Antegrade pressure measurement as a diagnostic tool in modern pediatric urology

The antegrade pressure measurement (APM) or perfusion pressure-flow test (Whitaker test) is a method of antegrade measurement of pressure in the upper urinary tract. In this study, we present the long-term follow-up results of APMs performed in our institution in the late 1980s and early 1990s to see whether the diagnostic decisions that were based on the outcomes of the test prove to be correct in the long term. We conducted a retrospective study by searching our hospital's electronic database. We found a total of 16 APMs performed between 1987 and 1995 (10 boys, six girls; mean age 61 months). In nine cases, action was undertaken immediately after the APM had been performed; in seven cases, this was a surgical procedure (re-implantation/re-calibration or pyeloplasty) after obstruction was demonstrated. In two cases (both postoperative after previous pyeloplasty), absence of obstruction was demonstrated and nephrostomy tubes were subsequently closed. In one case, this resulted in hydronephrosis that had to be treated with a new JJ stent. In all the seven cases in which no action was deemed necessary as a result of the outcome of the APM, long-term follow-up showed that intervention had indeed not been necessary. Although not often used anymore, the APM seems to be a safe and valuable diagnostic tool in the work up for possible urinary tract obstruction in children, especially in cases in which there is serious doubt concerning conservative watchful waitin

Differential expression analysis for sequence count data

*Motivation:* High-throughput nucleotide sequencing provides quantitative readouts in assays for RNA expression (RNA-Seq), protein-DNA binding (ChIP-Seq) or cell counting (barcode sequencing). Statistical inference of differential signal in such data requires estimation of their variability throughout the dynamic range. When the number of replicates is small, error modelling is needed to achieve statistical power.

*Results:* We propose an error model that uses the negative binomial distribution, with variance and mean linked by local regression, to model the null distribution of the count data. The method controls type-I error and provides good detection power. 

*Availability:* A free open-source R software package, _DESeq_, is available from the Bioconductor project and from "http://www-huber.embl.de/users/anders/DESeq":http://www-huber.embl.de/users/anders/DESeq

Developing an award program for children's settings to support healthy eating and physical activity and reduce the risk of overweight and obesity

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>This paper aimed to identify the best way to engage, motivate and support early childhood services (ECS) and primary schools (PS) to create policy and practise changes to promote healthy eating and physical activity. This information would be used to develop a suitable program to implement within these children's settings to reduce the risk of childhood overweight and obesity.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The Medical Research Council's (UK) framework for the design and evaluation of complex interventions was used to guide the development of the healthy eating and physical activity program suitable for ECS and PS. Within this framework a range of evaluation methods, including stakeholder planning, in-depth interviews with ECS and PS staff and acceptability and feasibility trials in one local government area, were used to ascertain the best way to engage and support positive changes in these children's settings.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Both ECS and PS identified that they had a role to play to improve children's healthy eating and physical activity. ECS identified their role in promoting healthy eating and physical activity as important for children's health, and instilling healthy habits for life. PS felt that these were health issues, rather than educational issues; however, schools saw the link between healthy eating and physical activity and student learning outcomes. These settings identified that a program that provides a simple guide that recognises good practise in these settings, such as an award scheme using a health promoting schools approach, as a feasible and acceptable way for them to support children's healthy eating and physical activity.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Through the process of design and evaluation a program - <it>Kids - 'Go for your life'</it>, was developed to promote and support children's healthy eating and physical activity and reduce the risk of childhood overweight and obesity. <it>Kids - 'Go for your life' </it>used an award program, based on a health promoting schools approach, which was demonstrated to be a suitable model to engage ECS and PS and was acceptable and feasible to create policy and practise changes to support healthy eating and physical activity for children.</p

A Prospective Study of the Association of Metacognitive Beliefs and Processes with Persistent Emotional Distress After Diagnosis of Cancer

Two hundred and six patients, diagnosed with primary breast or prostate cancer completed self-report questionnaires on two occasions: before treatment (T1) and 12 months later (T2). The questionnaires included: the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale; Impact of Events Scale; the Metacognitions Questionnaire-30 (MCQ-30) and the Illness Perceptions Questionnaire-revised. A series of regression analyses indicated that metacognitive beliefs at T1 predicted between 14 and 19 % of the variance in symptoms of anxiety, depression and trauma at T2 after controlling for age and gender. For all three outcomes, the MCQ-30 subscale ‘negative beliefs about worry’ made the largest individual contribution with ‘cognitive confidence’ also contributing in each case. For anxiety, a third metacognitive variable, ‘positive beliefs about worry’ also predicted variance in T2 symptoms. In addition, hierarchical analyses indicated that metacognitive beliefs explained a small but significant amount of variance in T2 anxiety (2 %) and T2 depression (4 %) over and above that explained by demographic variables, T1 symptoms and T1 illness perceptions. The findings suggest that modifying metacognitive beliefs and processes has the potential to alleviate distress associated with cancer

Analysis of Kudoa thyrsites (Myxozoa: Myxosporea) spore antigens using monoclonal antibodies

A method employing Percoll gradient centrifugation was developed to purify Kudoa thyrsites spores from somatic muscle tissue of Atlantic salmon Salmo salar. Highly purified spores were then used to immunize inbred BALB/c mice for derivation of hybridomas secreting Kudoa-specific monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). Analysis of mAbs by immunofluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry showed that several were specific for antigens on the surface of K. thyrsites spores whereas other mAbs reacted with polar capsules or with polar filaments of spores of K. thyrsites, K. paniformis and K. crumena. Immunoblots on spore lysates using the surface-binding mAbs showed a broad band of 46 to > 220 kDa, whereas mAbs specific for antigens of polar capsules and polar filaments detected sharper bands of various molecular masses, depending on the Kudoa species. The dominant epitope of the K. thyrsites spore surface antigen was shown to be carbohydrate as determined by its sensitivity to treatment with anhydrous trifluoromethane sulfonic acid and by its resistance to treatment with Proteinase K. Immunofluorescence microscopy using the K. thyrsites-specific mAbs on isolated, intact, permeabilized plasmodia and on thin sections of somatic muscle tissue containing plasmodia revealed intense labeling of spores both within the spore-producing plasmodia and in the flesh of infected Atlantic salmon. As few as 100 spores were detected by immunoblotting, indicating that these mAbs have potential for use in developing a field-based diagnostic test

Sampling of cereals and cereal-based foods for the determination of ochratoxin A: an overview

The mycotoxin ochratoxin A (OTA) is known to be heterogeneously distributed both intrinsically (from one individual food item to the next) as well as distributionally (throughout a sample of individual food items) in cereals and cereal-based foods. Therefore, proper sampling and sample comminution are special challenges, but are prerequisites for obtaining sound analytical data. This paper outlines the issue of the sampling process for cereals and cereal-based foods, starting with the planning phase, followed by the sampling step itself and the formation of analytical samples. The sampling of whole grain and retail-level cereal-based foods will be discussed. Furthermore, possibilities to reduce sampling variance are presented

EnvMine: A text-mining system for the automatic extraction of contextual information

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>For ecological studies, it is crucial to count on adequate descriptions of the environments and samples being studied. Such a description must be done in terms of their physicochemical characteristics, allowing a direct comparison between different environments that would be difficult to do otherwise. Also the characterization must include the precise geographical location, to make possible the study of geographical distributions and biogeographical patterns. Currently, there is no schema for annotating these environmental features, and these data have to be extracted from textual sources (published articles). So far, this had to be performed by manual inspection of the corresponding documents. To facilitate this task, we have developed EnvMine, a set of text-mining tools devoted to retrieve contextual information (physicochemical variables and geographical locations) from textual sources of any kind.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>EnvMine is capable of retrieving the physicochemical variables cited in the text, by means of the accurate identification of their associated units of measurement. In this task, the system achieves a recall (percentage of items retrieved) of 92% with less than 1% error. Also a Bayesian classifier was tested for distinguishing parts of the text describing environmental characteristics from others dealing with, for instance, experimental settings.</p> <p>Regarding the identification of geographical locations, the system takes advantage of existing databases such as GeoNames to achieve 86% recall with 92% precision. The identification of a location includes also the determination of its exact coordinates (latitude and longitude), thus allowing the calculation of distance between the individual locations.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>EnvMine is a very efficient method for extracting contextual information from different text sources, like published articles or web pages. This tool can help in determining the precise location and physicochemical variables of sampling sites, thus facilitating the performance of ecological analyses. EnvMine can also help in the development of standards for the annotation of environmental features.</p

The regions within the N-terminus critical for human glucagon like peptide-1 receptor (hGLP-1R) cell Surface expression

The hGLP-1R is a target for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and belongs to the class B family of GPCRs. Like other class B GPCRs, the GLP-1R contains an N-terminal signal peptide (SP) and undergoes N-linked glycosylation, which are important for its trafficking and maturation. This study analysed the role of the SP, the hydrophobic region after the SP (HRASP), glycosylation and the conserved residues within the N-terminus in GLP-1R trafficking. HGLP-1R targeted to the cell surface showed no SP, and the SP deleted mutant, but not the mutants defective in SP cleavage, showed cell surface expression, demonstrating the importance of SP cleavage for hGLP-1R cell surface expression. The N-terminal deletions of hGLP-1R revealed that the HRASP, not the SP, is essential for cell surface expression of GLP-1R. Further, inhibition of hGLP-1R glycosylation prevented cell surface expression of the receptor. Mutation of Trp39, Tyr69 and Tyr88, which are required for agonist binding, in the GLP-1R abolished cell surface expression of the receptor independent of the SP cleavage or N-linked glycosylation. In conclusion, the N-terminus of hGLP-1R regulates receptor trafficking and maturation. Therefore this study provides insight into the role of hGLP-1R N-terminus on the receptor cell surface expression

Examination of the effects of a new compression garment on skin tissue oxygenation in healthy volunteers

Objective: Compression devices have been shown to reduce venous stasis, increase blood flow and skin tissue oxygenation (StO2), promoting healthy tissue. This study aimed to explore the efficacy of a new compression garment in three different positions in healthy adults. Methods: In this quantitative study, potential participants were screened and recruited using the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire (PAR-Q, Canada). Participants attended three separate, one-hour sessions to evaluate StO2 in supine-lying, chair-sitting and long-sitting positions. StO2 was recorded for 20 minutes pre-, during and post- a 20-minute intervention using a compression garment, TributeWrap (Lohmann-Rauscher, Germany). A repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was followed by post-hoc pairwise comparisons. Results: A total of 28 healthy volunteers took part (aged 24.6 ±8.4years; 13 males, 15 females). A significant difference was seen between the three positions (p<0.001). Chair-sitting had the lowest StO2 pre-intervention, increasing StO2 significantly (32.25%, p<0.001) during wear of the compression garment (24.8% higher than baseline post-intervention). No significant difference was seen between long sitting and supine-lying (p=1.000). In contrast, long-sitting and supine-lying StO2 was higher pre-intervention compared with chair-sitting and only increased post-intervention (11% and 16.8% respectively, p<0.001) compared with baseline. Conclusion: The compression garment significantly increased StO2 levels in both seating positions. Further studies are required to determine if increasing StO2 through short intervention sessions with this device has the potential to improve self-management of tissue health in individuals with reduced mobility, oedema or venous insufficiency

Modelling stereotyping in cooperation systems

Cooperation is a sophisticated example of collective intelligence. This is particularly the case for indirect reciprocity, where benefit is provided to others without a guarantee of a future return. This is becoming increasingly relevant to future technology, where autonomous machines face cooperative dilemmas. This paper addresses the problem of stereotyping, where traits belonging to an individual are used as proxy when assessing their reputation. This is a cognitive heuristic that humans frequently use to avoid deliberation, but can lead to negative societal implications such as discrimination. It is feasible that machines could be equally susceptible. Our contribution concerns a new and general framework to examine how stereotyping affects the reputation of agents engaging in indirect reciprocity. The framework is flexible and focuses on how reputations are shared. This offers the opportunity to assess the interplay between the sharing of traits and the cost, in terms of reduced cooperation, through opportunities for shirkers to benefit. This is demonstrated using a number of key scenarios. In particular, the results show that cooperation is sensitive to the structure of reputation sharing between individuals