Treatment of acne with intermittent and conventional isotretinoin: a randomized, controlled multicenter study

Oral isotretinoin is the most effective choice in the treatment of severe acne. Application of isotretionin to acne has been expanded to treat those patients with less severe but scarring acne who are responding unsatisfactorily to conventional therapies. However, its use is associated with many side effects, some of which can result in very disastrous consequences. Data related with intermittent isotretinoin therapy is still limited. Our aim was to asses the efficacy and tolerability of two different intermittent isotretinoin courses and compare them with conventional isotretinoin treatment. In this multicenter and controlled study, 66 patients with moderate to severe cases were randomized to receive either isotretionin for the first 10 days of each month for 6 months (group 1), or each day in the first month, afterwards the first 10 days of each month for 5 months (group 2) or daily for 6 months (group 3). The drug dosage was 0.5 mg/kg/day in all groups. Patients were followed-up for 12 months. Efficacy values were evaluable for 22 patients in group 1, 19 patients in group 2, and 19 patients in group 3. Acne scores in each group were significantly lower at the end of treatment and follow-up periods (P < 0.001). When patients were evaluated separately as moderate (n = 31) and severe (n = 29), no statistically significant differences were obtained among the treatment protocols in patients with moderate acne. However, there was a significant difference between groups 1 and 3 to the response of the treatments in severe acne patients at the end of follow-up period (P = 0.013). The frequency and severity of isotretionin-related side effects were found to be lower in groups 1 and 2 compared with group 3. Intermittent isotretinoin may represent an effective alternative treatment, especially in moderate acne with a low incidence and severity of side effects. The intermittent isotretinoin can be recommended in those patients not tolerating the classical dosage

Microsurgical and tractographic anatomical study of insular and transsylvian transinsular approach

This study is to define the operative anatomy of the insula with emphasis on the transsylvian transinsular approach. The anatomy was studied in 15 brain specimens, among five were dissected by use of fiber dissection technique; diffusion tensor imaging of 10 healthy volunteers was obtained with a 1.5-T MR system. The temporal stem consists mainly of the uncinate fasciculus, inferior occipitofrontal fasciculus, Meyer’s loop of the optic radiation and anterior commissure. The transinsular approach requires an incision of the inferior limiting sulcus. In this procedure, the fibers of the temporal stem can be interrupted to various degrees. The fiber dissection technique is a very relevant and reliable method for neurosurgeons to study the details of brain anatomic features. The DTI fiber tracking technique can identify the fiber tracts of the temporal stem. Moreover, it will also help further functional study of human insula

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles at high transverse momenta in PbPb collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV

The azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles in PbPb collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV is measured with the CMS detector at the LHC over an extended transverse momentum (pt) range up to approximately 60 GeV. The data cover both the low-pt region associated with hydrodynamic flow phenomena and the high-pt region where the anisotropies may reflect the path-length dependence of parton energy loss in the created medium. The anisotropy parameter (v2) of the particles is extracted by correlating charged tracks with respect to the event-plane reconstructed by using the energy deposited in forward-angle calorimeters. For the six bins of collision centrality studied, spanning the range of 0-60% most-central events, the observed v2 values are found to first increase with pt, reaching a maximum around pt = 3 GeV, and then to gradually decrease to almost zero, with the decline persisting up to at least pt = 40 GeV over the full centrality range measured.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Search for new physics with same-sign isolated dilepton events with jets and missing transverse energy

A search for new physics is performed in events with two same-sign isolated leptons, hadronic jets, and missing transverse energy in the final state. The analysis is based on a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.98 inverse femtobarns produced in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. This constitutes a factor of 140 increase in integrated luminosity over previously published results. The observed yields agree with the standard model predictions and thus no evidence for new physics is found. The observations are used to set upper limits on possible new physics contributions and to constrain supersymmetric models. To facilitate the interpretation of the data in a broader range of new physics scenarios, information on the event selection, detector response, and efficiencies is provided.Comment: Published in Physical Review Letter

X-ray emission from the Sombrero galaxy: discrete sources

We present a study of discrete X-ray sources in and around the bulge-dominated, massive Sa galaxy, Sombrero (M104), based on new and archival Chandra observations with a total exposure of ~200 ks. With a detection limit of L_X = 1E37 erg/s and a field of view covering a galactocentric radius of ~30 kpc (11.5 arcminute), 383 sources are detected. Cross-correlation with Spitler et al.'s catalogue of Sombrero globular clusters (GCs) identified from HST/ACS observations reveals 41 X-rays sources in GCs, presumably low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). We quantify the differential luminosity functions (LFs) for both the detected GC and field LMXBs, whose power-low indices (~1.1 for the GC-LF and ~1.6 for field-LF) are consistent with previous studies for elliptical galaxies. With precise sky positions of the GCs without a detected X-ray source, we further quantify, through a fluctuation analysis, the GC LF at fainter luminosities down to 1E35 erg/s. The derived index rules out a faint-end slope flatter than 1.1 at a 2 sigma significance, contrary to recent findings in several elliptical galaxies and the bulge of M31. On the other hand, the 2-6 keV unresolved emission places a tight constraint on the field LF, implying a flattened index of ~1.0 below 1E37 erg/s. We also detect 101 sources in the halo of Sombrero. The presence of these sources cannot be interpreted as galactic LMXBs whose spatial distribution empirically follows the starlight. Their number is also higher than the expected number of cosmic AGNs (52+/-11 [1 sigma]) whose surface density is constrained by deep X-ray surveys. We suggest that either the cosmic X-ray background is unusually high in the direction of Sombrero, or a distinct population of X-ray sources is present in the halo of Sombrero.Comment: 11 figures, 5 tables, ApJ in pres

Age- and Temperature-Dependent Somatic Mutation Accumulation in Drosophila melanogaster

Using a transgenic mouse model harboring a mutation reporter gene that can be efficiently recovered from genomic DNA, we previously demonstrated that mutations accumulate in aging mice in a tissue-specific manner. Applying a recently developed, similar reporter-based assay in Drosophila melanogaster, we now show that the mutation frequency at the lacZ locus in somatic tissue of flies is about three times as high as in mouse tissues, with a much higher fraction of large genome rearrangements. Similar to mice, somatic mutations in the fly also accumulate as a function of age, but they do so much more quickly at higher temperature, a condition which in invertebrates is associated with decreased life span. Most mutations were found to accumulate in the thorax and less in abdomen, suggesting the highly oxidative flight muscles as a possible source of genotoxic stress. These results show that somatic mutation loads in short-lived flies are much more severe than in the much longer-lived mice, with the mutation rate in flies proportional to biological rather than chronological aging