1,006 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
Validation of a Predictive Model for Survival in Patients With Advanced Cancer: Secondary Analysis of RTOG 9714.
BackgroundThe objective of this study was to validate a simple predictive model for survival of patients with advanced cancer.MethodsPrevious studies with training and validation datasets developed a model predicting survival of patients referred for palliative radiotherapy using three readily available factors: primary cancer site, site of metastases and Karnofsky performance score (KPS). This predictive model was used in the current study, where each factor was assigned a value proportional to its prognostic weight and the sum of the weighted scores for each patient was survival prediction score (SPS). Patients were also classified according to their number of risk factors (NRF). Three risk groups were established. The Radiation Therapy and Oncology Group (RTOG) 9714 data was used to provide an additional external validation set comprised of patients treated among multiple institutions with appropriate statistical tests.ResultsThe RTOG external validation set comprised of 908 patients treated at 66 different radiation facilities from 1998 to 2002. The SPS method classified all patients into the low-risk group. Based on the NRF, two distinct risk groups with significantly different survival estimates were identified. The ability to predict survival was similar to that of the training and previous validation datasets for both the SPS and NRF methods.ConclusionsThe three variable NRF model is preferred because of its relative simplicity
Ionic and electronic properties of the topological insulator BiTeSe investigated using -detected nuclear magnetic relaxation and resonance of Li
We report measurements on the high temperature ionic and low temperature
electronic properties of the 3D topological insulator BiTeSe using
ion-implanted Li -detected nuclear magnetic relaxation and
resonance. With implantation energies in the range 5-28 keV, the probes
penetrate beyond the expected range of the topological surface state, but are
still within 250 nm of the surface. At temperatures above ~150 K, spin-lattice
relaxation measurements reveal isolated Li diffusion with an
activation energy eV and attempt frequency s for atomic site-to-site hopping. At lower
temperature, we find a linear Korringa-like relaxation mechanism with a field
dependent slope and intercept, which is accompanied by an anomalous field
dependence to the resonance shift. We suggest that these may be related to a
strong contribution from orbital currents or the magnetic freezeout of charge
carriers in this heavily compensated semiconductor, but that conventional
theories are unable to account for the extent of the field dependence.
Conventional NMR of the stable host nuclei may help elucidate their origin.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
A Transgenic Mouse Line Expressing Cre Recombinase in Undifferentiated Postmitotic Mouse Retinal Bipolar Cell Precursors
Approaches for manipulating cell type-specific gene expression during development depend on the identification of novel genetic tools. Here, we report the generation of a transgenic mouse line that utilizes Vsx2 upstream sequences to direct Cre recombinase to developing retinal bipolar cells. In contrast to the endogenous Vsx2 expression pattern, transgene expression was not detected in proliferating retinal progenitor cells and was restricted to post-mitotic bipolar cells. Cre immunolabeling was detected in rod bipolar cells and a subset of ON and OFF cone bipolar cells. Expression was first observed at postnatal day 3 and was detectable between 24 hours and 36 hours after the last S-phase of the cell cycle. The appearance of Cre-immunolabeled cells preceded the expression of bipolar cell type-specific markers such as PKCα and Cabp5 suggesting that transgene expression is initiated prior to terminal differentiation. In the presence of a constitutive conditional reporter transgene, reporter fluorescence was detected in Cre-expressing bipolar cells in the mature retina as expected, but was also observed in Cre-negative Type 2 bipolar cells and occasionally in Cre-negative photoreceptor cells. Together these findings reveal a new transgenic tool for directing gene expression to post-mitotic retinal precursors that are mostly committed to a bipolar cell fate
- …