On h h -transforms of one-dimensional diffusions stopped upon hitting zero

For a one-dimensional diffusion on an interval for which 0 is the regular-reflecting left boundary, three kinds of conditionings to avoid zero are studied. The limit processes are $h$-transforms of the process stopped upon hitting zero, where $h$'s are the ground state, the scale function, and the renormalized zero-resolvent. Several properties of the $h$-transforms are investigated

Validating the Effects of Inclusive Childcare with the Interaction Rating Scale

Abstract This study aimed to validate the effects of inclusion in center-based childcare, focusing on the inclusion of children with disabilities. One hundred thirty-eight 3 to 12-year-olds participated in this study. Participants were required to complete a 5-minute interaction session and were evaluated using the Interaction Rating Scale between Children (IRSC) as an evidence-based practical index of social skills. Significantly higher IRSC self-control scores were observed in interactions between typically developing children and children with disabilities than in normal children pairs. Additionally, behaviors reflecting the IRSC items, "explains his/her opinion logically" and "explains his/her opinion based on the level of competence/ability of the partner" were more frequently observed in interactions involving peers with disabilities than in those involving only typically developing peers. These results suggest that inclusive childcare may be effective in enhancing child social competence, especially self-control and flexibility/adaptability, depending on interaction partners' needs for care

Spectral density and Sobolev inequalities for pure and mixed states

We prove some general Sobolev-type and related inequalities for positive operators A of given ultracontractive spectral decay, without assuming e^{-tA} is submarkovian. These inequalities hold on functions, or pure states, as usual, but also on mixed states, or density operators in the quantum mechanical sense. This provides universal bounds of Faber-Krahn type on domains, that apply to their whole Dirichlet spectrum distribution, not only the first eigenvalue. Another application is given to relate the Novikov-Shubin numbers of coverings of finite simplicial complexes to the vanishing of the torsion of some l^{p,2}-cohomology

Prospective study of intratumoral microvessel density, p53 expression and survival in colorectal cancer

Adjuvant treatment of patients with colorectal cancer is hampered by a lack of reliable prognostic factors in addition to the clinicopathological staging system. A poorly defined but considerable fraction of Astler–Coller stage B patients will experience tumour recurrence, and some of the stage C patients will probably survive for a prolonged time after surgery without adjuvant treatment. Assessing parameters related to tumour angiogenesis has provided valuable prognostic information in different tumour types. The formation of new microvessels is part of the malignant phenotype in the majority of tumours. Alterations in tumour-suppressor genes, such as the p53 gene, or oncogenes, such as the ras gene, have been found to be responsible for changing the local balance of pro- and antiangiogenic factors in favour of the former. In this prospective study, intratumoral microvessel density (IMD) was assessed by immunostaining tissue sections for CD31 and counting individual microvessels in selected and highly vascular regions in specimens of 145 colorectal cancer patients. p53 protein overexpression was semiquantitatively determined after immunohistochemistry. In both uni- and multivariate analysis, high IMD was significantly associated with shorter survival in the patients undergoing surgery with curative intent (Astler–Coller stages A–C). p53 added prognostic power to IMD, both in Astler–Coller stage B and stage C patients. An association between IMD and mode of metastasis was also noted. High IMD was strongly associated with the incidence of haematogenous metastasis during follow-up, but not with the presence of lymphogenic metastasis observed at surgery. This study confirms the results of previous retrospective analyses of IMD and survival in colorectal cancer and warrants a clinical validation by randomizing stage B tumour patients with high IMD and p53 overexpression between adjuvant treatment or not. © 1999 Cancer Research Campaig

Microvessel density and VEGF expression are prognostic factors in colorectal cancer. Meta-analysis of the literature

We performed a meta-analysis of all published studies relating intratumoural microvessel density (MVD) (45 studies) or vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) expression (27 studies), both reflecting angiogenesis, to relapse free (RFS) and overall survival (OS) in colorectal cancer (CRC). For each study, MVD impact was measured by risk ratio between the two survival distributions with median MVD as cutoff. Eleven studies did not mention survival data or fit inclusion criteria, six were multiple publications of same series, leaving 32 independent studies for MVD (3496 patients) and 18 for VEGF (2050 patients). Microvessel density was assessed by immunohistochemistry, using antibodies against factor VIII (16 studies), CD31 (10 studies) or CD34 (seven studies). Vascular endothelial growth factor expression was mostly assessed by immunohistochemistry. Statistics were performed for MVD in 22 studies (the others lacking survival statistics) including nine studies (n=957) for RFS and 18 for OS (n=2383) and for VEGF in 17 studies, including nine studies for RFS (n=1064) and 10 for OS (n=1301). High MVD significantly predicted poor RFS (RR=2.32 95% CI: 1.39–3.90; P<0.001) and OS (RR=1.44; 95% CI: 1.08–1.92; P=0.01). Using CD31 or CD34, MVD was inversely related to survival, whereas it was not using factor VIII. Vascular endothelial growth factor expression significantly predicted poor RFS (RR=2.84; 95% CI: 1.95–4.16) and OS (RR=1.65; 95% CI: 1.27–2.14). To strengthen our findings, future prospective studies should explore the relation between MVD or VEGF expression and survival or response to therapy (e.g. antiangiogenic therapy). Assessment of these angiogenic markers should be better standardised in future studies