Whole-body vibration as a potential treatment to improve phonatory function

In Adults with Voice DisorderBACKGROUND: Whole-body vibration, the oscillatory movement transmitted from a mechanical vibration source to the body, has been shown to cause neurogenic adaption of the skeletal muscles and facilitate muscular function improvement (Cardinale & Wakeling, 2005). Phonatory function, in terms of intensity, has been found to improve following whole-body vibration at around 10 -15 Hz when compared to vibration below 10 Hz (Yokoyama and Hoshino, 1973). AIM: To identify whether whole-body vibration, compared to resonant voice training, would improve voice related quality of life and vocal function, in terms of maximum frequency and intensity. METHOD: Adults with self-perceived voice problems were randomly assigned to ...published_or_final_versio

A systematic review of resonant voice therapy

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Allocating the Burdens of Climate Action: Consumption-Based Carbon Accounting and the Polluter-Pays Principle

Action must be taken to combat climate change. Yet, how the costs of climate action should be allocated among states remains a question. One popular answer—the polluter-pays principle (PPP)—stipulates that those responsible for causing the problem should pay to address it. While intuitively plausible, the PPP has been subjected to withering criticism in recent years. It is timely, following the Paris Agreement, to develop a new version: one that does not focus on historical production-based emissions but rather allocates climate burdens in proportion to each state’s annual consumption-based emissions. This change in carbon accounting results in a fairer and more environmentally effective principle for distributing climate duties

Analysis of IL2/IL21 Gene Variants in Cholestatic Liver Diseases Reveals an Association with Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis

Background/Aims: The chromosome 4q27 region harboring IL2 and IL21 is an established risk locus for ulcerative colitis (UC) and various other autoimmune diseases. Considering the strong coincidence of primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) with UC and the increased frequency of other autoimmune disorders in patients with primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC), we investigated whether genetic variation in the IL2/IL21 region may also modulate the susceptibility to these two rare cholestatic liver diseases. Methods: Four strongly UC-associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within the KIAA1109/TENR/IL2/IL21 linkage disequilibrium block were genotyped in 124 PBC and 41 PSC patients. Control allele frequencies from 1,487 healthy, unrelated Caucasians were available from a previous UC association study. Results: The minor alleles of all four markers were associated with a decreased susceptibility to PSC (rs13151961: p = 0.013, odds ratio (OR) 0.34; rs13119723: p = 0.023, OR 0.40; rs6822844: p = 0.031, OR 0.41; rs6840978: p = 0.043, OR 0.46). Moreover, a haplotype consisting of the four minor alleles also had a protective effect on PSC susceptibility (p = 0.0084, OR 0.28). A haplotype of the four major alleles was independently associated with PSC when excluding the patients with concomitant inflammatory bowel disease (p = 0.033, OR 4.18). Conclusion: The IL2/IL21 region may be one of the highly suggestive but so far rarely identified shared susceptibility loci for PSC and UC. Copyright (C) 2011 S. Karger AG, Base

Coherent spinor dynamics in a spin-1 Bose condensate

Collisions in a thermal gas are perceived as random or incoherent as a consequence of the large numbers of initial and final quantum states accessible to the system. In a quantum gas, e.g. a Bose-Einstein condensate or a degenerate Fermi gas, the phase space accessible to low energy collisions is so restricted that collisions be-come coherent and reversible. Here, we report the observation of coherent spin-changing collisions in a gas of spin-1 bosons. Starting with condensates occupying two spin states, a condensate in the third spin state is coherently and reversibly created by atomic collisions. The observed dynamics are analogous to Josephson oscillations in weakly connected superconductors and represent a type of matter-wave four-wave mixing. The spin-dependent scattering length is determined from these oscillations to be -1.45(18) Bohr. Finally, we demonstrate coherent control of the evolution of the system by applying differential phase shifts to the spin states using magnetic fields.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figure

Use of tamoxifen and raloxifene for breast cancer chemoprevention in 2010

PURPOSE: Two selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs), tamoxifen and raloxifene, have been shown in randomized clinical trials to reduce the risk of developing primary invasive breast cancer (IBC) in high-risk women. In 1998, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) used these studies as a basis for approving tamoxifen for primary breast chemoprevention in both premenopausal and postmenopausal women at high risk. In 2007, the FDA approved raloxifene for primary breast cancer chemoprevention for postmenopausal women. METHODS: Data from the year 2010 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) were analyzed to estimate the prevalence of tamoxifen and raloxifene use for chemoprevention of primary breast cancers among U.S. women. RESULTS: Prevalence of use of chemopreventive agents for primary tumors was 20,598 (95% CI, 518–114,864) for U.S. women aged 35 to 79 for tamoxifen. Prevalence was 96,890 (95% CI, 41,277–192,391) for U.S. women aged 50 to79 for raloxifene. CONCLUSION: Use of tamoxifen and raloxifene for prevention of primary breast cancers continues to be low. In 2010, women reporting medication use for breast cancer chemoprevention were primarily using the more recently FDA-approved drug raloxifene. Multiple possible explanations for the low use exist, including lack of awareness and/or concern about side effects among primary care physicians and patients

Oral Contraceptives and Periodontal Diseases: Rethinking the Association Based Upon Analysis of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Data

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141450/1/jper1374.pd

ER and HER2 expression are positively correlated in HER2 non-overexpressing breast cancer

PMCID: PMC3446380This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Detection of BRCA1, BRCA2, and ATM Alterations in Matched Tumor Tissue and Circulating Tumor DNA in Patients with Prostate Cancer Screened in PROfound.

PURPOSE: Not all patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) have sufficient tumor tissue available for multigene molecular testing. Furthermore, samples may fail because of difficulties within the testing procedure. Optimization of screening techniques may reduce failure rates; however, a need remains for additional testing methods to detect cancers with alterations in homologous recombination repair genes. We evaluated the utility of plasma-derived circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in identifying deleterious BRCA1, BRCA2 (BRCA), and ATM alterations in screened patients with mCRPC from the phase III PROfound study. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: Tumor tissue samples were sequenced prospectively at Foundation Medicine, Inc. (FMI) using an investigational next-generation sequencing (NGS) assay based on FoundationOne®Liquid to inform trial eligibility. Matched ctDNA samples were retrospectively sequenced at FMI, using an investigational assay based on FoundationOne®Liquid CDx. RESULTS: 81% (503/619) of ctDNA samples yielded an NGS result, of which 491 had a tumor tissue result. BRCA and ATM status in tissue compared with ctDNA showed 81% positive percentage agreement and 92% negative percentage agreement, using tissue as reference. At variant-subtype level, using tissue as reference, concordance was high for nonsense (93%), splice (87%), and frameshift (86%) alterations but lower for large rearrangements (63%) and homozygous deletions (27%), with low ctDNA fraction being a limiting factor. CONCLUSIONS: We demonstrate that ctDNA can greatly complement tissue testing in identifying patients with mCRPC and BRCA or ATM alterations who are potentially suitable for receiving targeted PARP inhibitor treatments, particularly patients with no or insufficient tissue for genomic analyses

A multi-gene signature predicts outcome in patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

© 2014 Haider et al.; licensee BioMed Central. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Improved usage of the repertoires of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) profiles is crucially needed to guide the development of predictive and prognostic tools that could inform the selection of treatment options