Bilateral anterior dislocation of the shoulders at the start of a backstroke competition

Bilateral anterior dislocation of the shoulders is very rare. A 20-year-old man presented with bilateral anterior shoulder dislocation as a result of a diving incident. He complained of pain and restriction of movement in both shoulders with abducted and externally rotated arms. Radiographs revealed that the shoulders were dislocated. The patient was treated with closed reduction and was able to resume swimming 3 months later. To our knowledge, this is the first bilateral anterior dislocation of the shoulders during a backstroke swimming competition that was caused by this mechanism of injury. The rarity of this lesion and its uncommon mechanism prompted us to relate this observation

Increasing recruitment to randomised trials: a review of randomised controlled trials

BACKGROUND: Poor recruitment to randomised controlled trials (RCTs) is a widespread and important problem. With poor recruitment being such an important issue with respect to the conduct of randomised trials, a systematic review of controlled trials on recruitment methods was undertaken in order to identify strategies that are effective. METHODS: We searched the register of trials in Cochrane library from 1996 to end of 2004. We also searched Web of Science for 2004. Additional trials were identified from personal knowledge. Included studies had to use random allocation and participants had to be allocated to different methods of recruitment to a 'real' randomised trial. Trials that randomised participants to 'mock' trials and trials of recruitment to non-randomised studies (e.g., case control studies) were excluded. Information on the study design, intervention and control, and number of patients recruited was extracted by the 2 authors. RESULTS: We identified 14 papers describing 20 different interventions. Effective interventions included: telephone reminders; questionnaire inclusion; monetary incentives; using an 'open' rather than placebo design; and making trial materials culturally sensitive. CONCLUSION: Few trials have been undertaken to test interventions to improve trial recruitment. There is an urgent need for more RCTs of recruitment strategies

Search for sterile neutrino mixing in the MINOS long-baseline experiment

A search for depletion of the combined flux of active neutrino species over a 735 km baseline is reported using neutral-current interaction data recorded by the MINOS detectors in the NuMI neutrino beam. Such a depletion is not expected according to conventional interpretations of neutrino oscillation data involving the three known neutrino flavors. A depletion would be a signature of oscillations or decay to postulated noninteracting sterile neutrinos, scenarios not ruled out by existing data. From an exposure of 3.18×1020 protons on target in which neutrinos of energies between ~500¿¿MeV and 120 GeV are produced predominantly as ¿µ, the visible energy spectrum of candidate neutral-current reactions in the MINOS far detector is reconstructed. Comparison of this spectrum to that inferred from a similarly selected near-detector sample shows that of the portion of the ¿µ flux observed to disappear in charged-current interaction data, the fraction that could be converting to a sterile state is less than 52% at 90% confidence level (C.L.). The hypothesis that active neutrinos mix with a single sterile neutrino via oscillations is tested by fitting the data to various models. In the particular four-neutrino models considered, the mixing angles ¿24 and ¿34 are constrained to be less than 11° and 56° at 90% C.L., respectively. The possibility that active neutrinos may decay to sterile neutrinos is also investigated. Pure neutrino decay without oscillations is ruled out at 5.4 standard deviations. For the scenario in which active neutrinos decay into sterile states concurrently with neutrino oscillations, a lower limit is established for the neutrino decay lifetime t3/m3>2.1×10-12¿¿s/eV at 90% C.L

First observations of separated atmospheric nu_mu and bar{nu-mu} events in the MINOS detector

The complete 5.4 kton MINOS far detector has been taking data since the beginning of August 2003 at a depth of 2070 meters water-equivalent in the Soudan mine, Minnesota. This paper presents the first MINOS observations of nuµ and [overline nu ]µ charged-current atmospheric neutrino interactions based on an exposure of 418 days. The ratio of upward- to downward-going events in the data is compared to the Monte Carlo expectation in the absence of neutrino oscillations, giving Rup/downdata/Rup/downMC=0.62-0.14+0.19(stat.)±0.02(sys.). An extended maximum likelihood analysis of the observed L/E distributions excludes the null hypothesis of no neutrino oscillations at the 98% confidence level. Using the curvature of the observed muons in the 1.3 T MINOS magnetic field nuµ and [overline nu ]µ interactions are separated. The ratio of [overline nu ]µ to nuµ events in the data is compared to the Monte Carlo expectation assuming neutrinos and antineutrinos oscillate in the same manner, giving R[overline nu ][sub mu]/nu[sub mu]data/R[overline nu ][sub mu]/nu[sub mu]MC=0.96-0.27+0.38(stat.)±0.15(sys.), where the errors are the statistical and systematic uncertainties. Although the statistics are limited, this is the first direct observation of atmospheric neutrino interactions separately for nuµ and [overline nu ]µ

Measurements of neutrino oscillation in appearance and disappearance channels by the T2K experiment with 6.6 x 10(20) protons on target

111 pages, 45 figures, submitted to Physical Review D. Minor revisions to text following referee comments111 pages, 45 figures, submitted to Physical Review D. Minor revisions to text following referee comments111 pages, 45 figures, submitted to Physical Review D. Minor revisions to text following referee commentsWe thank the J-PARC staff for superb accelerator performance and the CERN NA61/SHINE Collaboration for providing valuable particle production data. We acknowledge the support of MEXT, Japan; NSERC, NRC, and CFI, Canada; CEA and CNRS/IN2P3, France; DFG, Germany; INFN, Italy; National Science Centre (NCN), Poland; RSF, RFBR and MES, Russia; MINECO and ERDF funds, Spain; SNSF and SER, Switzerland; STFC, UK; and the U. S. Deparment of Energy, USA. We also thank CERN for the UA1/NOMAD magnet, DESY for the HERA-B magnet mover system, NII for SINET4, the WestGrid and SciNet consortia in Compute Canada, GridPP, UK, and the Emerald High Performance Computing facility in the Centre for Innovation, UK. In addition, participation of individual researchers and institutions has been further supported by funds from ERC (FP7), EU; JSPS, Japan; Royal Society, UK; and DOE Early Career program, USA

Measurement of the electron neutrino charged-current interaction rate on water with the T2K ND280 pi(0) detector

10 pages, 6 figures, Submitted to PRDhttp://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.91.112010© 2015 American Physical Society11 pages, 6 figures, as accepted to PRD11 pages, 6 figures, as accepted to PRD11 pages, 6 figures, as accepted to PR

Saccadic Eye Movement Abnormalities in Children with Epilepsy

Childhood onset epilepsy is associated with disrupted developmental integration of sensorimotor and cognitive functions that contribute to persistent neurobehavioural comorbidities. The role of epilepsy and its treatment on the development of functional integration of motor and cognitive domains is unclear. Oculomotor tasks can probe neurophysiological and neurocognitive mechanisms vulnerable to developmental disruptions by epilepsy-related factors. The study involved 26 patients and 48 typically developing children aged 8–18 years old who performed a prosaccade and an antisaccade task. Analyses compared medicated chronic epilepsy patients and unmedicated controlled epilepsy patients to healthy control children on saccade latency, accuracy and dynamics, errors and correction rate, and express saccades. Patients with medicated chronic epilepsy had impaired and more variable processing speed, reduced accuracy, increased peak velocity and a greater number of inhibitory errors, younger unmedicated patients also showed deficits in error monitoring. Deficits were related to reported behavioural problems in patients. Epilepsy factors were significant predictors of oculomotor functions. An earlier age at onset predicted reduced latency of prosaccades and increased express saccades, and the typical relationship between express saccades and inhibitory errors was absent in chronic patients, indicating a persistent reduction in tonic cortical inhibition and aberrant cortical connectivity. In contrast, onset in later childhood predicted altered antisaccade dynamics indicating disrupted neurotransmission in frontoparietal and oculomotor networks with greater demand on inhibitory control. The observed saccadic abnormalities are consistent with a dysmaturation of subcortical-cortical functional connectivity and aberrant neurotransmission. Eye movements could be used to monitor the impact of epilepsy on neurocognitive development and help assess the risk for poor neurobehavioural outcomes

Measurement of single π0 production by coherent neutral-current ν Fe interactions in the MINOS Near Detector

Forward single π0 production by coherent neutral-current interactions, νA→νAπ0, is investigated using a 2.8×1020 protons-on-target exposure of the MINOS Near Detector. For single-shower topologies, the event distribution in production angle exhibits a clear excess above the estimated background at very forward angles for visible energy in the range 1-8 GeV. Cross sections are obtained for the detector medium comprised of 80% iron and 20% carbon nuclei with =48, the highest- target used to date in the study of this coherent reaction. The total cross section for coherent neutral-current single π0 production initiated by the νμ flux of the NuMI low-energy beam with mean (mode) Eν of 4.9 GeV (3.0 GeV), is 77.6±5.0(stat)-16.8+15.0(syst)×10-40 cm2 pernucleus. The results are in good agreement with predictions of the Berger-Sehgal model

Identification and Characterization of Nucleolin as a COUP-TFII Coactivator of Retinoic Acid Receptor β Transcription in Breast Cancer Cells

The orphan nuclear receptor COUP-TFII plays an undefined role in breast cancer. Previously we reported lower COUP-TFII expression in tamoxifen/endocrine-resistant versus sensitive breast cancer cell lines. The identification of COUP-TFII-interacting proteins will help to elucidate its mechanism of action as a transcriptional regulator in breast cancer.FLAG-affinity purification and multidimensional protein identification technology (MudPIT) identified nucleolin among the proteins interacting with COUP-TFII in MCF-7 tamoxifen-sensitive breast cancer cells. Interaction of COUP-TFII and nucleolin was confirmed by coimmunoprecipitation of endogenous proteins in MCF-7 and T47D breast cancer cells. In vitro studies revealed that COUP-TFII interacts with the C-terminal arginine-glycine repeat (RGG) domain of nucleolin. Functional interaction between COUP-TFII and nucleolin was indicated by studies showing that siRNA knockdown of nucleolin and an oligonucleotide aptamer that targets nucleolin, AS1411, inhibited endogenous COUP-TFII-stimulated RARB2 expression in MCF-7 and T47D cells. Chromatin immunoprecipitation revealed COUP-TFII occupancy of the RARB2 promoter was increased by all-trans retinoic acid (atRA). RARβ2 regulated gene RRIG1 was increased by atRA and COUP-TFII transfection and inhibited by siCOUP-TFII. Immunohistochemical staining of breast tumor microarrays showed nuclear COUP-TFII and nucleolin staining was correlated in invasive ductal carcinomas. COUP-TFII staining correlated with ERα, SRC-1, AIB1, Pea3, MMP2, and phospho-Src and was reduced with increased tumor grade.Our data indicate that nucleolin plays a coregulatory role in transcriptional regulation of the tumor suppressor RARB2 by COUP-TFII

Measurements of atmospheric neutrinos and antineutrinos in the MINOS far detector

This paper reports measurements of atmospheric neutrino and antineutrino interactions in the MINOS Far Detector, based on 2553 live-days (37.9 kton-years) of data. A total of 2072 candidate events are observed. These are separated into 905 contained-vertex muons and 466 neutrino-induced rock-muons, both produced by charged-current v_µ and v¯_µ interactions, and 701 contained-vertex showers, composed mainly of charged-current v_e and v¯_e interactions and neutral-current interactions. The curvature of muon tracks in the magnetic field of the MINOS Far Detector is used to select separate samples of v_µ and v¯_µ events. The observed ration of v¯_µ to v_µ events is compared with the Monte Carlo (MC) simulation, giving a double ration of (R^(data)_(v¯/v))/(R^(MC)_(v¯/v)) = 1.03 ± 0.08(stat) ± 0.08(syst). The v_µ and v¯_µ data are separated into bins of L/E resolution, based on the reconstructed energy and direction of each event, and a maximum likelihood fit to the observed L/E distributions is used to determine the atmospheric neutrino oscillation parameters. This fit returns 90% confidence limits of |Δm^2| = (1.9 ± 0.4) x 10^(-3) eV^2 and sin^(2)2θ > 0.86. The fit is extended to incorporate separate v_µ and v¯_µ oscillation parameters, returning 90% confidence limits of |Δm^2|-|Δm¯^2| = 0.6^(2.4)_(-0.8) x 10^(-3) eV^2 on the difference between the squared-mass splittings for neutrinos and antineutrinos