A practical approach to managing patients with HCV infection.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a major worldwide public health concern. It is a common cause of chronic liver disease and hepatocellular carcinoma. HCV antibody and HCV RNA testing are available diagnostic studies that offer high degree of accuracy. Current standard therapy includes a combination of pegylated interferon and ribavirin. Response rate is approximately 40% for genotype 1 and 80% for genotypes 2 and 3, respectively. Successful treatment can stop the progression of chronic liver disease, reduce the need for liver transplantation, and possibly decrease the risk for Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Evaluating for potential treatment candidacy is an important initial step in the management of chronic HCV infection as not all individuals may need or qualify for the treatment. Understanding the natural history, the different diagnostic modalities, the current therapeutic options and, the treatment response and adverse effect profiles can help the practitioners better manage chronic HCV infection

Oriented gap opening in the magnetically ordered state of Iron-pnicitides: an impact of intrinsic unit cell doubling on the FeFe square lattice by AsAs atoms

We show that the complicated band reconstruction near Fermi surfaces in the magnetically ordered state of iron-pnictides observed by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopies (ARPES) can be understood in a meanfield level if the \emph{intrinsic unit cell doubling} due to As atoms is properly considered as shown in the recently constructed S$_{4}$ microscopic effective model. The (0,$\pi$) or ($\pi$,0) col-linear antiferromagnetic (C-AFM) order does not open gaps between two points at Fermi surfaces linked by the ordered wave vector but forces a band reconstruction involving four points in unfolded Brillouin zone (BZ) and gives rise to small pockets or hot spots. The S$_4$ symmetry naturally chooses a staggered orbital order over a ferro-orbital order to coexist with the C-AFM order. These results strongly suggest that the kinematics based on the S$_{4}$ symmetry captures the essential low energy physics of iron-based superconductors.Comment: 5 figures, 5 page

Data characterization using artificial-star tests: performance evaluation

Traditional artificial-star tests are widely applied to photometry in crowded stellar fields. However, to obtain reliable binary fractions (and their uncertainties) of remote, dense, and rich star clusters, one needs to recover huge numbers of artificial stars. Hence, this will consume much computation time for data reduction of the images to which the artificial stars must be added. In this paper, we present a new method applicable to data sets characterized by stable, well-defined point-spread functions, in which we add artificial stars to the retrieved-data catalog instead of the raw images. Taking the young Large Magellanic Cloud cluster NGC 1818 as an example, we compare results from both methods and show that they are equivalent, while our new method saves significant computational time.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, accepted by PAS

China and Central Asia: the Role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)

The Mongolian Journal of International Affairs; Number 11, 2004, Page 129-151 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5564/mjia.v0i11.11