A time-series study of percutaneous closure of patent foramen ovale: premature adoption?

To evaluate the impact of National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance in January 2005 and subsequent trial evidence on the adoption of percutaneous closure of patent foramen ovale (PCPFO).A retrospective time series study was conducted using the Inpatient Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) England. A total of 3801 patients, aged ≥18 and ≤60 years, who had PCPFO from 1 April 2006 to 31 March 2012 in England. Percentage change annualised (PCA) in PCPFO procedure rates between initial NICE guidance and publication of trial results was analysed.Between Quarter 2, 2006 and Quarter 4, 2009, 2163 PCPFO procedures were performed, with an increasing PCA of 48.4%. The procedure rate peaked before the presentation of equivocal results from the first randomised controlled trial (RCT) in late 2010, and declined between Quarter 4, 2009 and Quarter 4, 2011 (PCA=-15.3%). Of more than 2300 patients recruited to three RCTs, only 71 were recruited in English hospitals.PCPFO was rapidly adopted after the publication of initial NICE guidance despite the absence of RCT evidence of efficacy. Very few English patients participated in international RCTs of PCPFO, suggesting that NICE recommendations also failed to encourage the generation of RCT evidence

A taxonomic review of the centipede genus Scolopendra Linnaeus, 1758 (Scolopendromorpha, Scolopendridae) in mainland Southeast Asia, with description of a new species from Laos

NHM Repositor

Reaction Time and Mortality from the Major Causes of Death:The NHANES-III Study

Studies examining the relation of information processing speed, as measured by reaction time, with mortality are scarce. We explored these associations in a representative sample of the US population

Imbibition dynamics of nano-particulate ink-jet drops on micro-porous media

Ink-jet printing of nano-metallic colloidal fluids on to porous media such as coated papers has become a viable method to produce conductive tracks for low-cost, disposable printed electronic devices. However, the formation of well-defined and functional tracks on an absorbing surface is controlled by the drop imbibition dynamics in addition to the well-studied post-impact drop spreading behavior. This study represents the first investigation of the realtime imbibition of ink-jet deposited nano-Cu colloid drops on to coated paper substrates. In addition, the same ink was deposited on to a non-porous polymer surface as a control substrate. By using high-speed video imaging to capture the deposition of ink-jet drops, the time-scales of drop spreading and imbibition were quantified and compared with model predictions. The influences of the coating pore size on the bulk absorption rate and nano-Cu particle distribution have also been studied

Pengaruh Roa, Der, Eps terhadap Return Saham Perusahaan Food And Beverage Bei

Return adalah tujuan dari investor untuk berinvestasi di pasar modal. Investor melakukan berbagai cara agar bisa mendapatkan return yang sesuai diinginkan, dengan melakukan analisis sendiri pada perilaku perdagangan suatu saham, ataupun dengan menggunakan sarana yang sudah disediakan dari analis di pasar modal. Informasi-informasi yang dapat digunakan sebagai tolak ukur tingkat return saham Perusahaan yang diteliti adalah ROA, DER, dan EPS. Perusahaan food and beverage dipilih sebagai populasi yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini yang terdaftar di BEI periode 2008-2012. Teknik purposive sampling digunakan untuk mendapatkan jumlah sampel. Berdasarkan teknik tersebut, 10 Perusahaan diperoleh sebagai sampel. Teknik analisis regresi linier berganda digunakan dalam penelitian ini dengan hasil bahwa semakin tinggi tingkat ROA dan EPS, maka semakin tinggi juga return sahamnya, hanya DER yang memiliki pengaruh negatif dan signifikan terhadap return saham

The Centipede Genus Scolopendra in Mainland Southeast Asia: Molecular Phylogenetics, Geometric Morphometrics and External Morphology as Tools for Species Delimitation

Copyright: © 2015 The PLOS ONE Staff. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License [4.0], which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The attached file S1 is the corrected, republished version of the article. The attached file S2 is the original, uncorrected version of the article

Study Of Spatial Biological Systems Using a Graphical User Interface

Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Crete, Greece, 22-27 June 2003In this paper, we describe a Graphical User Interface (GUI) designed to manage large quantities of image data of a biological system. After setting the design requirements for the system, we developed an ecology quantification GUI that assists biologists in analysing data. We focus on the main features of the interface and we present the results and an evaluation of the system. Finally, we provide some directions for some future work

On hyperbolicity of SU(2)-equivariant, punctured disc bundles over the complex affine quadric

Given a holomorphic line bundle over the complex affine quadric $Q^2$, we investigate its Stein, SU(2)-equivariant disc bundles. Up to equivariant biholomorphism, these are all contained in a maximal one, say $\Omega_{max}$. By removing the zero section to $\Omega_{max}$ one obtains the unique Stein, SU(2)-equivariant, punctured disc bundle over $Q^2$ which contains entire curves. All other such punctured disc bundles are shown to be Kobayashi hyperbolic.Comment: 15 pages, v2: minor changes, to appear in Transformation Group

Keratin 6a marks mammary bipotential progenitor cells that can give rise to a unique tumor model resembling human normal-like breast cancer.

Progenitor cells are considered an important cell of origin of human malignancies. However, there has not been any single gene that can define mammary bipotential progenitor cells, and as such it has not been possible to use genetic methods to introduce oncogenic alterations into these cells in vivo to study tumorigenesis from them. Keratin 6a is expressed in a subset of mammary luminal epithelial cells and body cells of terminal end buds. By generating transgenic mice using the Keratin 6a (K6a) gene promoter to express tumor virus A (tva), which encodes the receptor for avian leukosis virus subgroup A (ALV/A), we provide direct evidence that K6a(+) cells are bipotential progenitor cells, and the first demonstration of a non-basal location for some biopotential progenitor cells. These K6a(+) cells were readily induced to form mammary tumors by intraductal injection of RCAS (an ALV/A-derived vector) carrying the gene encoding the polyoma middle T antigen. Tumors in this K6a-tva line were papillary and resembled the normal breast-like subtype of human breast cancer. This is the first model of this subtype of human tumors and thus may be useful for preclinical testing of targeted therapy for patients with normal-like breast cancer. These observations also provide direct in vivo evidence for the hypothesis that the cell of origin affects mammary tumor phenotypes