Single cell tracking of gadolinium labeled CD4(+) T cells by laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry

Cellular therapy is emerging as a promising alternative to conventional immunosuppression in the fields of haematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantation, autoimmune disease and solid organ transplantation. Determining the persistence of cell-based therapies in vivo is crucial to understanding their regulatory function and requires the combination of an extremely sensitive detection technique and a stable, long-lifetime cell labelling agent. This paper reports the first application of laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) to perform single cell detection of T cell populations relevant to cellular immunotherapy. Purified human CD4+ T cells were labelled with commercially available Gd-based MRI contrast agents, Omniscan® and Dotarem®, which enabled passive loading of up to 108 Gd atoms per cell. In mixed preparations of labelled and unlabelled cells, LA-ICP-MS was capable of enumerating labelled cells at close to the predicted ratio. More importantly, LA-ICP-MS single cell analysis demonstrated that the cells retained sufficient label to remain detectable for up to 10 days post-labelling both in vitro and in vivo in an immunodeficient mouse model

Hidden spin-current conservation in 2d Fermi liquids

We report the existence of regimes of the two dimensional Fermi liquid that show unusual conservation of the spin current and may be tuned by varying some parameter like the density of fermions. We show that for reasonable models of the effective interaction the spin current may be conserved in general in 2d, not only for a particular regime. Low temperature spin waves propagate distinctively in these regimes and entirely new ``spin-acoustic'' modes are predicted for scattering-dominated temperature ranges. These new high-temperature propagating spin waves provide a clear signature for the experimental search of such regimes.Comment: 4 pages, no figures, revised version, accepted for pub. in the PR

FIRE (facilitating implementation of research evidence) : a study protocol

Research evidence underpins best practice, but is not always used in healthcare. The Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (PARIHS) framework suggests that the nature of evidence, the context in which it is used, and whether those trying to use evidence are helped (or facilitated) affect the use of evidence. Urinary incontinence has a major effect on quality of life of older people, has a high prevalence, and is a key priority within European health and social care policy. Improving continence care has the potential to improve the quality of life for older people and reduce the costs associated with providing incontinence aids

25th Annual Midwest/Midsouth Estate Planning Institute

Materials from UK/CLE\u27s 25th Annual Midwest/Midsouth Estate Planning Institute held in July 1998

The Evolution Of A Tropical Biodiversity Hotspot

The tropics are the source of most biodiversity yet inadequate sampling obscures answers to fundamental questions about how this diversity evolves. We leveraged samples assembled over decades of fieldwork to study diversification of the largest tropical bird radiation, the suboscine passerines. Our phylogeny, estimated using data from 2389 genomic regions in 1940 individuals of 1287 species, reveals that peak suboscine species diversity in the Neotropics is not associated with high recent speciation rates but rather with the gradual accumulation of species over time. Paradoxically, the highest speciation rates are in lineages from regions with low species diversity, which are generally cold, dry, unstable environments. Our results reveal a model in which species are forming faster in environmental extremes but have accumulated in moderate environments to form tropical biodiversity hotspots

Treatment of osteoarthritis of the knee with a topical diclofenac solution: a randomised controlled, 6-week trial [ISRCTN53366886]

BACKGROUND: Topical NSAIDs have been proven to relieve the symptoms of osteoarthritis (OA) in short-term studies (2 weeks). To justify its chronic use, efficacy of a topical NSAID over a longer term of study should be demonstrated. The efficacy and safety of a topical diclofenac solution over a 6-week treatment course in symptomatic primary OA of the knee was investigated. METHODS: 216 men and women, age 40–85 years, with radiologically confirmed primary OA of the knee and a flare of pain at baseline following discontinuation of prior therapy were enrolled into this double-blind study. Participants applied either a topical diclofenac solution (Pennsaid(®)) or vehicle control solution (carrier with no diclofenac); 40 drops 4 times daily directly to the painful knee(s), without massage, for 6 weeks. Pre-planned primary efficacy outcome measures included the core continuous variables pain relief and improved physical function measured by the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities (WOMAC) LK3.1 OA Index, and improved patient global assessment (PGA). Secondary efficacy measure was reduced stiffness. Safety assessments included adverse events and vital signs. RESULTS: The topical diclofenac group had a significantly greater mean change in score (final minus baseline) compared to the vehicle control group for pain (-5.2 vs. -3.3, p = 0.003), physical function (-13.4 vs. -6.9, p = 0.001), PGA (-1.3 vs. -0.7, p = 0.0001) and stiffness (-1.8 vs. -0.9, p = 0.002). The mean difference between treatment arms (95% confidence interval [CI]) was 1.9 (0.7 to 3.2), 6.5 (2.5 to 10.5), 0.6 (0.2 to 0.9), and 0.9 (0.3 to 1.4), respectively. Safety analyses showed that topical diclofenac caused skin irritation, mostly minor local skin dryness, in 42/107 (39%), leading to discontinuation of treatment in 5/107 (5%) participants. CONCLUSION: This topical diclofenac solution demonstrated relief at 6 weeks of the symptoms of primary osteoarthritis of the knee

A Search for Dark Higgs Bosons

Recent astrophysical and terrestrial experiments have motivated the proposal of a dark sector with GeV-scale gauge boson force carriers and new Higgs bosons. We present a search for a dark Higgs boson using 516 fb-1 of data collected with the BABAR detector. We do not observe a significant signal and we set 90% confidence level upper limits on the product of the Standard Model-dark sector mixing angle and the dark sector coupling constant.Comment: 7 pages, 5 postscript figures, published version with improved plots for b/w printin

The taxonomic name resolution service : an online tool for automated standardization of plant names

© The Author(s), 2013. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in BMC Bioinformatics 14 (2013): 16, doi:10.1186/1471-2105-14-16.The digitization of biodiversity data is leading to the widespread application of taxon names that are superfluous, ambiguous or incorrect, resulting in mismatched records and inflated species numbers. The ultimate consequences of misspelled names and bad taxonomy are erroneous scientific conclusions and faulty policy decisions. The lack of tools for correcting this ‘names problem’ has become a fundamental obstacle to integrating disparate data sources and advancing the progress of biodiversity science. The TNRS, or Taxonomic Name Resolution Service, is an online application for automated and user-supervised standardization of plant scientific names. The TNRS builds upon and extends existing open-source applications for name parsing and fuzzy matching. Names are standardized against multiple reference taxonomies, including the Missouri Botanical Garden's Tropicos database. Capable of processing thousands of names in a single operation, the TNRS parses and corrects misspelled names and authorities, standardizes variant spellings, and converts nomenclatural synonyms to accepted names. Family names can be included to increase match accuracy and resolve many types of homonyms. Partial matching of higher taxa combined with extraction of annotations, accession numbers and morphospecies allows the TNRS to standardize taxonomy across a broad range of active and legacy datasets. We show how the TNRS can resolve many forms of taxonomic semantic heterogeneity, correct spelling errors and eliminate spurious names. As a result, the TNRS can aid the integration of disparate biological datasets. Although the TNRS was developed to aid in standardizing plant names, its underlying algorithms and design can be extended to all organisms and nomenclatural codes. The TNRS is accessible via a web interface at http://tnrs.iplantcollaborative.org/ webcite and as a RESTful web service and application programming interface. Source code is available at https://github.com/iPlantCollaborativeOpenSource/TNRS/ webcite.BJE was supported by NSF grant DBI 0850373 and TR by CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Australia,. BB and BJE acknowledge early financial support from Conservation International and TEAM who funded the development of early prototypes of taxonomic name resolution. The iPlant Collaborative (http://www.iplantcollaborative.org) is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (#DBI-0735191)

Measurement of Natural Widths of Sigma-c-0 and Sigma-c-++ Baryons

In this paper we present a measurement of the natural widths of $\Sigma_c^0$ and $\Sigma_c^{++}$. Using data from the FOCUS experiment, we find $\Gamma(\Sigma_c^0) = 1.55 +0.41/-0.37 \pm 0.38$ MeV/c^2 and $\Gamma(\Sigma_c^0) = 2.05 +0.41/-0.38 \pm 0.38$ MeV/c^2. The first errors are statistical, the second systematic. These results are obtained with a sample of 913 $\Sigma_c^0 \to \Lambda_c^+ \pi^-$ decays and 1110 $\Sigma_c^++ \to \Lambda_c^+ \pi^+$ decays. These results are compared with recent theoretical predictions. PACS numbers: 14.20.Lq 13.30EgComment: Submitted to Physics Letters

Conducting a critical interpretive synthesis of the literature on access to healthcare by vulnerable groups

BACKGROUND: Conventional systematic review techniques have limitations when the aim of a review is to construct a critical analysis of a complex body of literature. This article offers a reflexive account of an attempt to conduct an interpretive review of the literature on access to healthcare by vulnerable groups in the UK METHODS: This project involved the development and use of the method of Critical Interpretive Synthesis (CIS). This approach is sensitised to the processes of conventional systematic review methodology and draws on recent advances in methods for interpretive synthesis. RESULTS: Many analyses of equity of access have rested on measures of utilisation of health services, but these are problematic both methodologically and conceptually. A more useful means of understanding access is offered by the synthetic construct of candidacy. Candidacy describes how people's eligibility for healthcare is determined between themselves and health services. It is a continually negotiated property of individuals, subject to multiple influences arising both from people and their social contexts and from macro-level influences on allocation of resources and configuration of services. Health services are continually constituting and seeking to define the appropriate objects of medical attention and intervention, while at the same time people are engaged in constituting and defining what they understand to be the appropriate objects of medical attention and intervention. Access represents a dynamic interplay between these simultaneous, iterative and mutually reinforcing processes. By attending to how vulnerabilities arise in relation to candidacy, the phenomenon of access can be better understood, and more appropriate recommendations made for policy, practice and future research. DISCUSSION: By innovating with existing methods for interpretive synthesis, it was possible to produce not only new methods for conducting what we have termed critical interpretive synthesis, but also a new theoretical conceptualisation of access to healthcare. This theoretical account of access is distinct from models already extant in the literature, and is the result of combining diverse constructs and evidence into a coherent whole. Both the method and the model should be evaluated in other contexts