1,671 research outputs found
Effect of early everolimus-facilitated reduction of acrolimus on efficacy and renal function in de novo liver transplant recipients: 24-month results for the North American subpopulation
Food Intake of the Largemouth Bass
During 18 months of electrofishing a sample of 991 adult largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) was taken from Crab Orchard Lake. The stomach contents were removed in the field with a gastroscope. Gizzard shad (Dorosoma cepedianum) constituted the principal forage fish. Approximately 50% of the bass collected had empty stomachs. As the size of bass increased, the food intake as a percent of body weight decreased. Ninety percent of the bass stomachs contained one food item. When more than one food item was found, they were usually in the same stage of digestion. It is suggested that the high percent of empty stomachs was related to hunting success, or that the onset of the feeding stimulus in association with rate of digestion might result in a periodicity of feeding that involves a high percent of empty stomachs. A higher relative intake of food by small bass was postulated to be a result of the bass\u27s typically consuming only one fish. Inasmuch as the forage fish were relatively uniform in size, one fish constituted a large meal for a small bass but not for a large bass
Mitochondrial autophagy in ischemic aged livers
Mitochondrial autophagy (mitophagy) is a central catabolic event for mitochondrial quality control. Defective or insufficient mitophagy, thus, can result in mitochondrial dysfunction, and ultimately cell death. There is a strong causal relationship between ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury and mitochondrial dysfunction following liver resection and transplantation. Compared to young patients, elderly patients poorly tolerate I/R injury. Accumulation of abnormal mitochondria after I/R is more prominent in aged livers than in young counterparts. This review highlights how altered autophagy is mechanistically involved in age-dependent hypersensitivity to reperfusion injury
An evaluation of the staff functions of internal auditing
Internal auditing is a staff function common to all organizations. Institutional research is a staff function unique to institutions of higher education. Both functions are internal to the organization, conduct appraisals of the organization, and collect data about the activities of the organization as a service to management. The study found that 77.6 percent of the available professional staff time in the surveyed university internal audit departments was devoted to accomplishing the Scope of Work standards. In institutional research offices this percentage was 32.1 percent, and in the private corporation internal audit departments it was 79.7 percent.The purpose of this dissertation was to evaluate the independent appraisal function (internal auditing) in universities, and compare this function in universities with the same function in similar sized private business enterprises. A questionnaire survey procedure was used to: (1) evaluate the internal audit function in universities based on the Scope of Work standards as adopted in the Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing (SPPIA) in 1978, (2) consider all independent staff functions in universities that could be performing these Scope of Work standards, and (3) gather data for statistical comparisons of the proportion of total resources devoted to the Scope of Work standards in universities and in private business enterprises.Statistical tests of the proportion of total resources devoted to accomplishing the Scope of Work standards in the two test groups were conducted. Resources used in the tests were number of employees and operating expenditures devoted to the Scope of Work standards. The null hypothesis (proportion of resources devoted to the SPPIA Scope of Work standard are equal) was accepted at the three levels of significance tested.Other data were collected from the respondents in each test group. In almost all cases this supplemental data reinforced the results of the tests of the primary hypotheses. That is, the internal auditing function in the surveyed universities is very similar to the internal auditing function in the surveyed private corporations
The angular spectrum of the scattering coefficient map reveals subsurface colorectal cancer
Abstract Colorectal cancer diagnosis currently relies on histological detection of endoluminal neoplasia in biopsy specimens. However, clinical visual endoscopy provides no quantitative subsurface cancer information. In this ex vivo study of nine fresh human colon specimens, we report the first use of quantified subsurface scattering coefficient maps acquired by swept-source optical coherence tomography to reveal subsurface abnormities. We generate subsurface scattering coefficient maps with a novel wavelet-based-curve-fitting method that provides significantly improved accuracy. The angular spectra of scattering coefficient maps of normal tissues exhibit a spatial feature distinct from those of abnormal tissues. An angular spectrum index to quantify the differences between the normal and abnormal tissues is derived, and its strength in revealing subsurface cancer in ex vivo samples is statistically analyzed. The study demonstrates that the angular spectrum of the scattering coefficient map can effectively reveal subsurface colorectal cancer and potentially provide a fast and more accurate diagnosis
Prospecting Period Measurements with LSST - Low Mass X-ray Binaries as a Test Case
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will provide for unbiased sampling
of variability properties of objects with mag 24. This should allow for
those objects whose variations reveal their orbital periods (), such
as low mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) and related objects, to be examined in much
greater detail and with uniform systematic sampling. However, the baseline LSST
observing strategy has temporal sampling that is not optimised for such work in
the Galaxy. Here we assess four candidate observing strategies for measurement
of in the range 10 minutes to 50 days. We simulate multi-filter
quiescent LMXB lightcurves including ellipsoidal modulation and stochastic
flaring, and then sample these using LSST's operations simulator (OpSim) over
the (mag, ) parameter space, and over five sightlines sampling a range
of possible reddening values. The percentage of simulated parameter space with
correctly returned periods ranges from 23 %, for the current baseline
strategy, to 70 % for the two simulated specialist strategies. Convolving
these results with a distribution, a modelled Galactic spatial
distribution and reddening maps, we conservatively estimate that the most
recent version of the LSST baseline strategy will allow determination
for 18 % of the Milky Way's LMXB population, whereas strategies that do
not reduce observations of the Galactic Plane can improve this dramatically to
32 %. This increase would allow characterisation of the full binary
population by breaking degeneracies between suggested distributions
in the literature. Our results can be used in the ongoing assessment of the
effectiveness of various potential cadencing strategies.Comment: Replacement after addressing minor corrections from the referee -
mainly improvements in clarificatio
Epidemiology of bloodstream infections in a multicenter retrospective cohort of liver transplant recipients
Although some studies have examined the epidemiology of bloodstream infections after liver transplantation, they were based in single centers and did not identify bloodstream infections treated in other hospitals. METHODS: We retrospectively examined a cohort of 7912 adult liver transplant recipients from 24 transplant centers using 2004 to 2012 International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification billing data from 3 State Inpatient Databases, and identified bloodstream infections, inpatient death, and cumulative 1-year hospital costs. Multilevel Cox regression analyses were used to determine factors associated with bloodstream infections and death. RESULTS: Bloodstream infections were identified in 29% (n = 2326) of liver transplant recipients, with a range of 19% to 40% across transplant centers. Only 63% of bloodstream infections occurring more than 100 days posttransplant were identified at the original transplant center. Bloodstream infections were associated with posttransplant laparotomy (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 1.52), prior liver transplant (aHR, 1.42), increasing age (aHR, 1.07/decade), and some comorbidities. Death was associated with bloodstream infections with and without septic shock (aHR, 10.96 and 3.71, respectively), transplant failure or rejection (aHR, 1.41), posttransplant laparotomy (aHR, 1.40), prior solid-organ transplant (aHR, 1.48), increasing age (aHR, 1.15/decade), and hepatitis C cirrhosis (aHR, 1.20). The risk of bloodstream infections and death varied across transplant centers. Median 1-year cumulative hospital costs were higher for patients who developed bloodstream infections within 1 year of transplant compared with patients who were bloodstream infection-free (US 111 313; P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Bloodstream infections are common and costly complications after liver transplantation that are associated with a markedly increased risk of death. The incidence and risk of developing bloodstream infections may vary across transplant centers
Generalized Rosenfeld scalings for tracer diffusivities in not-so-simple fluids: Mixtures and soft particles
Rosenfeld [Phys. Rev. A 15, 2545 (1977)] noticed that casting transport
coefficients of simple monatomic, equilibrium fluids in specific dimensionless
forms makes them approximately single-valued functions of excess entropy. This
has predictive value because, while the transport coefficients of dense fluids
are difficult to estimate from first principles, excess entropy can often be
accurately predicted from liquid-state theory. Here, we use molecular
simulations to investigate whether Rosenfeld's observation is a special case of
a more general scaling law relating mobility of particles in mixtures to excess
entropy. Specifically, we study tracer diffusivities, static structure, and
thermodynamic properties of a variety of one- and two-component model fluid
systems with either additive or non-additive interactions of the hard-sphere or
Gaussian-core form. The results of the simulations demonstrate that the effects
of mixture concentration and composition, particle-size asymmetry and
additivity, and strength of the interparticle interactions in these fluids are
consistent with an empirical scaling law relating the excess entropy to a new
dimensionless (generalized Rosenfeld) form of tracer diffusivity, which we
introduce here. The dimensionless form of the tracer diffusivity follows from
knowledge of the intermolecular potential and the transport / thermodynamic
behavior of fluids in the dilute limit. The generalized Rosenfeld scaling
requires less information, and provides more accurate predictions, than either
Enskog theory or scalings based on the pair-correlation contribution to the
excess entropy. As we show, however, it also suffers from some limitations,
especially for systems that exhibit significant decoupling of individual
component tracer diffusivities.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figure
Reexamining the association of body mass index with overall survival outcomes after liver transplantation
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