Symptomatic spinal metastasis: A systematic literature review of the preoperative prognostic factors for survival, neurological, functional and quality of life in surgically treated patients and methodological recommendations for prognostic studies

PURPOSE: While several clinical prediction rules (CPRs) of survival exist for patients with symptomatic spinal metastasis (SSM), these have variable prognostic ability and there is no recognized CPR for health related quality of life (HRQoL). We undertook a critical appraisal of the literature to identify key preoperative prognostic factors of clinical outcomes in patients with SSM who were treated surgically. The results of this study could be used to modify existing or develop new CPRs. METHODS: Seven electronic databases were searched (1990-2015), without language restriction, to identify studies that performed multivariate analysis of preoperative predictors of survival, neurological, functional and HRQoL outcomes in surgical patients with SSM. Individual studies were assessed for class of evidence. The strength of the overall body of evidence was evaluated using GRADE for each predictor. RESULTS: Among 4,818 unique citations, 17 were included; all were in English, rated Class III and focused on survival, revealing a total of 46 predictors. The strength of the overall body of evidence was very low for 39 and low for 7 predictors. Due to considerable heterogeneity in patient samples and prognostic factors investigated as well as several methodological issues, our results had a moderately high risk of bias and were difficult to interpret. CONCLUSIONS: The quality of evidence for predictors of survival was, at best, low. We failed to identify studies that evaluated preoperative prognostic factors for neurological, functional, or HRQoL outcomes in surgical patients with SSM. We formulated methodological recommendations for prognostic studies to promote acquiring high-quality evidence to better estimate predictor effect sizes to improve patient education, surgical decision-making and development of CPRs

Sparticle Spectrum of Large Volume Compactification

We examine the large volume compactification of Type IIB string theory or its F theory limit and the associated supersymmetry breakdown and soft terms. It is crucial to incorporate the loop-induced moduli mixing, originating from radiative corrections to the Kahler potential. We show that in the presence of moduli mixing, soft scalar masses generically receive a D-term contribution of the order of the gravitino mass m_{3/2} when the visible sector cycle is stabilized by the D-term potential of an anomalous U(1) gauge symmetry, while the moduli-mediated gaugino masses and A-parameters tend to be of the order of m_{3/2}/8pi^2. It is noticed also that a too large moduli mixing can destabilize the large volume solution by making it a saddle point.Comment: 29 page

Determining Principal Component Cardinality through the Principle of Minimum Description Length

PCA (Principal Component Analysis) and its variants areubiquitous techniques for matrix dimension reduction and reduced-dimensionlatent-factor extraction. One significant challenge in using PCA, is thechoice of the number of principal components. The information-theoreticMDL (Minimum Description Length) principle gives objective compression-based criteria for model selection, but it is difficult to analytically applyits modern definition - NML (Normalized Maximum Likelihood) - to theproblem of PCA. This work shows a general reduction of NML prob-lems to lower-dimension problems. Applying this reduction, it boundsthe NML of PCA, by terms of the NML of linear regression, which areknown.Comment: LOD 201

Prostate-specific extracellular vesicles as a novel biomarker in human prostate cancer

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) may play an important role in cancer development and progression. We aimed to investigate the prognostic potential of prostate-specific EVs in prostate cancer (PCa) patients. Plasma and prostate tissue were collected from patients who underwent surgery for PCa (n = 82) or benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH, n = 28). To analyze the quantity of EVs in prostate, we performed transmission electron microscopy (TEM), immuno-TEM with CD63 and prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA), and immunofluorescence staining. After EV isolation from plasma, CD63 and PSMA concentration was measured using ELISA kits. PSMA-positive areas in prostate differed in patients with BPH, and low-, intermediate-, and high-risk PCa (2.4, 8.2, 17.5, 26.5%, p < 0.001). Plasma PSMA-positive EV concentration differed in patients with BPH, and low-, intermediate-, and high-risk PCa (21.9, 43.4, 49.2, 59.9 ng/mL, p < 0.001), and ROC curve analysis indicated that plasma PSMA-positive EV concentration differentiated PCa from BPH (AUC 0.943). Patients with lower plasma PSMA-positive EV concentration had greater prostate volume (50.2 vs. 33.4 cc, p < 0.001) and lower pathologic Gleason score (p = 0.025). During the median follow-up of 18 months, patients with lower plasma PSMA-positive EV concentration tended to have a lower risk of biochemical failure than those with higher levels of prostate-specific EVs (p = 0.085).11910Ysciescopu

Proteins identification of wheat-rye translocation lines by MALDI-TOF-TOF mass spectrometry and ESI-QTOF/MS

OBJECTIVE: To examine the relationship between Timed Up and Go (TUG) performance, verbal executive function (EF) performance, and quality-of-life (QOL) measures in Parkinson's disease (PD). DESIGN: Cross-sectional. SETTING: Sixteen movement disorder centers from across the United States. PARTICIPANTS: Patients with PD (N=1964). INTERVENTIONS: Not applicable. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: TUG test, immediate and delayed 5-word recall, verbal fluency, PD QOL Questionnaire. RESULTS: TUG performance and verbal EF performance were significantly associated with, and predictors of, QOL measures, having the greatest association and predictability with the mobility domain of the QOL measures. CONCLUSIONS: The TUG test and verbal EF tests have QOL correlates, making the combined evaluation of mobility, cognitive, and QOL decline a potential examination tool to evaluate the sequelae of PD

Characterizing Operations Preserving Separability Measures via Linear Preserver Problems

We use classical results from the theory of linear preserver problems to characterize operators that send the set of pure states with Schmidt rank no greater than k back into itself, extending known results characterizing operators that send separable pure states to separable pure states. We also provide a new proof of an analogous statement in the multipartite setting. We use these results to develop a bipartite version of a classical result about the structure of maps that preserve rank-1 operators and then characterize the isometries for two families of norms that have recently been studied in quantum information theory. We see in particular that for k at least 2 the operator norms induced by states with Schmidt rank k are invariant only under local unitaries, the swap operator and the transpose map. However, in the k = 1 case there is an additional isometry: the partial transpose map.Comment: 16 pages, typos corrected, references added, proof of Theorem 4.3 simplified and clarifie

Ballistic Josephson junctions in edge-contacted graphene

Hybrid graphene-superconductor devices have attracted much attention since the early days of graphene research. So far, these studies have been limited to the case of diffusive transport through graphene with poorly defined and modest quality graphene-superconductor interfaces, usually combined with small critical magnetic fields of the superconducting electrodes. Here we report graphene based Josephson junctions with one-dimensional edge contacts of Molybdenum Rhenium. The contacts exhibit a well defined, transparent interface to the graphene, have a critical magnetic field of 8 Tesla at 4 Kelvin and the graphene has a high quality due to its encapsulation in hexagonal boron nitride. This allows us to study and exploit graphene Josephson junctions in a new regime, characterized by ballistic transport. We find that the critical current oscillates with the carrier density due to phase coherent interference of the electrons and holes that carry the supercurrent caused by the formation of a Fabry-P\'{e}rot cavity. Furthermore, relatively large supercurrents are observed over unprecedented long distances of up to 1.5 $\mu$m. Finally, in the quantum Hall regime we observe broken symmetry states while the contacts remain superconducting. These achievements open up new avenues to exploit the Dirac nature of graphene in interaction with the superconducting state.Comment: Updated version after peer review. Includes supplementary material and ancillary file with source code for tight binding simulation

Are lay people good at recognising the symptoms of schizophrenia?

©2013 Erritty, Wydell. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Aim: The aim of this study was to explore the general public’s perception of schizophrenia symptoms and the need to seekhelp for symptoms. The recognition (or ‘labelling’) of schizophrenia symptoms, help-seeking behaviours and public awareness of schizophrenia have been suggested as potentially important factors relating to untreated psychosis. Method: Participants were asked to rate to what extent they believe vignettes describing classic symptoms (positive and negative) of schizophrenia indicate mental illness. They were also asked if the individuals depicted in the vignettes required help or treatment and asked to suggest what kind of help or treatment. Results: Only three positive symptoms (i.e., Hallucinatory behaviour, Unusual thought content and Suspiciousness) of schizophrenia were reasonably well perceived (above 70%) as indicating mental illness more than the other positive or negative symptoms. Even when the participants recognised that the symptoms indicated mental illness, not everyone recommended professional help. Conclusion: There may be a need to improve public awareness of schizophrenia and psychosis symptoms, particularly regarding an awareness of the importance of early intervention for psychosis