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Item Frequency Of Development Of Connective Tissue Disease In Statin-Users Versus Nonusers(2013-09) Schmidt, Thomas; Battafarano, Daniel F.; Mortensen, Eric M.; Frei, Christopher R.; Mansi, Ishak; Frei, Christopher R.Statins have pleiotropic properties that may affect the development of connective tissue diseases (CTD). The objective of this study was to compare the risk of CTD diagnoses in statin users and nonusers. This study was a propensity score-matched analysis of adult patients (30 to 85 years old) in the San Antonio military medical community. The study was divided into baseline (October 1, 2003 to September 30, 2005), and follow-up (October 1, 2005 to March 5, 2010) periods. Statin users received a statin prescription during fiscal year 2005. Nonusers did not receive a statin at any time during the study. The outcome measure was the occurrence of 3 diagnosis codes of the International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification consistent with CTD. We described co-morbidities during the baseline period using the Charlson Comorbidity Index. We created a propensity score based on 41 variables. We then matched statin users and nonusers 1:1, using a caliper of 0.001. Of 46,488 patients who met study criteria (13,640 statin users and 32,848 nonusers), we matched 6,956 pairs of statin users and nonusers. Matched groups were similar in terms of patient age, gender, incidence of co-morbidities, total Charlson Comorbidity Index, health care use, and medication use. The odds ratio for CTD was lower in statin users than nonusers (odds ratio: 0.80; 95% confidence interval: 0.64 to 0.99; p = 0.05). Secondary analysis and sensitivity analysis confirmed these results. In conclusion, statin use was associated with a lower risk of CTD. Published by Elsevier Inc.Item The INIA Texas Gene Expression Database: An online tool for alcohol genomics(2012-04) Weyn-Vanhentenryck, Sebastien; Ponomarev, IgorAlcoholism is a serious condition that affects millions of people and costs billions of dollars each year in treatment, damages, and lost income. In addition, it carries a tremendous emotional burden. Alcoholism is caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors, which have yet to be fully identified. Fortunately, alcoholism research, as well as research into other diseases with a genetic component, has greatly benefited from recent rapid developments in high-throughput genomic technologies and the development of relevant model organisms. This has been highly productive for progress in the field, but effective methods for identifying relevant data and for performing cross-dataset analyses have not been developed at the same pace. To help fulfill this need, I have developed the INIA (Integrative Neuroscience Initiative on Alcoholism) Texas Gene Expression Database (IT-GED), which is freely available at http://inia.icmb.utexas.edu. IT-GED is a web-based database which contains a compilation of the significantly expressed genes from each of several microarray datasets investigating the role of gene expression in the brain's regulation of alcohol consumption. The studies were performed both in model organisms (mouse and rat) and post-mortem humans. The data is presented via a user-friendly interface which provides advanced searching abilities for identifying genes of interest and tools for analysis of the data. These tools provide the ability to compare user data to every dataset in IT-GED in order to assess the significance of a group of genes across multiple datasets and the ability to generate visual networks of those genes in order to identify the ones that are likely the most functionally significant in the response to high alcohol consumption. IT-GED thus provides a means by which alcohol researchers can combine multiple sources of data to generate novel hypotheses concerning the genetic causes of alcoholism. The goal of IT-GED is to provide support for comparing and integrating results across gene expression studies of alcohol consumption and for generating novel hypotheses based on individual genes and gene-gene interactions by simplifying data access, providing various tools for analysis, and presenting users with an easy-to-use interface.Item Integrated Land-Sea Planning: A Technical Guide to the Integrated Land-Sea Planning Toolkit. EBM Tools Network(2009-08-14) Crist, P.; Madden, Kiersten; Varley, I.; Eslinger, D.; Walker, D.; Anderson, A.; Morehead, Sally; Dunton, KennethCoastal ecosystems contain a rich diversity of species and habitat types that provide an abundance of the world’s natural resources (WRI, 2000). These coastal ecosystems also maintain a wealth of economic activity associated with recreation and tourism, waterborne commerce, and energy and mineral production. This economic activity has been one of the driving forces behind increased population growth in coastal communities. However, the activities that make coastal communities so desirable are the same activities that threaten many of our coastal natural resources. As a result, resource managers face the difficult challenge of balancing increasing human uses of coastal ecosystems with environmental protection. Several estimates suggest that populations along the coast have doubled over the past twenty years and that approximately half of the world’s population, or three billion people, currently live within 200 kilometers of the coast. As a result of this population growth, many coastal ecosystems are threatened by pollution, habitat degradation and loss, overfishing, invasive species, and increased coastal hazards such as sea-level rise (WRI, 2000; Hinrichsen, 1998; National Safety Council, 1998). The increasing population density of coastal areas, combined with a fast-growing economy (Colgan, 2004), makes the task of managing coastal resources more difficult. With the world’s coastal population expected to continue increasing, the ability to minimize impacts from population growth is essential. An integrated land-sea planning approach can help mitigate many of the potential problems associated with increased human activity in coastal communities by addressing the human use of land, freshwater, and marine resources while also working to maintain the integrity of terrestrial, aquatic, and marine/estuarine ecosystems. This planning approach, however, requires a significant commitment from planners and resource managers to conduct collaborative planning, while also requiring the participation of scientists and technologists (e.g., GIS analysts and database managers). To assist in the integrated planning process, a technological toolkit has been developed to guide ecosystem assessment and planning within and across disciplines and ecosystems. This publication is intended to guide users in the application of the integrated land-sea toolkit and facilitate this type of planning approach. There is a large body of published work on the science and planning process for each aspect of the toolkit and each tool is accompanied by documentation and publications. Therefore, this guide does not attempt to replicate the contents of those publications nor exhaustively reference them. It is strictly designed to explain the process for implementing an integrated land-sea planning approach through the interoperation of three decision support tools. Users of the toolkit are expected to obtain the appropriate references, training, and support as needed for their particular applications, experience, and capacity. While this toolkit is described as an integrated land-sea planning toolkit it is also fully suited to inland watershed applications where the effect of land use/management on aquatic ecosystems is of interest.Item Next Hackathon Announced!(The University of Texas at Austin, 2019-10-21) News, UTItem Update of Atlas of Major Texas Oil Reservoirs Data Base and Atlas of Major Texas Gas Reservoirs Data Base(1993) Holtz, Mark H.; Garrett, C. M., Jr.; Tremblay, Thomas A.Updating both the "Atlas of Major Texas Oil Reservoirs: Database" (Holtz and others, 1991) and the "Atlas of Major Texas Gas Reservoirs: Database" (Garrett and others, 1991) centered on updating cumulative production data current to December 31, 1992, for reservoirs already in the database and adding new significant-sized reservoirs (cumulative production greater than 1 million barrels of oil equivalent) to the databases. Addition of new reservoirs to the database resulted in the modification of existing plays or the determination of new plays. Play boundaries were also modified to accommodate the additional reservoirs. Oil and gas production data used for the cumulative production update and the determination of significant-sized reservoirs were obtained from Dwight's Energy data. For reservoirs already included in the Atlas databases, annual production values were added to the cumulative production already determined by the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) or reported by the Railroad Commission of Texas. For new reservoirs, the cumulative production values reported by Dwight's Energy data were applied. Oil reservoirs originally listed in both databases because of large gas production were combined and now are listed only in the updated Oil Atlas database.Item VLT/FLAMES Spectroscopy Of Red Giant Branch Stars In The Fornax Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy(2014-12) Lemasle, B.; de Boer, T. J. L.; Hill, V.; Tolstoy, E.; Irwin, M. J.; Jablonka, P.; Venn, K.; Battaglia, G.; Starkenburg, E.; Shetrone, M.; Letarte, B.; Francois, P.; Helmi, A.; Primas, F.; Kaufer, A.; Szeifert, T.; Shetrone, Matthew D.Context. Fornax is one of the most massive dwarf spheroidal galaxies in the Local Group. The Fornax field star population is dominated by intermediate age stars but star formation was going on over almost its entire history. It has been proposed that Fornax experienced a minor merger event. Aims. Despite recent progress, only the high metallicity end of Fornax field stars ([Fe/H] > -1.2 dex) has been sampled in larger number via high resolution spectroscopy. We want to better understand the full chemical evolution of this galaxy by better sampling the whole metallicity range, including more metal poor stars. Methods. We use the VLT-FLAMES multi-fibre spectrograph in high-resolution mode to determine the abundances of several a, iron-peak and neutron-capture elements in a sample of 47 individual red giant branch stars in the Fornax dwarf spheroidal galaxy. We combine these abundances with accurate age estimates derived from the age probability distribution from the colour-magnitude diagram of Fornax. Results. Similar to other dwarf spheroidal galaxies, the old, metal-poor stars of Fornax are typically alpha-rich while the young metal-rich stars are a-poor. In the classical scenario of the time delay between Type II (SNe II) and Type Ia Supernovae (SNe la), we confirm that SNe la started to contribute to the chemical enrichment at [Fe/H] between -2.0 and -1.8 dex. We find that the onset of SNe Ia took place between 12-10 Gyr ago. The high values of [Ba/Fe], [La/Fe] reflect the influence of SNe Ia and AGB stars in the abundance pattern of the younger stellar population of Fornax. Conclusions. Our findings of low [alpha/Fe] and enhanced [Eu/Mg] are compatible with an initial mass function that lacks the most massive stars and with star formation that kept going on throughout the whole history of Fornax. We find that massive stars kept enriching the interstellar medium in alpha-elements, although they were not the main contributor to the iron enrichment.Item VLT/FLAMES Spectroscopy Of Red Giant Branch Stars In The Fornax Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy(2014-12) Lemasle, B.; de Boer, T. J. L.; Hill, V.; Tolstoy, E.; Irwin, M. J.; Jablonka, P.; Venn, K.; Battaglia, G.; Starkenburg, E.; Shetrone, M.; Letarte, B.; Francois, P.; Helmi, A.; Primas, F.; Kaufer, A.; Szeifert, T.; Shetrone, Matthew D.Context. Fornax is one of the most massive dwarf spheroidal galaxies in the Local Group. The Fornax field star population is dominated by intermediate age stars but star formation was going on over almost its entire history. It has been proposed that Fornax experienced a minor merger event. Aims. Despite recent progress, only the high metallicity end of Fornax field stars ([Fe/H] > -1.2 dex) has been sampled in larger number via high resolution spectroscopy. We want to better understand the full chemical evolution of this galaxy by better sampling the whole metallicity range, including more metal poor stars. Methods. We use the VLT-FLAMES multi-fibre spectrograph in high-resolution mode to determine the abundances of several a, iron-peak and neutron-capture elements in a sample of 47 individual red giant branch stars in the Fornax dwarf spheroidal galaxy. We combine these abundances with accurate age estimates derived from the age probability distribution from the colour-magnitude diagram of Fornax. Results. Similar to other dwarf spheroidal galaxies, the old, metal-poor stars of Fornax are typically alpha-rich while the young metal-rich stars are a-poor. In the classical scenario of the time delay between Type II (SNe II) and Type Ia Supernovae (SNe la), we confirm that SNe la started to contribute to the chemical enrichment at [Fe/H] between -2.0 and -1.8 dex. We find that the onset of SNe Ia took place between 12-10 Gyr ago. The high values of [Ba/Fe], [La/Fe] reflect the influence of SNe Ia and AGB stars in the abundance pattern of the younger stellar population of Fornax. Conclusions. Our findings of low [alpha/Fe] and enhanced [Eu/Mg] are compatible with an initial mass function that lacks the most massive stars and with star formation that kept going on throughout the whole history of Fornax. We find that massive stars kept enriching the interstellar medium in alpha-elements, although they were not the main contributor to the iron enrichment.