338 research outputs found
Clinical application of high throughput molecular screening techniques for pharmacogenomics.
Genetic analysis is one of the fastest-growing areas of clinical diagnostics. Fortunately, as our knowledge of clinically relevant genetic variants rapidly expands, so does our ability to detect these variants in patient samples. Increasing demand for genetic information may necessitate the use of high throughput diagnostic methods as part of clinically validated testing. Here we provide a general overview of our current and near-future abilities to perform large-scale genetic testing in the clinical laboratory. First we review in detail molecular methods used for high throughput mutation detection, including techniques able to monitor thousands of genetic variants for a single patient or to genotype a single genetic variant for thousands of patients simultaneously. These methods are analyzed in the context of pharmacogenomic testing in the clinical laboratories, with a focus on tests that are currently validated as well as those that hold strong promise for widespread clinical application in the near future. We further discuss the unique economic and clinical challenges posed by pharmacogenomic markers. Our ability to detect genetic variants frequently outstrips our ability to accurately interpret them in a clinical context, carrying implications both for test development and introduction into patient management algorithms. These complexities must be taken into account prior to the introduction of any pharmacogenomic biomarker into routine clinical testing
Testing Models of the Individual and Cosmological Evolutions of Powerful Radio Galaxies
We seek to develop an essentially analytical model for the evolution of
Fanaroff-Riley Class II radio galaxies as they age individually and as their
numbers vary with cosmological epoch. Such modeling is required in order to
probe in more detail the impact of radio galaxies on the growth of structures
in the universe, which appears likely to have been quite significant at z > 1.
In this first paper of a series we compare three rather sophisticated
analytical models for the evolution of linear size and lobe power of FR II
radio galaxies, those of Kaiser, Dennett-Thorpe & Alexander (1997), Blundell,
Rawlings & Willott (1999), and Manolakou & Kirk (2002). We perform
multi-dimensional Monte Carlo simulations in order to compare the predictions
of each model for radio powers, sizes, redshifts and spectral indices with
data. The observational samples used here are the low frequency radio surveys,
3CRR, 6CE and 7CRS, which are flux-limited and complete. We search for and
describe the best parameters for each model, after doing statistical tests on
them. We find that no existing model can give acceptable fits to all the
properties of the surveys considered, although the Kaiser, Dennett-Thorpe &
Alexander (1997) model gives better overall results than do the Manolakou &
Kirk (2002) or Blundell, Rawlings & Willott (1999) models for most of the tests
we performed. We suggest ways in which these models may be improved.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures; substantially improved version, with additional
statistical tests; to appear in MNRA
Jet propagation and the asymmetries of CSS radio sources
As Compact Steep Spectrum radio sources have been shown to be more
asymmetrical than larger sources of similar powers, there is a high probability
that they interact with an asymmetric medium in the central regions of the host
elliptical galaxy. We consider a simple analytical model of the propagation of
radio jets through a reasonable asymmetric environment and show that they can
yield the range of arm-length and luminosity asymmetries that have been
observed. We then generalize this to allow for the effects of orientation, and
quantify the substantial enhancements of the asymmetries that can be produced
in this fashion. We present two-dimensional and three-dimensional simulations
of jets propagating through multi-phase media and note that the results from
the simulations are also broadly consistent with the observations.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in A&
- …