918 research outputs found
Use of cumulative mortality data in patients with acute myocardial infarction for early detection of variation in clinical practice: observational study
OBJECTIVES: Use of cumulative mortality adjusted for
case mix in patients with acute myocardial infarction
for early detection of variation in clinical practice.
DESIGN: Observational study.
SETTING: 20 hospitals across the former Yorkshire
region.
PARTICIPANTS: All 2153 consecutive patients with
confirmed acute myocardial infarction identified
during three months.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Variable lifeadjusted
displays showing cumulative differences between
observed and expected mortality of patients; expected
mortality calculated from risk model based on
admission characteristics of age, heart rate, and
systolic blood pressure.
RESULTS: The performance of two individual hospitals
over three months was examined as an example. One,
the smallest district hospital in the region, had a series
of 30 consecutive patients but had five more deaths
than predicted. The variable lifeadjusted display
showed minimal variation from that predicted for the
first 15 patients followed by a run of unexpectedly
high mortality. The second example was the main
tertiary referral centre for the region, which admitted
188 consecutive patients. The display showed a period
of apparently poor performance followed by
substantial improvement, where the plot rose steadily
from a cumulative net lives saved of - 4 to 7. These
variations in patient outcome are unlikely to have
been revealed during conventional audit practice.
CONCLUSIONS: Variable lifeadjusted display has been
integrated into surgical care as a graphical display of
riskadjusted survival for individual surgeons or centres.
In combination with a simple risk model, it may have a
role in monitoring performance and outcome in
patients with acute myocardial infarction
Realistic interpretation of a superposition state does not imply a mixture
Contrary to previous claims, it is shown that, for an ensemble of either
single-particle systems or multi-particle systems, the realistic interpretation
of a superposition state that mathematically describes the ensemble does not
imply that the ensemble is a mixture. Therefore it cannot be argued that the
realistic interpretation is wrong on the basis that some predictions derived
from the mixture are different from the corresponding predictions derived from
the superposition state
R-parity Violation and General Soft Supersymmetry Breaking
We consider the most general class possible of soft supersymmetry breaking
terms that can be added to the MSSM, with and without R-parity violation,
consistent with the sole requirement that no quadratic divergences are induced.
We renormalise the resulting theory through one loop and give an example of how
a previously ignored term might affect the sparticle spectrum.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure. Plain TeX, uses Harvmac (Big) and epsf. Added
references and typo corrected (v2
Estimating the parameters of the Sgr A* black hole
The measurement of relativistic effects around the galactic center may allow
in the near future to strongly constrain the parameters of the supermassive
black hole likely present at the galactic center (Sgr A*). As a by-product of
these measurements it would be possible to severely constrain, in addition,
also the parameters of the mass-density distributions of both the innermost
star cluster and the dark matter clump around the galactic center.Comment: Accepted for publication on General Relativity and Gravitation, 2010.
11 Pages, 1 Figur
Two-loop beta-functions and their effects for the R-parity Violating MSSM
We present the full two-loop beta-functions for the MSSM including R-parity
violating couplings. We analyse the effect of two-loop running on the bounds on
R-parity violating couplings, on the nature of the LSP and on the stop masses.Comment: 12 pages, including 2 figures. Plain TeX. Uses Harvmac and epsf.
Revised version with corrected Table and Figure
Quark-Squark Alignment Revisited
We re-examine the possibility that the solution to the supersymmetric flavor
problem is related to small mixing angles in gaugino couplings induced by
approximate horizontal Abelian symmetries. We prove that, for a large class of
models, there is a single viable structure for the down quark mass matrix with
four holomorphic zeros. Consequently, we are able to obtain both lower and
upper bounds on the supersymmetric mixing angles and predict the contributions
to various flavor changing neutral current processes. We find that the most
likely signals for alignment are close to the present bound,
significant CP violation in mixing, and shifts of order a few
percent in various CP asymmetries in and decays. In contrast, the
modifications to radiative B decays, to and to
decays are small. We further investigate a new class of
alignment models, where supersymmetric contributions to flavor changing
processes are suppressed by both alignment and RGE-induced degeneracy.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figure
An Anglo-Saxon execution cemetery at Walkington Wold, Yorkshire
This paper presents a re-evaluation of a cemetery excavated over
30 years ago at Walkington Wold in east Yorkshire. The cemetery is
characterized by careless burial on diverse alignments, and by the fact that
most of the skeletons did not have associated crania. The cemetery has been
variously described as being the result of an early post-Roman massacre, as
providing evidence for a ‘Celtic’ head cult or as an Anglo-Saxon execution
cemetery. In order to resolve the matter, radiocarbon dates were acquired and
a re-examination of the skeletal remains was undertaken. It was confirmed that
the cemetery was an Anglo-Saxon execution cemetery, the only known example
from northern England, and the site is set into its wider context in the paper
MEK1 drives oncogenic signaling and interacts with PARP1 for genomic and metabolic homeostasis in malignant pleural mesothelioma.
Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is a lethal malignancy etiologically caused by asbestos exposure, for which there are few effective treatment options. Although asbestos carcinogenesis is associated with reactive oxygen species (ROS), the bona fide oncogenic signaling pathways that regulate ROS homeostasis and bypass ROS-evoked apoptosis in MPM are poorly understood. In this study, we demonstrate that the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway RAS-RAF-MEK-ERK is hyperactive and a molecular driver of MPM, independent of histological subtypes and genetic heterogeneity. Suppression of MAPK signaling by clinically approved MEK inhibitors (MEKi) elicits PARP1 to protect MPM cells from the cytotoxic effects of MAPK pathway blockage. Mechanistically, MEKi induces impairment of homologous recombination (HR) repair proficiency and mitochondrial metabolic activity, which is counterbalanced by pleiotropic PARP1. Consequently, the combination of MEK with PARP inhibitors enhances apoptotic cell death in vitro and in vivo that occurs through coordinated upregulation of cytotoxic ROS in MPM cells, suggesting a mechanism-based, readily translatable strategy to treat this daunting disease. Collectively, our studies uncover a previously unrecognized scenario that hyperactivation of the MAPK pathway is an essential feature of MPM and provide unprecedented evidence that MAPK signaling cooperates with PARP1 to homeostatically maintain ROS levels and escape ROS-mediated apoptosis
Exact solutions of the radial Schrodinger equation for some physical potentials
By using an ansatz for the eigenfunction, we have obtained the exact
analytical solutions of the radial Schrodinger equation for the pseudoharmonic
and Kratzer potentials in two dimensions. The energy levels of all the bound
states are easily calculated from this eigenfunction ansatz. The normalized
wavefunctions are also obtained.Comment: 13 page
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