Mesoscopic Quantum Magnetic Conductors

Contains table of contents for Section 4, and a report on one research project.Joint Services Electronics Program Grant DAAL04-95-1-003

Engineering standards for trauma and orthopaedic implants worldwide : a systematic review protocol

Introduction Despite multiple scandals in the medical implant sector, premarket testing has been the attention of little published research. Complications related to new devices, such as the DePuy Articular Surface Replacement (ASR, DePuy Synthes, USA), have raised the issue of how designs are tested and whether engineering standards remain up to date with our understanding of implant biomechanics. Despite much work setting up national joint registries to improve implant monitoring, there have been few academic studies examining the premarket engineering standards new implants must meet. Emerging global economies mean that the markets have changed, and it is unknown to what degree engineering standards vary around the world. Governments, industry and independent regulatory bodies all produce engineering standards; therefore, the comparison of surgical implants across different manufacturers and jurisdictions is difficult. In this review, we will systematically collate and compare engineering standards for trauma and orthopaedic implants around the world. This will help inform patient, hospital and surgeon choice and provide an evidence base for future research in this area. Methods and analysis This protocol is based on Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Protocol (PRISMA-P) guidelines. We will conduct a systematic review of trauma and orthopaedic engineering standards from four main sources of information as identified in our preliminary scoping searches: governments, industry, independent regulatory bodies and engineering and medical publications. Any current standard relevant to trauma and orthopaedic implants will be included. We will use a predefined search strategy and follow the recommendations of the Cochrane handbook where applicable. We will undertake a narrative synthesis with qualitative evaluation of homogeneity between engineering standards. Ethics and dissemination No ethics approval is required as no primary data are being collected. The results will be made available by peer-reviewed publication and reported according to PRISMA-P guidelines

A randomised controlled trial to assess the effectiveness of a single session of nurse administered massage for short term relief of chronic non-malignant pain

Background: Massage is increasingly used to manage chronic pain but its benefit has not been clearly established. The aim of the study is to determine the effectiveness of a single session of nurse-administered massage for the short term relief of chronic non-malignant pain and anxiety. Methods: A randomised controlled trial design was used, in which the patients were assigned to a massage or control group. The massage group received a 15 minute manual massage and the control group a 15 minute visit to talk about their pain. Adult patients attending a pain relief unit with a diagnosis of chronic pain whose pain was described as moderate or severe were eligible for the study. An observer blind to the patients' treatment group carried out assessments immediately before (baseline), after treatment and 1, 2, 3 and 4 hours later. Pain was assessed using 100 mm visual analogue scale and the McGill Pain Questionnaire. Pain Relief was assessed using a five point verbal rating scale. Anxiety was assessed with the Spielberger short form State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Results: 101 patients were randomised and evaluated, 50 in the massage and 51 in the control group. There were no statistically significant differences between the groups at baseline interview. Patients in the massage but not the control group had significantly less pain compared to baseline immediately after and one hour post treatment. 95% confidence interval for the difference in mean pain reduction at one hour post treatment between the massage and control groups is 5.47 mm to 24.70 mm. Patients in the massage but not the control group had a statistically significant reduction in anxiety compared to baseline immediately after and at 1 hour post treatment. Conclusion: Massage is effective in the short term for chronic pain of moderate to severe intensity

Direct Imaging Search for Extrasolar Planets in the Pleiades

We carried out an imaging survey for extrasolar planets around stars in the Pleiades (125 Myr, 135 pc) in the $H$ and $K_{S}$ bands using HiCIAO combined with the adaptive optics, AO188, on the Subaru telescope. We found 13 companion candidates fainter than 14.5 mag in the $H$ band around 9 stars. Five of these 13 were confirmed to be background stars by measurement of their proper motion. One was not found in the second epoch observation, and thus was not a background or companion object. One had multi-epoch image, but the precision of its proper motion was not sufficient to conclude whether it was background object. Four other candidates are waiting for second epoch observations to determine their proper motion. Finally, the remaining 2 were confirmed to be 60 $M_{J}$ brown dwarf companions orbiting around HD 23514 (G0) and HII 1348 (K5) respectively, as had been reported in previous studies. In our observations, the average detection limit for a point source was 20.3 mag in the $H$ band beyond 1''.5 from the central star. On the basis of this detection limit, we calculated the detection efficiency to be 90% for a planet with 6 to 12 Jovian masses and a semi-major axis of 50--1000 AU. For this we extrapolated the distribution of planet mass and semi-major axis derived from RV observations and adopted the planet evolution model of Baraffe et al. (2003). As there was no detection of a planet, we estimated the frequency of such planets to be less than 17.9% ($2\sigma$) around one star of the Pleiades cluster.Comment: 30 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in PAS

Reduced-order modeling of plasma ionization due to multifluid, collisional-radiative effects

Collisional rate calculations which account for relative multifluid streaming were implemented in a collisional-radiative model that is applicable for a generalized set of atomic elements. The rate modifications for multifluid streaming were derived in two recent studies for electron-impact excitation, de-excitation, ionization, and recombination [H. P. Le and J.-L. Cambier, Phys. Plasmas 22, 093512 (2015); 23, 063505 (2016)]. This study follows from the previous studies by extending the derivations to radiative recombination. However, the memory intensive aspect of expanding the collisional rate tabulations to temperature and multifluid effects can become a numerical obstacle for large-scale plasma simulations. The main objective of this study is to explore reduced-order modeling approaches for collisional-radiative systems that may adopt collisional rate accounting for multifluid streaming. The ionization test case simulated in this work uses the quasi-steady-state solution and two Boltzmann grouping approaches, one of which is the ionic excitation concept and the other being a relatively finer selection of Boltzmann groups. The reduced-order models captured the general trend of the detailed model, providing a foundation from which to improve or perform coupled plasma simulations in the future

Pan-cancer Alterations of the MYC Oncogene and Its Proximal Network across the Cancer Genome Atlas

Although theMYConcogene has been implicated incancer, a systematic assessment of alterations ofMYC, related transcription factors, and co-regulatoryproteins, forming the proximal MYC network (PMN),across human cancers is lacking. Using computa-tional approaches, we define genomic and proteo-mic features associated with MYC and the PMNacross the 33 cancers of The Cancer Genome Atlas.Pan-cancer, 28% of all samples had at least one ofthe MYC paralogs amplified. In contrast, the MYCantagonists MGA and MNT were the most frequentlymutated or deleted members, proposing a roleas tumor suppressors.MYCalterations were mutu-ally exclusive withPIK3CA,PTEN,APC,orBRAFalterations, suggesting that MYC is a distinct onco-genic driver. Expression analysis revealed MYC-associated pathways in tumor subtypes, such asimmune response and growth factor signaling; chro-matin, translation, and DNA replication/repair wereconserved pan-cancer. This analysis reveals insightsinto MYC biology and is a reference for biomarkersand therapeutics for cancers with alterations ofMYC or the PMN

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts

Genomic, Pathway Network, and Immunologic Features Distinguishing Squamous Carcinomas

This integrated, multiplatform PanCancer Atlas study co-mapped and identified distinguishing molecular features of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) from five sites associated with smokin