Regional differences of testicular artery blood flow in post pubertal and pre-pubertal dogs

Background Measurement of testicular artery blood flow is used in several species to evaluate reproductive function and testicular and scrotal pathology. In dogs there are inconsistent reports about normal flow in post-pubertal dogs and no information concerning pre-pubertal dogs. The aim of this study was to describe regional differences in testicular artery blood flow in clinically normal post-pubertal and pre-pubertal dogs with no history of reproductive tract disease. Results The post-pubertal dogs produced normal ejaculates throughout the study. In all dogs the three different regions of the artery were imaged and monophasic flow with an obvious systolic peak and flow throughout diastole was observed on every occasion. The highest peak systolic velocity (PSV) and end diastolic velocity (EDV) were measured within the distal supra-testicular artery and marginal artery whilst the lowest PSV and EDV were measured within the intra-testicular arteries. Flow measurements were not different between left and right testes and were consistent between dogs on different examination days. Calculated resistance index (RI) and pulsatility index (PI) were lowest in the intra-testicular arteries. The pre-pubertal dogs had significantly smaller testes than the post-pubertal dogs (p < 0.05) and were unable to ejaculate during the study. The three different artery regions were imaged at every examination time point, and flow profiles had a similar appearance to those of the post-pubertal dogs. PSV, EDV, RI and PI showed a similar trend to the post-pubertal dogs in that values were lowest in the intra-testicular arteries. Notably, values of PSV, EDV, RI and PI were significantly lower (p < 0.05) in pre-pubertal dogs compared with post-pubertal dogs. Conclusions This study demonstrated important regional and pubertal differences in testicular artery blood flow of dogs, and form the basis for establishing baseline reference values that may be employed for the purposes of clinical diagnosis

An Integrated TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource to Drive High-Quality Survival Outcome Analytics

For a decade, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) program collected clinicopathologic annotation data along with multi-platform molecular profiles of more than 11,000 human tumors across 33 different cancer types. TCGA clinical data contain key features representing the democratized nature of the data collection process. To ensure proper use of this large clinical dataset associated with genomic features, we developed a standardized dataset named the TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource (TCGA-CDR), which includes four major clinical outcome endpoints. In addition to detailing major challenges and statistical limitations encountered during the effort of integrating the acquired clinical data, we present a summary that includes endpoint usage recommendations for each cancer type. These TCGA-CDR findings appear to be consistent with cancer genomics studies independent of the TCGA effort and provide opportunities for investigating cancer biology using clinical correlates at an unprecedented scale. Analysis of clinicopathologic annotations for over 11,000 cancer patients in the TCGA program leads to the generation of TCGA Clinical Data Resource, which provides recommendations of clinical outcome endpoint usage for 33 cancer types

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp. Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02