EMSL Quarterly Highlights Report Second Quarter, Fiscal Year 2010 (January 1, 2010 through March 31, 2010)

The Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) is a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national scientific user facility located at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington. EMSL is operated by PNNL for the DOE-Office of Biological and Environmental Research. At one location, EMSL offers a comprehensive array of leading-edge resources and expertise. Access to the instrumentation and expertise is obtained on a peer-reviewed proposal basis. Staff members work with researchers to expedite access to these capabilities. The "EMSL Quarterly Highlights Report" documents current research and activities of EMSL staff and users

Agriculture in the Trans-Pacific Partnership

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a trade and investment agreement under negotiation by 12 countries in the Pacific Rim. This report assesses this partnership's potential impacts on the region's agriculture in 2025

BRCA2 polymorphic stop codon K3326X and the risk of breast, prostate, and ovarian cancers

Background: The K3326X variant in BRCA2 (BRCA2*c.9976A>T; p.Lys3326*; rs11571833) has been found to be associated with small increased risks of breast cancer. However, it is not clear to what extent linkage disequilibrium with fully pathogenic mutations might account for this association. There is scant information about the effect of K3326X in other hormone-related cancers. Methods: Using weighted logistic regression, we analyzed data from the large iCOGS study including 76 637 cancer case patients and 83 796 control patients to estimate odds ratios (ORw) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for K3326X variant carriers in relation to breast, ovarian, and prostate cancer risks, with weights defined as probability of not having a pathogenic BRCA2 variant. Using Cox proportional hazards modeling, we also examined the associations of K3326X with breast and ovarian cancer risks among 7183 BRCA1 variant carriers. All statistical tests were two-sided. Results: The K3326X variant was associated with breast (ORw = 1.28, 95% CI = 1.17 to 1.40, P = 5.9x10- 6) and invasive ovarian cancer (ORw = 1.26, 95% CI = 1.10 to 1.43, P = 3.8x10-3). These associations were stronger for serous ovarian cancer and for estrogen receptor–negative breast cancer (ORw = 1.46, 95% CI = 1.2 to 1.70, P = 3.4x10-5 and ORw = 1.50, 95% CI = 1.28 to 1.76, P = 4.1x10-5, respectively). For BRCA1 mutation carriers, there was a statistically significant inverse association of the K3326X variant with risk of ovarian cancer (HR = 0.43, 95% CI = 0.22 to 0.84, P = .013) but no association with breast cancer. No association with prostate cancer was observed. Conclusions: Our study provides evidence that the K3326X variant is associated with risk of developing breast and ovarian cancers independent of other pathogenic variants in BRCA2. Further studies are needed to determine the biological mechanism of action responsible for these associations

EMSL Quarterly Highlights Report Second Quarter, Fiscal Year 2010 (January 1, 2010 through March 31, 2010)

The Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) is a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national scientific user facility located at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington. EMSL is operated by PNNL for the DOE-Office of Biological and Environmental Research. At one location, EMSL offers a comprehensive array of leading-edge resources and expertise. Access to the instrumentation and expertise is obtained on a peer-reviewed proposal basis. Staff members work with researchers to expedite access to these capabilities. The "EMSL Quarterly Highlights Report" documents current research and activities of EMSL staff and users

Abstraction-based efficiency in the lexicon

Contains fulltext : 90732.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Listeners learn from their past experience of listening to spoken words, and use this learning to maximise the efficiency of future word recognition. This paper summarises evidence that the facilitatory effects of drawing on past experience are mediated by abstraction, enabling learning to be generalised across new words and new listening situations. Phoneme category retuning, which allows adaptation to speaker-specific articulatory characteristics, is generalised on the basis of relatively brief experience to words previously unheard from that speaker. Abstract knowledge of prosodic regularities is applied to recognition even of novel words for which these regularities were violated. Prosodic word-boundary regularities drive segmentation of speech into words independently of the membership of the lexical candidate set resulting from the segmentation operation. Each of these different cases illustrates how abstraction from past listening experience has contributed to the efficiency of lexical recognition.18 p

Is Physician Self-disclosure Related to Patient Evaluation of Office Visits?

CONTEXT: Physician self-disclosure has been viewed either positively or negatively, but little is known about how patients respond to physician self-disclosure. OBJECTIVE: To explore the possible relationship of physician self-disclosure to patient satisfaction. DESIGN: Routine office visits were audiotaped and coded for physician self-disclosure using the Roter Interaction Analysis System (RIAS). Physician self-disclosure was defined as a statement describing the physician's personal experience that has medical and/or emotional relevance for the patient. We stratified our analysis by physician specialty and compared patient satisfaction following visits in which physician self-disclosure did or did not occur. PARTICIPANTS: Patients (N = 1,265) who visited 59 primary care physicians and 65 surgeons. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Patient satisfaction following the visit. RESULTS: Physician self-disclosure occurred in 17% (102/589) of primary care visits and 14% (93/676) of surgical visits. Following visits in which a primary care physician self-disclosed, fewer patients reported feelings of warmth/friendliness (37% vs 52%; P = .008) and reassurance/comfort (42% vs 55%; P = .027), and fewer reported being very satisfied with the visit (74% vs 83%; P = .031). Following visits in which a surgeon self-disclosed, more patients reported feelings of warmth/friendliness (60% vs 45%; P = .009) and reassurance/comfort (59% vs 47%; P = .044), and more reported being very satisfied with the visit (88% vs 75%; P = .007). After adjustment for patient characteristics, length of the visit, and other physician communication behaviors, primary care patients remained less satisfied (adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 0.45; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.24 to 0.81) and surgical patients more satisfied (AOR, 2.22; 95% CI, 1.12 to 4.50) after visits in which the physician self-disclosed. CONCLUSIONS: Physician self-disclosure is significantly associated with higher patient satisfaction ratings for surgical visits and lower patient satisfaction ratings for primary care visits. Further study is needed to explore these intriguing findings and to define the circumstances under which physician self-disclosure is either well or poorly received