Evaluation of the first automated thyroglobulin assay

The aim of this study was to investigate technical and analytical performance of the first automated thyroglobulin (Tg) assay (DPC-Immulite(R); Diagnostic Products Corporation, Los Angeles, USA). In imprecision studies using several human serum pools ranging from 21 to 58 replicates, a coefficient of variation of 9.0 % was obtained at a mean Tg concentration of 0.84 ng/ml and of 6.1 % at a Tg concentration of 62.1 ng/ml. In a method comparison with a non-automated assay (BRAHMS LUMItest Tg(R), BRAHMS, Berlin, Germany) using 383 sera of 303 patients with thyroid carcinoma, regression analysis according to Passing and Bablock yielded in the following equation: Immulite Tg=1.6 x BRAHMS Tg - 0.1 ng/ml (Pearson's r=0.979). Sera obtained from 59 patients with thyroid carcinoma enabled comparative follow-up studies; in all cases qualitative agreement was found with regard to increase or decrease of serum Tg; in eight cases, however, Tg was detected with the Immulite assay but not with the BRAHMS assay. Further follow-up proved the presence of thyroid tissue in these patients. From these and further methodological data (dilution linearity, interference studies, carry-over study, high-dose hook properties, and short report time) it is concluded that the DPC-Immulite Tg assay meets the requirements of routine diagnostic use

Improving the scalability of parallel N-body applications with an event driven constraint based execution model

The scalability and efficiency of graph applications are significantly constrained by conventional systems and their supporting programming models. Technology trends like multicore, manycore, and heterogeneous system architectures are introducing further challenges and possibilities for emerging application domains such as graph applications. This paper explores the space of effective parallel execution of ephemeral graphs that are dynamically generated using the Barnes-Hut algorithm to exemplify dynamic workloads. The workloads are expressed using the semantics of an Exascale computing execution model called ParalleX. For comparison, results using conventional execution model semantics are also presented. We find improved load balancing during runtime and automatic parallelism discovery improving efficiency using the advanced semantics for Exascale computing.Comment: 11 figure

Impact of the Introduction of Calcimimetics on Timing of Parathyroidectomy in Secondary and Tertiary Hyperparathyroidism

Hyperparathyroidism (HPT), both secondary and tertiary, is common in patients with end-stage renal disease, and is associated with severe bone disorders, cardiovascular complications, and increased mortality. Since the introduction of calcimimetics in 2004, treatment of HPT has shifted from surgery to predominantly medical therapy. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of this change of management on the HPT patient population before undergoing (sub-)total parathyroidectomy (PTx). Overall, 119 patients with secondary or tertiary HPT undergoing PTx were included in a retrospective, single-center cohort. Group A, who underwent PTx before January 2005, was compared with group B, who underwent PTx after January 2005. Patient characteristics, time interval between HPT diagnosis and PTx, and postoperative complications were compared. Group A comprised 70 (58.8 %) patients and group B comprised 49 (41.2 %) patients. The median interval between HPT diagnosis and PTx was 27 (interquartile range [IQR] 12.5-48.0) and 49 (IQR 21.0-75.0) months for group A and B, respectively (p = 0.007). Baseline characteristics were similar among both groups. The median preoperative serum parathyroid hormone (PTH) level was 936 pg/mL (IQR 600-1273) for group A versus 1091 pg/mL (IQR 482-1373) for group B (p = 0.38). PTx resulted in a dramatic PTH reduction (less than twofold the upper limit: A, 80.0 %; B, 85.4 %), and postoperative complication rates were low in both groups (A: 7.8 %; B: 10.2 %) [p = 0.66]. The introduction of calcimimetics in 2004 is associated with a significant 2-year delay of surgery with continuously elevated preoperative PTH levels, while parathyroid surgery, even in a fragile population, is considered a safe and effective procedure

Deriving an emergent relational schema from RDF data

We motivate and describe techniques that allow to detect an "emergent" relational schema from RDF data. We show that on a wide variety of datasets, the found structure explains well over 90% of the RDF triples. Further, we also describe technical solutions to the semantic challenge to give short names that humans find logical to these emergent tables, columns and relationships between tables. Our techniques can be exploited in many ways, e.g., to improve the efficiency of SPARQL systems, or to use existing SQL-based applications on top of any RDF dataset using a RDBMS