Colorectal cancer screening: From test performance to participant experience

__Abstract__ Influenza A virus is a member of the Orthomyxoviridae family. The influenza A viruses are classified on the basis of antigenic properties of the glycoproteins hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA) into 17 HA subtypes (H1-H17) and 10 NA subtypes (N1-N10) . These different subtypes of HA and NA are used in influenza A virus nomenclature, to discriminate viruses based on the surface glycoproteins (e.g. H5N1, H3N2). All subtypes with the exception of H17N10 circulate in wild birds, which are considered their natural reservoir. The H17N10 subtype has recently been isolated from bats, raising the possibility that birds are not the exclusive influenza virus reservoir. Influenza A virus is a single-stranded negative-sense segmented RNA virus, with a genome consisting of eight gene segments, that can encode up to 16 proteins (Fig 1a)

Perspective review of what is needed for molecular-specific fluorescence-guided surgery

Molecular image-guided surgery has the potential for translating the tools of molecular pathology to real-time guidance in surgery. As a whole, there are incredibly positive indicators of growth, including the first United States Food and Drug Administration clearance of an enzyme-biosynthetic-activated probe for surgery guidance, and a growing number of companies producing agents and imaging systems. The strengths and opportunities must be continued but are hampered by important weaknesses and threats within the field. A key issue to solve is the inability of macroscopic imaging tools to resolve microscopic biological disease heterogeneity and the limitations in microscopic systems matching surgery workflow. A related issue is that parsing out true molecular-specific uptake from simple-enhanced permeability and retention is hard and requires extensive pathologic analysis or multiple in vivo tests, comparing fluorescence accumulation with standard histopathology and immunohistochemistry. A related concern in the field is the over-reliance on a finite number of chosen preclinical models, leading to early clinical translation when the probe might not be optimized for high intertumor variation or intratumor heterogeneity. The ultimate potential may require multiple probes, as are used in molecular pathology, and a combination with ultrahigh-resolution imaging and image recognition systems, which capture the data at a finer granularity than is possible by the surgeon. Alternatively, one might choose a more generalized approach by developing the tracer based on generic hallmarks of cancer to create a more "one-size-fits-all" concept, similar to metabolic aberrations as exploited in fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) (i.e., Warburg effect) or tumor acidity. Finally, methods to approach the problem of production cost minimization and regulatory approvals in a manner consistent with the potential revenue of the field will be important. In this area, some solid steps have been demonstrated in the use of fluorescent labeling commercial antibodies and separately in microdosing studies with small molecules. (C) The Authors

The International Mass Loading Service

The International Mass Loading Service computes four loadings: a) atmospheric pressure loading; b) land water storage loading; c) oceanic tidal loading; and d) non-tidal oceanic loading. The service provides to users the mass loading time series in three forms: 1) pre-computed time series for a list of 849 space geodesy stations; 2) pre-computed time series on the global 1deg x 1deg grid; and 3) on-demand Internet service for a list of stations and a time range specified by the user. The loading displacements are provided for the time period from 1979.01.01 through present, updated on an hourly basis, and have latencies 8-20 hours.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, to appear in the Proceedings of the Reference Frames for Applications in Geosciences Simposium, held in Luxemboug in October 201

Quasi-static aberrations induced by laser guide stars in adaptive optics

Laser Guide Star Adaptive Optics (LGS AO) systems use the return from an artificial guide star to measure the wavefront aberrations in the direction of the science object. We observe quasi-static differences between the measured wavefront and the wavefront aberration of the science object. This paper quantifies and explains the source of the difference between the wavefronts measured using an LGS and a natural guide star at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which can be as high as 1000 nm RMS

Single-electron tunneling in InP nanowires

We report on the fabrication and electrical characterization of field-effect devices based on wire-shaped InP crystals grown from Au catalyst particles by a vapor-liquid-solid process. Our InP wires are n-type doped with diameters in the 40-55 nm range and lengths of several microns. After being deposited on an oxidized Si substrate, wires are contacted individually via e-beam fabricated Ti/Al electrodes. We obtain contact resistances as low as ~10 kOhm, with minor temperature dependence. The distance between the electrodes varies between 0.2 and 2 micron. The electron density in the wires is changed with a back gate. Low-temperature transport measurements show Coulomb-blockade behavior with single-electron charging energies of ~1 meV. We also demonstrate energy quantization resulting from the confinement in the wire.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Adiabatic quantum computation and quantum phase transitions

We analyze the ground state entanglement in a quantum adiabatic evolution algorithm designed to solve the NP-complete Exact Cover problem. The entropy of entanglement seems to obey linear and universal scaling at the point where the mass gap becomes small, suggesting that the system passes near a quantum phase transition. Such a large scaling of entanglement suggests that the effective connectivity of the system diverges as the number of qubits goes to infinity and that this algorithm cannot be efficiently simulated by classical means. On the other hand, entanglement in Grover's algorithm is bounded by a constant.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in PR

Mg-Ni-H films as selective coatings: tunable reflectance by layered hydrogenation

Unlike other switchable mirrors, Mg2NiHx films show large changes in reflection that yield very low reflectance (high absorptance) at different hydrogen contents, far before reaching the semiconducting state. The resulting reflectance patterns are of interference origin, due to a self-organized layered hydrogenation mechanism that starts at the substrate interface, and can therefore be tuned by varying the film thickness. This tunability, together with the high absorptance contrast observed between the solar and the thermal energies, strongly suggests the use of these films in smart coatings for solar applications.Comment: Three two-column pages with 3 figures embedded; RevTE