2,738 research outputs found
How Accurate Are Blood (or Breath) Tests for Identifying Self-Reported Heavy Drinking Among People with Alcohol Dependence?
AIMS: Managing patients with alcohol dependence includes assessment for heavy drinking, typically by asking patients. Some recommend biomarkers to detect heavy drinking but evidence of accuracy is limited.
METHODS: Among people with dependence, we assessed the performance of disialo-carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (%dCDT, ≥1.7%), gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT, ≥66 U/l), either %dCDT or GGT positive, and breath alcohol (> 0) for identifying 3 self-reported heavy drinking levels: any heavy drinking (≥4 drinks/day or >7 drinks/week for women, ≥5 drinks/day or >14 drinks/week for men), recurrent (≥5 drinks/day on ≥5 days) and persistent heavy drinking (≥5 drinks/day on ≥7 consecutive days). Subjects (n = 402) with dependence and current heavy drinking were referred to primary care and assessed 6 months later with biomarkers and validated self-reported calendar method assessment of past 30-day alcohol use.
RESULTS: The self-reported prevalence of any, recurrent and persistent heavy drinking was 54, 34 and 17%. Sensitivity of %dCDT for detecting any, recurrent and persistent self-reported heavy drinking was 41, 53 and 66%. Specificity was 96, 90 and 84%, respectively. %dCDT had higher sensitivity than GGT and breath test for each alcohol use level but was not adequately sensitive to detect heavy drinking (missing 34-59% of the cases). Either %dCDT or GGT positive improved sensitivity but not to satisfactory levels, and specificity decreased. Neither a breath test nor GGT was sufficiently sensitive (both tests missed 70-80% of cases).
CONCLUSIONS: Although biomarkers may provide some useful information, their sensitivity is low the incremental value over self-report in clinical settings is questionable
Ab initio molecular dynamics simulations of Aluminum solvation
The solvation of Al and its hydrolyzed species in water clusters has been
studied by means of ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. The hexa-hydrate
aluminum ion formed a stable complex in the finite temperature cluster
simulation of one aluminum ion and 16 waters. The average dipole moment of
strongly polarized hydrated water molecules in the first solvation shell of the
hexa-hydrate aluminum ion was found to be 5.02 Debye. The deprotonated
hexa-hydrate complex evolves into a tetra-coordinated aluminate ion with two
water molecules in the second solvation shell forming hydrogen bonds to the
hydroxyl groups in agreement with the observed coordination.Comment: 12 pages in Elsevier LaTeX, 5 figures in Postscript, 2 last figures
are in color, submitted to Chemical Physics Letter
Galerkin FEM for fractional order parabolic equations with initial data in
We investigate semi-discrete numerical schemes based on the standard Galerkin
and lumped mass Galerkin finite element methods for an initial-boundary value
problem for homogeneous fractional diffusion problems with non-smooth initial
data. We assume that , is a convex
polygonal (polyhedral) domain. We theoretically justify optimal order error
estimates in - and -norms for initial data in . We confirm our theoretical findings with a number of numerical tests
that include initial data being a Dirac -function supported on a
-dimensional manifold.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure
Hadronic Charmed Meson Decays Involving Tensor Mesons
Charmed meson decays into a pseudoscalar meson P and a tensor meson T are
studied. The charm to tensor meson transition form factors are evaluated in the
Isgur-Scora-Grinstein-Wise (ISGW) quark model. It is shown that the
Cabibbo-allowed decay is dominated by the
W-annihilation contribution and has the largest branching ratio in
decays. We argue that the Cabibbo-suppressed mode
should be suppressed by one order of magnitude relative to . When the finite width effect of the tensor resonances is taken
into account, the decay rate of is generally enhanced by a factor of
. Except for , the predicted branching ratios
of decays are in general too small by one to two orders of magnitude
compared to experiment. However, it is very unlikely that the
transition form factors can be enhanced by a factor of within the
ISGW quark model to account for the discrepancy between theory and experiment.
As many of the current data are still preliminary and lack sufficient statistic
significance, more accurate measurements are needed to pin down the issue.Comment: 11 page
Leaf Extracts of Calocedrus formosana (Florin) Induce G2/M Cell Cycle Arrest and Apoptosis in Human Bladder Cancer Cells
Calocedrus formosana (Florin) bark acetone/ethylacetate extracts are known to exert an antitumor effect on some human cancer cell lines, but the mechanism is yet to be defined. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of Florin leaf methanol extracts on the growth and apoptosis of human bladder cancer cell lines. MTT (3-(4,5-Dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide) assay showed that the growth of these bladder cancer cells was potently inhibited by the Florin leaf extracts. The cell cycle of these extract-treated cells (TCCSUP cells) was arrested at the G2/M phase as determined by flow cytometry. Western blot analysis revealed the increases of cyclin B1 and Cdc2 kinase levels, alone with the decrease of phosphorylated Cdc2 kinase, after treating these cells with the extracts. An immunofluorescence assessment of β-tubulin showed decreased levels of polymerized tubulin in treated cells. However, the proteolytic cleavage of poly ADP-ribose polymerase and the activation of caspase-3/-8/-9 were all increased upon treatments of extracts. The concurrent increase of Bax and decrease of Bcl-2 levels indicated that the extracts could induce apoptosis in these treated cells. Taken together, these results suggest that the Florin leaf extracts may be an effective antibladder cancer agent
Characterization of skeletal phenotypes of TRα1(PV) and TRβ(PV) mutant mice: implications for tissue thyroid status and T3 target gene expression
Bone development is extremely sensitive to alterations in thyroid status. Recently, we analyzed the skeletal phenotypes of mice with the dominant negative resistance to thyroid hormone (RTH) mutation PV targeted to either the thyroid hormone receptor (TR) α1 or β gene. This perspective summarizes our findings to date and explores the wider implications for thyroid status and T3 target gene expression in individual tissues
Black strings in AdS_5
We present non-extremal magnetic black string solutions in five-dimensional
gauged supergravity. The conformal infinity is the product of time and S^1xS_h,
where S_h denotes a compact Riemann surface of genus h. The construction is
based on both analytical and numerical techniques. We compute the holographic
stress tensor, the Euclidean action and the conserved charges of the solutions
and show that the latter satisfy a Smarr-type formula. The phase structure is
determined in the canonical ensemble, and it is shown that there is a first
order phase transition from small to large black strings, which disappears
above a certain critical magnetic charge that is obtained numerically. For
another particular value of the magnetic charge, that corresponds to a twisting
of the dual super Yang-Mills theory, the conformal anomalies coming from the
background curvature and those arising from the coupling to external gauge
fields exactly cancel. We also obtain supersymmetric solutions describing waves
propagating on extremal BPS magnetic black strings, and show that they possess
a Siklos-Virasoro reparametrization invariance.Comment: 40 pages, 7 figures, JHEP3. v2: minor corrections, 2 references
added. v3: typos in holographic stress tensor corrected, 3 references adde
The Power of Duples (in Self-Assembly): It's Not So Hip To Be Square
In this paper we define the Dupled abstract Tile Assembly Model (DaTAM),
which is a slight extension to the abstract Tile Assembly Model (aTAM) that
allows for not only the standard square tiles, but also "duple" tiles which are
rectangles pre-formed by the joining of two square tiles. We show that the
addition of duples allows for powerful behaviors of self-assembling systems at
temperature 1, meaning systems which exclude the requirement of cooperative
binding by tiles (i.e., the requirement that a tile must be able to bind to at
least 2 tiles in an existing assembly if it is to attach). Cooperative binding
is conjectured to be required in the standard aTAM for Turing universal
computation and the efficient self-assembly of shapes, but we show that in the
DaTAM these behaviors can in fact be exhibited at temperature 1. We then show
that the DaTAM doesn't provide asymptotic improvements over the aTAM in its
ability to efficiently build thin rectangles. Finally, we present a series of
results which prove that the temperature-2 aTAM and temperature-1 DaTAM have
mutually exclusive powers. That is, each is able to self-assemble shapes that
the other can't, and each has systems which cannot be simulated by the other.
Beyond being of purely theoretical interest, these results have practical
motivation as duples have already proven to be useful in laboratory
implementations of DNA-based tiles
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