It behoves to identify risk factors. At 14 Spanish centers, data on 1062 adult patients with HT (age 59.2 +/- 12.3 yr, 82.5% men) were collected at GSK923295 routine follow-up examinations. Glomerular filtration rate, GFR, was estimated using the four-variable MDRD equation, and moderate-or-severe renal dysfunction (MSRD) was defined as K/DOQI stage 3 CKD or worse. Time since transplant ranged from one month to 22 yr (mean 6.7 yr). At assessment, 26.6% of patients were diabetic and 63.9% hypertensive; 53.9% were taking cyclosporine and 33.1% tacrolimus; and 61.4% had MSRD. Among patients on cyclosporine or tacrolimus at assessment, multivariate logistic regression
identified male sex (OR 0.44), pre- and post-HT creatinine (2.73 and 3.13 per mg/dL), age at transplant C59 (1.06 per yr), time since transplant (1.05 per yr), and tacrolimus
(0.65) as independent positive or negative predictors of MSRD. It is concluded that female sex, pre- and one-month post-HT serum creatinine, age at transplant, time since transplant, and immunosuppression with cyclosporine rather than tacrolimus may all be risk factors for development of CKD >= stage 3 by patients with HT.”
“This paper investigates the application of multivariable PID (MPID) controllers to wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) with pre-denitrifying process. WWTPs have usually a number of interacting control loops. The controller’s parameters are often left unchanged since the plant commissioning and hence poor performance Buparlisib ic50 is often observed due to inevitable
changes in the plant and its influent characteristics. The model-based MPID tuning methods are complicated, cumbersome and expensive, and require a high level of control expertise to design, and implement. In this paper, a simple and novel tuning method is proposed along with three existing methods, which require only step or frequency response tests. The performance of these methods is compared and the parameters are tuned using a proposed optimisation technique to meet standard quality effluent at a minimum cost. This is achieved using a nonlinear ASM1 model to determine the optimal values of the controller parameters. The results Show that by effective and proper tuning of the MPID controllers, the closed-loop performance of WWTP improves and it could potentially lead to energy saving and improvement in the removal of nitrogen. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.”
“The role of Fe as an acceptor and Nb as a donor in [0.94-x](Bi1/2Na1/2)TiO3-0.06BaTiO(3)-x (K0.5Na0.5)NbO3 (100xKNN) (x=0.02 and 0.03) lead-free piezoceramics was investigated. X-ray diffraction analyses show that all the profiles are best-fitted with a cubic symmetry where Fe doping tends to induce a lattice expansion, while Nb doping does the opposite. The strain and polarization characteristics are enhanced and suppressed by the acceptor and donor dopants, respectively.