adjudicated as Type 1, 386 (20.8%) as Type 2, and 244 (13.1%) as Type 4. Few events were Type 3 (n = 2) or Type 5 (n = 5). Alirocumab reduced first MIs [hazard ratio (HR) 0.85, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.77–0.95; P = 0.003], with reductions in both Type 1 (HR 0.87, 95% CI 0.77–0.99; P = 0.032) and Type 2 (0.77, 0.61–0.97; P = 0.025), but not Type 4 MI. Conclusion  After ACS, alirocumab added to intensive statin therapy favourably impacted on Type 1 and 2 MIs. The data indicate for the first time that a lipid-lowering therapy can attenuate the risk of Type 2 MI. Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol reduction below levels achievable with statins is an effective preventive strategy for both MI types.For complete list of authors see http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehz299</p

MEDICINFOSYS: AN ARCHITECTURE FOR AN EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICAL INFORMATION RESEARCH AND DELIVERY SYSTEM

Due to the complicated nature of medical information needs, the time constraints of clinicians, and the linguistic complexities and sheer volume of medical information, most medical questions go unanswered. It has been shown that nearly all of these questions can be answered with the presently available medical sources and that when these questions get answered, patient health benefits. In this work, we design and describe a framework for Evidence-Based medical information research and delivery, MedicInfoSys. This system leverages the strengths of knowledge-based workers and of mature knowledge-based technologies within the medical domain. The most critical element of this framework, is a search interface, PifMed. PifMed uses gold-standard MeSH categorization (presently integrated into medline) as the basis of a navigational structure, which allows users to browse search results with an interactive tree of categories. Evaluation by user study shows it to be superior to PubMed, in terms of speed and usability

The effect of surface characteristics of polymeric materials on the strength of bonded joints

The degree of roughness and the linear direction of the abrasion process operated over the adherend surface are two important design factors for the adhesive joint. Thus, in the first part of this study, the surface roughness was varied by means of different grades of abrasive paper and its effect on the joint strength was studied. An investigation involving changing the linear direction with respect to the loading direction was also carried out. These experiments were done to determine the effectiveness of the abrasion process for the pretreatment of the adherend. A significant increase in joint strength was found for the abrasion treatment. However, it was shown that different linear directions did not have any significant effect on the joint strength. In the second part of this study, thermodynamic analysis of the bonding of dissimilar polymeric materials using different adhesives in terms of their surface tension, critical surface tension, and joint strength was carried out. The aim of the study was to determine the thermodynamic criteria for maximum joint strength in bonding dissimilar materials. The results showed that the joint strength was dictated by the adherend with the lower critical surface tension. Maximum joint strength for bonding dissimilar materials is attained when the surface tension of the adhesive used is close to that of the adherend with the lower critical surface tension.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

JALI

The rich signals we extract from facial expressions imposes high expectations for the science and art of facial animation. While the advent of high-resolution performance capture has greatly improved realism, the utility of procedural animation warrants a prominent place in facial animation workflow. We present a system that, given an input audio soundtrack and speech transcript, automatically generates expressive lip-synchronized facial animation that is amenable to further artistic refinement, and that is comparable with both performance capture and professional animator output. Because of the diversity of ways we produce sound, the mapping from phonemes to visual depictions as visemes is many-valued. We draw from psycholinguistics to capture this variation using two visually distinct anatomical actions: Ja w and L ip, wheresound is primarily controlled by jaw articulation and lower-face muscles, respectively. We describe the construction of a transferable template jali 3D facial rig, built upon the popular facial muscle action unit representation facs. We show that acoustic properties in a speech signal map naturally to the dynamic degree of jaw and lip in visual speech. We provide an array of compelling animation clips, compare against performance capture and existing procedural animation, and report on a brief user study. </jats:p

The PIF Process Interchange Format and Framework PIF Working Group

This document describes the first version of the Process Interchange Format (PIF, version 1.0). The goal of this work is to develop an interchange format to help automatically exchange process descriptions among a wide variety of business process modeling and support systems such as: workflow software, flow charting tools, process simulation systems, and process repositories. Instead of having to write ad hoc translators for each pair of such systems, each system will only need to have a single translator for converting process descriptions in that system into and out of the common PIF format. Then any system will be able to automatically exchange basic process descriptions with any other system. The current PIF format includes a core set of object types (such as activities, actors, and prerequisite relations) that can be used to describe the basic elements of any process. The PIF format also includes a framework for extending the core set of object types to include additional information needed in specific applications. These extended descriptions are exchanged in such a way that the common elements are interpretable by any PIF translator and the additional elements are interpretable by any translator that knows about the extensions. The PIF format was developed by a working group including representatives from several universities and companies and has been used for experimental automatic translations among systems developed independently at three of these sites. This document is being distributed in the hopes that other groups will comment upon the interchange format proposed here and that this format (or future versions of it) may be useful to other groups as well.

How phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming specifically contribute to the development of reading strategies ?

Phonological Awareness (PA) and Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) have been shown as reliable predictors of variability in learning to read, as well as causal factors in reading disabilities. On the one hand, numerous studies insist on crucial impact of PA on reading through the way of the sublexical route. On the other hand, results are few and variable regarding the impact of RAN (i.e. the ability to name as quickly as possible a number of highly familiar visual stimuli arranged in a matrix) on reading strategies. Some authors support that RAN reflects the establishment of direct word recognition and the lexical route of reading (Manis, Franklin, Seidenberg & Doi, 1999 ; Manis, Doi, & Bhadha, 2000 ; Wolf, Bowers & Biddle, 2000 ; Stainthorp, Powell, & Stuart, 2013). However, their studies lack consistency in the assessment of the reading routes and RAN. To better understand common underlying processes between PA/RAN and reading, the present study aims to investigate the nature of the impact of PA and RAN respectively on the sublexical and the lexical routes in reading by means of fine psycholinguistic assessments. Experimental tasks measuring PA, RAN and both routes of reading were administered to sixty-one second graders without pathological score in vocabulary or nonverbal intelligence and without language impairment. Multiple regression analyses were conducted. The results showed that RAN predicts the development of direct access to the stored phonological representation of printed words (lexical route) more than the decoding procedure (sublexical route). The reverse pattern was observed for PA. This supports distinct contributions of PA and RAN to reading