Admissions Scandal

The American Democracy Project kicks off the year with the first Times Talk of the semester on Thursday, September 5th at 12-1pm in the South Study Area of Forsyth Library. Jon Armstrong and Carolyn Tatro from the Office of Admissions present on the Admissions Scandal. Free pizza and salad provided to the first 20 attendees

Cofactor Genomics: A Sequencing Service Company Emerges from the Technology Development Laboratory

Jump Starting Technologies, Patent Issues, and Translational Medicine Poster SessionCofactor Genomics is based in St. Louis, MO and provides sequencing and analysis services to academic and industry clients. We are a small company committed to changing the service sequencing paradigm by offering our customers front-to-back solutions; experimental design, next-generation sequencing, and advanced analytics for their work. Cofactor Genomics was founded by individuals with one-of-a-kind experience in Next-Generation sequencing technology development. The Cofactor Genomics executive team spent a collective 35 years working in the Technology Development Group at The Genome Center at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. From early 2004 to late 2008, their primary responsibilities within the group were to investigate, evaluate and develop both wet-lab and computational applications for emerging Next-Generation sequencing technology platforms. Their experience began with beta testing the 454 Life Sciences (now Roche) GS 20, continued with beta testing the first serial numbered instrument from Solexa (now Illumina), and culminated with beta testing the Applied Biosystems (now Life Technologies) SOLiD instrument. Our individual experiences were unique within the realm of next-generation sequencing technology, thus extremely complimentary for a consolidation and commercialization of skill sets; Matt Hickenbotham became a renowned expert in library construction and Next-Gen instrumentation, Jon Armstrong emerged as an expert in targeted and reduced representation genomic sequencing, and Ryan Richt and Dr. Jarret Glasscock were two of the first individuals in the world to characterize the data generated by these instruments. It is this early-access wet-lab and computational experience with these disruptive sequencing technologies that provided the foundation for operations at Cofactor Genomics. Cofactor Genomics has been in operation for 2 years and has already established a proven track record of capability, versatility, remarkably consistent high quality data generation, and delivering custom data analysis solutions. We constructed 268 different sequencing libraries in our first year spanning nearly every sequencing application and multiple Next-Gen instrument platforms. This feat would be impossible for any firm other than Cofactor to complete in such a short time frame, much to the credit of our highly skilled and talented team. We pooled our talents to form a company offering customers end-to-end sequencing solutions that ultimately allow them to concentrate on what they do best, breakthrough research

How effective is public health policy in Scotland on vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy?

Objective:To evaluate the uptake of universal vitamin D supplementation during pregnancy, its effectiveness in preventing vitamin D deficiency and the factors associated with these.Design:The regional public health organisation in Ayrshire, Scotland has a policy of universal provision of vitamin D supplements (10 µg/d) to all pregnant women for the duration of their pregnancy. Pregnant women in this area were recruited at their 12-week antenatal appointment. Blood samples were collected at the 12-week and 34-week appointments. To account for the seasonal variation, women were recruited in two cohorts: summer and winter. Telephone interviews were conducted at 34 weeks to assess the uptake of vitamin D supplements during pregnancy. Other variables were obtained from medical records.Setting:The study was conducted in the NHS Ayrshire and Arran Health Board in Scotland.Participants:612 pregnant women (aged 15–44 years) living in Ayrshire (latitude 55°), Scotland.Results:Sixty-six percentage took supplementation as recommended. Consumption of supplementation was significantly associated with a higher median serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations at 34 weeks. Despite this at 34 weeks, 33 % of the summer cohort had insufficient or deficient vitamin D status, while 15 % of the winter cohort had insufficient or deficient status. In multivariable analysis, only adherence and season were independent predictors of vitamin D status.Conclusions:While supplementation improved and maintained vitamin D status during pregnancy, it was not adequate to ensure all those insufficient at 12 weeks achieved sufficient status at the end of pregnancy.</div

Randomised trial of cord clamping at very preterm birth: outcomes at 2 years

Objective: To report outcomes at 2 years corrected age for children of women recruited to a trial comparing alternative policies for timing of cord clamping and immediate neonatal care at very preterm birth. Design: Parallel group randomised (1:1) trial. Setting: Eight UK tertiary maternity units. Participants: Two hundred and seventy six babies born to 261 women expected to have a livebirth before 32+0 weeks gestation. Interventions: Deferred cord clamping (≥2 minutes) and immediate neonatal care with cord intact, or immediate (≤20 seconds) clamping and immediate neonatal care after clamping. Main outcome measure: Composite of death or adverse neurodevelopmental outcome at 2 years corrected age. Results: Six babies born after 35+6 weeks were excluded. At 2 years corrected age, outcome data were not available for a further 52 children, leaving 218 for analysis (115 deferred clamping, 103 immediate clamping). Overall, 24/115 (21%) children allocated deferred clamping died or had an adverse neurodevelopmental outcome compared with 35/103 (34%) allocated immediate clamping; relative risk (RR) 0.61 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.39 to 0.96); risk difference (RD) -13% (95% CI -25% to -1%). Multiple imputation for missing data gave a RR 0.69 (95% CI 0.44 to 1.09) and RD -9% (95% CI -21% to 2%). Conclusions: Deferred clamping and immediate neonatal care with cord intact may reduce the risk of death or adverse neurodevelopmental outcome at 2 years of age for children born very premature. Confirmation in larger studies is needed to determine the real benefits and harms

Analytical performance of an immunoprofiling assay based on RNA models

As immuno-oncology drugs grow more popular in the treatment of cancer, better methods are needed to quantify the tumor immune cell component to determine which patients are most likely to benefit from treatment. Methods such as flow cytometry can accurately assess the composition of infiltrating immune cells; however, they show limited use in formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) specimens. This article describes a novel hybrid-capture RNA sequencing assay, ImmunoPrism, that estimates the relative percentage abundance of eight immune cell types in FFPE solid tumors. Immune health expression models were generated using machine learning methods and used to uniquely identify each immune cell type using the most discriminatively expressed genes. The analytical performance of the assay was assessed using 101 libraries from 40 FFPE and 32 fresh-frozen samples. With defined samples, ImmunoPrism had a precision of ±2.72%, a total error of 2.75%, and a strong correlation (

Phase I Study Assessing the Pharmacokinetic Profile, Safety, and Tolerability of a Single Dose of Ceftazidime-Avibactam in Hospitalized Pediatric Patients.

This study aimed to investigate the pharmacokinetics (PK), safety, and tolerability of a single dose of ceftazidime-avibactam in pediatric patients. A phase I, multicenter, open-label PK study was conducted in pediatric patients hospitalized with an infection and receiving systemic antibiotic therapy. Patients were enrolled into four age cohorts (cohort 1, ≥12 to &lt;18 years; cohort 2, ≥6 to &lt;12 years; cohort 3, ≥2 to &lt;6 years; cohort 4, ≥3 months to &lt;2 years). Patients received a single 2-h intravenous infusion of ceftazidime-avibactam (cohort 1, 2,000 to 500 mg; cohort 2, 2,000 to 500 mg [≥40 kg] or 50 to 12.5 mg/kg [&lt;40 kg]; cohorts 3 and 4, 50 to 12.5 mg/kg). Blood samples were collected to describe individual PK characteristics for ceftazidime and avibactam. Population PK modeling was used to describe characteristics of ceftazidime and avibactam PK across all age groups. Safety and tolerability were assessed. Thirty-two patients received study drug. Mean plasma concentration-time curves, geometric mean maximum concentration (Cmax), and area under the concentration-time curve from time zero to infinity (AUC0-∞) were similar across all cohorts for both drugs. Six patients (18.8%) reported an adverse event, all mild or moderate in intensity. No deaths or serious adverse events occurred. The single-dose PK of ceftazidime and avibactam were comparable between each of the 4 age cohorts investigated and were broadly similar to those previously observed in adults. No new safety concerns were identified. (This study has been registered at ClinicalTrials.gov under registration no. NCT01893346.)

On-orbit Validation of the Geolocation Accuracy of the GOES-16 Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) Flashes Using Ground-based Laser Beacons

As part of the geolocation accuracy assessment of lightning flashes detected by the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) on the GOES-16 and GOES-17 satellites (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite), two satellite laser ranging stations employed laser beacon systems to generate transient light pulses that simulate natural lightning around 777.4 nm to validate the pre-launch spec of 5 km. The pulse width, repetition rate, wavelength, and power of the laser-pulses were configured to produce sufficient instrument response to be detected as synthetic lightning events by the GLM instrument. During the testing period from April 2017 to January 2018, the laser systems illuminated the GOES-16 satellite to observe diurnal variation of the GLM system response, with particular emphasis on geolocation accuracy. The final GOES-16 laser beacon tests, which used the latest updates of the geolocation algorithms implemented by the GOES-R Ground Segment, showed the offsets between the GLM geolocated location and the known laser locations were within 5 km

A systematic review of patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) used in child and adolescent burn research

Crown Copyright © 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd and ISBI. All rights reserved. Introduction: Patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) can identify important information about patient needs and therapeutic progress. The aim of this review was to identify the PROMs that are being used in child and adolescent burn care and to determine the quality of such scales. Methods: Computerised and manual bibliographic searches of Medline, Social Sciences Index, Cinahl, Psychinfo, Psycharticles, AMED, and HAPI, were used to identify Englishlanguage articles using English-language PROMs from January 2001 to March 2013. The psychometric quality of the PROMs was assessed. Results: 23 studies met the entry criteria and identified 32 different PROMs (31 generic, 1 burns-specific). Overall, the psychometric quality of the PROMs was low; only two generic scales (the Perceived Stigmatisation Questionnaire and the Social Comfort Scale) and only one burns-specific scale (the Children Burn Outcomes Questionnaire for children aged 5-18) had psychometric evidence relevant to this population. Conclusions: The majority of PROMs did not have psychometric evidence for their use with child or adolescent burn patients. To appropriately identify the needs and treatment progress of child and adolescent burn patients, new burns-specific PROMs need to be developed and validated to reflect issues that are of importance to this population