7,556 research outputs found
Water Quality Trends of the Upper Ohio River from 1977 to 1987
Author Institution: School of Natural Resources and Ohio River Basin Consortium for Research and Education, The Ohio State UniversityWater quality trends from 1977 to 1987 at four stations in the upper Ohio River were explored statistically by use of the seasonal Kendall test for trends and informally described by comparison with flow data and water quality criteria. Monthly data for eight chemical parameters were evaluated: cyanide, phenolics, copper, iron, lead, zinc, dissolved oxygen, and total suspended solids. Results indicated general improvements in the water quality, most notably in decreasing concentrations of cyanide, phenolics, lead, and zinc. The strongest trends were noted for cyanide. Flow adjustment of the data did not affect conclusions about concentration trends, and flow-concentration regressions were weak
National trends in total hip arthroplasty for traumatic hip fractures: An analysis of a nationwide all-payer database.
BACKGROUND: Hemiarthroplasty (HA) has traditionally been the treatment of choice for elderly patients with displaced femoral neck fractures. Ideal treatment for younger, ambulatory patients is not as clear. Total hip arthroplasty (THA) has been increasingly utilized in this population however the factors associated with undergoing HA or THA have not been fully elucidated.
AIM: To examine what patient characteristics are associated with undergoing THA or HA. To determine if outcomes differ between the groups.
METHODS: We queried the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) for patients that underwent HA or THA for a femoral neck fracture between 2005 and 2014. The NIS comprises a large representative sample of inpatient hospitalizations in the United States. International Classifications of Disease, Ninth Edition (ICD-9) codes were used to identify patients in our sample. Demographic variables, hospital characteristics, payer status, medical comorbidities and mortality rates were compared between the two procedures. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was then performed to identify independent risk factors of treatment utilized.
RESULTS: Of the total 502060 patients who were treated for femoral neck fracture, 51568 (10.3%) underwent THA and the incidence of THA rose from 8.3% to 13.7%. Private insurance accounted for a higher percentage of THA than hemiarthroplasty. THA increased most in urban teaching hospitals relative to urban non-teaching hospitals. Mean length of stay (LOS) was longer for HA. The mean charges were less for HA, however charges decreased steadily for both groups. HA had a higher mortality rate, however, after adjusting for age and comorbidities HA was not an independent risk factor for mortality. Interestingly, private insurance was an independent predictor for treatment with THA.
CONLUSION: There has been an increase in the use of THA for the treatment of femoral neck fractures in the United States, most notably in urban hospitals. HA and THA are decreasing in total charges and LOS
Virtual Data in CMS Analysis
The use of virtual data for enhancing the collaboration between large groups
of scientists is explored in several ways:
- by defining ``virtual'' parameter spaces which can be searched and shared
in an organized way by a collaboration of scientists in the course of their
analysis;
- by providing a mechanism to log the provenance of results and the ability
to trace them back to the various stages in the analysis of real or simulated
data;
- by creating ``check points'' in the course of an analysis to permit
collaborators to explore their own analysis branches by refining selections,
improving the signal to background ratio, varying the estimation of parameters,
etc.;
- by facilitating the audit of an analysis and the reproduction of its
results by a different group, or in a peer review context.
We describe a prototype for the analysis of data from the CMS experiment
based on the virtual data system Chimera and the object-oriented data analysis
framework ROOT. The Chimera system is used to chain together several steps in
the analysis process including the Monte Carlo generation of data, the
simulation of detector response, the reconstruction of physics objects and
their subsequent analysis, histogramming and visualization using the ROOT
framework.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics
(CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 9 pages, LaTeX, 7 eps figures. PSN
TUAT010. V2 - references adde
Frequentist Analysis of the Parameter Space of Minimal Supergravity
We make a frequentist analysis of the parameter space of minimal supergravity
(mSUGRA), in which, as well as the gaugino and scalar soft
supersymmetry-breaking parameters being universal, there is a specific relation
between the trilinear, bilinear and scalar supersymmetry-breaking parameters,
A_0 = B_0 + m_0, and the gravitino mass is fixed by m_{3/2} = m_0. We also
consider a more general model, in which the gravitino mass constraint is
relaxed (the VCMSSM). We combine in the global likelihood function the
experimental constraints from low-energy electroweak precision data, the
anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, the lightest Higgs boson mass M_h, B
physics and the astrophysical cold dark matter density, assuming that the
lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) is a neutralino. In the VCMSSM, we find
a preference for values of m_{1/2} and m_0 similar to those found previously in
frequentist analyses of the constrained MSSM (CMSSM) and a model with common
non-universal Higgs masses (NUHM1). On the other hand, in mSUGRA we find two
preferred regions: one with larger values of both m_{1/2} and m_0 than in the
VCMSSM, and one with large m_0 but small m_{1/2}. We compare the probabilities
of the frequentist fits in mSUGRA, the VCMSSM, the CMSSM and the NUHM1: the
probability that mSUGRA is consistent with the present data is significantly
less than in the other models. We also discuss the mSUGRA and VCMSSM
predictions for sparticle masses and other observables, identifying potential
signatures at the LHC and elsewhere.Comment: 18 pages 27 figure
The NUHM2 after LHC Run 1
We make a frequentist analysis of the parameter space of the NUHM2, in which
the soft supersymmetry (SUSY)-breaking contributions to the masses of the two
Higgs multiplets, , vary independently from the universal soft
SUSY-breaking contributions to the masses of squarks and sleptons. Our
analysis uses the MultiNest sampling algorithm with over points
to sample the NUHM2 parameter space. It includes the ATLAS and CMS Higgs mass
measurements as well as their searches for supersymmetric jets + MET signals
using the full LHC Run~1 data, the measurements of by
LHCb and CMS together with other B-physics observables, electroweak precision
observables and the XENON100 and LUX searches for spin-independent dark matter
scattering. We find that the preferred regions of the NUHM2 parameter space
have negative SUSY-breaking scalar masses squared for squarks and sleptons,
, as well as . The tension present in the
CMSSM and NUHM1 between the supersymmetric interpretation of and
the absence to date of SUSY at the LHC is not significantly alleviated in the
NUHM2. We find that the minimum with 21 degrees of freedom
(dof) in the NUHM2, to be compared with in the
CMSSM, and in the NUHM1. We find that the
one-dimensional likelihood functions for sparticle masses and other observables
are similar to those found previously in the CMSSM and NUHM1.Comment: 20 pages latex, 13 figure
Metatranscriptomic Analysis of Sulfur Oxidation Genes in the Endosymbiont of Solemya Velum
Thioautotrophic endosymbionts in the Domain Bacteria mediate key sulfur transformations in marine reducing environments. However, the molecular pathways underlying symbiont metabolism and the extent to which these pathways are expressed in situ are poorly characterized for almost all symbioses. This is largely due to the difficulty of culturing symbionts apart from their hosts. Here, we use pyrosequencing of community RNA transcripts (i.e., the metatranscriptome) to characterize enzymes of dissimilatory sulfur metabolism in the model symbiosis between the coastal bivalve Solemya velum and its intracellular thioautotrophic symbionts. High-throughput sequencing of total RNA from the symbiont-containing gill of a single host individual generated 1.6 million sequence reads (500 Mbp). Of these, 43,735 matched Bacteria protein-coding genes in BLASTX searches of the NCBI database. The taxonomic identities of the matched genes indicated relatedness to diverse species of sulfur-oxidizing Gammaproteobacteria, including other thioautotrophic symbionts and the purple sulfur bacterium Allochromatium vinosum. Manual querying of these data identified 28 genes from diverse pathways of sulfur energy metabolism, including the dissimilatory sulfite reductase (Dsr) pathway for sulfur oxidation to sulfite, the APS pathway for sulfite oxidation, and the Sox pathway for thiosulfate oxidation. In total, reads matching sulfur energy metabolism genes represented 7% of the Bacteria mRNA pool. Together, these data highlight the dominance of thioautotrophy in the context of symbiont community metabolism, identify the likely pathways mediating sulfur oxidation, and illustrate the utility of metatranscriptome sequencing for characterizing community gene transcription of uncultured symbionts
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