Assessing and presenting summaries of evidence in Cochrane Reviews

Cochrane Reviews are intended to help providers, practitioners and patients make informed decisions about health care. The goal of the Cochrane Applicability and Recommendation Methods Group (ARMG) is to develop approaches, strategies and guidance that facilitate the uptake of information from Cochrane Reviews and their use by a wide audience with specific focus on developers of recommendations and on healthcare decision makers. This paper is part of a series highlighting developments in systematic review methodology in the 20 years since the establishment of The Cochrane Collaboration, and its aim is to present current work and highlight future developments in assessing and presenting summaries of evidence, with special focus on Summary of Findings (SoF) tables and Plain Language Summaries. A SoF table provides a concise and transparent summary of the key findings of a review in a tabular format. Several studies have shown that SoF tables improve accessibility and understanding of Cochrane Reviews. The ARMG and GRADE Working Group are working on further development of the SoF tables, for example by evaluating the degree of acceptable flexibility beyond standard presentation of SoF tables, developing SoF tables for diagnostic test accuracy reviews and interactive SoF tables (iSoF). The plain language summary (PLS) is the other main building block for dissemination of review results to end-users. The PLS aims to summarize the results of a review in such a way that health care consumers can readily understand them. Current efforts include the development of a standardized language to describe statistical results, based on effect size and quality of supporting evidence. Producing high quality PLS and SoF tables and making them compatible and linked would make it easier to produce dissemination products targeting different audiences (for example, providers, health policy makers, guideline developers). Current issues of debate include optimal presentation formats of SoF tables, the training required to produce SoF tables, and the extent to which the authors of Cochrane Reviews should provide explicit guidance to target audiences of patients, clinicians and policy-makers

Genetic and epigenetic landscape of nasopharyngeal carcinoma

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Survey instruments used in clinical and epidemiological research on waterpipe tobacco smoking: a systematic review

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The primary objective was to systematically review the medical literature for instruments validated for use in epidemiological and clinical research on waterpipe smoking.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We searched the following databases: MEDLINE, EMBASE, and ISI the Web of Science. We selected studies using a two-stage duplicate and independent screening process. We included papers reporting on the development and/or validation of survey instruments to measure waterpipe tobacco consumption or related concepts. Two reviewers used a standardized and pilot tested data abstraction form to collect data from each eligible study using a duplicate and independent screening process. We also determined the percentage of observational studies assessing the health effects of waterpipe tobacco smoking and the percentage of studies of prevalence of waterpipe tobacco smoking that have used validated survey instruments.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We identified a total of five survey instruments. One instrument was designed to measure knowledge, attitudes, and waterpipe use among pregnant women and was shown to have internal consistency and content validity. Three instruments were designed to measure waterpipe tobacco consumption, two of which were reported to have face validity. The fifth instrument was designed to measure waterpipe dependence and was rigorously developed and validated. One of the studies of prevalence and none of the studies of health effects of waterpipe smoking used validated instruments.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>A number of instruments for measuring the use of and dependence on waterpipe smoking exist. Future research should study content validity and cross cultural adaptation of these instruments.</p

擋土墻填土邊坡水文響應過程分析:以賴屋山擋土墻填土邊坡為例

Several cracks were found to occur on the slope face of the Laiwushan retaining wall.In order to understand the mechanism of deformation and failure mechanism,automatic monitoring instruments,including piezometers,tensiometers,moisture probes and in-place inclinometers were installed at the top of fill slope.The following findings can be observed based on the monitoring data of piezometers,moisture probes and tensiometers:rainfall infiltration has little influence on the fluctuation of the groundwater table,possibly because the groundwater table was deep;the response of pore pressure and volumetric water content at various depths in the fill was delayed,depending on the soil depth.The rainwater can infiltrate into a depth of over 3m,and a perched water table can be observed at the depth of 3m,resulting in reduction in shear strength of soil and potential shallow failure. 深圳賴屋山的一擋墻表面出現數條裂縫,為了深入研究其變形破壞機制,在擋墻背后填土區布置自動監測儀器,主要包括滲壓計、張力計與水分計及固定式測斜儀。通過對滲壓計、張力計和水分計的監測數據分析表明:填土內地下水位埋深大,降雨對其影響小;土體中孔隙壓力和體積含水量對強降雨響應隨著埋深存在不同程度的滯后性,強降雨入滲深度大于3m,并且在3m處形成瞬態飽和地下水,抗剪強度降低,易于引起邊坡的淺層變形破壞

擋土墻填土邊坡水文響應過程分析:以賴屋山擋土墻填土邊坡為例

Several cracks were found to occur on the slope face of the Laiwushan retaining wall.In order to understand the mechanism of deformation and failure mechanism,automatic monitoring instruments,including piezometers,tensiometers,moisture probes and in-place inclinometers were installed at the top of fill slope.The following findings can be observed based on the monitoring data of piezometers,moisture probes and tensiometers:rainfall infiltration has little influence on the fluctuation of the groundwater table,possibly because the groundwater table was deep;the response of pore pressure and volumetric water content at various depths in the fill was delayed,depending on the soil depth.The rainwater can infiltrate into a depth of over 3m,and a perched water table can be observed at the depth of 3m,resulting in reduction in shear strength of soil and potential shallow failure. 深圳賴屋山的一擋墻表面出現數條裂縫,為了深入研究其變形破壞機制,在擋墻背后填土區布置自動監測儀器,主要包括滲壓計、張力計與水分計及固定式測斜儀。通過對滲壓計、張力計和水分計的監測數據分析表明:填土內地下水位埋深大,降雨對其影響小;土體中孔隙壓力和體積含水量對強降雨響應隨著埋深存在不同程度的滯后性,強降雨入滲深度大于3m,并且在3m處形成瞬態飽和地下水,抗剪強度降低,易于引起邊坡的淺層變形破壞

Adsorption of lead, zinc and cadmium ions on polyphosphate-modified kaolinite clay

The aim of this research work is to determine the potential of application of sodium polyphosphatemodified kaolinite clay as an adsorbent for the removal of lead (II), zinc (II) and cadmium (II) ions from aqueous solutions. The adsorbent dosage, pH, temperature and contact time were investigated. The adsorption isotherms of all three metal ions followed well Langmuir equation. ) calculated using the Langmuir constants for metal ions sorption on the sodium polyphosphate-kaolinite clay showed that the adsorption process is spontaneous and endothermic in nature. The results of this study showed that the sodium polyphosphate-kaolinite clay powder can be efficiently used as a low-cost adsorbent for the removal of divalent lead, zinc and cadmium from aqueous solution

Comparative methylome analysis in solid tumors reveals aberrant methylation at chromosome 6p in nasopharyngeal carcinoma

© 2015 The Authors. Cancer Medicine published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Altered patterns of DNA methylation are key features of cancer. Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) has the highest incidence in Southern China. Aberrant methylation at the promoter region of tumor suppressors is frequently reported in NPC; however, genome-wide methylation changes have not been comprehensively investigated. Therefore, we systematically analyzed methylome data in 25 primary NPC tumors and nontumor counterparts using a high-throughput approach with the Illumina HumanMethylation450 BeadChip. Comparatively, we examined the methylome data of 11 types of solid tumors collected by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). In NPC, the hypermethylation pattern was more dominant than hypomethylation and the majority of de novo methylated loci were within or close to CpG islands in tumors. The comparative methylome analysis reveals hypermethylation at chromosome 6p21.3 frequently occurred in NPC (false discovery rate; FDR=1.33 × 10 -9 ), but was less obvious in other types of solid tumors except for prostate and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-positive gastric cancer (FDR < 10 -3 ). Bisulfite pyrosequencing results further confirmed the aberrant methylation at 6p in an additional patient cohort. Evident enrichment of the repressive mark H3K27me3 and active mark H3K4me3 derived from human embryonic stem cells were found at these regions, indicating both DNA methylation and histone modification function together, leading to epigenetic deregulation in NPC. Our study highlights the importance of epigenetic deregulation in NPC. Polycomb Complex 2 (PRC2), responsible for H3K27 trimethylation, is a promising therapeutic target. A key genomic region on 6p with aberrant methylation was identified. This region contains several important genes having potential use as biomarkers for NPC detection.published_or_final_versio

A well-separated pairs decomposition algorithm for k-d trees implemented on multi-core architectures

Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.Variations of k-d trees represent a fundamental data structure used in Computational Geometry with numerous applications in science. For example particle track tting in the software of the LHC experiments, and in simulations of N-body systems in the study of dynamics of interacting galaxies, particle beam physics, and molecular dynamics in biochemistry. The many-body tree methods devised by Barnes and Hutt in the 1980s and the Fast Multipole Method introduced in 1987 by Greengard and Rokhlin use variants of k-d trees to reduce the computation time upper bounds to O(n log n) and even O(n) from O(n2). We present an algorithm that uses the principle of well-separated pairs decomposition to always produce compressed trees in O(n log n) work. We present and evaluate parallel implementations for the algorithm that can take advantage of multi-core architectures.The Science and Technology Facilities Council, UK

NF-κB p65 Subunit Is Modulated by Latent Transforming Growth Factor-β Binding Protein 2 (LTBP2) in Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma HONE1 and HK1 Cells

NF-kappa B is a well-characterized transcription factor, widely known as a key player in tumor-derived inflammation and cancer development. Herein, we present the functional and molecular relevance of the canonical NF-kappa B p65 subunit in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Loss-and gain-of-function approaches were utilized to reveal the functional characteristics of p65 in propagating tumor growth, tumor-associated angiogenesis, and epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition in NPC cells. Extracellular inflammatory stimuli are critical factors that trigger the NF-kappa B p65 signaling; hence, we investigated the components of the tumor microenvironment that might potentially influence the p65 signaling pathway. This led to the identification of an extracellular matrix (ECM) protein that was previously reported as a candidate tumor suppressor in NPC. Our studies on the Latent Transforming Growth Factor-beta Binding Protein 2 (LTBP2) protein provides substantial evidence that it can modulate the p65 transcriptional activity. Re-expression of LTBP2 elicits tumor suppressive effects that parallel the inactivation of p65 in NPC cells. LTBP2 was able to reduce phosphorylation of p65 at Serine 536, inhibit nuclear localization of active phosphorylated p65, and impair the p65 DNA-binding ability. This results in a consequential down-regulation of p65-related gene expression. Therefore, the data suggest that the overall up-regulation of p65 expression and the loss of this candidate ECM tumor suppressor are milestone events contributing to NPC development.published_or_final_versio

The asymptotic behaviour of a distributive sorting method

In the distributive sorting method of Dobosiewicz, both the interval between the minimum and the median of the numbers to be sorted and the interval between the median and the maximum are partitioned inton/2 subintervals of equal length; the procedure is then applied recursively on each subinterval containing more than three numbers. We refine and extend previous analyses of this method, e.g., by establishing its asymptotic linear behaviour under various probabilistic assumptions