Conference Websites Research Articles

Rotigotine: Transdermal Dopamine Agonist Treatment of Parkinson's Disease and Restless Legs Syndrome

To evaluate the pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, clinical efficacy, and tolerability of rotigotine, a nonergoline D(3)/D(2)/D(1) dopamine receptor agonist in the treatment of Parkinson's disease and restless legs syndrome (RLS). A literature search was conducted using MEDLINE (1996-December 2006) and International Pharmaceutical Abstracts, using the search terms rotigotine and dopamine agonist. References cited in the articles were reviewed for additional information. Information was also obtained from Schwarz Pharma. Abstracts for posters at scientific conferences were accessed from conference Web sites. English-language literature reporting controlled animal and human clinical studies was reviewed to evaluate the pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, therapeutic use, and adverse effects of rotigotine. Clinical trials selected for inclusion were limited to those with human subjects; data from animal studies were included if human data were not available. Rotigotine has been investigated in early Parkinson's disease, as adjuvant therapy to levodopa in advanced Parkinson's disease, and in RLS. It is administered transdermally, which provides the convenience of once-daily dosing, constant drug delivery, and sustained stable plasma concentrations. In clinical trials of patients with early Parkinson's disease, rotigotine has decreased combined scores on the motor and activities of daily living sections of the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale up to 85 weeks. In patients with advanced Parkinson's disease, rotigotine reduced mean off-time when used as an adjuvant to levodopa. Rotigotine has decreased the severity of RLS in Phase III trials. Acute adverse events are similar to those of other dopamine agonists and are most common during the titration phase. Mild-to-moderate application site reactions are common. Longer trials are required to determine whether transdermal rotigotine will reduce development of dyskinesias and motor fluctuations in Parkinson's disease and augmentation and rebound in RLS by preventing pulsatile dopamine stimulation associated with levodopa and other dopamine agonists.

Copper Mountain Special Issue on Iterative Methods

The 9th Copper Mountain Conference on Iterative Methods was held April 2–7, 2006, in Copper Mountain, Colorado. The conference is organized by Front Range Scientific Computations, Inc., with co-organizers the Center for Applied Scientific Computing at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the University of Maryland. Traditionally, the SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing (SISC) hosts a special issue on iterative methods that is open to the public and is announced well in advance through both the SISC and the Copper Mountain Conference web sites. I would like to thank the current members of the program committee for their service as guest editorial board. The committee members are Xiao-Chuan Cai, University of Colorado; Iain Duff, RAL and CERFACS; Roland Freund, University of California, Davis; Kirk Jordan, IBM, Watson Research Center; Tim Kelley, North Carolina State University; David Keyes, Columbia University; Tom Manteuffel, University of Colorado; Steve McCormick, University of Colorado; David Silvester, University of Manchester; Ray Tuminaro, Sandia National Laboratory; Henk van der Vorst, University of Utrecht; Homer Walker, Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Carol Woodward, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Irad Yavneh, Technion. The committee is chaired by Howard Elman (University of Maryland) and myself. This issue contains 21 papers that largely reflect the topics presented at the conference, including papers that were part of the student papers competition. More specifically, we have papers covering the more traditional numerical linear algebra topic of preconditioning, including preconditioners for nonsymmetric problems in GMRES, radial basis function interpolation via preconditioned Krylov iterations, preconditioned eigensolvers, graph-based algorithms for preconditioning, and strategies for constructing block preconditioners for systems of PDEs, as well as some emerging new topics, such as preconditioners for stochastic elliptic PDEs and linear systems arising in interior point optimization methods. Most of the papers deal with some aspects of iterative methods for systems of algebraic equations; however, a paper on iterative optimization procedures with application to image registration also found its place in the issue. The overwhelming majority of the papers deal with various aspects of (mostly algebraic) multigrid (or (A)MG), ranging from theory of geometric MG applied to nontraditional formulation of Stokes problems to investigation of a number of algorithmic issues in AMG (such as the construction of the interpolation operator, coarsening strategies including for nonsymmetric problems), as well as the construction of specialized AMG algorithms for Google PageRank-like problems and for problems arising from higher-order spectral elements discretizations. Many thanks are due to all authors for their valuable contributions. I would like also to thank the SIAM staff for their constant support and efforts to bring this issue to life. Finally, let me acknowledge the traditional support for the conference from the US Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, IBM, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratory.

Inhaled insulin in diabetes mellitus.

Insulin therapy often relies on multiple daily injections of insulin. However this is a considerable burden to many people with diabetes and adherence to such an insulin regimen can be difficult to maintain, hence compromising optimal glycaemic control. Also, short acting injected insulin is absorbed more slowly than insulin released by the normal pancreas in response to a meal. Inhaled insulin has the potential to reduce the number of injections to perhaps one long-acting insulin per day, and provide a closer match to the natural state, by more rapid absorption from the lung. To compare the efficacy, adverse effects and patient acceptability of inhaled versus injected insulin. A sensitive search strategy for randomised controlled or cross-over trials was combined with key terms for inhaled insulins. Databases searched were: The Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, PubMed, EMBASE, Science Citation Index, BIOSIS, Web of Science Proceedings, National Research Register UK, Current Controlled Trials, ClinicalTrials.gov, Conference Papers Index, LexisNexis, and web sites of the ADA and EASD were searched for recent meeting abstracts. Reference lists and journals were handsearched. There were no language restrictions on searching. Manufacturers of inhaled insulin were also contacted. Date of last search October 2002. Only randomised controlled trials with parallel groups or controlled cross-over trials, including type 1 or type 2 diabetic patients of any age treated with insulin, were considered eligible. The minimum trial duration considered was 10 weeks, as this is the time taken for glycated haemoglobin to reliably reflect changes in glycaemic control. Trial selection and evaluation of study quality was performed independently by two reviewers. The quality of reporting of each trial was assessed according to a modification of the criteria outlined in Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD) Report 4, Spitzer; and Jadad. Six randomised controlled trials were found and the overall number of participants was 1191. Three trials included patients with type 1 diabetes and three with type 2 diabetes. Three trials had a duration of 24 weeks, and three of 12 weeks. All were open label. There was insufficient information to determine the study quality. Results for HbA1c were similar for all trials, in that all showed comparable glycaemic control for inhaled insulin compared to an entirely subcutaneous regimen. All trials that reported patient satisfaction and quality of life showed that these were significantly greater in the inhaled insulin group. Overall there was no difference in total hypoglycaemic episodes between the groups, but one trial showed a statistically significant increase in severe hypoglycaemic episodes for the inhaled insulin group. No adverse pulmonary effects were observed in any of the studies, but longer follow-up will be required to be sure that there are no adverse side-effects. Cavets include: few studies published in full (so quality could not be assessed), and only two studies used the same basal regimen in both the inhaled and injected groups. Inhaled insulin taken before meals, in conjunction with an injected basal insulin, has been shown to maintain glycaemic control comparable to that of patients taking multiple daily injections. The key benefit appears to be that patient satisfaction and quality of life are significantly improved, presumably due to the reduced number of daily injections required. However, the patient satisfaction data is based on five trials, of which only two have been published in full; also the three trials containing quality of life data are all only published in abstract form at present. In addition, longer term pulmonary safety data are still needed. Also, the lower bioavailability, and hence higher doses of inhaled insulin required, may make it less cost-effective than injected insulin.

Physics Conference Proceedings and the Electronic Environment—An Investigation of New Dissemination Patterns

The electronic publication of articles from physics conference proceedings on the Los Alamos (arXive) preprint server and on dedicated conference web sites is investigated. Several sub-disciplines within physics were sampled. Except for high-energy theory conferences, and to a lesser extent astrophysics, there is almost no publication of proceedings articles on the preprint server. Only one conference out of all those sampled had a web site with conference presentations on it. That web site contained audio files of the presentations and images of the overheads used and thus had much different content than the published proceedings.

CHRIE Graduate Research Conference and Quality Assessment Websites

CHRIE Graduate Research Conference and Quality Assessment Websites

Discussion Lists and Newsgroups

‘Internet Review’ identifies relevant and useful Internet-based information sources and reviews Websites related to entrepreneurship and innovation. This issue's article focuses on Listservs and Usenet groups, identifying useful groups and sites. We also offer a selection of conference Websites for readers to visit.