Ultrasound-guided aspiration of cystic ovarian lesions

Introduction and Objective: In the last two decades the increased accuracy of ultrasonography has allowed simple ovarian cysts to be reliably identified. As clinical data suggest that simple cystic lesions rarely become malignant, surgical treatment of these cysts may therefore represent overtreatment. Our study aimed to evaluate the results of ultrasound (US) guided aspiration of cystic ovarian lesions performed in our institution in the last ten years

Fractional variational calculus of variable order

We study the fundamental problem of the calculus of variations with variable order fractional operators. Fractional integrals are considered in the sense of Riemann-Liouville while derivatives are of Caputo type.Comment: Submitted 26-Sept-2011; accepted 18-Oct-2011; withdrawn by the authors 21-Dec-2011; resubmitted 27-Dec-2011; revised 20-March-2012; accepted 13-April-2012; to 'Advances in Harmonic Analysis and Operator Theory', The Stefan Samko Anniversary Volume (Eds: A. Almeida, L. Castro, F.-O. Speck), Operator Theory: Advances and Applications, Birkh\"auser Verlag (http://www.springer.com/series/4850

Transvaginal ultrasonography and hysteroscopy in postmenopausal bleeding: a prospective study

OBJECTIVE: To determine the diagnostic value of transvaginal ultrasonography and hysteroscopy in patients with postmenopausal bleeding. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Between January 1, 1998 and June 30, 1999, 88 outpatient women with postmenopausal bleeding were enrolled in a prospective study. They underwent transvaginal ultrasonography and hysteroscopy, and were submitted to directed biopsy during hysteroscopy. Findings were classified as normal endometrium, suggestive of atrophy, focal abnormality (benign or suspicious), and diffuse thickness (benign or suspicious). Data was compared with the final diagnosis, established by histological examination, as atrophy, benign pathology, atypical hyperplasia and endometrial carcinoma. RESULTS: Among 88 women enrolled, 15 were excluded because hysteroscopy was impossible, and four had abandoned the study. The histological findings were scanty material in 12 (17.4%), atrophy in 24 (34.8%), cystic atrophy in one (1.4%), normal endometrium in five (7.2%), tuberculous endometritis in one (1.4%), polyps in 12 (17.4%), leiomyoma in one (1.4%), non-atypical hyperplasia in three (4.3%), atypical hyperplasia in one (1.4%) and endometrial carcinoma in nine cases (13.0%). For the assessment of endometrial carcinoma, ultrasonography revealed sensitivity 77.8%, specificity 93.3%, positive predictive value 63.6%, negative predictive value 96.6%; and hysteroscopy revealed sensitivity of 88.9%, specificity 98.3%, positive predictive value 88.9%, negative predictive value 98.3%. The combined use of both methods revealed sensitivity 100%, specificity 91.7%, positive predictive value 64.3%, negative predictive value 100%. CONCLUSIONS: Both imagiological methods were found to be useful screening tests for endometrial carcinoma. Hysteroscopy was a superior diagnostic procedure

In silico single strand melting curve: a new approach to identify nucleic acid polymorphisms in Totiviridae

CpG-island promoters of developmental genes are unmethylated. DNA methylation state of CpG islands overlapping and surrounding the promoter region of Pax3 (a) and Pax7 (b) genes in myogenic (MB, MT, MF) and non-myogenic samples (ESC). CpG islands are indicated in green and regions analysed by sodium bisulphite sequencing are shown in red. Each circle represents a CpG dinucleotide and its distance to the gene TSS is indicated below. The colour gradient represents the percentage of methylation indicated in the legend. Abbreviations: ESC, embryonic stem cell; MB, myoblast; MT, myotube; MF, myofiber; TSS, transcription start site. c. DNA methylation state of -5 kb distal regulatory region for MyoD was analysed by sodium bisulphite sequencing in ESC and myoblast samples, and represented as above. (PDF 171 kb

Evolutionary plasticity determination by orthologous groups distribution

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Genetic plasticity may be understood as the ability of a functional gene network to tolerate alterations in its components or structure. Usually, the studies involving gene modifications in the course of the evolution are concerned to nucleotide sequence alterations in closely related species. However, the analysis of large scale data about the distribution of gene families in non-exclusively closely related species can provide insights on how plastic or how conserved a given gene family is. Here, we analyze the abundance and diversity of all Eukaryotic Clusters of Orthologous Groups (KOG) present in STRING database, resulting in a total of 4,850 KOGs. This dataset comprises 481,421 proteins distributed among 55 eukaryotes.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We propose an index to evaluate the evolutionary plasticity and conservation of an orthologous group based on its abundance and diversity across eukaryotes. To further KOG plasticity analysis, we estimate the evolutionary distance average among all proteins which take part in the same orthologous group. As a result, we found a strong correlation between the evolutionary distance average and the proposed evolutionary plasticity index. Additionally, we found low evolutionary plasticity in <it>Saccharomyces cerevisiae </it>genes associated with inviability and <it>Mus musculus </it>genes associated with early lethality. At last, we plot the evolutionary plasticity value in different gene networks from yeast and humans. As a result, it was possible to discriminate among higher and lower plastic areas of the gene networks analyzed.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The distribution of gene families brings valuable information on evolutionary plasticity which might be related with genetic plasticity. Accordingly, it is possible to discriminate among conserved and plastic orthologous groups by evaluating their abundance and diversity across eukaryotes.</p> <p>Reviewers</p> <p>This article was reviewed by Prof Manyuan Long, Hiroyuki Toh, and Sebastien Halary.</p

Non-global logarithms and jet algorithms in high-pT jet shapes

We consider jet-shape observables of the type proposed recently, where the shapes of one or more high-pT jets, produced in a multi-jet event with definite jet multiplicity, may be measured leaving other jets in the event unmeasured. We point out the structure of the full next-to-leading logarithmic resummation specifically including resummation of non-global logarithms in the leading-Nc limit and emphasising their properties. We also point out differences between jet algorithms in the context of soft gluon resummation for such observables.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures. Title and a few words changed. Several typos corrected. Version accepted by JHE

Identifying Boosted Objects with N-subjettiness

We introduce a new jet shape -- N-subjettiness -- designed to identify boosted hadronically-decaying objects like electroweak bosons and top quarks. Combined with a jet invariant mass cut, N-subjettiness is an effective discriminating variable for tagging boosted objects and rejecting the background of QCD jets with large invariant mass. In efficiency studies of boosted W bosons and top quarks, we find tagging efficiencies of 30% are achievable with fake rates of 1%. We also consider the discovery potential for new heavy resonances that decay to pairs of boosted objects, and find significant improvements are possible using N-subjettiness. In this way, N-subjettiness combines the advantages of jet shapes with the discriminating power seen in previous jet substructure algorithms.Comment: 26 pages, 26 figures, 2 tables; v2: references added; v3: discussion of results extende

Multivariate discrimination and the Higgs + W/Z search

A systematic method for optimizing multivariate discriminants is developed and applied to the important example of a light Higgs boson search at the Tevatron and the LHC. The Significance Improvement Characteristic (SIC), defined as the signal efficiency of a cut or multivariate discriminant divided by the square root of the background efficiency, is shown to be an extremely powerful visualization tool. SIC curves demonstrate numerical instabilities in the multivariate discriminants, show convergence as the number of variables is increased, and display the sensitivity to the optimal cut values. For our application, we concentrate on Higgs boson production in association with a W or Z boson with H -> bb and compare to the irreducible standard model background, Z/W + bb. We explore thousands of experimentally motivated, physically motivated, and unmotivated single variable discriminants. Along with the standard kinematic variables, a number of new ones, such as twist, are described which should have applicability to many processes. We find that some single variables, such as the pull angle, are weak discriminants, but when combined with others they provide important marginal improvement. We also find that multiple Higgs boson-candidate mass measures, such as from mild and aggressively trimmed jets, when combined may provide additional discriminating power. Comparing the significance improvement from our variables to those used in recent CDF and DZero searches, we find that a 10-20% improvement in significance against Z/W + bb is possible. Our analysis also suggests that the H + W/Z channel with H -> bb is also viable at the LHC, without requiring a hard cut on the W/Z transverse momentum.Comment: 41 pages, 5 tables, 29 figure

A Factorization Law for Entanglement Decay

We present a simple and general factorization law for quantum systems shared by two parties, which describes the time evolution of entanglement upon passage of either component through an arbitrary noisy channel. The robustness of entanglement-based quantum information processing protocols is thus easily and fully characterized by a single quantity.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure