Use of Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone Analogs in Children: Update by an International Consortium

This update, written by authors designated by multiple pediatric endocrinology societies (see List of Participating Societies) from around the globe, concisely addresses topics related to changes in GnRHa usage in children and adolescents over the last decade. Topics related to the use of GnRHa in precocious puberty include diagnostic criteria, globally available formulations, considerations of benefit of treatment, monitoring of therapy, adverse events, and long-term outcome data. Additional sections review use in transgender individuals and other pediatric endocrine related conditions. Although there have been many significant changes in GnRHa usage, there is a definite paucity of evidence-based publications to support them. Therefore, this paper is explicitly not intended to evaluate what is recommended in terms of the best use of GnRHa, based on evidence and expert opinion, but rather to describe how these drugs are used, irrespective of any qualitative evaluation. Thus, this paper should be considered a narrative review on GnRHa utilization in precocious puberty and other clinical situations. These changes are reviewed not only to point out deficiencies in the literature but also to stimulate future studies and publications in this area. © 2019 S. Karger AG, Basel

On the Role of Dopamine in Cognitive Vision

Abstract. Although dopamine is one of the most studied neurotransmitter in the brain, its exact function is still unclear. This short review focuses on its role in different levels of cognitive vision: visual processing, visual attention and working memory. Dopamine can influence cognitive vision either through direct modulation of visual cells or through gating of basal ganglia functioning. Even if its classically assigned role is to signal reward prediction error, we review evidence that dopamine is also involved in novelty detection and attention shifting and discuss the possible implications for computational modeling.

Kinematic Evidence For Top-quark Pair Production In W Plus Multijet Events In P(p)over-bar Collisions At Root-s=1.8 Tev

We present a study of W+multijet events that compares the kinematics of the observed events with expectations from direct QCD W+jet production and from production and decay of top quark pairs. The data were collected in the 1992-93 run with the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) from 19.3 pb-1 of proton-antiproton collisions at s =1.8 TeV. A W+2 jet sample and a W+3 jet sample are selected with the requirement that at least the two or three jets have energy transverse with respect to the beam axis in excess of 20 GeV. The jet energy distributions for the W+2 jet sample agree well with the predictions of direct QCD W production. From the W+3 jet events, a "signal sample" with an improved ratio of tt̄ to QCD produced W events is selected by requiring each jet to be emitted centrally in the event center of mass frame. This sample contains 14 events with unusually hard jet ET distributions not well described by expectations for jets from direct QCD W production and other background processes. Using expected jet ET distributions, a relative likelihood is defined and used to determine if an event is more consistent with the decay of tt̄ pairs, with Mtop=170 GeV/c2, than with direct QCD W production. Eight of the 14 signal sample events are found to be more consistent with top-quark than direct QCD W production, while only 1.7 such top-quark-like events are expected in the absence of tt̄. The probability that the observation is due to an upward fluctuation of the number of background events is found to be 0.8%. The robustness of the result was tested by varying the cuts defining the signal sample, and the largest probability for such a fluctuation found was 1.9%. Good agreement in the jet spectra is obtained if jet production from tt̄ pair decays is included. For those events kinematically more consistent with tt̄ we find evidence for a b-quark content in their jets to the extent expected from top quark decay, and larger than expected for background processes. For events with four or more jets, the discrepancy with the predicted jet distributions from direct QCD W production, and the associated excess of b-quark content, is more pronounced. © 1995 The American Physical Societ