Testosterone for the aging male; current evidence and recommended practice

An international consensus document was recently published and provides guidance on the diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of late-onset hypogonadism (LOH) in men. The diagnosis of LOH requires biochemical and clinical components. Controversy in defining the clinical syndrome continues due to the high prevalence of hypogonadal symptoms in the aging male population and the non-specific nature of these symptoms. Further controversy surrounds setting a lower limit of normal testosterone, the limitations of the commonly available total testosterone result in assessing some patients and the unavailability of reliable measures of bioavailable or free testosterone for general clinical use. As with any clinical intervention testosterone treatment should be judged on a balance of risk versus benefit. The traditional benefits of testosterone on sexual function, mood, strength and quality of life remain the primary goals of treatment but possible beneficial effects on other parameters such as bone density, obesity, insulin resistance and angina are emerging and will be reviewed. Potential concerns regarding the effects of testosterone on prostate disease, aggression and polycythaemia will also be addressed. The options available for treatment have increased in recent years with the availability of a number of testosterone preparations which can reliably produce physiological serum concentrations

Control, conflict and concession: Corporate governance, accounting and accountability at Birmingham Small Arms, 1906-1933

This paper takes as its starting point the relevance of a historical perspective to the study of corporate governance. Corporate governance is concerned with the institutions that influence how business corporations allocate resources and returns, and with the exercise of accountability to investors and other stakeholders. The historical model adopted is that of personal capitalism which is informed by scholars such as Chandler, and in the British context, Quail. Birmingham Small Arms, a quoted and diversified engineering company, was selected for analysis because although it was relatively large and adopted a holding company format, it retained many of the characteristics of a personal capitalist firm. Our longitudinal study of 1906 to 1933 shows that what emerged at BSA was a dominant group of directors who were eventually impelled to concede change by a sustained shareholder critique and an altered legal and business environment

Scotland Registry for Ankylosing Spondylitis (SIRAS) – Protocol

Funding SIRAS was funded by unrestricted grants from Pfizer and AbbVie. The project was reviewed by both companies, during the award process, for Scientific merit, to ensure that the design did not compromise patient safety, and to assess the global regulatory implications and any impact on regulatory strategy.Publisher PD

Model of ligand-triggered information transmission in G-protein coupled receptor complexes

We present a model for the effects of ligands on information transmission in G-Protein Coupled Receptor (GPCR) complexes. The model is built ab initio entirely on principles of statistical mechanics and tenets of information transmission theory and was validated in part using agonist-induced effector activity and signaling bias for the angiotensin- and adrenergic-mediated signaling pathways, with in vitro observations of phosphorylation sites on the C tail of the GPCR complex, and single-cell information-transmission experiments. The model extends traditional kinetic models that form the basis for many existing models of GPCR signaling. It is based on maximizing the rates of entropy production and information transmission through the GPCR complex. The model predicts that (1) phosphatase-catalyzed reactions, as opposed to kinase-catalyzed reactions, on the C-tail and internal loops of the GPCR are responsible for controlling the signaling activity, (2) signaling favors the statistical balance of the number of switches in the ON state and the number in the OFF state, and (3) biased-signaling response depends discontinuously on ligand concentration

Beam Dynamics Studies for the SCREX-ISOLDE LINAC at CERN

For the REX-ISOLDE upgrade a superconducting linac based on 101.28MHz Quarter Wave Resonators (QWRs) is foreseen downstream of the normal conducting (NC) linac. Currently the REX-ISOLDE linac can accelerate ions with a mass to charge ratio in the range of 3 < A/q < 4.5 up to an energy of 2.8 MeV/u. The upgrade aims to reach a minimum final beam energy of 10 MeV/u for A/q=4.5 in two main stages. The first stage consists of installing two cryomodules loaded with 10 cavities able to reach 5.5 MeV/u at the end of the present linac and the second consists of replacing part of the existing NC linac and adding further cryomodules. We report here on a beam dynamics study of the accelerator for the two installation stages.status: publishe

Quantitative analysis of the importance of wind-induced circulation for the spatial structuring of planktonic populations

1. Several studies have shown that wind-induced water movements have an important effect on the spatial distribution of crustacean zooplankton. However, few attempts have been made to quantify the effect of physical processes on these broad-scale patterns. Much of our understanding of this spatial structure has been based on the results of isolated surveys, which do not capture the dynamic nature of the pelagic environment. 2. In this study, we have used a combination of high-speed sampling (at a spatial resolution of 240 m) and spatial data analysis to quantify the factors influencing the horizontal spatial structure of the Daphnia galeata population in Windermere. 3. The results show that lake-wide circulation patterns, as indicated by water temperature, account for 29–47% of the basin-scale spatial variance in D. galeata abundance. However, these patterns are highly dynamic and change in response to the prevailing weather. This lack of temporal persistence means that the results of single-survey sampling campaigns must be interpreted with caution

Groupoid normalizers of tensor products

We consider an inclusion B [subset of or equal to] M of finite von Neumann algebras satisfying B′∩M [subset of or equal to] B. A partial isometry vset membership, variantM is called a groupoid normalizer if vBv*,v*Bv[subset of or equal to] B. Given two such inclusions B&lt;sub&gt;i&lt;/sub&gt; [subset of or equal to] M&lt;sub&gt;i&lt;/sub&gt;, i=1,2, we find approximations to the groupoid normalizers of [formula] in [formula], from which we deduce that the von Neumann algebra generated by the groupoid normalizers of the tensor product is equal to the tensor product of the von Neumann algebras generated by the groupoid normalizers. Examples are given to show that this can fail without the hypothesis [formula], i=1,2. We also prove a parallel result where the groupoid normalizers are replaced by the intertwiners, those partial isometries vset membership, variantM satisfying vBv*[subset of or equal to] B and v*v,vv*[set membership, variant] B