Search results for "Sensitivity"
showing 10 items of 3059 documents
Mucin 1 deficiency mediates corticosteroid insensitivity in asthma
2019
BACKGROUND: The loss of corticosteroid efficacy is an important issue in severe asthma management and may lead to poor asthma control and deterioration of airflow. Recent data indicate that Mucin 1 (MUC1) membrane mucin can mediate corticosteroid efficacy in chronic rhinosinusitis, but the role of MUC1 in uncontrolled severe asthma is unknown. The objective was to analyze the previously unexplored role of MUC1 on corticosteroid efficacy in asthma. METHODS: Mucin 1 expression was evaluated by real-time PCR in human bronchial epithelial cells (HBEC) and blood neutrophils from uncontrolled severe asthma (n=27), controlled mild asthma (n=16), and healthy subjects (n=13). IL-8, MMP9, and GM-CSF …
Spectroscopy of short-lived radioactive molecules
2020
Molecular spectroscopy offers opportunities for the exploration of the fundamental laws of nature and the search for new particle physics beyond the standard model1–4. Radioactive molecules—in which one or more of the atoms possesses a radioactive nucleus—can contain heavy and deformed nuclei, offering high sensitivity for investigating parity- and time-reversal-violation effects5,6. Radium monofluoride, RaF, is of particular interest because it is predicted to have an electronic structure appropriate for laser cooling6, thus paving the way for its use in high-precision spectroscopic studies. Furthermore, the effects of symmetry-violating nuclear moments are strongly enhanced5,7–9 in molecu…
First measurements of field metabolic rate in wild juvenile fishes show strong thermal sensitivity but variations between sympatric ecotypes
2021
The relationship between physiology and temperature has a large influence on population-level responses to climate change. In natural settings, direct thermal effects on metabolism may be exaggerated or offset by behavioural responses influencing individual energy balance. Drawing on a newly developed proxy, we provide the first estimates of the thermal performance curve of field metabolism in a wild fish. We investigate the thermal sensitivity of field metabolic rate in two sympatric, genetically distinct ecotypes of Atlantic cod from the Skagerrak coast of southern Norway. The combined ecotype median of field metabolic rate increased with increasing temperature until around 16°C, coincide…
Sensitivity Analysis in Nonrandomized Longitudinal Mediation Analysis
2021
Mediation analysis relies on an untestable assumption of the no omitted confounders, which posits that an omitted variable that confounds the relationships between the antecedent, mediator, and outcome variables cannot exist. One common model in alcohol addiction studies is a nonrandomized latent growth curve mediation model (LGCMM), where the antecedent variable is not randomized, the two covarying mediators are latent intercept and slope modeling longitudinal effect of the repeated measures mediator, and an outcome variable that measures alcohol use. An important gap in the literature is lack of sensitivity analysis techniques to assess the effect of the violation of the no omitted confou…
Sensitivity analysis of Gaussian processes for oceanic chlorophyll prediction
2015
Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) for machine learning has lately been successfully introduced for chlorophyll content mapping from remotely sensed data. The method provides a fast, stable and accurate prediction of biophysical parameters. However, since GPR is a non-linear kernel regression method, the relevance of the features are not accessible. In this paper, we introduce a probabilistic approach for feature sensitivity analysis (SA) of the GPR in order to reveal the relative importance of the features (bands) being used in the regression process. We evaluated the SA on GPR ocean chlorophyll content prediction. The method revealed the importance of the spectral bands, thus allowing the …
The value of synthetic linear epitope analogues of La/SSB for the detection of autoantibodies to La/SSB; specificity, sensitivity and comparison of m…
1998
SUMMARY In a previous study it was shown that La/SSB contains four linear epitopes, p147–154, p291–302, p301–318 and p349–364. The aim of the present study was to investigate the value of the synthetic epitope analogues of the La/SSB autoantigen for the detection of antibodies to La/SSB, in comparison with recombinant La and fragments of this protein. A total of 122 sera with anti-La/SSB activity, from patients with primary Sjögren's syndrome (pSS) or systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), were tested in various peptide-based assays. In addition, 62 sera from pSS or SLE patients with other autoantibody specificities and 95 sera from healthy individuals were used as controls. The autoantibody s…
Shape Sensitivity Analysis and Gradient-Based Optimization of Large Structures Using MLFMA
2014
A fast method for computing the action of shape-differentiated electric field integral equation (EFIE) system matrix to a vector is derived exploiting the multilevel fast multipole algorithm (MLFMA). The proposed method is used in conjunction with the adjoint-variable method (AVM) to compute the shape gradient of arbitrary objective functions depending on shape of a metallic scatterer. The method is demonstrated numerically by optimizing the shape of a parabolic reflector illuminated with a half-wave dipole.
On shape differentiation of discretized electric field integral equation
2013
Abstract This work presents shape derivatives of the system matrix representing electric field integral equation discretized with Raviart–Thomas basis functions. The arising integrals are easy to compute with similar methods as the entries of the original system matrix. The results are compared to derivatives computed with automatic differentiation technique and finite differences, and are found to be in an excellent agreement. Furthermore, the derived formulas are employed to analyze shape sensitivity of the input impedance of a planar inverted F-antenna, and the results are compared to those obtained using a finite difference approximation.
Harnessing Women’s Potential as a Soft Engine for Growth : Lessons from Contrasting Trajectories between Finland and Japan for Growing Economies
2017
Harnessing the vigor of women’s potential is essential for inclusive economic growth in a digital economy moving toward aging society. This can be a soft engine for sustainable growth substitutable for costly hard investment. While there exists explicit evidence of a virtual cycle between economic growth and gender balance improvement, emerging countries cannot afford to overcome the constraints of low income. Given the foregoing, this paper analyzed possible co-evolution between economic growth, gender balance improvement and digital innovation initiated by information and communication technology (ICT) advancement. Using a unique dataset representing the state of gender balance improvemen…
T@sty: a test for assessing taste sensitivity. Description, application example
2019
The aim of the poster is to present the T@styTM device and to give an example application through results obtained in an ongoing study. The advantages and limits of this device will be discussed. T@styTM device, usable for home testing, was designed to assess human ability to detect several tastants at low concentrations in order to provide individual profiles based on sensitivity to the five tastes (sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami). Three test-sheets made of edible paper are used for each taste (three replicate measurements). Each test-sheet consists of six series of three precut discs (one “tasty disc” and two neutral discs) on which taste stimuli of different intensities were depos…