Port-a-caths in cancer patients

We report on 91 patients with cancer who underwent the insertion of 89 venous and 4 hepatic arterial, implanted vascular ports (port-a-caths) for periods of up to 33 months (total 1 525 patient-months). There were 1 fatal, 9 serious and 8 minor complications in 18 patients which are described and discussed. In this series, comlplications were more common in younger patients, and infection was rare.Port-a-caths are extremely useful for vascular access, and have a low complication rate. However, the occasional occurrence of serious and even fatal complications suggests that the decision to insert a device should be judiciously weighed

Needing to connect: The effect of self and others on young people's involvement with their mobile phones

The present research was a preliminary examination of young Australians’ mobile phone behaviour. The study explored the relationship between, and psychological predictors of, frequency of mobile phone use and mobile phone involvement conceptualised as people’s cognitive and behavioural interaction with their mobile phone. Participants were 946 Australian youth aged between 15 and 24 years. A descriptive measurement tool, the Mobile Phone Involvement Questionnaire (MPIQ), was developed. Self-identity and validation from others were explored as predictors of both types of mobile phone behaviour. A distinction was found between frequency of mobile phone use and mobile phone involvement. Only self-identity predicted frequency of use whereas both self-identity and validation from others predicted mobile phone involvement. These findings reveal the importance of distinguishing between frequency of use and people’s psychological relationship with their phone and that factors relating to one’s self-concept and approval from others both impact on young people’s mobile phone involvement

A database of phylogenetically atypical genes in archaeal and bacterial genomes, identified using the <it>DarkHorse </it>algorithm

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The process of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is believed to be widespread in Bacteria and Archaea, but little comparative data is available addressing its occurrence in complete microbial genomes. Collection of high-quality, automated HGT prediction data based on phylogenetic evidence has previously been impractical for large numbers of genomes at once, due to prohibitive computational demands. <it>DarkHorse</it>, a recently described statistical method for discovering phylogenetically atypical genes on a genome-wide basis, provides a means to solve this problem through lineage probability index (LPI) ranking scores. LPI scores inversely reflect phylogenetic distance between a test amino acid sequence and its closest available database matches. Proteins with low LPI scores are good horizontal gene transfer candidates; those with high scores are not.</p> <p>Description</p> <p>The <it>DarkHorse </it>algorithm has been applied to 955 microbial genome sequences, and the results organized into a web-searchable relational database, called the <it>DarkHorse </it>HGT Candidate Resource <url>http://darkhorse.ucsd.edu</url>. Users can select individual genomes or groups of genomes to screen by LPI score, search for protein functions by descriptive annotation or amino acid sequence similarity, or select proteins with unusual G+C composition in their underlying coding sequences. The search engine reports LPI scores for match partners as well as query sequences, providing the opportunity to explore whether potential HGT donor sequences are phylogenetically typical or atypical within their own genomes. This information can be used to predict whether or not sufficient information is available to build a well-supported phylogenetic tree using the potential donor sequence.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The <it>DarkHorse </it>HGT Candidate database provides a powerful, flexible set of tools for identifying phylogenetically atypical proteins, allowing researchers to explore both individual HGT events in single genomes, and large-scale HGT patterns among protein families and genome groups. Although the <it>DarkHorse </it>algorithm cannot, by itself, provide definitive proof of horizontal gene transfer, it is a flexible, powerful tool that can be combined with slower, more rigorous methods in situations where these other methods could not otherwise be applied.</p

Fortune favours the bold? exploring tournament behavior among Australian superannuation funds

In this paper we investigate the tournament induced risk-shifting behavior of Australian "multi-sector growth funds". We apply a regression-based methodology and examine tournaments based on the calendar year and the financial year. In our core analysis we find evidence in favor of Taylor's (J Econ Behav Organ 1455: 1-11, 2003) risk shifting tournament hypothesis for financial year-end tournaments. Apart from the standard tournament hypothesis we also report a range of findings regarding stability; fund age; and fund size. Support for the Taylor hypothesis generally continues across these variations as well