Nebraska Rural Poll and Metro Poll Research Brief: Well-Being Among Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Nebraskans

Better or Worse Off Compared to Five Years Ago and Ten Years From Now. Both the Nebraska Metro and Rural Polls asked residents if they are better or worse off than they were five years ago and if they expect to be better or worse off ten years from now

Nebraska Rural Poll and Metro Poll Research Brief: Attributes of Successful Communities for Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Nebraskans

Both the Nebraska Metro and Rural Polls asked residents how essential or necessary various characteristics are in order for them to have a high quality of life

Nebraska Rural Poll and Metro Poll Research Brief: Well-Being Among Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Nebraskans

Better or Worse Off Compared to Five Years Ago and Ten Years From Now. Both the Nebraska Metro and Rural Polls asked residents if they are better or worse off than they were five years ago and if they expect to be better or worse off ten years from now

Hopf algebras, coproducts and symbols: an application to Higgs boson amplitudes

We show how the Hopf algebra structure of multiple polylogarithms can be used to simplify complicated expressions for multi-loop amplitudes in perturbative quantum field theory and we argue that, unlike the recently popularized symbol-based approach, the coproduct incorporates information about the zeta values. We illustrate our approach by rewriting the two-loop helicity amplitudes for a Higgs boson plus three gluons in a simplified and compact form involving only classical polylogarithms.Comment: 46 page

‘Down with communism – Power to the people’: The legacies of 1989 and beyond

This special issue brings together reflections on the thirtieth anniversary of the revolutions of 1989 and considers their consequences for our understandings of European and global society. What seemed for some at least the surprising and rapid collapse of Eastern European state socialism prompted rethinking in social theory about the potential for emancipatory politics and new modes of social and political organization. At the same time, there was increased reflection on the nature of varieties of capitalism and the meaning of socialism beyond the failure of at least its etatist and autarkic mode. The five articles here and the editors’ introduction address themes such as utopian hopes, civil society, the transformation of Europe, the world beyond 1989, and new configurations of power and conflict

Metastatic breast carcinoma mimicking a sebaceous gland neoplasm: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Breast cancer is common in women and its metastases involve the skin in approximately one quarter of patients. Accordingly, metastatic breast cancer shown to be cutaneous through histology must be distinguished from a wide variety of other neoplasms as well as the diverse morphologic variants of breast cancer itself.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>We report the case of a 61-year-old Caucasian woman with cutaneous metastases of a bilateral ductal breast carcinoma that in histopathological examination mimicked an adnexal neoplasm with sebaceous differentiation.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Against the background of metastatic breast carcinoma, dermatopathological considerations of sebaceous differentiation of skin lesions are presented and discussed focusing on the rare differential diagnosis of sebaceous carcinoma of the breast.</p

Using clinical risk factors and bone mineral density to determine who among patients undergoing bone densitometry should have vertebral fracture assessment

Vertebral fracture assessment (VFA) is a new method for imaging thoracolumbar spine on bone densitometer. Among patients referred for bone densitometry, the selection of patients for VFA testing can be optimized using an index derived from clinical risk factors and bone density measurement. VFA, a method for imaging thoracolumbar spine on bone densitometer, was developed because vertebral fractures, although common and predictive of future fractures, are often not clinically diagnosed. The study objective was to develop a strategy for selecting patients for VFA. A convenience sample from a university hospital bone densitometry center included 892 subjects (795 women) referred for bone mineral density (BMD) testing. We used questionnaires to capture clinical risk factors and dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry to obtain BMD and VFA. Prevalence of vertebral fractures was 18% in women and 31% in men (p = 0.003 for gender difference). In women, age, height loss, glucocorticoid use, history of vertebral and other fractures, and BMD T-score were significantly and independently associated with vertebral fractures. A multivariate model which included above predictors had an area under the receiver operating curve of 0.85 with 95% confidence interval (CI) of 0.81 to 0.89. A risk factor index was derived from the above multivariate model. Using a level of 2 as a cut-off yielded 93% sensitivity (95% CI 87, 96) and 48% specificity (95% CI 69, 83). Assuming a 15% prevalence of vertebral fractures, this cut-off value had a 24% positive and 97% negative predictive value and required VFA scanning of three women at a cost of $60 (assuming a$20 cost/VFA scan) to detect one with vertebral fracture(s). Selecting patients for VFA can be optimized using an index derived from BMD measurement and easily obtained clinical risk factors

LipocalinPred: a SVM-based method for prediction of lipocalins

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Functional annotation of rapidly amassing nucleotide and protein sequences presents a challenging task for modern bioinformatics. This is particularly true for protein families sharing extremely low sequence identity, as for lipocalins, a family of proteins with varied functions and great diversity at the sequence level, yet conserved structures.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In the present study we propose a SVM based method for identification of lipocalin protein sequences. The SVM models were trained with the input features generated using amino acid, dipeptide and secondary structure compositions as well as PSSM profiles. The model derived using both PSSM and secondary structure emerged as the best model in the study. Apart from achieving a high prediction accuracy (>90% in leave-one-out), lipocalinpred correctly differentiates closely related fatty acid-binding proteins and triabins as non-lipocalins.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The method offers a promising approach as a lipocalin prediction tool, complementing PROSITE, Pfam and homology modelling methods.</p

Strong interface-induced spin-orbit coupling in graphene on WS2

Interfacial interactions allow the electronic properties of graphene to be modified, as recently demonstrated by the appearance of satellite Dirac cones in the band structure of graphene on hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) substrates. Ongoing research strives to explore interfacial interactions in a broader class of materials in order to engineer targeted electronic properties. Here we show that at an interface with a tungsten disulfide (WS2) substrate, the strength of the spin-orbit interaction (SOI) in graphene is very strongly enhanced. The induced SOI leads to a pronounced low-temperature weak anti-localization (WAL) effect, from which we determine the spin-relaxation time. We find that spin-relaxation time in graphene is two-to-three orders of magnitude smaller on WS2 than on SiO2 or hBN, and that it is comparable to the intervalley scattering time. To interpret our findings we have performed first-principle electronic structure calculations, which both confirm that carriers in graphene-on-WS2 experience a strong SOI and allow us to extract a spin-dependent low-energy effective Hamiltonian. Our analysis further shows that the use of WS2 substrates opens a possible new route to access topological states of matter in graphene-based systems.Comment: Originally submitted version in compliance with editorial guidelines. Final version with expanded discussion of the relation between theory and experiments to be published in Nature Communication