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Interrater Reliability in Toxicity Identification: Limitations of Current Standards.
PurposeThe National Cancer Institute Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (CTCAE) v5.0 is the standard for oncology toxicity encoding and grading, despite limited validation. We assessed interrater reliability (IRR) in multireviewer toxicity identification.Methods and materialsTwo reviewers independently reviewed 100 randomly selected notes for weekly on-treatment visits during radiation therapy from the electronic health record. Discrepancies were adjudicated by a third reviewer for consensus. Term harmonization was performed to account for overlapping symptoms in CTCAE. IRR was assessed based on unweighted and weighted Cohen's kappa coefficients.ResultsBetween reviewers, the unweighted kappa was 0.68 (95% confidence interval, 0.65-0.71) and the weighted kappa was 0.59 (0.22-1.00). IRR was consistent between symptoms noted as present or absent with a kappa of 0.6 (0.66-0.71) and 0.6 (0.65-0.69), respectively.ConclusionsSignificant discordance suggests toxicity identification, particularly retrospectively, is a complex and error-prone task. Strategies to minimize IRR, including training and simplification of the CTCAE criteria, should be considered in trial design and future terminologies
Catalysis of the Autoxidation of Aquated Sulfur Dioxide by Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Transition Metal Complexes
The relationship between acid precipitation and the fate of sulfur dioxide (SO_2) and nitrogen oxides (NO_x) in the atmosphere has become the subject of intensive study in recent years. Fundamental questions about the multifarious pathways for the chemical transformation of SO_2 and NO_x to oxyacids remain to be answered before a complete description of this complex reaction network can be provided
Aberrant Development of Thymocytes in Mice Lacking Laminin-2
In previous in vitro studies, we proposed a role for the extracellular matrix component, laminin-
2, and its integrin receptor, VLA-6, in thymocyte development. The characterization of
two dystrophic mouse strains with different defects in laminin-2 allowed us to examine this
proposal in vivo. Mice deficient in laminin-2, dy/dy, show a significant reduction in thymus
size and number of thymocytes compared to normal littermates. These mice also exhibited
apparent alterations of thymic architecture. Examination of the CD4/CD8 populations in dy/dy
thymi showed large relative increases in the DN (CD4-CD8-) and SP (CD4+CD8-,
CD4-CD8+) populations and a significant decrease in the DP (CD4+CD8+) population. Further
examination of the DN population for CD44 and CD25 expression showed a remarkable
decrease in the more mature pre-T cell populations. Analysis of apoptosis in situ, and by flow
cytometry, in dy/dy thymi revealed a significant increase in apoptotic DN thymocytes in the
capsule and subcapsular regions. Interestingly, thymocyte development appeared to proceed
normally in dystrophic mice expressing a mutant form of laminin-2, dy2J, as well as, in fetal
and neonatal dy/dy mice. We propose that laminin-2 plays an active role in thymocyte development
by delivering cell survival and differentiation signals at specific stages of development
in young adult mice
Unwind: Interactive Fish Straightening
The ScanAllFish project is a large-scale effort to scan all the world's
33,100 known species of fishes. It has already generated thousands of
volumetric CT scans of fish species which are available on open access
platforms such as the Open Science Framework. To achieve a scanning rate
required for a project of this magnitude, many specimens are grouped together
into a single tube and scanned all at once. The resulting data contain many
fish which are often bent and twisted to fit into the scanner. Our system,
Unwind, is a novel interactive visualization and processing tool which
extracts, unbends, and untwists volumetric images of fish with minimal user
interaction. Our approach enables scientists to interactively unwarp these
volumes to remove the undesired torque and bending using a piecewise-linear
skeleton extracted by averaging isosurfaces of a harmonic function connecting
the head and tail of each fish. The result is a volumetric dataset of a
individual, straight fish in a canonical pose defined by the marine biologist
expert user. We have developed Unwind in collaboration with a team of marine
biologists: Our system has been deployed in their labs, and is presently being
used for dataset construction, biomechanical analysis, and the generation of
figures for scientific publication
Matter-wave bistability in coupled atom-molecule quantum gases
We study the matter-wave bistability in coupled atom-molecule quantum gases,
in which heteronuclear molecules are created via an interspecies Feshbach
resonance involving either two-species Bose or two-species Fermi atoms at zero
temperature. We show that the resonant two-channel Bose model is equivalent to
the nondegenerate parametric down-conversion in quantum optics, while the
corresponding Fermi model can be mapped to a quantum optics model that
describes a single-mode laser field interacting with an ensemble of
inhomogeneously broadened two-level atoms. Using these analogy and the fact
that both models are subject to the Kerr nonlinearity due to the two-body
s-wave collisions, we show that under proper conditions, the population in the
molecular state in both models can be made to change with the Feshbach detuning
in a bistable fashion.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure
ImmunoPET of urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA) system: broad applicability in cancer imaging
Unconventional Josephson Effect in Hybrid Superconductor-Topological Insulator Devices
We report on transport properties of Josephson junctions in hybrid
superconducting-topological insulator devices, which show two striking
departures from the common Josephson junction behavior: a characteristic energy
that scales inversely with the width of the junction, and a low characteristic
magnetic field for suppressing supercurrent. To explain these effects, we
propose a phenomenological model which expands on the existing theory for
topological insulator Josephson junctions
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