Sex Offender Risk Assessment

Compared to clinical methods, actuarial risk instruments are a preferred method to discern sex offenders risk for sexual as well as violent recidivism because, unlike clinical practices, they are considered inexpensive, objective and modestly accurate. Scientists argue that risk instruments that employ only static, or historic measures of offender characteristics, rather than dynamic, are certainly sufficient for the purposes of gauging individuals' likelihood of recidivism. In fact, Harris and Rice (2003:207) contend that dynamic constructs are “unnecessary for anticipating who will recidivate in a given time period”; furthermore they state that “very accurate statements about the likelihood of another…offense can be based upon knowledge of an individual's lifetime conduct.” In their view, offender risk scales that incorporate only static information are essentially capturing factors that reflect a person's underlying antisocial propensity. Although there are a considerable number of risk instruments available for corrections officials to utilize, far fewer have been rigorously evaluated. Of those that have, Harris and Rice (2003) recommend that the MnSOST-R and the Static-99 are two of the most “promising” scales for predicting sexual recidivism. An emerging body of work also suggests that the sorag is quite effectual in terms of its predictive accuracy. Additional empirical research is likely to surface which will provide further evidence of the statistical accuracy of sex offender risk instruments.Includes bibliographical reference

Sex Offender Recidivism in Missouri and Community Correction Options

There has been substantial public scrutiny over the release of sex offenders to the community, predominantly for individuals who have assaulted young children. The vast majority of sex offenders, however, will be returned to the community following incarceration. Understanding the recidivism patterns of sex offenders and successful community corrections options are one step in developing effective sentencing and correctional policies. Using data provided by the Missouri Department of Corrections, a sample of men in all offense categories released from Missouri prison in 1998 was analyzed. The sample was analyzed by demographic factors, criminal history, and institutional behavior. The results show that Missouri sex offenders were more likely to be older, white, and have less educational and employment deficits than the general prison population. Sex offenders were significantly more likely to have consistent employment histories, have been convicted of a prior sex crime, provide moderate risk to the public, have a higher salient factor score, have lower institutional risk scores, and to have spent more time in prison. Sex offenders spent significantly more time in prison than offenders who had committed other types of crime.Includes bibliographical reference

RNA-Seq identifies genes whose proteins are upregulated during syncytia development in murine C2C12 myoblasts and human BeWo trophoblasts

The fusion of villous cytotrophoblasts into the multinucleated syncytiotrophoblast is critical for the essential functions of the mammalian placenta. Using RNA-Seq gene expression, quantitative protein expression, and siRNA knockdown we identified genes and their cognate proteins which are similarly upregulated in two cellular models of mammalian syncytia development (human BeWo cytotrophoblast to syncytiotrophoblast and murine C2C12 myoblast to myotube). These include DYSF, PDE4DIP, SPIRE2, NDRG1, PLEC, GPR146, HSPB8, DHCR7, and HDAC5. These findings provide avenues for further understanding of the mechanisms underlying mammalian placental syncytiotrophoblast development

Murine cytomegalovirus protein pM79 is a key regulator for viral late transcription

Herpesvirus genes are temporally expressed during permissive infections, but how their expression is regulated at late times is poorly understood. Previous studies indicate that the human cytomegalovirus (CMV) gene, UL79, is required for late gene expression. However, the mechanism remains to be fully elucidated, and UL79 homologues in other CMVs have not been studied. Here, we characterized the role of the conserved murine CMV (MCMV) gene M79. We showed that M79 encoded a protein (pM79) which was expressed with early-late kinetics and localized to nuclear viral replication compartments. M79 transcription was significantly decreased in the absence of viral DNA synthesis but markedly stimulated by pM79. To investigate its role, we created the recombinant virus SMin79, in which pM79 expression was disrupted. While marker-rescued virus grew efficiently in fibroblasts, SMin79 failed to produce infectious progeny but was rescued by pM79 expression in trans. During SMin79 infection, representative viral immediate-early and early gene products as well as viral DNA accumulated sufficiently. Formation of viral replication compartments also appeared normal. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis analysis indicated that the overall structure of replicating viral DNA was indistinguishable between wild-type and SMin79 infection. Viral tiled array and quantitative PCR analysis revealed that many late transcripts sensitive to a viral DNA synthesis inhibitor (phosphonoacetic acid) were markedly reduced by pM79 mutation. This study indicates that cytomegaloviruses use a conserved mechanism to promote transcription at late stages of infection and that pM79 is a critical regulator for at least a subset of viral DNA synthesis-dependent transcripts

A Web-Based Flexible Communication System in Radiology

A web-based system for rapid multidirectional communication has been created in the Radiology department at San Francisco General Hospital. The system allows messaging among radiology attendings, residents, and technologists, as well as other members of the hospital community, such as Emergency Department physicians and nurses. Instead of being tied to a particular workflow, this system provides a flexible communication infrastructure which can be easily adapted for different functions and user roles. The system has so far been configured to successfully support the standard “wet reading” workflow, to support marking and tracking of critical results, as well as multiple educational and quality improvement workflows. In the 19 months of operation, the system has gained over 1,800 users (virtually all providers at our institution), it has been accessed by radiologists over 39,000 times and by non-radiologists over 34,000 times. It has become an integral part of the radiology department operations and non-radiology clinical workflows. Unlike most existing softwares, our system is not a task-specific application, but a multipurpose communication system. It is able to effectively accommodate multiple workflows and user roles through configuration (without additional programming). This flexibility has helped this system to be rapidly and widely adopted within our enterprise. The extended reach of the system enables improved monitoring and documentation of workflows, helping with management decision making, and quality assurance. We report a successful radiology communication system based on the principles of flexibility and inclusiveness of users inside and outside the radiology department

Increased severity of glomerulonephritis in C-C chemokine receptor 2 knockout mice

Increased severity of glomerulonephritis in C-C chemokine receptor 2 knockout mice.BackgroundThe C-C chemokine receptor 2 (CCR2) is expressed on monocytes and facilitates monocyte migration. CCR2 is a prominent receptor for monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1). This chemokine recruits monocytes to sites of inflammation. It has been suggested that CCR2 and its ligand, MCP-1, play a role in the pathogenesis of glomerulonephritis. The goal of this study was to determine the contribution of CCR2 in a murine model of accelerated nephrotoxic nephritis. We measured the extent of development of renal disease in CCR2 wild-type and knockout mice after the administration of antiglomerular basement membrane antibody.MethodsEight groups of animals were treated (N = 10 per group). Four days after IgG immunization, CCR2 wild-type and knockout mice received control serum or nephrotoxic serum. The urinary protein/creatinine ratio was measured on days 1 and 3; plasma and kidneys were collected on days 4 and 7. Kidneys were evaluated by light microscopy, immunohistochemistry, and immunofluorescence. The genotype of mice was confirmed by tissue analysis.ResultsProtective effects of CCR2 knockout on the urinary protein/creatinine ratio were observed on day 1, as values for this parameter were significantly lower (35 ± 3.6) than in nephritic wild-type mice (50 ± 6.8). There was a marked increase in proteinuria in nephritic wild-type mice on day 1 compared with vehicle-treated, wild-type animals (5 ± 1.0). On day 3, the ameliorative effects of CCR2 knockout were not observed; the increase in the urinary protein/creatinine ratio was similar in nephritic CCR2 wild-type (92 ± 11.2) and knockout mice (102 ± 9.2). Plasma markers of disease were evaluated on days 4 and 7. At these time points, there were no beneficial effects of CCR2 receptor knockout on plasma levels of urea nitrogen, creatinine, albumin, or cholesterol. On day 7, blood urea nitrogen (248 ± 19.9 mg/dL) and plasma cholesterol were higher in nephritic CCR2 knockout mice than in wild-type mice (142 ± 41.7 mg/dL) that received nephrotoxic serum. Histopathologic injury was more severe in nephritic CCR2 knockout mice than nephritic wild-type mice on day 4 (3.1 ± 0.3 vs. 2.0 ± 0.3) and day 7 (3.6 ± 0.2 vs. 2.9 ± 0.3). By immunohistochemical analysis at day 4, there were significantly fewer mac-2–positive cells, representative of macrophages in the glomeruli of nephritic CCR2 knockout (2.1 ± 0.6) mice than nephritic wild-type (3.9 ± 0.5) animals. By indirect immunofluorescence, there was a moderate, diffuse linear IgG deposition of equivalent severity present in glomeruli of both wild-type and CCR2 knockout nephritic mice.ConclusionThese results suggest that our strategy was successful in reducing macrophage infiltration, but this model of glomerulonephritis is not solely dependent on the presence of CCR2 for progression of disease. After a transient ameliorative effect on proteinuria, CCR2 knockout led to more severe injury in nephritic mice. This raises the intriguing possibility that a CCR2 gene product ameliorates glomerulonephritis in this murine model. Although effects that occur in chemokine knockout mice are not equivalent to those expected with prolonged use of a chemokine antagonist, this study may nevertheless have implications for consideration of long-term use of chemokine antagonists in renal disease

Loss of KMT2C reprograms the epigenomic landscape in hPSCs resulting in NODAL overexpression and a failure of hemogenic endothelium specification

Germline or somatic variation in the family of KMT2 lysine methyltransferases have been associated with a variety of congenital disorders and cancers. Notably

Gynecologic oncology patient perspectives and knowledge on advance care planning: A quality improvement intervention

OBJECTIVES: Assess and improve advance care planning (ACP) awareness and uptake among gynecologic oncology patients. METHODS: Using a quality improvement Plan-Do-Check-Act framework, we completed a single institution needs assessment and intervention. The needs assessment was a 26-question survey assessing baseline ACP knowledge and preferences of gynecologic oncology patients. We used this survey to implement an outpatient intervention in which patients were offered ACP resources (pamphlet, discussion with their gynecologic oncologist, and/or social work referral). We conducted a post-intervention survey among patients who had and had not received ACP resource(s) to assess whether our intervention increased ACP knowledge, discussions, or uptake. RESULTS: Among 106 patients surveyed in the needs assessment, 33 % had ACP documents, 26 % had discussed ACP with a physician, and 82 % thought discussing ACP was important. The majority preferred these conversations in the outpatient setting (52 %) with their gynecologic oncologist (80 %) instead of nurses or trainees. In the intervention, 526 patients were offered ACP resources. Compared to women who did not receive resources (n = 324), patients who received ACP resource(s) (n = 202) were more likely to have ACP discussions with their gynecologic oncologist (38 % vs 68 %, CONCLUSIONS: ACP uptake among gynecologic oncology patients is low, but ACP discussions with an oncologist during outpatient visits are important to patients and improve their knowledge regarding completing ACP documents

RAD51 foci as a biomarker predictive of platinum chemotherapy response in ovarian cancer

PURPOSE: To determine the ability of RAD51 foci to predict platinum chemotherapy response in high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC) patient-derived samples. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: RAD51 and γH2AX nuclear foci were evaluated by immunofluorescence in HGSOC patient-derived cell lines (n = 5), organoids (n = 11), and formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tumor samples (discovery n = 31, validation n = 148). Samples were defined as RAD51-High if \u3e10% of geminin-positive cells had ≥5 RAD51 foci. Associations between RAD51 scores, platinum chemotherapy response, and survival were evaluated. RESULTS: RAD51 scores correlated with in vitro response to platinum chemotherapy in established and primary ovarian cancer cell lines (Pearson r = 0.96, P = 0.01). Organoids from platinum-nonresponsive tumors had significantly higher RAD51 scores than those from platinum-responsive tumors (P \u3c 0.001). In a discovery cohort, RAD51-Low tumors were more likely to have a pathologic complete response (RR, 5.28; P \u3c 0.001) and to be platinum-sensitive (RR, ∞; P = 0.05). The RAD51 score was predictive of chemotherapy response score [AUC, 0.90; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.78-1.0; P \u3c 0.001). A novel automatic quantification system accurately reflected the manual assay (92%). In a validation cohort, RAD51-Low tumors were more likely to be platinum-sensitive (RR, ∞; P \u3c 0.001) than RAD51-High tumors. Moreover, RAD51-Low status predicted platinum sensitivity with 100% positive predictive value and was associated with better progression-free (HR, 0.53; 95% CI, 0.33-0.85; P \u3c 0.001) and overall survival (HR, 0.43; 95% CI, 0.25-0.75; P = 0.003) than RAD51-High status. CONCLUSIONS: RAD51 foci are a robust marker of platinum chemotherapy response and survival in ovarian cancer. The utility of RAD51 foci as a predictive biomarker for HGSOC should be tested in clinical trials

Spatio-structural granularity of biological material entities

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>With the continuously increasing demands on knowledge- and data-management that databases have to meet, ontologies and the theories of granularity they use become more and more important. Unfortunately, currently used theories and schemes of granularity unnecessarily limit the performance of ontologies due to two shortcomings: (i) they do not allow the integration of multiple granularity perspectives into one granularity framework; (ii) they are not applicable to cumulative-constitutively organized material entities, which cover most of the biomedical material entities.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The above mentioned shortcomings are responsible for the major inconsistencies in currently used spatio-structural granularity schemes. By using the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) as a top-level ontology and Keet's general theory of granularity, a granularity framework is presented that is applicable to cumulative-constitutively organized material entities. It provides a scheme for granulating complex material entities into their constitutive and regional parts by integrating various compositional and spatial granularity perspectives. Within a scale dependent resolution perspective, it even allows distinguishing different types of representations of the same material entity. Within other scale dependent perspectives, which are based on specific types of measurements (e.g. weight, volume, etc.), the possibility of organizing instances of material entities independent of their parthood relations and only according to increasing measures is provided as well. All granularity perspectives are connected to one another through overcrossing granularity levels, together forming an integrated whole that uses the <it>compositional object perspective </it>as an integrating backbone. This granularity framework allows to consistently assign structural granularity values to all different types of material entities.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The here presented framework provides a spatio-structural granularity framework for all domain reference ontologies that model cumulative-constitutively organized material entities. With its multi-perspectives approach it allows querying an ontology stored in a database at one's own desired different levels of detail: The contents of a database can be organized according to diverse granularity perspectives, which in their turn provide different <it>views </it>on its content (i.e. data, knowledge), each organized into different levels of detail.</p