Correction to: Between a rock and a hard place: dilemmas regarding the purpose of public universities in South Africa

Correction to: Between a rock and a hard place: dilemmas regarding the purpose of public universities in South Africa (Higher Education, (2019), 77, 4, (567-583), 10.1007/s10734-018-0291-9)

On minor black holes in galactic nuclei

Small and intermediate mass black holes should be expected in galactic nuclei as a result of stellar evolution, minor mergers and gravitational dynamical friction. If these minor black holes accrete as X-ray binaries or ultra-luminous X-ray sources, and are associated with star formation, they could account for observations of many low luminosity AGN or LINERs. Accreting and inspiralling intermediate mass black holes could provide a crucial electromagnetic counterpart to strong gravitational wave signatures, allowing tests of strong gravity. Here we discuss observational signatures of minor black holes in galactic nuclei and we demonstrate that optical line ratios observed in LINERs or transition-type objects can be produced by an ionizing radiation field from ULXs. We conclude by discussing constraints from existing observations as well as candidates for future study.Comment: 6 pages. MNRAS Letters (accepted

Prospective, multicenter study of managing lower extremity venous ulcers

Seventy patients with 90 venous ulcers were randomly assigned to hydrocolloid or conventional dressing and compression therapy at four study centers. The ulcers had been present for a mean of 47.8 in the control and 46.2 weeks in the treatment group and 42% of all patients had recurrent ulcers. Ulcers treated with hydrocolloid dressings reduced 71% and control treated wounds reduced 43% in area after 7.2 weeks of treatment. Thirty-four percent of all ulcers healed. Mean time to healing was 7 weeks for the hydrocolloid dressing group and 8 weeks for the control group. Most ulcers were less painful at final evaluation, but reduction in pain was more pronounced in hydrocolloid-dressed ulcers ( p =0.03). At baseline as well as during follow-up, significant differences between study centers were observed. Ulcers in patients in the United Kingdom were larger and less likely to heal ( p =0.001). Size of the ulcer at baseline was associated with treatment response and time to healing ( p =0.002). Percent reduction in ulcer area after 2 weeks was also correlated with treatment outcome ( p =0.004) and time to healing ( p =0.002). When all treatment outcome predictors were analyzed together, only percent reduction in area after 2 weeks remained statistically significant ( p =0.002), with percent reduction during the first 2 weeks of treatment >30% predicting healing .Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/41373/1/10016_2005_Article_BF02132997.pd

Breast cancer risk and drinking water contaminated by wastewater: a case control study

BACKGROUND: Drinking water contaminated by wastewater is a potential source of exposure to mammary carcinogens and endocrine disrupting compounds from commercial products and excreted natural and pharmaceutical hormones. These contaminants are hypothesized to increase breast cancer risk. Cape Cod, Massachusetts, has a history of wastewater contamination in many, but not all, of its public water supplies; and the region has a history of higher breast cancer incidence that is unexplained by the population's age, in-migration, mammography use, or established breast cancer risk factors. We conducted a case-control study to investigate whether exposure to drinking water contaminated by wastewater increases the risk of breast cancer. METHODS: Participants were 824 Cape Cod women diagnosed with breast cancer in 1988–1995 and 745 controls who lived in homes served by public drinking water supplies and never lived in a home served by a Cape Cod private well. We assessed each woman's exposure yearly since 1972 at each of her Cape Cod addresses, using nitrate nitrogen (nitrate-N) levels measured in public wells and pumping volumes for the wells. Nitrate-N is an established wastewater indicator in the region. As an alternative drinking water quality indicator, we calculated the fraction of recharge zones in residential, commercial, and pesticide land use areas. RESULTS: After controlling for established breast cancer risk factors, mammography, and length of residence on Cape Cod, results showed no consistent association between breast cancer and average annual nitrate-N (OR = 1.8; 95% CI 0.6 – 5.0 for ≥ 1.2 vs. < .3 mg/L), the sum of annual nitrate-N concentrations (OR = 0.9; 95% CI 0.6 – 1.5 for ≥ 10 vs. 1 to < 10 mg/L), or the number of years exposed to nitrate-N over 1 mg/L (OR = 0.9; 95% CI 0.5 – 1.5 for ≥ 8 vs. 0 years). Variation in exposure levels was limited, with 99% of women receiving some of their water from supplies with nitrate-N levels in excess of background. The total fraction of residential, commercial, and pesticide use land in recharge zones of public supply wells was associated with a small statistically unstable higher breast cancer incidence (OR = 1.4; 95% CI 0.8–2.4 for highest compared with lowest land use), but risk did not increase for increasing land use fractions. CONCLUSION: Results did not provide evidence of an association between breast cancer and drinking water contaminated by wastewater. The computer mapping methods used in this study to link routine measurements required by the Safe Drinking Water Act with interview data can enhance individual-level epidemiologic studies of multiple health outcomes, including diseases with substantial latency

On the “Duel” Nature of History: Revisiting Contingency versus Determinism

Are we “historical accidents” of an undirected evolutionary history? In his recent book, Islands in the Cosmos, Dale Russell addresses this question, and Brian Swartz reviews his synthesis of this “cosmic” evolutionary debate

Molecular biology of breast cancer metastasis: Clinical implications of experimental studies on metastatic inefficiency

Recent technological advances have led to an increasing ability to detect isolated tumour cells and groups of tumour cells in patients' blood, lymph nodes or bone marrow. However, the clinical significance of these cells is unclear. Should they be considered as evidence of metastasis, necessitating aggressive treatment, or are they in some cases unrelated to clinical outcome? Quantitative experimental studies on the basic biology of metastatic inefficiency are providing clues that may help in understanding the significance of these cells. This understanding will be of use in guiding clinical studies to assess the significance of isolated tumour cells and micrometastases in cancer patients

Search for Doubly-Charged Higgs Boson Production at HERA

A search for the single production of doubly-charged Higgs bosons H^{\pm \pm} in ep collisions is presented. The signal is searched for via the Higgs decays into a high mass pair of same charge leptons, one of them being an electron. The analysis uses up to 118 pb^{-1} of ep data collected by the H1 experiment at HERA. No evidence for doubly-charged Higgs production is observed and mass dependent upper limits are derived on the Yukawa couplings h_{el} of the Higgs boson to an electron-lepton pair. Assuming that the doubly-charged Higgs only decays into an electron and a muon via a coupling of electromagnetic strength h_{e \mu} = \sqrt{4 \pi \alpha_{em}} = 0.3, a lower limit of 141 GeV on the H^{\pm\pm} mass is obtained at the 95% confidence level. For a doubly-charged Higgs decaying only into an electron and a tau and a coupling h_{e\tau} = 0.3, masses below 112 GeV are ruled out.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl

Common Data Elements to Facilitate Sharing and Re-use of Participant-Level Data: Assessment of Psychiatric Comorbidity Across Brain Disorders

The Ontario Brain Institute\u27s “Brain-CODE” is a large-scale informatics platform designed to support the collection, storage and integration of diverse types of data across several brain disorders as a means to understand underlying causes of brain dysfunction and developing novel approaches to treatment. By providing access to aggregated datasets on participants with and without different brain disorders, Brain-CODE will facilitate analyses both within and across diseases and cover multiple brain disorders and a wide array of data, including clinical, neuroimaging, and molecular. To help achieve these goals, consensus methodology was used to identify a set of core demographic and clinical variables that should be routinely collected across all participating programs. Establishment of Common Data Elements within Brain-CODE is critical to enable a high degree of consistency in data collection across studies and thus optimize the ability of investigators to analyze pooled participant-level data within and across brain disorders. Results are also presented using selected common data elements pooled across three studies to better understand psychiatric comorbidity in neurological disease (Alzheimer\u27s disease/amnesic mild cognitive impairment, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, cerebrovascular disease, frontotemporal dementia, and Parkinson\u27s disease)