A VELOUR post hoc subset analysis: prognostic groups and treatment outcomes in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer treated with aflibercept and FOLFIRI

The VELOUR study demonstrated a survival benefit for FOLFIRI + aflibercept versus FOLFIRI + placebo in metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) patients who progressed on oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy. Continued divergence of overall survival (OS) curves in the intension to treat (ITT) population, with the survival advantage persisting beyond median survival time, suggested subpopulations might have different magnitudes of survival gain. Additionally, 10% of patients within VELOUR had recurrence during or within 6 months of completing oxaliplatin-based adjuvant therapy (adjuvant fast relapsers) - previously identified as having poorer survival outcomes

Qualitative Detection of Hepatitis C Virus in the Patients Going Through Eye Surgery

Purpose: This study was carried out to analyze the prevalence of hepatitis C Virus in patient going through eye surgery. Material and Method: This was a prospective observational study conducted at the Sindh Institute of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences (SIOVS) Hyderabad from July 2013 to June 2015. In this study, evaluation of 5600 patients of various ages undergoing eye surgeries and being unaware of hepatitis C infection were included. Each patient was serologically screened by immunochromatography (ICT method) for qualitative detection of antibodies for Hepatitis C before surgery. Result: Two thousand two hundred sixty four (40.43%) patients were male and 3336 (59.57%) were female. Large numbers of patients were in 4th and 5th decade of life in both the sexes. Of these 5600 patients, 713 (12.73%) were serologically positive for hepatitis C antibodies. Majority of them were female (58.44%). Conclusion: The prevalence of hepatitis C antibodies positive is higher in our population. Therefore, it is mandatory to screen every patient for hepatitis C and B before any surgical procedure. The surgeon and health care professional should take protective measures. The used infected materials should be destroyed properly.

Highly-efficient low cost anisotropic wet etching of silicon wafers for solar cells application

In this work, a novel aqueous etching solution was investigated for texturization of silicon substrates. Nearly 30% of incident light is reflected from the surface of crystalline silicon due to its high refractive index. Surface texturization is an efficient practice to reduce surface reflection by enhancing light trapping. Newly formulated etching solution was evaluated for optical reflection, surface morphology and hydrophilicity of silicon substrates. Amazingly, experimental results demonstrate lowest optical reflectance, improved surface morphology as well as enhanced periodicity of the resulting pyramids. A remarkably lowest surface reflectance of 9.94% was achieved. Meanwhile, addition of IPA in the solution plays a major part in improving hydrophilicity of the silicon substrates

Improving timeliness for acute asthma care for paediatric ED patients using a nurse driven intervention: an interrupted time series analysis.

Asthma is the most common chronic paediatric disease treated in the emergency department (ED). Rapid corticosteroid administration is associated with improved outcomes, but our busy ED setting has made it challenging to achieve this goal. Our primary aim was to decrease the time to corticosteroid administration in a large, academic paediatric ED. We conducted an interrupted time series analysis for moderate to severe asthma exacerbations of one to 18 year old patients. A multidisciplinary team designed the intervention of a bedside nurse initiated administration of oral dexamethasone, to replace the prior system of a physician initiated order for oral prednisone. Our baseline and intervention periods were 12 month intervals. Our primary process measure was the time to corticosteroid administration. Other process measures included ED length of stay, admission rate, and rate of emesis. The balance measures included rate of return visits to the ED or clinic within five days, as well as the proportion of discharged patients who were admitted within five days. No special cause variation occurred in the baseline period. The mean time to corticosteroid administration decreased significantly, from 98 minutes in the baseline period to 59 minutes in the intervention period (p \u3c 0.01), and showed special cause variation improvement within two months after the intervention using statistical process control methodology. We sustained the improvement and demonstrated a stable process. The intervention period had a significantly lower admission rate (p\u3c0.01) and emesis rate (p\u3c0.01), with no unforeseen harm to patients found with any of our balance measures. In summary, the introduction of a nurse initiated, standardized protocol for corticosteroid therapy for asthma exacerbations in a paediatric ED was associated with decreased time to corticosteroid administration, admission rates, and post-corticosteroid emesi

MH370 and MH17 airplane catastrophes: Reporting verbs in Malaysian online newspaper articles

Reporting verbs are important in news articles on controversial events or issues because of the need to present the attitude of news sources towards the topic or even to indicate the journalist’s attitudes towards information cited in the articles. The study investigated the use of reporting verbs in news articles on MH370 and MH17 airplane catastrophes in online English newspapers published in Malaysia. A total of 80 news articles on MH370 and MH17 from two online English-language, New Straits Time and The Star, were analysed for the author’s stance and writer’s stance using Thompson and Ye’s (1991) framework on reporting verbs. The analysis identified 931 instances of reporting verbs (91.75%, author’s stance; 8.25%, writer’s stance). For the author’s stance, 91.75% of the articles on MH370 and MH17 were reported positively using mainly the verb “said”, and the various news sources were stated clearly. New Straits Time reported MH17 more positively than MH370 but the pattern was the opposite for The Star. The neutral author’s stance was hardly used. There was no negative author’s stance for MH370 articles in both newspapers. As for the writer’s stance, counter-factive (42.51%) and non-factive (47.90%) reporting dominated. Articles on the disappearance of MH370 had more non-factive reporting verbs than counter-factive reporting verbs in both newspapers but for the MH17 articles, New Straits Time leaned towards a counter-factive writer’s stance, suggesting more critical reporting. The study showed that the articles on airplane catastrophes reflected safe reporting, often affirming the validity of statements from news sources

Comparison of the elastic recovery and strain-in-compression of commercial and novel vinyl polysiloxane impression materials incorporating a novel crosslinking agent and a surfactant

This study aims to formulate experimental vinylpolysiloxane (VPS) impression materials and compare their elastic recovery and strain-in-compressions with three commercial VPS materials (Aquasil, Elite, and Extrude). Five experimental materials (Exp), two hydrophobic (Exp-I and II) and three hydrophilic (Exp-III, IV and V) were developed. Exp 1 contained vinyl-terminated poly-dimethyl siloxane and a conventional cross-linking agent (poly methylhydrosiloxane), while Exp- II contained a novel cross-linking agent that is tetra-functional dimethyl-silyl-ortho-silicate (TFDMSOS). Exp III–V (hydrophilic materials) were formulated by incorporating different concentrations of non-ionic surfactant (Rhodasurf CET-2) into Exp II formulation. Measurement of elastic recovery and strain-in-compression for commercial and experimental materials were performed according to ISO4823 standard using the calibrated mechanical testing machine (Tinius Olsen). One-way analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA) and Tukey’s post-hoc (HSD) test were used for statistical analysis and a p-value of ≤ 0.05 was considered significant. Exp-I has statistically similar values to commercial VPS. The Exp-II showed the highest elastic recovery, while % elastic recovery was reduced with the addition of the non-ionic surfactant (Rhodasurf CET-2). The % reduction was directly related to the concentration of Rhodasurf CET-2. In addition, Exp II had significantly higher strain-in-compression values compared to Exp-I and commercial materials. These values were further increased with the addition of a non-ionic surfactant (Rhodasurf CET-2) was added (Exp-III, IV and V)

Holographic Charge Density Waves

We discuss a gravity dual of a charge density wave consisting of a U(1) gauge field and two scalar fields in the background of an AdS$_4$ Schwarzschild black hole together with an antisymmetric field (probe limit). Interactions drive the system to a phase transition below a critical temperature. We numerically compute the ground states characterized by modulated solutions for the gauge potential corresponding to a dynamically generated unidirectional charge density wave in the conformal field theory. Signatures of the holographic density waves are retrieved by studying the dynamical response to an external electric field. We find that this novel holographic state shares many common features with the standard condensed matter version of charge density wave systems.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures; improved discussion, published versio

Recent advances in highly efficient organic-silicon hybrid solar cells

Organic-silicon hybrid solar cells (organic/Si HSCs) have drawn much attention in the development of modern low-cost photovoltaic solar cells. Due to simpler and less expensive fabrication processes at room temperature, the HSCs have many superiorities over conventional silicon solar cells, positioning the HSCs be a striking research topic. Recently, a significant amount of research has been done to improve the yield and efficiency of hybrid solar cells. The performance enhancement of hybrid solar cells highly depends on a combination of the electrical, optical, materials and structural aspects. This review is dedicated to the recent advances in the mechanism, fabrication processes and light management in organic/Si HSCs, highlighting the important device structures, the surface texturing, the transparent electrodes as well as the integration of metallic nanostructures to improve the performances of hybrid solar cells