National-wide data on the treatment of BPH in Korea

The healthcare system in Korea provides coverage to all the people who are residing in Korea, so the data of the Korea healthcare system are national-wide and relatively accurate. We obtained the recent 5-year data (2004–2008) on the treatment of BPH from the national health insurance system. We tried to determine the trends or changes of BPH treatments in Korea. Over 3.8 million men visited clinics and were prescribed one or more BPH medications, and more than 44 000 men underwent surgical treatment during 2004–2008. Compared with the year 2004, two times the patients were prescribed BPH medications in 2008. With respect to the surgical treatment, the number of cases was increased 1.6 times in 2006 compared with the previous years. The most commonly used surgical option was TURP before 2006, but laser therapy was carried out as much as TURP in 2006 and in the following years. The relative risk of laser therapy in the 50 s is 1.53 (95% CI is 1.47–1.59). In conclusion, our national-wide data for the Korean BPH patients show that these patients' medical treatment increased during the 5 years from 2004 to 2008. Laser treatment had increased and it might replace TURP in several years

Restricted Expression of Epstein-Barr Virus Latent Genes in Murine B Cells Derived from Embryonic Stem Cells

Background: Several human malignancies are associated with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and more than 95 % of the adult human population carries this virus lifelong. EBV efficiently infects human B cells and persists in this cellular compartment latently. EBV-infected B cells become activated and growth transformed, express a characteristic set of viral latent genes, and acquire the status of proliferating lymphoblastoid cell lines in vitro. Because EBV infects only primate cells, it has not been possible to establish a model of infection in immunocompetent rodents. Such a model would be most desirable in order to study EBV’s pathogenesis and latency in a suitable and amenable host. Methodology/Principal Findings: We stably introduced recombinant EBV genomes into mouse embryonic stem cells and induced their differentiation to B cells in vitro to develop the desired model. In vitro differentiated murine B cells maintained the EBV genomes but expression of viral genes was restricted to the latent membrane proteins (LMPs). In contrast to human B cells, EBV’s nuclear antigens (EBNAs) were not expressed detectably and growth transformed murine B cells did not arise in vitro. Aberrant splicing and premature termination of EBNA mRNAs most likely prevented the expression of EBNA genes required for B-cell transformation. Conclusions/Significance: Our findings indicate that fundamental differences in gene regulation between mouse and ma

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

X-ray emission from the Sombrero galaxy: discrete sources

We present a study of discrete X-ray sources in and around the bulge-dominated, massive Sa galaxy, Sombrero (M104), based on new and archival Chandra observations with a total exposure of ~200 ks. With a detection limit of L_X = 1E37 erg/s and a field of view covering a galactocentric radius of ~30 kpc (11.5 arcminute), 383 sources are detected. Cross-correlation with Spitler et al.'s catalogue of Sombrero globular clusters (GCs) identified from HST/ACS observations reveals 41 X-rays sources in GCs, presumably low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). We quantify the differential luminosity functions (LFs) for both the detected GC and field LMXBs, whose power-low indices (~1.1 for the GC-LF and ~1.6 for field-LF) are consistent with previous studies for elliptical galaxies. With precise sky positions of the GCs without a detected X-ray source, we further quantify, through a fluctuation analysis, the GC LF at fainter luminosities down to 1E35 erg/s. The derived index rules out a faint-end slope flatter than 1.1 at a 2 sigma significance, contrary to recent findings in several elliptical galaxies and the bulge of M31. On the other hand, the 2-6 keV unresolved emission places a tight constraint on the field LF, implying a flattened index of ~1.0 below 1E37 erg/s. We also detect 101 sources in the halo of Sombrero. The presence of these sources cannot be interpreted as galactic LMXBs whose spatial distribution empirically follows the starlight. Their number is also higher than the expected number of cosmic AGNs (52+/-11 [1 sigma]) whose surface density is constrained by deep X-ray surveys. We suggest that either the cosmic X-ray background is unusually high in the direction of Sombrero, or a distinct population of X-ray sources is present in the halo of Sombrero.Comment: 11 figures, 5 tables, ApJ in pres

Azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles at high transverse momenta in PbPb collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV

The azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles in PbPb collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV is measured with the CMS detector at the LHC over an extended transverse momentum (pt) range up to approximately 60 GeV. The data cover both the low-pt region associated with hydrodynamic flow phenomena and the high-pt region where the anisotropies may reflect the path-length dependence of parton energy loss in the created medium. The anisotropy parameter (v2) of the particles is extracted by correlating charged tracks with respect to the event-plane reconstructed by using the energy deposited in forward-angle calorimeters. For the six bins of collision centrality studied, spanning the range of 0-60% most-central events, the observed v2 values are found to first increase with pt, reaching a maximum around pt = 3 GeV, and then to gradually decrease to almost zero, with the decline persisting up to at least pt = 40 GeV over the full centrality range measured.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Effective Rheology of Bubbles Moving in a Capillary Tube

We calculate the average volumetric flux versus pressure drop of bubbles moving in a single capillary tube with varying diameter, finding a square-root relation from mapping the flow equations onto that of a driven overdamped pendulum. The calculation is based on a derivation of the equation of motion of a bubble train from considering the capillary forces and the entropy production associated with the viscous flow. We also calculate the configurational probability of the positions of the bubbles.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur