More insight into the fate of biomedical meeting abstracts: a systematic review

BACKGROUND: It has been estimated that about 45% of abstracts that are accepted for presentation at biomedical meetings will subsequently be published in full. The acceptance of abstracts at meetings and their fate after initial rejection are less well understood. We set out to estimate the proportion of abstracts submitted to meetings that are eventually published as full reports, and to explore factors that are associated with meeting acceptance and successful publication. METHODS: Studies analysing acceptance of abstracts at biomedical meetings or their subsequent full publication were searched in MEDLINE, OLDMEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, BIOSIS, Science Citation Index Expanded, and by hand searching of bibliographies and proceedings. We estimated rates of abstract acceptance and of subsequent full publication, and identified abstract and meeting characteristics associated with acceptance and publication, using logistic regression analysis, survival-type analysis, and meta-analysis. RESULTS: Analysed meetings were held between 1957 and 1999. Of 14945 abstracts that were submitted to 43 meetings, 46% were accepted. The rate of full publication was studied with 19123 abstracts that were presented at 234 meetings. Using survival-type analysis, we estimated that 27% were published after two, 41% after four, and 44% after six years. Of 2412 abstracts that were rejected at 24 meetings, 27% were published despite rejection. Factors associated with both abstract acceptance and subsequent publication were basic science and positive study outcome. Large meetings and those held outside the US were more likely to accept abstracts. Abstracts were more likely to be published subsequently if presented either orally, at small meetings, or at a US meeting. Abstract acceptance itself was strongly associated with full publication. CONCLUSIONS: About one third of abstracts submitted to biomedical meetings were published as full reports. Acceptance at meetings and publication were associated with specific characteristics of abstracts and meetings

Hybrid molecular-continuum simulations of water flow through carbon nanotube membranes of realistic thickness

We present new hybrid molecular-continuum simulations of water flow through filtration membranes. The membranes consist of aligned carbon nanotubes (CNTs) of high aspect ratio, where the tube diameters are ~1–2 nm and the tube lengths (i.e. the membrane thicknesses) are 2–6 orders of magnitude larger than this. The flow in the CNTs is subcontinuum, meaning standard continuum fluid equations cannot adequately model the flow; also, full molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are too computationally expensive for modelling these membrane thicknesses. However, various degrees of scale separation in both time and space in this problem can be exploited by a multiscale method: we use the serial-network internal-flow multiscale method (SeN-IMM). Our results from this hybrid method compare very well with full MD simulations of flow cases up to a membrane thickness of 150 nm, beyond which any full MD simulation is computationally intractable. We proceed to use the SeN-IMM to predict the flow in membranes of thicknesses 150 nm–2 μm, and compare these results with both a modified Hagen–Poiseuille flow equation and experimental results for the same membrane configuration. We also find good agreement between experimental and our numerical results for a 1-mm-thick membrane made of CNTs with diameters around 1.1 nm. In this case, the hybrid simulation is orders of magnitude quicker than a full MD simulation would be

Post-mortem volatiles of vertebrate tissue

Volatile emission during vertebrate decay is a complex process that is understood incompletely. It depends on many factors. The main factor is the metabolism of the microbial species present inside and on the vertebrate. In this review, we combine the results from studies on volatile organic compounds (VOCs) detected during this decay process and those on the biochemical formation of VOCs in order to improve our understanding of the decay process. Micro-organisms are the main producers of VOCs, which are by- or end-products of microbial metabolism. Many microbes are already present inside and on a vertebrate, and these can initiate microbial decay. In addition, micro-organisms from the environment colonize the cadaver. The composition of microbial communities is complex, and communities of different species interact with each other in succession. In comparison to the complexity of the decay process, the resulting volatile pattern does show some consistency. Therefore, the possibility of an existence of a time-dependent core volatile pattern, which could be used for applications in areas such as forensics or food science, is discussed. Possible microbial interactions that might alter the process of decay are highlighted