A wealth of literature examines the role of challenge from an individual psychological perspective, but research investigating how a talent development system can proactively support athletes to ...successfully meet the ever-increasing demands of top-level professional sport is less prevalent. This study takes advantage of a naturally occurring but highly atypical developmental challenge as a result of COVID-19 to examine factors influencing the efficacy and effectiveness of the talent development pathway at Munster Rugby. Players and staff (n = 12) took part in semi-structured interviews exploring their experiences of the build-up to the event, the game itself, and the impact post-event. The data were subsequently analysed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis. Players and coaches highlight the groundwork undertaken to establish alignment and coherence, both horizontally and vertically across the talent development environment, and how this contributed to navigating the challenge successfully. The findings support the necessity of both the player and the talent development system being prepared to enable players to perform at the highest level. The findings point to an overlap between the development and performance phases of a player’s journey and the need to integrate short- and long-term objectives within a talent development system.
In an effort to further investigate previously observed activity of indolyl sulfonamides towards pancreatic cancer cell lines, a library of 44 compounds has been synthesized. The biological activity ...of the compounds has been determined using two different screening assay techniques against 7 pancreatic cancer cell lines and 9 non-pancreatic cancer cell lines. In the first assay, the cytotoxicity of the compounds was evaluated using a traditional (48 hour compound exposure) method. An in silico investigation was conducted to determine if the compounds might be inducing cell death by inhibiting the S100A2-p53 protein-protein interaction. In the second assay, the potential role of the compounds as metabolic inhibitors of ATP production was evaluated using a rapid screening (1-2 hour compound exposure) method. IC50 values of the hit compounds were obtained and four compounds displayed submicromolar potency against PANC-1 cells. The investigation has provided several compounds that display selective in vitro activity toward pancreatic cancer that warrant further development.
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
3.
From expert to novice Costello, Ian
British journal of nursing (Mark Allen Publishing),
03/2018, Volume:
27, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
I am about to begin my second year on the 2-year Foundation Degree in Health Care Practice—Trainee Nursing Associate (TNA) programme. Having already spent nearly 15 years working as a healthcare ...assistant in a medium secure unit for male offenders with mental health and learning disabilities, I have moved from being an expert within the healthcare assistant role to being a novice in this new nursing associate (NA) role.
Efforts to “greenshift” (Backe) digital games have been hindered, in part, by a gap between game development practices and critical game studies. To date, plant modeling for games has largely focused ...on imitating visual patterns rather than implementing dynamic ecological processes, which has shaped and ultimately limited the arguments that games are able to make about the natural world. Propagate, an individual-based plant growth plugin for Unreal Engine, draws from both ecological modeling and game criticism to deepen the relationship between play and ecology. The project offers a speculative approach to cultivating persistent digital environments that vary over time, are delicately interconnected, and exist in dialogue with players. Approaching game worlds as living, animate environments instead of painstakingly crafted backdrops is a step towards redistributing narrative focus and agency from players to the spaces they inhabit.
In recent years, several HPC facilities have started continuous monitoring of their systems and jobs to collect performance-related data for understanding performance and operational efficiency. Such ...data can be used to optimize the performance of individual jobs and the overall system by creating data-driven models that can predict the performance of jobs waiting in the scheduler queue. In this paper, we model the performance of representative control jobs using longitudinal system-wide monitoring data and machine learning to explore the causes of performance variability. We analyze these prediction models in great detail to identify the features that are dominant predictors of performance. We demonstrate that such models can be application-agnostic and can be used for predicting performance of applications that are not included in training.
Background
The EPOCH regimen, consisting of vincristine sulfate, doxorubicin hydrochloride, and etoposide phosphate, is typically administered by continuous infusion over four days to oncology ...inpatients. If the EPOCH regimen was available to be administered through portable elastomeric pumps, chemotherapy could be transitioned to an outpatient setting, reducing inpatient bed days and overall healthcare costs. However, a lack of stability data for the admixtures in the elastomeric infusion devices currently prevents the transition of the regime to an outpatient setting. The purpose of this study is to determine the physical and chemical stability of the admixture in polyisoprene elastomeric pumps under different storage conditions to support the transition of the EPOCH regime to an outpatient setting.
Methods
The physico-chemical stability of three admixtures at a range of clinically relevant concentrations compounded in polyisoprene elastomeric infusors was determined when refrigerated at 2–6℃ over a 14-day period followed by 35℃ up to 7 days in the dark, and under standardized fluorescent light to simulate scenarios in clinical practice.
Results
All tested admixtures were compatible and the drugs were stable in the elastomeric infusors for up to 14 days when stored at 2–6℃ followed by 7 days at 35℃ in the dark, with nominal losses of <5%. The major degradant of etoposide phosphate was its active form etoposide. There was no degradation (<1% loss) found when the admixture was exposed to a standardized fluorescent light dose of 80 klux-h (25℃) for 10 h. The temperature and light conditions the infusors were exposed to during the stability study were more severe than the conditions determine during clinical administration.
Conclusion
The extended stability of the three infusional admixtures compounded in elastomeric infusion pumps demonstrated herein permits advance preparation and storage of these drugs, reducing pharmacy compounding resources. The demonstrated stability at 35℃ and under light exposure, conditions more severe than those experienced during clinical practice, support continuous infusions for up to seven days from the elastomeric infusors without a loss of potency. The proven stability of the EPOCH regimens in the tested elastomeric infusion device supports the transition of treatment to an outpatient setting which will reduce inpatient bed days and overall healthcare costs.
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NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Global pandemics can wreak havoc and lead to significant social, economic,
and personal losses. Preventing the spread of infectious diseases requires
implementing interventions at different levels of ...government, and evaluating
the potential impact and efficacy of those preemptive measures. Agent-based
modeling can be used for detailed studies of epidemic diffusion and possible
interventions. We present Loimos, a highly parallel simulation of epidemic
diffusion written on top of Charm++, an asynchronous task-based parallel
runtime. Loimos uses a hybrid of time-stepping and discrete-event simulation to
model disease spread. We demonstrate that our implementation of Loimos is able
to scale to large core counts on an HPC system. In particular, Loimos is able
to simulate a US-scale synthetic interaction network in an average of 1.497
seconds per simulation day when executed on 16 nodes on Rivanna at the
University of Virginia, processing around 428 billion interactions
(person-person edges) in under five minutes for an average of 1.4 billion
traversed edges per second (TEPS).
The Solar Orbiter (SolO) mission is a joint ESA and NASA interdisciplinary mission to study the sun. The spacecraft will orbit the sun in a moderately elliptical orbit. It will, amongst other things, ...investigate the near sun heliosphere environment and its magnetized atmosphere by using in-situ measurements very close to the sun to improve our understanding of solar and heliospheric processes. The Solar Orbiter spacecraft will approach the sun close to 0.28 AU. While the Solar Orbiter solar array design is, to a large extent, based on the design of the BepiColombo Mercury Planetary Orbiter solar array, the thermal shields and rear side foil is very specific for this mission. Solar Orbiter is equipped with unique and highly sensitive remote-sensing and in-situ sensors which require limiting the radiated electromagnetic emission. Additionally, the mission requires that optical and thermal reflections to the spacecraft are minimized. Some solar array heat shields have to withstand temperatures of more than 450°C, whereas others are designed such that the temperature is below 270°C to keep the structures within their qualified temperature range and simultaneously fulfil sunlight reflection requirements. This paper describes the Solar Orbiter solar array design in general and the thermal shield design in detail with its challenges to cope both the thermal and stray light requirements.
This study was designed to compare the costs of a pharmacy-based Central Intravenous Additive Service (CIVAS) with those of traditional ward-based preparation of intravenous doses for a paediatric ...population. Labour costs were derived from timings of preparation of individual doses in both the pharmacy and ward by an independent observer. The use of disposables and diluents was recorded and their acquisition costs apportioned to the cost of each dose prepared. Data were collected from 20 CIVAS sessions (501 doses) and 26 ward-based sessions (30 doses). In addition, the costs avoided by the use of part vials in CIVAS was calculated. This was derived from a total of 50 CIVAS sessions. Labour, disposable and diluent costs were significantly lower for CIVAS compared with ward-based preparation (p < 0.001). The ratio of costs per dose in 1994 pounds sterling between ward and pharmacy was 2.35:1 (2.51 pounds:1.07 pounds). Sensitivity analysis of the best and worst staff mixes in both locations ranged from 2.3:1 to 4.0:1, always in favour of CIVAS. There were considerable costs avoided in CIVAS from the multiple use of vials; the estimated annual sum derived from the study was 44,000 pounds. In addition, CIVAS was less vulnerable to unanticipated interruptions in work flow than ward-based preparation. CIVAS for children was more economical than traditional ward-based preparation, because of a cost-minimisation effect. Sensitivity analysis showed that these advantages were maintained over a full range of skill mixes. Additionally, significant savings accrued from the multiple use of vials in CIVAS.
