1,287 research outputs found
Bronchoscopy of Lung Cancer
Lung cancer is a leading cancer site in men and women with a high incidence and mortality rate. Most
patients are diagnosed when the disease has already spread. An early, detection and immediate and
accurate histological or cytological diagnosis are essential for a hopeful outcome. In most patients,
bronchoscopy is the method of choice in establishing a suspected lung neoplasm. With the rigid and
flexible method, two complementary techniques are available. The methods bear a very low mortality
rate if sufficient monitoring and resuscitative instrumentation is available. Rigid bronchoscopy
offers the possibility of obtaining large biopsy specimens from the tumorous tissue and provides an
effective tool in the control of major haemorrhage. However, it cannot be used for the inspection of
further peripherally located parts of the bronchial system and needs general anaesthesia. In contrast,
the flexible method can be quickly and readily performed at practically any location using portable
equipment. Bronchi can be inspected up to the 8th order and with bronchial washing, forceps biopsy,
brush biopsy and fluorescence bronchoscopy techniques with a high diagnostic yield are available.
This holds true, especially if these sampling techniques are used as complementary methods
Geographic bias related to geocoding in epidemiologic studies
BACKGROUND: This article describes geographic bias in GIS analyses with unrepresentative data owing to missing geocodes, using as an example a spatial analysis of prostate cancer incidence among whites and African Americans in Virginia, 1990â1999. Statistical tests for clustering were performed and such clusters mapped. The patterns of missing census tract identifiers for the cases were examined by generalized linear regression models. RESULTS: The county of residency for all cases was known, and 26,338 (74%) of these cases were geocoded successfully to census tracts. Cluster maps showed patterns that appeared markedly different, depending upon whether one used all cases or those geocoded to the census tract. Multivariate regression analysis showed that, in the most rural counties (where the missing data were concentrated), the percent of a county's population over age 64 and with less than a high school education were both independently associated with a higher percent of missing geocodes. CONCLUSION: We found statistically significant pattern differences resulting from spatially non-random differences in geocoding completeness across Virginia. Appropriate interpretation of maps, therefore, requires an understanding of this phenomenon, which we call "cartographic confounding.
Laser frequency combs for astronomical observations
A direct measurement of the universe's expansion history could be made by
observing in real time the evolution of the cosmological redshift of distant
objects. However, this would require measurements of Doppler velocity drifts of
about 1 centimeter per second per year, and astronomical spectrographs have not
yet been calibrated to this tolerance. We demonstrate the first use of a laser
frequency comb for wavelength calibration of an astronomical telescope. Even
with a simple analysis, absolute calibration is achieved with an equivalent
Doppler precision of approximately 9 meters per second at about 1.5 micrometers
- beyond state-of-the-art accuracy. We show that tracking complex, time-varying
systematic effects in the spectrograph and detector system is a particular
advantage of laser frequency comb calibration. This technique promises an
effective means for modeling and removal of such systematic effects to the
accuracy required by future experiments to see direct evidence of the
universe's putative acceleration.Comment: Science, 5th September 2008. 18 pages, 7 figures (7 JPG files),
including Supporting Online Material. Version with higher resolution figures
available at http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~mmurphy/pub.htm
Retinal glia promote dorsal root ganglion axon regeneration.
Axon regeneration in the adult central nervous system (CNS) is limited by several factors including a lack of neurotrophic support. Recent studies have shown that glia from the adult rat CNS, specifically retinal astrocytes and MĂźller glia, can promote regeneration of retinal ganglion cell axons. In the present study we investigated whether retinal glia also exert a growth promoting effect outside the visual system. We found that retinal glial conditioned medium significantly enhanced neurite growth and branching of adult rat dorsal root ganglion neurons (DRG) in culture. Furthermore, transplantation of retinal glia significantly enhanced regeneration of DRG axons past the dorsal root entry zone after root crush in adult rats. To identify the factors that mediate the growth promoting effects of retinal glia, mass spectrometric analysis of retinal glial conditioned medium was performed. Apolipoprotein E and secreted protein acidic and rich in cysteine (SPARC) were found to be present in high abundance, a finding further confirmed by western blotting. Inhibition of Apolipoprotein E and SPARC significantly reduced the neuritogenic effects of retinal glial conditioned medium on DRG in culture, suggesting that Apolipoprotein E and SPARC are the major mediators of this regenerative response.This work was supported by a van Geest Fight for Sight Early Career Investigator Award, grant number 1868 [BL].This is the final version of the article. It first appeared at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.011599
Evaluation of Methods for Estimating Time to Steady State with Examples from Phase 1 Studies
An overview is provided of the methodologies used in determining the time to steady state for Phase 1 multiple dose studies. These methods include NOSTASOT (no-statistical-significance-of-trend), Helmert contrasts, spline (quadratic) regression, effective half life for accumulation, nonlinear mixed effects modeling, and Bayesian approach using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. For each methodology we describe its advantages and disadvantages. The first two methods do not require any distributional assumptions for the pharmacokinetic (PK) parameters and are limited to average assessment of steady state. Also spline regression which provides both average and individual assessment of time to steady state does not require any distributional assumptions for the PK parameters. On the other hand, nonlinear mixed effects modeling and Bayesian hierarchical modeling which allow for the estimation of both population and subject-specific estimates of time to steady state do require distributional assumptions on PK parameters. The current investigation presents eight case studies for which the time to steady state was assessed using the above mentioned methodologies. The time to steady state estimates obtained from nonlinear mixed effects modeling, Bayesian hierarchal approach, effective half life, and spline regression were generally similar
Determining the Physical Properties of the B Stars I. Methodology and First Results
We describe a new approach to fitting the UV-to-optical spectra of B stars to
model atmospheres and present initial results. Using a sample of lightly
reddened stars, we demonstrate that the Kurucz model atmospheres can produce
excellent fits to either combined low dispersion IUE and optical photometry or
HST FOS spectrophotometry, as long as the following conditions are fulfilled:
1) an extended grid of Kurucz models is employed,
2) the IUE NEWSIPS data are placed on the FOS absolute flux system using the
Massa & Fitzpatrick (1999) transformation, and
3) all of the model parameters and the effects of interstellar extinction are
solved for simultaneously.
When these steps are taken, the temperatures, gravities, abundances and
microturbulence velocities of lightly reddened B0-A0 V stars are determined to
high precision. We also demonstrate that the same procedure can be used to fit
the energy distributions of stars which are reddened by any UV extinction curve
which can be expressed by the Fitzpatrick & Massa (1990) parameterization
scheme.
We present an initial set of results and verify our approach through
comparisons with angular diameter measurements and the parameters derived for
an eclipsing B star binary. We demonstrate that the metallicity derived from
the ATLAS 9 fits to main sequence B stars is essentially the Fe abundance. We
find that a near zero microturbulence velocity provides the best-fit to all but
the hottest or most luminous stars (where it may become a surrogate for
atmospheric expansion), and that the use of white dwarfs to calibrate UV
spectrophotometry is valid.Comment: 17 pages, including 2 pages of Tables and 6 pages of Figures.
Astrophysical Jounral, in pres
Analytic structure of the gluon and quark propagators in Landau gauge QCD
In Landau gauge QCD the infrared behavior of the propagator of transverse
gluons can be analytically determined to be a power law from Dyson-Schwinger
equations. This propagator clearly shows positivity violation, indicating the
absence of the transverse gluons from the physical spectrum, i.e. gluon
confinement. A simple analytic structure for the gluon propagator is proposed
capturing all important features. We provide arguments that the Landau gauge
quark propagator possesses a singularity on the real timelike axis. For this
propagator we find a positive definite Schwinger function.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures; summary of a talk given at several occasions; to
be published in the proceedings of the international conference QCD DOWN
UNDER, March 10 - 19, Adelaide, Australi
Variational Worldline Approximation for the Relativistic Two-Body Bound State in a Scalar Model
We use the worldline representation of field theory together with a
variational approximation to determine the lowest bound state in the scalar
Wick-Cutkosky model where two equal-mass constituents interact via the exchange
of mesons. Self-energy and vertex corrections are included approximately in a
consistent way as well as crossed diagrams. Only vacuum-polarization effects of
the heavy particles are neglected. In a path integral description of an
appropriate current-current correlator an effective, retarded action is
obtained by integrating out the meson field. As in the polaron problem we
employ a quadratic trial action with variational functions to describe
retardation and binding effects through multiple meson exchange.The variational
equations for these functions are derived, discussed qualitatively and solved
numerically. We compare our results with the ones from traditional approaches
based on the Bethe-Salpeter equation and find an enhanced binding contrary to
some claims in the literature. For weak coupling this is worked out
analytically and compared with results from effective field theories. However,
the well-known instability of the model, which usually is ignored, now appears
at smaller coupling constants than in the one-body case and even when
self-energy and vertex corrections are turned off. This induced instability is
investigated analytically and the width of the bound state above the critical
coupling is estimated.Comment: 62 pages, 7 figures, FBS style, published versio
The Infrared Behavior of Gluon and Ghost Propagators in Landau Gauge QCD
A solvable systematic truncation scheme for the Dyson-Schwinger equations of
Euclidean QCD in Landau gauge is presented. It implements the Slavnov-Taylor
identities for the three-gluon and ghost-gluon vertices, whereas irreducible
four-gluon couplings as well as the gluon-ghost and ghost-ghost scattering
kernels are neglected. The infrared behavior of gluon and ghost propagators is
obtained analytically: The gluon propagator vanishes for small spacelike
momenta whereas the ghost propagator diverges stronger than a massless particle
pole. The numerical solutions are compared with recent lattice data for these
propagators. The running coupling of the renormalization scheme approaches a
fixed point, , in the infrared.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Revtex; revised version accepted for publication
in Physical Review Letter
CRALBP is a Highly Prevalent Autoantigen for Human Autoimmune Uveitis
Cellular retinaldehyde binding protein (CRALBP) is an autoantigen in spontaneous equine recurrent uveitis. In
order to test whether CRALBP contributes to human autoimmune uveitis, the specificity of antibodies from human
uveitis patient's sera was first evaluated in two-dimensional (2D) Western blot analysis. Subsequent identification of the immunoreactive proteins by mass spectrometry resulted in the identification of CRALBP as a putative autoantigen. Additionally, sera from human uveitis and control patients were by Western blot using purified human recombinant CRALBP. Anti-CRALBP autoantibodies occur more frequently (P<.01) in human uveitis patients than in normal controls. Thirty out of 56 tested uveitis patient's sera contained autoantibodies reactive against CRALBP, compared to only four out of 23 normal control subjects. The presence of CRALBP autoantibodies in 54% of tested uveitis patients supports CRALBP as a possible autoantigen in human autoimmune uveitis
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