LOCV calculation for Beta-stable matter at finite temperature

The method of lowest-order constrained variational, which predicts reasonably the nuclear matter semi-empirical data is used to calculate the equation of state of beta-stable matter at finite temperature. The Reid soft-core with and without the N-$\Delta$ interactions which fits the N-N scattering data as well as the $UV_{14}$ potential plus the three-nucleon interaction are considered in the nuclear many-body Hamiltonian. The electron and muon are treated relativistically in the total Hamiltonian at given temperature, to make the fluid electrically neutral and stable against beta decay. The calculation is performed for a wide range of baryon density and temperature which are of interest in the astrophysics. The free energy, entropy, proton abundance, etc. of nuclear beta-stable matter are calculated. It is shown that by increasing the temperature, the maximum proton abundance is pushed to the lower density while the maximum itself increases as we increase the temperature. The proton fraction is not enough to see any gas-liquid phase transition. Finally we get an overall agreement with other many-body techniques, which are available only at zero temperature.Comment: LaTex, 20 page

Intra-silicone oil injection of methotrexate at the end of vitrectomy for advanced proliferative diabetic retinopathy

PurposeTo evaluate the role of methotrexate (MTX) injected into the silicone oil at the end of pars plana vitrectomy for advanced proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR).MethodsIn this prospective comparative interventional study, eyes with severe diabetic tractional macular detachment or combined tractional/rhegmatogenous retinal detachment were included. Standard 20 gauge pars plana vitrectomy, and retinal reattachment was performed. In the case group, 250 μg MTX was injected into the silicone oil at the end of surgery. The rate of retinal re-detachment associated with fibrovascular proliferation or proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR) was assessed.ResultsOverall, 38 eyes of 35 patients (19 cases and 19 controls) were studied. The two groups were matched for age, sex, preoperative visual acuity, and the type of surgery (vitrectomy alone vs combined phacoemulsification/vitrectomy). Retinal re-detachment with fibrovascular proliferation or PVR occurred in seven eyes (36.8) in the MTX group and eight eyes (42.1) in the control group (P=0.74). Mean change in visual acuity was 0.04±0.71 and 0.39±0.70 logMAR in the MTX and the control group, respectively (P=0.14). The rate of improvement or worsening of visual acuity was similar between the two groups (P=0.51 and P=0.12).ConclusionIntra-silicone injection of MTX at the end of vitrectomy for retinal detachment associated with severe PDR did not reduce the risk of postoperative retinal detachment due to the fibrous or fibrovascular proliferations. © 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited

Posterior sub-tenon's bevacizumab injection in diabetic macular edema; a pilot study

Purpose: To evaluate the short-term results of sub-tenon's injection of bevacizumab in patients with clinically significant macular edema (CSME). Methods: In this prospective non-comparative interventional case series, sub-tenon's injection of 2.5. mg/0.1. ml bevacizumab was performed for eyes with CSME. Macular thickness and best corrected visual acuity measurements were performed before and one month after injections. Results: Nineteen eyes of twelve patients with a mean age of 59.8. ±. 5.7. years were evaluated. Thirteen eyes (68.4) had center-involving macular edema. No significant difference was observed between pre- and post-injection central subfield retinal thickness measurements (P= 0.3). Central subfield thickness measurements improved or remained unchanged in 13 eyes (68.4). Baseline BCVA of 0.48. ±. 0.35 LogMAR improved to 0.36. ±. 0.26 LogMAR after injection (P= 0.01). Improvement of. > 2 lines in BCVA was found in 5 eyes (26.3), and no eye lost. > 2 lines of BCVA. No complication associated with sub-tenon's injection was observed. Conclusion: Sub-tenon's injection of bevacizumab resulted in significant short-term visual improvement in eyes with CSME. Retinal thickness changes were not significant. © 2015 The Authors

Gingival neoplasm presenting as an ossifying epulis in a parrot cichlid fish (Hoplarchus psittacus)

This report describes the histopathological features of an ossifying epulis, measuring 1.5 × 1 × 1 cm in length, width and height, respectively, on the lingual surface of the lower jaw of a 2.5 year-old parrot cichlid (Hoplarchus psittacus) from a commercial aquarium. The tumor had appeared in the oral cavity three months prior to its introduction to the laboratory for diagnosis. Grossly, the neoplastic mass was pale-tan with a shiny, smooth surface and coalescing areas of hemorrhage. Microscopically, the overlying epithelium was hyperplastic and extended deeply into the underlying stroma. The stroma consisted of well vascularized collagenous tissue and neoplastic fibroblasts associated with irregular cords and islands of mineral deposition as dentin-like materials confirmed by Masson's trichrome and Goldner's trichrome staining

Detecting discordance enrichment among a series of two-sample genome-wide expression data sets

Background With the current microarray and RNA-seq technologies, two-sample genome-wide expression data have been widely collected in biological and medical studies. The related differential expression analysis and gene set enrichment analysis have been frequently conducted. Integrative analysis can be conducted when multiple data sets are available. In practice, discordant molecular behaviors among a series of data sets can be of biological and clinical interest. Methods In this study, a statistical method is proposed for detecting discordance gene set enrichment. Our method is based on a two-level multivariate normal mixture model. It is statistically efficient with linearly increased parameter space when the number of data sets is increased. The model-based probability of discordance enrichment can be calculated for gene set detection. Results We apply our method to a microarray expression data set collected from forty-five matched tumor/non-tumor pairs of tissues for studying pancreatic cancer. We divided the data set into a series of non-overlapping subsets according to the tumor/non-tumor paired expression ratio of gene PNLIP (pancreatic lipase, recently shown it association with pancreatic cancer). The log-ratio ranges from a negative value (e.g. more expressed in non-tumor tissue) to a positive value (e.g. more expressed in tumor tissue). Our purpose is to understand whether any gene sets are enriched in discordant behaviors among these subsets (when the log-ratio is increased from negative to positive). We focus on KEGG pathways. The detected pathways will be useful for our further understanding of the role of gene PNLIP in pancreatic cancer research. Among the top list of detected pathways, the neuroactive ligand receptor interaction and olfactory transduction pathways are the most significant two. Then, we consider gene TP53 that is well-known for its role as tumor suppressor in cancer research. The log-ratio also ranges from a negative value (e.g. more expressed in non-tumor tissue) to a positive value (e.g. more expressed in tumor tissue). We divided the microarray data set again according to the expression ratio of gene TP53. After the discordance enrichment analysis, we observed overall similar results and the above two pathways are still the most significant detections. More interestingly, only these two pathways have been identified for their association with pancreatic cancer in a pathway analysis of genome-wide association study (GWAS) data. Conclusions This study illustrates that some disease-related pathways can be enriched in discordant molecular behaviors when an important disease-related gene changes its expression. Our proposed statistical method is useful in the detection of these pathways. Furthermore, our method can also be applied to genome-wide expression data collected by the recent RNA-seq technology

Concordant integrative gene set enrichment analysis of multiple large-scale two-sample expression data sets

Background Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) is an important approach to the analysis of coordinate expression changes at a pathway level. Although many statistical and computational methods have been proposed for GSEA, the issue of a concordant integrative GSEA of multiple expression data sets has not been well addressed. Among different related data sets collected for the same or similar study purposes, it is important to identify pathways or gene sets with concordant enrichment. Methods We categorize the underlying true states of differential expression into three representative categories: no change, positive change and negative change. Due to data noise, what we observe from experiments may not indicate the underlying truth. Although these categories are not observed in practice, they can be considered in a mixture model framework. Then, we define the mathematical concept of concordant gene set enrichment and calculate its related probability based on a three-component multivariate normal mixture model. The related false discovery rate can be calculated and used to rank different gene sets. Results We used three published lung cancer microarray gene expression data sets to illustrate our proposed method. One analysis based on the first two data sets was conducted to compare our result with a previous published result based on a GSEA conducted separately for each individual data set. This comparison illustrates the advantage of our proposed concordant integrative gene set enrichment analysis. Then, with a relatively new and larger pathway collection, we used our method to conduct an integrative analysis of the first two data sets and also all three data sets. Both results showed that many gene sets could be identified with low false discovery rates. A consistency between both results was also observed. A further exploration based on the KEGG cancer pathway collection showed that a majority of these pathways could be identified by our proposed method. Conclusions This study illustrates that we can improve detection power and discovery consistency through a concordant integrative analysis of multiple large-scale two-sample gene expression data sets

Pharmacologic vitreolysis

The vitreoretinal interface is involved in a wide range of vitreoretinal disorders and separation of the posterior vitreous face from the retinal surface is an essential part of vitrectomy surgeries. A diverse range of enzymatic and non-enzymatic agents are being studied as an adjunct before or during vitrectomy to facilitate the induction of posterior vitreous detachment. There is a significant body of knowledge in the literature about different vitreolytic agents under investigation for a variety of pathologies involving the vitreoretinal interface which will be summarized in this review