61 research outputs found
Fluctuations of company yearly profits versus scaled revenue: Fat tail distribution of Levy type
We analyze annual revenues and earnings data for the 500 largest-revenue U.S.
companies during the period 1954-2007. We find that mean year profits are
proportional to mean year revenues, exception made for few anomalous years,
from which we postulate a linear relation between company expected mean profit
and revenue. Mean annual revenues are used to scale both company profits and
revenues. Annual profit fluctuations are obtained as difference between actual
annual profit and its expected mean value, scaled by a power of the revenue to
get a stationary behavior as a function of revenue. We find that profit
fluctuations are broadly distributed having approximate power-law tails with a
Levy-type exponent , from which we derive the associated
break-even probability distribution. The predictions are compared with
empirical data.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure
The introduction of the Cancer Research UK Stratified Medicine Programme 2 (CRUK SMP2) in North East England; lessons learned and experience gained
Introduction: The CRUK SMP2 programme was set-up to evaluate
the feasibility of performing large scale molecular analysis within the
NHS on the (often small) diagnostic biopsies obtained in NSCLC. The
results are used to allocate patients to an appropriate molecular therapy
within the “umbrella” MATRIX trial. Newcastle opened SMP2 on
01/10/2014. Here we report our first year’s experience.
Methods: NSCLC patients with PS 0–2 were consented onto the CRUK
SMP2. Matched residual diagnostic tissue and blood were sent to All
Wales Genetics Laboratory, Cardiff. Samples with >70ng DNA were
assessed for 28 oncogenes using Next Genuine Sequencing on the Illumina
SMP2 panel.
Results: 116 patients were consented from 6/10/14–1/10/15 referred
from 12 oncologists. The data on patient/sample flow is shown in Fig
1. Median survival was 161 days from consent. The 1st sample was
sent to Cardiff on 28/1/15 as the Illumina panel was undergoing fi-
nal validation. 50 samples have been sent; 11 had insufficient DNA;
these samples had lower cell number (but with no impact of necrosis/tumour
proportion); The most commonly altered gene was K-Ras
(13 of 22 adenocarcinomas). Only 2 patients with results from >25
of the 28 genes had no tier 1 or 2 ie potentially treatable molecular
abnormalities. The median time from consent to result was 109 days
(range 45–250) with delays occurring throughout the pathway.
Conclusion: Patients and oncologists are keen to be involved in
molecular profiling; but patients need to be consented early to allow
results to guide therapy. Prioritisation of samples is key. Not all
samples are suitable for analysis due to small cell number or low tumour
proportion. Molecular analysis may require extra resource in
pathology, if it is to become standard of care. The first 4 patients to
start treatment on MATRIX were enrolled from 27/8/15 in Newcastle.
Disclosure: All authors have declared no conflicts of interest
The Compartmentalized Bacteria of the Planctomycetes-Verrucomicrobia-Chlamydiae Superphylum Have Membrane Coat-Like Proteins
Compartmentalized bacteria have proteins that are structurally related to eukaryotic membrane coats, and one of these proteins localizes at the membrane of vesicles formed inside bacterial cells
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