Purpose: To assess the clinical utility of genotypic resistance testing among HIV-1-infected patients with limited prior exposure to antiretroviral drugs. Method: Patients experiencing virological ...failure were randomly allocated to either centralized genotypic resistance testing or to no testing and were followed for a minimum of 1 year. Results: 55 patients were recruited from 14 centers in the United Kingdom. There were no demonstrable differences between the groups in terms of virological or immunological response. For patients allocated to resistance testing, there was an increased tendency to recycle previously used drugs. Conclusion: The study did not demonstrate a benefit of genotypic resistance testing in this population, although statistical power was low. However, testing did alter prescribing behavior, and clinical effects may become manifest in the longer term.
Flowering time is a complex trait that controls adaptation of plants to their local environment in the outcrossing species Zea mays (maize). We dissected variation for flowering time with a set of ...5000 recombinant inbred lines (maize Nested Association Mapping population, NAM). Nearly a million plants were assayed in eight environments but showed no evidence for any single largeeffect quantitative trait loci (QTLs). Instead, we identified evidence for numerous small-effect QTLs shared among families; however, allelic effects differ across founder lines. We identified no individual QTLs at which allelic effects are determined by geographic origin or large effects for epistasis or environmental interactions. Thus, a simple additive model accurately predicts flowering time for maize, in contrast to the genetic architecture observed in the selfing plant species rice and Arabidopsis.
VERITAS is a state-of-the-art ground-based gamma-ray observatory that operates in the very high-energy (VHE) region of 100 GeV to 50 TeV. The observatory consists of an array of four 12m-diameter ...imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes located in southern Arizona, USA. The four-telescope array has been fully operational since September 2007, and over the last two years, VERITAS has been operating with high efficiency and with excellent performance. This talk summarizes the recent results from VERITAS, including the discovery of eight new VHE gamma-ray sources.
Astrophys.J.655:396-405,2007 Gamma-ray burst (GRB) observations at very high energies (VHE, E > 100 GeV)
can impose tight constraints on some GRB emission models. Many GRB afterglow
models predict a ...VHE component similar to that seen in blazars and plerions, in
which the GRB spectral energy distribution has a double-peaked shape extending
into the VHE regime. VHE emission coincident with delayed X-ray flare emission
has also been predicted. GRB follow-up observations have had high priority in
the observing program at the Whipple 10m Gamma-ray Telescope and GRBs will
continue to be high priority targets as the next generation observatory,
VERITAS, comes on-line. Upper limits on the VHE emission, at late times (>~4
hours), from seven GRBs observed with the Whipple Telescope are reported here.
Astrophys.J.644:148-154,2006 Galaxy clusters might be sources of TeV gamma rays emitted by high-energy
protons and electrons accelerated by large scale structure formation shocks,
galactic winds, or ...active galactic nuclei. Furthermore, gamma rays may be
produced in dark matter particle annihilation processes at the cluster cores.
We report on observations of the galaxy clusters Perseus and Abell 2029 using
the 10 m Whipple Cherenkov telescope during the 2003-2004 and 2004-2005
observing seasons. We apply a two-dimensional analysis technique to scrutinize
the clusters for TeV emission. In this paper we first determine flux upper
limits on TeV gamma-ray emission from point sources within the clusters.
Second, we derive upper limits on the extended cluster emission. We
subsequently compare the flux upper limits with EGRET upper limits at 100 MeV
and theoretical models. Assuming that the gamma-ray surface brightness profile
mimics that of the thermal X-ray emission and that the spectrum of cluster
cosmic rays extends all the way from thermal energies to multi-TeV energies
with a differential spectral index of -2.1, our results imply that the cosmic
ray proton energy density is less than 7.9% of the thermal energy density for
the Perseus cluster.
The Macaulay Library is the world's largest archive of animal sounds and has been selected by the Office of Naval Research as a major repository for the deposition, digital archival, review, and ...retrieval of the many recordings of marine animals made over the last half-century. Archived marine recordings pose challenging retrieval problems given the typically long intervals of silence between animal sounds and the multiplicity of species detectable in any given recording. One goal of this project is to design software that will permit remote experts to annotate the content of long recordings archived at the Macaulay Library through their web browsers. Annotations will permit subsequent searches of the archive database to retrieve not only suitable recordings, but also those parts of a recording meeting the search criteria. The project also seeks to define and extract a set of acoustic features from all archived marine recordings that can be used in subsequent search and retrieval tasks. Both capabilities will be unique to this sound collection, and will greatly enhance the accessibility and the utility of the archive to scientists, students, educators, military personnel, and the media.
Prepared in cooperation with Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Bioacoustics Program, Ithaca, NY, Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies, Newport, OR, and National Marine Mammal Laboratory, NOAA/NMFS/Alaska Fisheries Science Center, Seattle, WA.
The Macaulay Library is the world's largest archive of animal sounds and has been selected by the Office of Naval Research as a major repository for the deposition, digital archival, review, and ...retrieval of the many recordings of marine animals made over the last half-century. Archived marine recordings pose challenging retrieval problems given the typically long intervals of silence between animal sounds and the multiplicity of species detectable in any given recording. One goal of this project is to design software that will permit remote experts to annotate the content of long recordings archived at the Macaulay Library through their web browsers. Annotations will permit subsequent searches of the archive database to retrieve not only suitable recordings, but also those parts of a recording meeting the search criteria. The project also seeks to define and extract a set of acoustic features from all archived marine recordings that can be used in subsequent search and retrieval tasks. Both capabilities will be unique to this sound collection, and will greatly enhance the accessibility and the utility of the archive to scientists, students, educators, military personnel, and the media.
Prepared in cooperation with Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies, Newport, OR and National Marine Mammal Laboratory, NOAA/NMFS/Alaska Fisheries Science Center, Seattle, WA. A National Oceanographic Partnership Program Award. The original document contains color images. Sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation.
A statistical metrology framework is used to identify systematic and random sources of interconnect structure (ILD thickness) variation. Electrical and physical measurements, TCAD simulations, design ...of experiments, signal processing, and statistical analysis are integrated via statistical metrology to deconvolve ILD thickness variation into constituent variation sources. In this way, insight into planarization variation is enabled; for a representative CMP process we find that die-level neighborhood interactions are comparable to die-level feature-dependent effects, and within each die, die-level variation is greater than wafer-level variation. The characterization of variation sources via statistical metrology is critical for improved process control, interconnect simulation, and robust circuit design.
