Anastasoff v. United States and Appeals in Veterans\u27 Cases

Many cases regarding veterans\u27 benefits are heard in the Federal Circuit. The Federal Circuit has a practice of issuing one sentence orders in some cases. This practice benefits veterans by allowing decisions adverse to veterans to be made without creating precedential value. Removing the practice of unpublished opinions in the Federal Circuit would extinguish this benefit

Anastasoff v. United States and Appeals in Veterans\u27 Cases

Many cases regarding veterans\u27 benefits are heard in the Federal Circuit. The Federal Circuit has a practice of issuing one sentence orders in some cases. This practice benefits veterans by allowing decisions adverse to veterans to be made without creating precedential value. Removing the practice of unpublished opinions in the Federal Circuit would extinguish this benefit

The importance of DNA methylation in prostate cancer development.

After briefly reviewing the nature of DNA methylation, its general role in cancer and the tools available to interrogate it, we consider the literature surrounding DNA methylation as relating to prostate cancer. Specific consideration is given to recurrent alterations. A list of frequently reported genes is synthesized from 17 studies that have reported on methylation changes in malignant prostate tissue, and we chart the timing of those changes in the diseases history through amalgamation of several previously published data sets. We also review associations with genetic alterations and hormone signalling, before the practicalities of investigating prostate cancer methylation using cell lines are assessed. We conclude by outlining the interplay between DNA methylation and prostate cancer metabolism and their regulation by androgen receptor, with a specific discussion of the mitochondria and their associations with DNA methylation.CEM is funded by an ERC grant. IGM is supported in Oslo by funding from the Norwegian Research Council, Helse Sor-Ost and the University of Oslo through the Centre for Molecular Medicine (Norway), which is a part of the Nordic EMBL (European Molecular Biology Laboratory) partnership. IGM holds a visiting scientist position with Cancer Research UK through the Cambridge Research Institute and a Senior Honorary Visiting Research Fellowship with Cambridge University through the Department of Oncology. IGM is supported in Belfast by the Belfast-Manchester Movember Centre of Excellence (CE013_2-004), funded in partnership with Prostate Cancer UK. AGL is supported by a Cancer Research UK programme grant (C14303/A20406) to Simon Tavaré and by the European Commission through the Horizon 2020 project SOUND (Grant Agreement no. 633974). CEM and AGL acknowledge the support of the University of Cambridge, Cancer Research UK and Hutchison Whampoa Limited.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsbmb.2016.04.00

Performance and policy dimensions in internet routing

The Internet Routing Project, referred to in this report as the 'Highball Project', has been investigating architectures suitable for networks spanning large geographic areas and capable of very high data rates. The Highball network architecture is based on a high speed crossbar switch and an adaptive, distributed, TDMA scheduling algorithm. The scheduling algorithm controls the instantaneous configuration and swell time of the switch, one of which is attached to each node. In order to send a single burst or a multi-burst packet, a reservation request is sent to all nodes. The scheduling algorithm then configures the switches immediately prior to the arrival of each burst, so it can be relayed immediately without requiring local storage. Reservations and housekeeping information are sent using a special broadcast-spanning-tree schedule. Progress to date in the Highball Project includes the design and testing of a suite of scheduling algorithms, construction of software reservation/scheduling simulators, and construction of a strawman hardware and software implementation. A prototype switch controller and timestamp generator have been completed and are in test. Detailed documentation on the algorithms, protocols and experiments conducted are given in various reports and papers published. Abstracts of this literature are included in the bibliography at the end of this report, which serves as an extended executive summary

A Hidden Markov Movement Model for rapidly identifying behavioral states from animal tracks

Electronic telemetry is frequently used to document animal movement through time. Methods that can identify underlying behaviors driving specific movement patterns can help us understand how and why animals use available space, thereby aiding conservation and management efforts. For aquatic animal tracking data with significant measurement error, a Bayesian state‐space model called the first‐Difference Correlated Random Walk with Switching (DCRWS) has often been used for this purpose. However, for aquatic animals, highly accurate tracking data are now becoming more common. We developed a new hidden Markov model (HMM) for identifying behavioral states from animal tracks with negligible error, called the hidden Markov movement model (HMMM). We implemented as the basis for the HMMM the process equation of the DCRWS, but we used the method of maximum likelihood and the R package TMB for rapid model fitting. The HMMM was compared to a modified version of the DCRWS for highly accurate tracks, the DCRWS [Formula: see text] , and to a common HMM for animal tracks fitted with the R package moveHMM. We show that the HMMM is both accurate and suitable for multiple species by fitting it to real tracks from a grey seal, lake trout, and blue shark, as well as to simulated data. The HMMM is a fast and reliable tool for making meaningful inference from animal movement data that is ideally suited for ecologists who want to use the popular DCRWS implementation and have highly accurate tracking data. It additionally provides a groundwork for development of more complex modeling of animal movement with TMB. To facilitate its uptake, we make it available through the R package swim

GDNF selectively promotes regeneration of injury-primed sensory neurons in the lesioned spinal cord

Axonal regeneration within the CNS fails due to the growth-inhibitory environment and the limited intrinsic growth capacity of injured neurons. Injury to DRG peripheral axons induces expression of growth associated genes including members of the glial-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) signaling pathway and “pre-conditions” the injured cells into an active growth state, enhancing growth of their centrally projecting axons. Here, we show that pre-conditioning DRG neurons prior to culturing increased neurite outgrowth, which was further enhanced by GDNF in a bell-shaped growth response curve. In vivo, GDNF delivered directly to DRG cell bodies facilitated the pre-conditioning effect, further enhancing axonal regeneration beyond spinal cord lesions. Consistent with the in vitro results, the in vivo effect was seen only at low GDNF concentrations. We conclude that peripheral nerve injury upregulates GDNF signaling pathway components and that exogenous GDNF treatment selectively promotes axonal growth of injury-primed sensory neurons in a concentration-dependent fashion

Two-tier charging in Maputo Central Hospital: Costs, revenues and effects on equity of access to hospital services

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Special services within public hospitals are becoming increasingly common in low and middle income countries with the stated objective of providing higher comfort services to affluent customers and generating resources for under funded hospitals. In the present study expenditures, outputs and costs are analysed for the Maputo Central Hospital and its Special Clinic with the objective of identifying net resource flows between a system operating two-tier charging, and, ultimately, understanding whether public hospitals can somehow benefit from running Special Clinic operations.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A combination of step-down and bottom-up costing strategies were used to calculate recurrent as well as capital expenses, apportion them to identified cost centres and link costs to selected output measures.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The results show that cost differences between main hospital and clinic are marked and significant, with the Special Clinic's cost per patient and cost per outpatient visit respectively over four times and over thirteen times their equivalent in the main hospital.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>While the main hospital cost structure appeared in line with those from similar studies, salary expenditures were found to drive costs in the Special Clinic (73% of total), where capital and drug costs were surprisingly low (2 and 4% respectively). We attributed low capital and drug costs to underestimation by our study owing to difficulties in attributing the use of shared resources and to the Special Clinic's outsourcing policy. The large staff expenditure would be explained by higher physician time commitment, economic rents and subsidies to hospital staff. On the whole it was observed that: (a) the flow of capital and human resources was not fully captured by the financial systems in place and stayed largely unaccounted for; (b) because of the little consideration given to capital costs, the main hospital is more likely to be subsidising its Special Clinic operations, rather than the other way around.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We conclude that the observed lack of transparency may create scope for an inequitable cross subsidy of private customers by public resources.</p