A Quantitative Analysis of Endogenous Target Fertility in Sri Lanka

Even though the economic model of fertility seems theoretically plausible, application of the model to empirical data often gives us ambiguous impression about its validity. One source of the ambiguity that is examined by an empirical analysis in this paper comes from simultaneity of demand for and supply of children. Fertility differentials are explained by differences in educational attainment, work experience prior to marriage, possession of durable goods, job categories of the husband and the residual of the age at marriage. Differentials in parity progression are largely explained by the age of marriage or the previous childbirth. The effect of socio-economic variables is parity dependent in supply of children. Differentials in spacing of childbirths are explained by the expected demand and unexpected additional demand for children and the age difference from the mean age at marriage or the previous childbirth

Frozen section is superior to imprint cytology for the intra-operative assessment of sentinel lymph node metastasis in Stage I Breast cancer patients

BACKGROUND: A standard intra-operative procedure for assessing sentinel lymph node metastasis in breast cancer patients has not yet been established. PATIENTS AND METHODS: One hundred and thirty-eight patients with stage I breast cancer who underwent sentinel node biopsy using both imprint cytology and frozen section were analyzed. RESULTS: Seventeen of the 138 patients had sentinel node involvement. Results of imprint cytology included nine false negative cases (sensitivity, 47.1%). In contrast, only two cases of false negatives were found on frozen section (sensitivity, 88.2%). There were two false positive cases identified by imprint cytology (specificity, 98.3%). On the other hand, frozen section had 100% specificity. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that frozen section is superior to imprint cytology for the intra-operative determination of sentinel lymph node metastasis in stage I breast cancer patients

Household Composition in Colombo, Sri Lanka

In our research, Data from 1981 Population Census of Sri Lanka were retabulated by each household unit for Bambalapitiya and Havelock Town,3,848 households in total, to show basic statistics and characteristics of the household composition. 1)The proportion of the extend family household is as high as 42.6% 2)The female-headed households mostly (81.9%) consist of the widowed mother with children and other extended family members. 3)The average age of female household heads is higher than that of male. 4)Burgers seem to have higher proportion of vertically extended family households while Moors and Malays horizontally extended. 5)The average household size is as large as 8.24 for vertically extended family households.It is 5.31 as a whole,which is larger by 1 person than that from an example of a village in Kurunegalla. 6)The proportion of individuals by family type and that by relation to the head for 10 year age group may partly indicate individuals shifting among households of different family type. 7)Cohabitation of children over 20 years of age is observed more often among one parent nuclear family households (over60%

Household Composition in Colombo, Sri Lanka

In our research, Data from 1981 Population Census of Sri Lanka were retabulated by each household unit for Bambalapitiya and Havelock Town,3,848 households in total, to show basic statistics and characteristics of the household composition. 1)The proportion of the extend family household is as high as 42.6% 2)The female-headed households mostly (81.9%) consist of the widowed mother with children and other extended family members. 3)The average age of female household heads is higher than that of male. 4)Burgers seem to have higher proportion of vertically extended family households while Moors and Malays horizontally extended. 5)The average household size is as large as 8.24 for vertically extended family households.It is 5.31 as a whole,which is larger by 1 person than that from an example of a village in Kurunegalla. 6)The proportion of individuals by family type and that by relation to the head for 10 year age group may partly indicate individuals shifting among households of different family type. 7)Cohabitation of children over 20 years of age is observed more often among one parent nuclear family households (over60%

Ductal carcinoma in situ and sentinel lymph node metastasis in breast cancer

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The impact of sentinel lymph node biopsy on breast cancer mimicking ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is a matter of debate.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We studied the rate of occurrence of sentinel lymph node metastasis in 255 breast cancer patients with pure DCIS showing no invasive components on routine pathological examination. We compared this to the rate of occurrence in 177 patients with predominant intraductal-component (IDC) breast cancers containing invasive foci equal to or less than 0.5 cm in size.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Most of the clinical and pathological baseline characteristics were the same between the two groups. However, peritumoral lymphatic permeation occurred less often in the pure DCIS group than in the IDC-predominant invasive-lesion group (1.2% vs. 6.8%, p = 0.002). One patient (0.39%) with pure DCIS had two sentinel lymph nodes positive for metastasis. This rate was significantly lower than that in patients with IDC-predominant invasive lesions (6.2%; p < 0.001).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Because the rate of sentinel lymph node metastasis in pure DCIS is very low, sentinel lymph node biopsy can safely be omitted.</p

Novel iodinated tracers, MIBG and BMIPP, for nuclear cardiology

With the rapid growth of molecular biology, in vivo imaging of such molecular process (i.e., molecular imaging) has been well developed. The molecular imaging has been focused on justifying advanced treatments and for assessing the treatment effects. Most of molecular imaging has been developed using PET camera and suitable PET radiopharmaceuticals. However, this technique cannot be widely available and we need alternative approach. 123I-labeled compounds have been also suitable for molecular imaging using single-photon computed tomography (SPECT) 123I-labeled meta-iodobenzylguanidine (MIBG) has been used for assessing severity of heart failure and prognosis. In addition, it has a potential role to predict fatal arrhythmia, particularly for those who had and are planned to receive implantable cardioverter-defibrillator treatment. 123I-beta-methyl-iodophenylpentadecanoic acid (BMIPP) plays an important role for identifying ischemia at rest, based on the unique capability to represent persistent metabolic alteration after recovery of ischemia, so called ischemic memory. Since BMIPP abnormalities may represent severe ischemia or jeopardized myocardium, it may permit risk analysis in CAD patients, particularly for those with chronic kidney disease and/or hemodialysis patients. This review will discuss about recent development of these important iodinated compounds

The 2nd DBCLS BioHackathon: interoperable bioinformatics Web services for integrated applications

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The interaction between biological researchers and the bioinformatics tools they use is still hampered by incomplete interoperability between such tools. To ensure interoperability initiatives are effectively deployed, end-user applications need to be aware of, and support, best practices and standards. Here, we report on an initiative in which software developers and genome biologists came together to explore and raise awareness of these issues: BioHackathon 2009.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Developers in attendance came from diverse backgrounds, with experts in Web services, workflow tools, text mining and visualization. Genome biologists provided expertise and exemplar data from the domains of sequence and pathway analysis and glyco-informatics. One goal of the meeting was to evaluate the ability to address real world use cases in these domains using the tools that the developers represented. This resulted in i) a workflow to annotate 100,000 sequences from an invertebrate species; ii) an integrated system for analysis of the transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs) enriched based on differential gene expression data obtained from a microarray experiment; iii) a workflow to enumerate putative physical protein interactions among enzymes in a metabolic pathway using protein structure data; iv) a workflow to analyze glyco-gene-related diseases by searching for human homologs of glyco-genes in other species, such as fruit flies, and retrieving their phenotype-annotated SNPs.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Beyond deriving prototype solutions for each use-case, a second major purpose of the BioHackathon was to highlight areas of insufficiency. We discuss the issues raised by our exploration of the problem/solution space, concluding that there are still problems with the way Web services are modeled and annotated, including: i) the absence of several useful data or analysis functions in the Web service "space"; ii) the lack of documentation of methods; iii) lack of compliance with the SOAP/WSDL specification among and between various programming-language libraries; and iv) incompatibility between various bioinformatics data formats. Although it was still difficult to solve real world problems posed to the developers by the biological researchers in attendance because of these problems, we note the promise of addressing these issues within a semantic framework.</p

The 3rd DBCLS BioHackathon: improving life science data integration with Semantic Web technologies.

BACKGROUND: BioHackathon 2010 was the third in a series of meetings hosted by the Database Center for Life Sciences (DBCLS) in Tokyo, Japan. The overall goal of the BioHackathon series is to improve the quality and accessibility of life science research data on the Web by bringing together representatives from public databases, analytical tool providers, and cyber-infrastructure researchers to jointly tackle important challenges in the area of in silico biological research. RESULTS: The theme of BioHackathon 2010 was the 'Semantic Web', and all attendees gathered with the shared goal of producing Semantic Web data from their respective resources, and/or consuming or interacting those data using their tools and interfaces. We discussed on topics including guidelines for designing semantic data and interoperability of resources. We consequently developed tools and clients for analysis and visualization. CONCLUSION: We provide a meeting report from BioHackathon 2010, in which we describe the discussions, decisions, and breakthroughs made as we moved towards compliance with Semantic Web technologies - from source provider, through middleware, to the end-consumer.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are