Women, men and coronary heart disease: a review of the qualitative literature

Aim. This paper presents a review of the qualitative literature which examines the experiences of patients with coronary heart disease. The paper also assesses whether the experiences of both female and male patients are reflected in the literature and summarizes key themes. Background. Understanding patients' experiences of their illness is important for coronary heart disease prevention and education. Qualitative methods are particularly suited to eliciting patients' detailed understandings and perceptions of illness. As much previous research has been 'gender neutral', this review pays particular attention to gender. Methods. Published papers from 60 qualitative studies were identified for the review through searches in MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PREMEDLINE, PsychINFO, Social Sciences Citation Index and Web of Science using keywords related to coronary heart disease. Findings. Early qualitative studies of patients with coronary heart disease were conducted almost exclusively with men, and tended to generalize from 'male' experience to 'human' experience. By the late 1990s this pattern had changed, with the majority of studies including women and many being conducted with solely female samples. However, many studies that include both male and female coronary heart disease patients still do not have a specific gender focus. Key themes in the literature include interpreting symptoms and seeking help, belief about coronary 'candidates' and relationships with health professionals. The influence of social roles is important: many female patients have difficulties reconciling family responsibilities and medical advice, while male patients worry about being absent from work. Conclusions. There is a need for studies that compare the experiences of men and women. There is also an urgent need for work that takes masculinity and gender roles into account when exploring the experiences of men with coronary heart disease

Proton-proton scattering above 3 GeV/c

A large set of data on proton-proton differential cross sections, analyzing powers and the double polarization parameter A_NN is analyzed employing the Regge formalism. We find that the data available at proton beam momenta from 3 GeV/c to 50 GeV/c exhibit features that are very well in line with the general characteristics of Regge phenomenology and can be described with a model that includes the rho, omega, f_2, and a_2 trajectories and single Pomeron exchange. Additional data, specifically for spin-dependent observables at forward angles, would be very helpful for testing and refining our Regge model.Comment: 16 pages, 19 figures; revised version accepted for publication in EPJ

Soil Organic Carbon and Nitrogen Feedbacks on Crop Yields under Climate Change

Articles in A&EL are published under the CC-BY NC ND (non-commercial; no derivatives) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/). Users are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format. Any further publication of the article will require proper attribution; no derivative works may be made from this article; and the article may not be used for any commercial gain (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/). The author is given explicit permission to publish the final article in her/his institutional repository. There is an option for the CC-BY license if required by an author's institution.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Tomato: a crop species amenable to improvement by cellular and molecular methods

Tomato is a crop plant with a relatively small DNA content per haploid genome and a well developed genetics. Plant regeneration from explants and protoplasts is feasable which led to the development of efficient transformation procedures. In view of the current data, the isolation of useful mutants at the cellular level probably will be of limited value in the genetic improvement of tomato. Protoplast fusion may lead to novel combinations of organelle and nuclear DNA (cybrids), whereas this technique also provides a means of introducing genetic information from alien species into tomato. Important developments have come from molecular approaches. Following the construction of an RFLP map, these RFLP markers can be used in tomato to tag quantitative traits bred in from related species. Both RFLP's and transposons are in the process of being used to clone desired genes for which no gene products are known. Cloned genes can be introduced and potentially improve specific properties of tomato especially those controlled by single genes. Recent results suggest that, in principle, phenotypic mutants can be created for cloned and characterized genes and will prove their value in further improving the cultivated tomato.

Choice of tracers for the evaluation of spray deposits

Tracer substances, used to evaluate spraying effectiveness, ordinarily modify the surface tension of aqueous solutions. This study aimed to establish a method of using tracers to evaluate distribution and amount of spray deposits, adjusted to the surface tension of the spraying solution. The following products were tested: 0.15% Brilliant Blue, 0.15% Saturn Yellow in 0.015% Vixilperse lignosulfonate, and 0.005% sodium fluorescein, and mixtures of Brilliant Blue plus Saturn Yellow and Brilliant Blue plus sodium fluorescein at the same concentrations. Solutions were deposited on citrus leaves and stability was determined by measuring fluorescence and optical density of solutions without drying, dried in the dark and exposed to sunlight for 2, 4 and 8 h. These values were compared to those obtained directly in water. The static surface tension of the tracer solution was determined by weighing droplets formed during a period of 20 to 40 seconds. The Brilliant Blue and Saturn Yellow mixture at 0.15% was stable under all conditions tested. It was not absorbed by the leaves and maintained the same surface tension as that of water, thus permitting concentration adjustment to the same levels used for agrochemical products, and allowing the development of a qualitative method based on visual evaluation of the distribution of the pigment under ultraviolet light and of a quantitative method based on the determination of the amount of the dye deposited in the same solution. Spray deposition could be evaluated at different surface tensions of the spraying solution, simulating the effect of agrochemical formulations

Intercalibration of the barrel electromagnetic calorimeter of the CMS experiment at start-up

Calibration of the relative response of the individual channels of the barrel electromagnetic calorimeter of the CMS detector was accomplished, before installation, with cosmic ray muons and test beams. One fourth of the calorimeter was exposed to a beam of high energy electrons and the relative calibration of the channels, the intercalibration, was found to be reproducible to a precision of about 0.3%. Additionally, data were collected with cosmic rays for the entire ECAL barrel during the commissioning phase. By comparing the intercalibration constants obtained with the electron beam data with those from the cosmic ray data, it is demonstrated that the latter provide an intercalibration precision of 1.5% over most of the barrel ECAL. The best intercalibration precision is expected to come from the analysis of events collected in situ during the LHC operation. Using data collected with both electrons and pion beams, several aspects of the intercalibration procedures based on electrons or neutral pions were investigated

An Integrated TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource to Drive High-Quality Survival Outcome Analytics

For a decade, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) program collected clinicopathologic annotation data along with multi-platform molecular profiles of more than 11,000 human tumors across 33 different cancer types. TCGA clinical data contain key features representing the democratized nature of the data collection process. To ensure proper use of this large clinical dataset associated with genomic features, we developed a standardized dataset named the TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource (TCGA-CDR), which includes four major clinical outcome endpoints. In addition to detailing major challenges and statistical limitations encountered during the effort of integrating the acquired clinical data, we present a summary that includes endpoint usage recommendations for each cancer type. These TCGA-CDR findings appear to be consistent with cancer genomics studies independent of the TCGA effort and provide opportunities for investigating cancer biology using clinical correlates at an unprecedented scale. Analysis of clinicopathologic annotations for over 11,000 cancer patients in the TCGA program leads to the generation of TCGA Clinical Data Resource, which provides recommendations of clinical outcome endpoint usage for 33 cancer types

Current assessment of the Red Rectangle band problem

In this paper we discuss our insights into several key problems in the identification of the Red Rectangle Bands (RRBs). We have combined three independent sets of observations in order to try to define the constraints guiding the bands. We provide a summary of the general behavior of the bands and review the evidence for a molecular origin of the bands. The extent, composition, and possible absorption effects of the bands are discussed. Comparison spectra of the strongest band obtained at three different spectral resolutions suggests that an intrinsic line width of individual rotational lines can be deduced. Spectroscopic models of several relatively simple molecules were examined in order to investigate where the current data are weak. Suggestions are made for future studies to enhance our understanding of these enigmatic bands

Search for a W' boson decaying to a bottom quark and a top quark in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

Results are presented from a search for a W' boson using a dataset corresponding to 5.0 inverse femtobarns of integrated luminosity collected during 2011 by the CMS experiment at the LHC in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV. The W' boson is modeled as a heavy W boson, but different scenarios for the couplings to fermions are considered, involving both left-handed and right-handed chiral projections of the fermions, as well as an arbitrary mixture of the two. The search is performed in the decay channel W' to t b, leading to a final state signature with a single lepton (e, mu), missing transverse energy, and jets, at least one of which is tagged as a b-jet. A W' boson that couples to fermions with the same coupling constant as the W, but to the right-handed rather than left-handed chiral projections, is excluded for masses below 1.85 TeV at the 95% confidence level. For the first time using LHC data, constraints on the W' gauge coupling for a set of left- and right-handed coupling combinations have been placed. These results represent a significant improvement over previously published limits.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters B. Replaced with version publishe

Measurement of the Lambda(b) cross section and the anti-Lambda(b) to Lambda(b) ratio with Lambda(b) to J/Psi Lambda decays in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The Lambda(b) differential production cross section and the cross section ratio anti-Lambda(b)/Lambda(b) are measured as functions of transverse momentum pt(Lambda(b)) and rapidity abs(y(Lambda(b))) in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. The measurements are based on Lambda(b) decays reconstructed in the exclusive final state J/Psi Lambda, with the subsequent decays J/Psi to an opposite-sign muon pair and Lambda to proton pion, using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.9 inverse femtobarns. The product of the cross section times the branching ratio for Lambda(b) to J/Psi Lambda versus pt(Lambda(b)) falls faster than that of b mesons. The measured value of the cross section times the branching ratio for pt(Lambda(b)) > 10 GeV and abs(y(Lambda(b))) < 2.0 is 1.06 +/- 0.06 +/- 0.12 nb, and the integrated cross section ratio for anti-Lambda(b)/Lambda(b) is 1.02 +/- 0.07 +/- 0.09, where the uncertainties are statistical and systematic, respectively.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters