3,250 research outputs found
A descriptive analysis of child-relevant systematic reviews in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Systematic reviews (SRs) are considered an important tool for decision-making. There has been no recent comprehensive identification or description of child-relevant SRs. A description of existing child-relevant SRs would help to identify the extent of available child-relevant evidence available in SRs and gaps in the evidence base where SRs are required. The objective of this study was to describe child-relevant SRs from the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR, Issue 2, 2009).</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>SRs were assessed for relevance using pre-defined criteria. Data were extracted and entered into an electronic form. Univariate analyses were performed to describe the SRs overall and by topic area.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The search yielded 1666 SRs; 793 met the inclusion criteria. 38% of SRs were last assessed as up-to-date prior to 2007. Corresponding authors were most often from the UK (41%). Most SRs (59%) examined pharmacological interventions. 53% had at least one external source of funding. SRs included a median of 7 studies (IQR 3, 15) and 679 participants (IQR 179, 2833). Of all studies, 48% included only children, and 27% only adults. 94% of studies were published in peer-reviewed journals. Primary outcomes were specified in 72% of SRs. Allocation concealment and the Jadad scale were used in 97% and 25% of SRs, respectively. Adults and children were analyzed separately in 12% of SRs and as a subgroup analysis in 14%. Publication bias was assessed in only 14% of SRs. A meta-analysis was conducted in 68% of SRs with a median of 5 trials (IQR 3, 9) each. Variations in these characteristics were observed across topic areas.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We described the methodological characteristics and rigour of child-relevant reviews in the CDSR. Many SRs are not up-to-date according to Cochrane criteria. Our study describes variation in conduct and reporting across SRs and reveals clinicians' ability to access child-specific data.</p
Magnetoresistance, specific heat and magnetocaloric effect of equiatomic rare-earth transition-metal magnesium compounds
We present a study of the magnetoresistance, the specific heat and the
magnetocaloric effect of equiatomic Mg intermetallics with , Eu, Gd, Yb and , Au and of GdAuIn. Depending on the
composition these compounds are paramagnetic (, Yb) or they
order either ferro- or antiferromagnetically with transition temperatures
ranging from about 13 to 81 K. All of them are metallic, but the resistivity
varies over 3 orders of magnitude. The magnetic order causes a strong decrease
of the resistivity and around the ordering temperature we find pronounced
magnetoresistance effects. The magnetic ordering also leads to well-defined
anomalies in the specific heat. An analysis of the entropy change leads to the
conclusions that generally the magnetic transition can be described by an
ordering of localized moments arising from the half-filled
shells of Eu or Gd. However, for GdAgMg we find clear evidence
for two phase transitions indicating that the magnetic ordering sets in
partially below about 125 K and is completed via an almost first-order
transition at 39 K. The magnetocaloric effect is weak for the antiferromagnets
and rather pronounced for the ferromagnets for low magnetic fields around the
zero-field Curie temperature.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures include
Approaches to Investigate Selective Dietary Polysaccharide Utilization by Human Gut Microbiota at a Functional Level
The human diet is temporally and spatially dynamic, and influenced by culture, regional food systems, socioeconomics, and consumer preference. Such factors result in enormous structural diversity of ingested glycans that are refractory to digestion by human enzymes. To convert these glycans into metabolizable nutrients and energy, humans rely upon the catalytic potential encoded within the gut microbiome, a rich collective of microorganisms residing in the gastrointestinal tract. The development of high-throughput sequencing methods has enabled microbial communities to be studied with more coverage and depth, and as a result, cataloging the taxonomic structure of the gut microbiome has become routine. Efforts to unravel the microbial processes governing glycan digestion by the gut microbiome, however, are still in their infancy and will benefit by retooling our approaches to study glycan structure at high resolution and adopting next-generation functional methods. Also, new bioinformatic tools specialized for annotating carbohydrate-active enzymes and predicting their functions with high accuracy will be required for deciphering the catalytic potential of sequence datasets. Furthermore, physiological approaches to enable genotype-phenotype assignments within the gut microbiome, such as fluorescent polysaccharides, has enabled rapid identification of carbohydrate interactions at the single cell level. In this review, we summarize the current state-of-knowledge of these methods and discuss how their continued development will advance our understanding of gut microbiome function
O(a)-improved quark action on anisotropic lattices and perturbative renormalization of heavy-light currents
We investigate the Symanzik improvement of the Wilson quark action on
anisotropic lattices. Taking first a general action with nearest-neighbor and
clover interactions, we study the mass dependence of the ratio of the hopping
parameters, the clover coefficients, and an improvement coefficient for
heavy-light vector and axial vector currents. We show how tree-level
improvement can be achieved. For a particular choice of the spatial Wilson
coupling, the results simplify, and improvement is possible.
(Here is the bare quark mass and the temporal lattice spacing.)
With this choice we calculate the renormalization factors of heavy-light
bilinear operators at one-loop order of perturbation theory employing the
standard plaquette gauge action.Comment: 26 pages, 8 figure
A Contribution of the Trivial Connection to Jones Polynomial and Witten's Invariant of 3d Manifolds I
We use the Chern-Simons quantum field theory in order to prove a recently
conjectured limitation on the 1/K expansion of the Jones polynomial of a knot
and its relation to the Alexander polynomial. This limitation allows us to
derive a surgery formula for the loop corrections to the contribution of the
trivial connection to Witten's invariant. The 2-loop part of this formula
coincides with Walker's surgery formula for Casson-Walker invariant. This
proves a conjecture that Casson-Walker invariant is a 2-loop correction to the
trivial connection contribution to Witten's invariant of a rational homology
sphere. A contribution of the trivial connection to Witten's invariant of a
manifold with nontrivial rational homology is calculated for the case of
Seifert manifolds.Comment: 28 page
Entropic C-theorems in free and interacting two-dimensional field theories
The relative entropy in two-dimensional field theory is studied on a cylinder
geometry, interpreted as finite-temperature field theory. The width of the
cylinder provides an infrared scale that allows us to define a dimensionless
relative entropy analogous to Zamolodchikov's function. The one-dimensional
quantum thermodynamic entropy gives rise to another monotonic dimensionless
quantity. I illustrate these monotonicity theorems with examples ranging from
free field theories to interacting models soluble with the thermodynamic Bethe
ansatz. Both dimensionless entropies are explicitly shown to be monotonic in
the examples that we analyze.Comment: 34 pages, 3 figures (8 EPS files), Latex2e file, continuation of
hep-th/9710241; rigorous analysis of sufficient conditions for universality
of the dimensionless relative entropy, more detailed discussion of the
relation with Zamolodchikov's theorem, references added; to appear in Phys.
Rev.
Glycoside hydrolase from the GH76 family indicates that marine Salegentibacter sp. Hel_I_6 consumes alpha-mannan from fungi
Microbial glycan degradation is essential to global carbon cycling. The marine bacterium Salegentibacter sp. Hel_I_6 (Bacteroidota) isolated from seawater off Helgoland island (North Sea) contains an α-mannan inducible gene cluster with a GH76 family endo-α-1,6-mannanase (ShGH76). This cluster is related to genetic loci employed by human gut bacteria to digest fungal α-mannan. Metagenomes from the Hel_I_6 isolation site revealed increasing GH76 gene frequencies in free-living bacteria during microalgae blooms, suggesting degradation of α-1,6-mannans from fungi. Recombinant ShGH76 protein activity assays with yeast α-mannan and synthetic oligomannans showed endo-α-1,6-mannanase activity. Resolved structures of apo-ShGH76 (2.0 Å) and of mutants co-crystalized with fungal mannan-mimicking α-1,6-mannotetrose (1.90 Å) and α-1,6-mannotriose (1.47 Å) retained the canonical (α/α)6 fold, despite low identities with sequences of known GH76 structures (GH76s from gut bacteria: <27%). The apo-form active site differed from those known from gut bacteria, and co-crystallizations revealed a kinked oligomannan conformation. Co-crystallizations also revealed precise molecular-scale interactions of ShGH76 with fungal mannan-mimicking oligomannans, indicating adaptation to this particular type of substrate. Our data hence suggest presence of yet unknown fungal α-1,6-mannans in marine ecosystems, in particular during microalgal blooms
Radio Bursts Associated with Flare and Ejecta in the 13 July 2004 Event
We investigate coronal transients associated with a GOES M6.7 class flare and
a coronal mass ejection (CME) on 13 July 2004. During the rising phase of the
flare, a filament eruption, loop expansion, a Moreton wave, and an ejecta were
observed. An EIT wave was detected later on. The main features in the radio
dynamic spectrum were a frequency-drifting continuum and two type II bursts.
Our analysis shows that if the first type II burst was formed in the low
corona, the burst heights and speed are close to the projected distances and
speed of the Moreton wave (a chromospheric shock wave signature). The
frequency-drifting radio continuum, starting above 1 GHz, was formed almost two
minutes prior to any shock features becoming visible, and a fast-expanding
piston (visible as the continuum) could have launched another shock wave. A
possible scenario is that a flare blast overtook the earlier transient, and
ignited the first type II burst. The second type II burst may have been formed
by the same shock, but only if the shock was propagating at a constant speed.
This interpretation also requires that the shock-producing regions were located
at different parts of the propagating structure, or that the shock was passing
through regions with highly different atmospheric densities. This complex
event, with a multitude of radio features and transients at other wavelengths,
presents evidence for both blast-wave-related and CME-related radio emissions.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures; Solar Physics Topical Issue, in pres
Photoreceptor Differentiation following Transplantation of Allogeneic Retinal Progenitor Cells to the Dystrophic Rhodopsin Pro347Leu Transgenic Pig
Purpose. Transplantation of stem, progenitor, or precursor cells has resulted in photoreceptor replacement and evidence of functional efficacy in rodent models of retinal degeneration. Ongoing work has been directed toward the replication of these results in a large animal model, namely, the pig. Methods. Retinal progenitor cells were derived from the neural retina of GFP-transgenic pigs and transplanted to the subretinal space of rhodopsin Pro347Leu-transgenic allorecipients, in the early stage of the degeneration and the absence of immune suppression. Results. Results confirm the survival of allogeneic porcine RPCs without immune suppression in the setting of photoreceptor dystrophy. The expression of multiple photoreceptor markers by grafted cells included the rod outer segment-specific marker ROM-1. Further evidence of photoreceptor differentiation included the presence of numerous photoreceptor rosettes within GFP-positive grafts, indicative of the development of cellular polarity and self-assembly into rudiments of outer retinal tissue. Conclusion. Together, these data support the tolerance of RPCs as allografts and demonstrate the high level of rod photoreceptor development that can be obtained from cultured RPCs following transplantation. Strategies for further progress in this area, together with possible functional implications, are discussed
- …