What you know can influence what you are going to know (especially for older adults)

Stimuli related to an individual's knowledge/experience are often more memorable than abstract stimuli, particularly for older adults. This has been found when material that is congruent with knowledge is contrasted with material that is incongruent with knowledge, but there is little research on a possible graded effect of congruency. The present study manipulated the degree of congruency of study material with participants’ knowledge. Young and older participants associated two famous names to nonfamous faces, where the similarity between the nonfamous faces and the real famous individuals varied. These associations were incrementally easier to remember as the name-face combinations became more congruent with prior knowledge, demonstrating a graded congruency effect, as opposed to an effect based simply on the presence or absence of associations to prior knowledge. Older adults tended to show greater susceptibility to the effect than young adults, with a significant age difference for extreme stimuli, in line with previous literature showing that schematic support in memory tasks particularly benefits older adults

Improving the use of research evidence in guideline development: 16. Evaluation

BACKGROUND: The World Health Organization (WHO), like many other organisations around the world, has recognised the need to use more rigorous processes to ensure that health care recommendations are informed by the best available research evidence. This is the last of a series of 16 reviews that have been prepared as background for advice from the WHO Advisory Committee on Health Research to WHO on how to achieve this. OBJECTIVES: We reviewed the literature on evaluating guidelines and recommendations, including their quality, whether they are likely to be up-to-date, and their implementation. We also considered the role of guideline developers in undertaking evaluations that are needed to inform recommendations. METHODS: We searched PubMed and three databases of methodological studies for existing systematic reviews and relevant methodological research. We did not conduct systematic reviews ourselves. Our conclusions are based on the available evidence, consideration of what WHO and other organisations are doing and logical arguments. KEY QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: Our answers to these questions were informed by a review of instruments for evaluating guidelines, several studies of the need for updating guidelines, discussions of the pros and cons of different research designs for evaluating the implementation of guidelines, and consideration of the use of uncertainties identified in systematic reviews to set research priorities. How should the quality of guidelines or recommendations be appraised? • WHO should put into place processes to ensure that both internal and external review of guidelines is undertaken routinely. • A checklist, such as the AGREE instrument, should be used. • The checklist should be adapted and tested to ensure that it is suitable to the broad range of recommendations that WHO produces, including public health and health policy recommendations, and that it includes questions about equity and other items that are particularly important for WHO guidelines. When should guidelines or recommendations be updated? • Processes should be put into place to ensure that guidelines are monitored routinely to determine if they are in need of updating. • People who are familiar with the topic, such as Cochrane review groups, should do focused, routine searches for new research that would require revision of the guideline. • Periodic review of guidelines by experts not involved in developing the guidelines should also be considered. • Consideration should be given to establishing guideline panels that are ongoing, to facilitate routine updating, with members serving fixed periods with a rotating membership. How should the impact of guidelines or recommendations be evaluated? • WHO headquarters and regional offices should support member states and those responsible for policy decisions and implementation to evaluate the impact of their decisions and actions by providing advice regarding impact assessment, practical support and coordination of efforts. • Before-after evaluations should be used cautiously and when there are important uncertainties regarding the effects of a policy or its implementation, randomised evaluations should be used when possible. What responsibility should WHO take for ensuring that important uncertainties are addressed by future research when the evidence needed to inform recommendations is lacking? • Guideline panels should routinely identify important uncertainties and research priorities. This source of potential priorities for research should be used systematically to inform priority-setting processes for global research

Physiological modeling, tight glycemic control, and the ICU clinician: what are models and how can they affect practice?

Critically ill patients are highly variable in their response to care and treatment. This variability and the search for improved outcomes have led to a significant increase in the use of protocolized care to reduce variability in care. However, protocolized care does not address the variability of outcome due to inter- and intra-patient variability, both in physiological state, and the response to disease and treatment. This lack of patient-specificity defines the opportunity for patient-specific approaches to diagnosis, care, and patient management, which are complementary to, and fit within, protocolized approaches

Anticancer Gene Transfer for Cancer Gene Therapy

Gene therapy vectors are among the treatments currently used to treat malignant tumors. Gene therapy vectors use a specific therapeutic transgene that causes death in cancer cells. In early attempts at gene therapy, therapeutic transgenes were driven by non-specific vectors which induced toxicity to normal cells in addition to the cancer cells. Recently, novel cancer specific viral vectors have been developed that target cancer cells leaving normal cells unharmed. Here we review such cancer specific gene therapy systems currently used in the treatment of cancer and discuss the major challenges and future directions in this field

The Spin Structure of the Nucleon

We present an overview of recent experimental and theoretical advances in our understanding of the spin structure of protons and neutrons.Comment: 84 pages, 29 figure

Code Status Discussions Between Attending Hospitalist Physicians and Medical Patients at Hospital Admission

BackgroundBioethicists and professional associations give specific recommendations for discussing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).ObjectiveTo determine whether attending hospitalist physicians' discussions meet these recommendations.DesignCross-sectional observational study on the medical services at two hospitals within a university system between August 2008 and March 2009.ParticipantsAttending hospitalist physicians and patients who were able to communicate verbally about their medical care.Main measuresWe identified code status discussions in audio-recorded admission encounters via physician survey and review of encounter transcripts. A quantitative content analysis was performed to determine whether discussions included elements recommended by bioethicists and professional associations. Two coders independently coded all discussions; Cohen's kappa was 0.64-1 for all reported elements.Key resultsAudio-recordings of 80 patients' admission encounters with 27 physicians were obtained. Eleven physicians discussed code status in 19 encounters. Discussions were more frequent in seriously ill patients (OR 4, 95% CI 1.2-14.6), yet 66% of seriously ill patients had no discussion. The median length of the code status discussions was 1 min (range 0.2-8.2). Prognosis was discussed with code status in only one of the encounters. Discussions of patients' preferences focused on the use of life-sustaining interventions as opposed to larger life goals. Descriptions of CPR as an intervention used medical jargon, and the indication for CPR was framed in general, as opposed to patient-specific scenarios. No physician quantitatively estimated the outcome of or provided a recommendation about the use of CPR.ConclusionsCode status was not discussed with many seriously ill patients. Discussions were brief, and did not include elements that bioethicists and professional associations recommend to promote patient autonomy. Local and national guidelines, research, and clinical practice changes are needed to clarify and systematize with whom and how CPR is discussed at hospital admission

First observations of separated atmospheric nu_mu and bar{nu-mu} events in the MINOS detector

The complete 5.4 kton MINOS far detector has been taking data since the beginning of August 2003 at a depth of 2070 meters water-equivalent in the Soudan mine, Minnesota. This paper presents the first MINOS observations of nuµ and [overline nu ]µ charged-current atmospheric neutrino interactions based on an exposure of 418 days. The ratio of upward- to downward-going events in the data is compared to the Monte Carlo expectation in the absence of neutrino oscillations, giving Rup/downdata/Rup/downMC=0.62-0.14+0.19(stat.)±0.02(sys.). An extended maximum likelihood analysis of the observed L/E distributions excludes the null hypothesis of no neutrino oscillations at the 98% confidence level. Using the curvature of the observed muons in the 1.3 T MINOS magnetic field nuµ and [overline nu ]µ interactions are separated. The ratio of [overline nu ]µ to nuµ events in the data is compared to the Monte Carlo expectation assuming neutrinos and antineutrinos oscillate in the same manner, giving R[overline nu ][sub mu]/nu[sub mu]data/R[overline nu ][sub mu]/nu[sub mu]MC=0.96-0.27+0.38(stat.)±0.15(sys.), where the errors are the statistical and systematic uncertainties. Although the statistics are limited, this is the first direct observation of atmospheric neutrino interactions separately for nuµ and [overline nu ]µ