Investigation of correlations between clinical signs and pathological findings in cats and dogs with inflammatory bowel disease

This paper compares the correlation between the clinical signs and the histopathological observations of the entire intestine in cats and dogs with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). To perform this study, hospital records of 53 dogs and 20 cats of different sex, ages, and breed diagnosed with IBD following the histopathological criteria of the World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA) were evaluated. The results obtained in this study did show correlations between some clinical signs and the histopathological assessment of dogs and cats with IBD. Therefore, a slight association between diarrhea and lacteal dilation in the small bowel, and diarrhea and desquamation in the large bowel of dogs with IBD was seen, but no other associations were found between the rest of the lesions and symptoms. In contrast, cats only showed a correlation between anorexia with villous stunting and villous epithelial injury, without correspondence among other clinical signs and lesions. The results of this study propose that the evaluation of IBD can be complicated, especially with the use of retrospective records of archived intestinal biopsies and subjective clinical and histopathologic decisions

Randomised phase 3 study of adjuvant chemotherapy with or without nadroparin in patients with completely resected non-small-cell lung cancer: the NVALT-8 study

Contains fulltext : 207334.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access

Developing a western Siberia reference site for tropospheric water vapour isotopologue observations obtained by different techniques (in situ and remote sensing)

Water stable isotopologues provide integrated tracers of the atmospheric water cycle, affected by changes in air mass origin, non-convective and convective processes and continental recycling. Novel remote sensing and in situ measuring techniques have recently offered opportunities for monitoring atmospheric water vapour isotopic composition. Recently developed infrared laser spectrometers allow for continuous in situ measurements of surface water vapour δD_v and δ¹⁸O_v. So far, very few intercomparisons of measurements conducted using different techniques have been achieved at a given location, due to difficulties intrinsic to the comparison of integrated with local measurements. Nudged simulations conducted with high-resolution isotopically enabled general circulation models (GCMs) provide a consistent framework for comparison with the different types of observations. Here, we compare simulations conducted with the ECHAM5-wiso model with two types of water vapour isotopic data obtained during summer 2012 at the forest site of Kourovka, western Siberia: hourly ground-based FTIR total atmospheric columnar δD_v amounts, and in situ hourly Picarro δD_v measurements. There is an excellent correlation between observed and predicted δD_v at surface while the comparison between water column values derived from the model compares well with FTIR estimates

Multifaceted contributions : health workers and smallpox eradication in India

Smallpox eradication in South Asia was a result of the efforts of many grades of health-workers. Working from within the confines of international organisations and government structures, the role of the field officials, who were of various nationalities and also drawn from the cities and rural enclaves of the countries in these regions, was crucial to the development and deployment of policies. However, the role of these personnel is often downplayed in official histories and academic histories, which highlight instead the roles played by a handful of senior officials within the World Health Organization and the federal governments in the sub-continent. This article attempts to provide a more rounded assessment of the complex situation in the field. In this regard, an effort is made to underline the great usefulness of the operational flexibility displayed by field officers, wherein lessons learnt in the field were made an integral part of deploying local campaigns; careful engagement with the communities being targeted, as well as the employment of short term workers from amongst them, was an important feature of this work

Mathematical Properties of a New Levin-Type Sequence Transformation Introduced by \v{C}\'{\i}\v{z}ek, Zamastil, and Sk\'{a}la. I. Algebraic Theory

\v{C}\'{\i}\v{z}ek, Zamastil, and Sk\'{a}la [J. Math. Phys. \textbf{44}, 962 - 968 (2003)] introduced in connection with the summation of the divergent perturbation expansion of the hydrogen atom in an external magnetic field a new sequence transformation which uses as input data not only the elements of a sequence $\{s_n \}_{n=0}^{\infty}$ of partial sums, but also explicit estimates $\{\omega_n \}_{n=0}^{\infty}$ for the truncation errors. The explicit incorporation of the information contained in the truncation error estimates makes this and related transformations potentially much more powerful than for instance Pad\'{e} approximants. Special cases of the new transformation are sequence transformations introduced by Levin [Int. J. Comput. Math. B \textbf{3}, 371 - 388 (1973)] and Weniger [Comput. Phys. Rep. \textbf{10}, 189 - 371 (1989), Sections 7 -9; Numer. Algor. \textbf{3}, 477 - 486 (1992)] and also a variant of Richardson extrapolation [Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. London A \textbf{226}, 299 - 349 (1927)]. The algebraic theory of these transformations - explicit expressions, recurrence formulas, explicit expressions in the case of special remainder estimates, and asymptotic order estimates satisfied by rational approximants to power series - is formulated in terms of hitherto unknown mathematical properties of the new transformation introduced by \v{C}\'{\i}\v{z}ek, Zamastil, and Sk\'{a}la. This leads to a considerable formal simplification and unification.Comment: 41 + ii pages, LaTeX2e, 0 figures. Submitted to Journal of Mathematical Physic

Quantitative constraints on the atmospheric chemistry of nitrogen oxides: An analysis along chemical coordinates

In situ observations Of NO_2, NO, NO_y, ClONO_2, OH, O_3, aerosol surface area, spectrally resolved solar radiation, pressure and temperature obtained from the ER-2 aircraft during the Photochemistry of Ozone Loss in the Arctic Region in Summer (POLARIS) experiments are used to examine the factors controlling the fast photochemistry connecting NO and NO_2 and the slower chemistry connecting NO_x and HNO_3. Our analysis uses “chemical coordinates” to examine gradients of the difference between a model and precisely calibrated measurements to provide a quantitative assessment of the accuracy of current photochemical models. The NO/NO_2 analysis suggests that reducing the activation energy for the NO+O_3 reaction by 1.7 kJ/mol will improve model representation of the temperature dependence of the NO/NO_2 ratio in the range 215–235 K. The NO_x/HNO_3 analysis shows that systematic errors in the relative rate coefficients used to describe NO_x loss by the reaction OH + NO_2 → HNO_3 and by the reaction set NO_2 + O_3 → NO_3; NO_2 + NO_3 → N_(2)O_5; N_(2)O_5 + H_(2)O → 2HNO_3 are in error by +8.4% (+30/−45%) (OH+NO_2 too fast) in models using the Jet Propulsion Laboratory 1997 recommendations [DeMore et al., 1997]. Models that use recommendations for OH+NO2 and OH+HNO_3 based on reanalysis of recent and past laboratory measurements are in error by 1.2% (+30/−45%) (OH+NO_2 too slow). The +30%/−45% error limit reflects systematic uncertainties, while the statistical uncertainty is 0.65%. This analysis also shows that the POLARIS observations only modestly constrain the relative rates of the major NO_x production reactions HNO3 + OH → H_(2)O + NO_3 and HNO_3 + hν → OH + NO_2. Even under the assumption that all other aspects of the model are perfect, the POLARIS observations only constrain the rate coefficient for OH+HNO_3 to a range of 65% around the currently recommended value

Inorganic chlorine partitioning in the summer lower stratosphere: Modeled and measured [ClONO_2]/[HCl] during POLARIS

We examine inorganic chlorine (Cl_y,) partitioning in the summer lower stratosphere using in situ ER-2 aircraft observations made during the Photochemistry of Ozone Loss in the Arctic Region in Summer (POLARIS) campaign. New steady state and numerical models estimate [ClONO_2]/[HCl] using currently accepted photochemistry. These models are tightly constrained by observations with OH (parameterized as a function of solar zenith angle) substituting for modeled HO_2 chemistry. We find that inorganic chlorine photochemistry alone overestimates observed [ClONO_2]/[HCl] by approximately 55–60% at mid and high latitudes. On the basis of POLARIS studies of the inorganic chlorine budget, [ClO]/[ClONO_2], and an intercomparison with balloon observations, the most direct explanation for the model-measurement discrepancy in Cl_y, partitioning is an error in the reactions, rate constants, and measured species concentrations linking HCl and ClO (simulated [ClO]/[HCl] too high) in combination with a possible systematic error in the ER-2 ClONO_2 measurement (too low). The high precision of our simulation (±15% 1σ for [ClONO_2]/[HCl], which is compared with observations) increases confidence in the observations, photolysis calculations, and laboratory rate constants. These results, along with other findings, should lead to improvements in both the accuracy and precision of stratospheric photochemical models

Higgs After the Discovery: A Status Report

Recently, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations have announced the discovery of a 125 GeV particle, commensurable with the Higgs boson. We analyze the 2011 and 2012 LHC and Tevatron Higgs data in the context of simplified new physics models, paying close attention to models which can enhance the diphoton rate and allow for a natural weak-scale theory. Combining the available LHC and Tevatron data in the ZZ* 4-lepton, WW* 2-lepton, diphoton, and b-bbar channels, we derive constraints on the effective low-energy theory of the Higgs boson. We map several simplified scenarios to the effective theory, capturing numerous new physics models such as supersymmetry, composite Higgs, dilaton. We further study models with extended Higgs sectors which can naturally enhance the diphoton rate. We find that the current Higgs data are consistent with the Standard Model Higgs boson and, consequently, the parameter space in all models which go beyond the Standard Model is highly constrained.Comment: 37 pages; v2: ATLAS dijet-tag diphoton channel added, dilaton and doublet-singlet bugs corrected, references added; v3: ATLAS WW channel included, comments and references adde