Polyvascular Atherosclerosis: Diagnostic and Prognostic Burden

ATHEROSCLEROSIS is a progressive disease process of the large and medium sized arteries that involves the gradual accumulation of lipids, infl ammatory cells, and fi brous elements in plaques located in the vessel walls. Its pathogenesis is multifactorial, involving numerous, well known risk factors, and genetic predisposition. Some of those risk factors are modifi able (i.e., cigarette smoking, obesity, physical inactivity, elevated LDL cholesterol, reduced HDL cholesterol, hypertension, and diabetes mellitus), but some of them are not (i.e., age, gender, family history). Intensive research during the past decades has shown that atherosclerosis is a systemic disease that aff ects diff erent vascular territories simultaneously (polyvascular disease, PVD). Th erefore, individuals with one manifestation of atherosclerosis are more likely to have concomitant disease in other vascular territories. Th e process of atherosclerotic plaque formation begins early in the life, and it continuous to progress causing clinical manifestations decades later. Studies have shown that a substantial number of patients were asymptomatic prior to the acute atherosclerotic event, which itself caries a large portion of mortality and morbidity burden of atherosclerotic disease. Indeed, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death around the world, accounting for 50% of all mortality in developed countries, up to 85% in low and middle income countries

Performance of the WaveBurst algorithm on LIGO data

In this paper we describe the performance of the WaveBurst algorithm which was designed for detection of gravitational wave bursts in interferometric data. The performance of the algorithm was evaluated on the test data set collected during the second LIGO Scientific run. We have measured the false alarm rate of the algorithm as a function of the threshold and estimated its detection efficiency for simulated burst waveforms.Comment: proceedings of GWDAW, 2003 conference, 13 pages, 6 figure

One Year of Alendronate Treatment Lowers Microstructural Stresses Associated with Trabecular Microdamage Initiation

Alendronate, an anti-remodeling agent, is commonly used to treat patients suffering from osteoporosis by increasing bone mineral density. Though fracture risk is lowered, an increase in microdamage accumulation has been documented in patients receiving alendronate, leading to questions about the potentially detrimental effects of remodeling suppression on the local tissue (material) properties. In this study, trabecular bone cores from the distal femur of beagle dogs treated for one year with alendronate, at doses scaled by weight to approximate osteoporotic and Paget's disease treatment doses in humans, were subjected to uniaxial compression to induce microdamage. Tissue level von Mises stresses were computed for alendronate-treated and non-treated controls using finite element analysis and correlated to microdamage morphology. Using a modified version of the Moore and Gibson classification for damage morphology, we determined that the von Mises stress for trabeculae exhibiting severe and linear microcrack patterns was decreased by approximately 25% in samples treated with alendronate compared with non-treated controls (p<0.01), whereas there was no reduction in the von Mises stress state for diffuse microdamage formation. Furthermore, an examination of the architectural and structural characteristics of damaged trabeculae demonstrated that severely damaged trabeculae were thinner, more aligned with the loading axis, and less mineralized than undamaged trabeculae in alendronate-treated samples (p<0.01). Similar relationships with damage morphology were found only with trabecular orientation in vehicle-treated control dogs. These results indicate that changes in bone's architecture and matrix properties associated with one year of alendronate administration reduce trabecular bone's ability to resist the formation of loading-induced severe and linear microcracks, both of which dissipate less energy prior to fracture than does diffuse damage

Self-similarity in NMR spectra: an application in assessing the level of cysteine

High resolution of NMR spectroscopic data of biosamples are a rich source of information on the metabolic response to physiological variation or pathological events. There are many advantages of NMR techniques such as the sample preparation is fast, simple and non-invasive. Statistical analysis of NMR spectra usually focuses on differential expression of large resonance intensity corresponding to abundant metabolites and involves several data preprocessing steps. In this paper we estimate functional components of spectra and test their significance using multiscale techniques. We also explore scaling in NMR spectra and use the systematic variability of scaling descriptors to predict the level of cysteine, an important precursor of glutathione, a control antioxidant in human body. This is motivated by high cost (in time and resources) of traditional methods for assessing cysteine level by high performance liquid chromatograph (HPLC)

Cancer and systemic inflammation: treat the tumour and treat the host

Determinants of cancer progression and survival are multifactorial and host responses are increasingly appreciated to have a major role. Indeed, the development and maintenance of a systemic inflammatory response has been consistently observed to confer poorer outcome, in both early and advanced stage disease. For patients, cancer-associated symptoms are of particular importance resulting in a marked impact on day-to-day quality of life and are also associated with poorer outcome. These symptoms are now recognised to cluster with one another with anorexia, weight loss and physical function forming a recognised cluster whereas fatigue, pain and depression forming another. Importantly, it has become apparent that these symptom clusters are associated with presence of a systemic inflammatory response in the patient with cancer. Given the understanding of the above, there is now a need to intervene to moderate systemic inflammatory responses, where present. In this context the rationale for therapeutic intervention using nonselective anti-inflammatory agents is clear and compelling and likely to become a part of routine clinical practice in the near future. The published literature on therapeutic intervention using anti-inflammatory agents for cancer-associated symptoms was reviewed. There are important parallels with the development of useful treatments for the systemic inflammatory response in patients with rheumatological disease and cardiovascular disease

Bayesian Wavelet Shrinkage of the Haar-Fisz Transformed Wavelet Periodogram.

It is increasingly being realised that many real world time series are not stationary and exhibit evolving second-order autocovariance or spectral structure. This article introduces a Bayesian approach for modelling the evolving wavelet spectrum of a locally stationary wavelet time series. Our new method works by combining the advantages of a Haar-Fisz transformed spectrum with a simple, but powerful, Bayesian wavelet shrinkage method. Our new method produces excellent and stable spectral estimates and this is demonstrated via simulated data and on differenced infant electrocardiogram data. A major additional benefit of the Bayesian paradigm is that we obtain rigorous and useful credible intervals of the evolving spectral structure. We show how the Bayesian credible intervals provide extra insight into the infant electrocardiogram data

Are conductance plateaus independent events in atomic point contact measurements ? A statistical approach

Room temperature conductance-elongation curves of gold atomic wires are measured using a Scanning Tunnelling Microscope Break Junction technique. Landauer's conductance plateaus are individually identified and statistically analysed. Both the probabilities to observe, and the lengths of the two last plateaus (at conductance values close to 2e2/h and 4e2/h) are studied. All results converge to show that the occurrence of these two conductance plateaus on a conductance-elongation curve are statistically independent events.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in Nanotechnolog

Separated Kaon Electroproduction Cross Section and the Kaon Form Factor from 6 GeV JLab Data

The $^{1}H$($e,e^\prime K^+$)$\Lambda$ reaction was studied as a function of the Mandelstam variable $-t$ using data from the E01-004 (FPI-2) and E93-018 experiments that were carried out in Hall C at the 6 GeV Jefferson Lab. The cross section was fully separated into longitudinal and transverse components, and two interference terms at four-momentum transfers $Q^2$ of 1.00, 1.36 and 2.07 GeV$^2$. The kaon form factor was extracted from the longitudinal cross section using the Regge model by Vanderhaeghen, Guidal, and Laget. The results establish the method, previously used successfully for pion analyses, for extracting the kaon form factor. Data from 12 GeV Jefferson Lab experiments are expected to have sufficient precision to distinguish between theoretical predictions, for example recent perturbative QCD calculations with modern parton distribution amplitudes. The leading-twist behavior for light mesons is predicted to set in for values of $Q^2$ between 5-10 GeV$^2$, which makes data in the few GeV regime particularly interesting. The $Q^2$ dependence at fixed $x$ and $-t$ of the longitudinal cross section we extracted seems consistent with the QCD factorization prediction within the experimental uncertainty