Polycystic kidney disease in patients on the renal transplant waiting list: trends in hematocrit and survival

BACKGROUND: The patient characteristics and mortality associated with autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (PKD) have not been characterized for a national sample of end stage renal disease (ESRD) patients on the renal transplant waiting list. METHODS: 40,493 patients in the United States Renal Data System who were initiated on ESRD therapy between 1 April 1995 and 29 June 1999 and later enrolled on the renal transplant waiting list were analyzed in an historical cohort study of the relationship between hematocrit at the time of presentation to ESRD and survival (using Cox Regression) in patients with PKD as a cause of ESRD. RESULTS: Hematocrit levels at presentation to ESRD increased significantly over more recent years of the study. Hematocrit rose in parallel in patients with and without PKD, but patients with PKD had consistently higher hemoglobin. PKD was independently associated with higher hematocrit in multiple linear regression analysis (p < 0.0001). In logistic regression, higher hematocrit was independently associated with PKD. In Cox Regression analysis, PKD was associated with statistically significant improved survival both in comparison with diabetic (hazard ratio, 0.64, 95% CI 0.53–0.77, p < 0.001) and non-diabetic (HR 0.68, 95% CI 0.56–0.82, p = 0.001) ESRD patients, adjusted for all other factors. CONCLUSIONS: Hematocrit at presentation to ESRD was significantly higher in patients with PKD compared with patients with other causes of ESRD. The survival advantage of PKD in ESRD persisted even adjusted for differences in hematocrit and in comparison with patients on the renal transplant waiting list

An effective theory for jet propagation in dense QCD matter: jet broadening and medium-induced bremsstrahlung

Two effects, jet broadening and gluon bremsstrahlung induced by the propagation of a highly energetic quark in dense QCD matter, are reconsidered from effective theory point of view. We modify the standard Soft Collinear Effective Theory (SCET) Lagrangian to include Glauber modes, which are needed to implement the interactions between the medium and the collinear fields. We derive the Feynman rules for this Lagrangian and show that it is invariant under soft and collinear gauge transformations. We find that the newly constructed theory SCET$_{\rm G}$ recovers exactly the general result for the transverse momentum broadening of jets. In the limit where the radiated gluons are significantly less energetic than the parent quark, we obtain a jet energy-loss kernel identical to the one discussed in the reaction operator approach to parton propagation in matter. In the framework of SCET$_{\rm G}$ we present results for the fully-differential bremsstrahlung spectrum for both the incoherent and the Landau-Pomeranchunk-Migdal suppressed regimes beyond the soft-gluon approximation. Gauge invariance of the physics results is demonstrated explicitly by performing the calculations in both the light-cone and covariant $R_{\xi}$ gauges. We also show how the process-dependent medium-induced radiative corrections factorize from the jet production cross section on the example of the quark jets considered here.Comment: 52 pages, 15 pdf figures, as published in JHE

Branching dendrites with resonant membrane: a “sum-over-trips” approach

Dendrites form the major components of neurons. They are complex branching structures that receive and process thousands of synaptic inputs from other neurons. It is well known that dendritic morphology plays an important role in the function of dendrites. Another important contribution to the response characteristics of a single neuron comes from the intrinsic resonant properties of dendritic membrane. In this paper we combine the effects of dendritic branching and resonant membrane dynamics by generalising the “sum-over-trips” approach (Abbott et al. in Biol Cybernetics 66, 49–60 1991). To illustrate how this formalism can shed light on the role of architecture and resonances in determining neuronal output we consider dual recording and reconstruction data from a rat CA1 hippocampal pyramidal cell. Specifically we explore the way in which an Ih current contributes to a voltage overshoot at the soma

Second chances: Investigating athletes’ experiences of talent transfer

Talent transfer initiatives seek to transfer talented, mature individuals from one sport to another. Unfortunately talent transfer initiatives seem to lack an evidence-based direction and a rigorous exploration of the mechanisms underpinning the approach. The purpose of this exploratory study was to identify the factors which successfully transferring athletes cite as facilitative of talent transfer. In contrast to the anthropometric and performance variables that underpin current talent transfer initiatives, participants identified a range of psychobehavioral and environmental factors as key to successful transfer. We argue that further research into the mechanisms of talent transfer is needed in order to provide a strong evidence base for the methodologies employed in these initiatives

Strong and Tunable Nonlinear Optomechanical Coupling in a Low-Loss System

A major goal in optomechanics is to observe and control quantum behavior in a system consisting of a mechanical resonator coupled to an optical cavity. Work towards this goal has focused on increasing the strength of the coupling between the mechanical and optical degrees of freedom; however, the form of this coupling is crucial in determining which phenomena can be observed in such a system. Here we demonstrate that avoided crossings in the spectrum of an optical cavity containing a flexible dielectric membrane allow us to realize several different forms of the optomechanical coupling. These include cavity detunings that are (to lowest order) linear, quadratic, or quartic in the membrane's displacement, and a cavity finesse that is linear in (or independent of) the membrane's displacement. All these couplings are realized in a single device with extremely low optical loss and can be tuned over a wide range in situ; in particular, we find that the quadratic coupling can be increased three orders of magnitude beyond previous devices. As a result of these advances, the device presented here should be capable of demonstrating the quantization of the membrane's mechanical energy.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl

Heavy Flavour Production at Tevatron and Parton Shower Effects

We present hadron-level predictions from the Monte Carlo generator Cascade and numerical calculations of charm and beauty production at the Fermilab Tevatron within the framework of the $k_T$-factorization QCD approach. Our consideration is based on the CCFM-evolved unintegrated gluon densities in a proton. The performed analysis covers the total and differential cross sections of open charm and beauty quarks, $B$ and $D$ mesons (or rather muons from their semileptonic decays) and the total and differential cross sections of $b \bar b$ di-jet hadroproduction. We study the theoretical uncertainties of our calculations and investigate the effects coming from parton showers in initial and final states. Our predictions are compared with the recent experimental data taken by the D0 and CDF collaborations. Special attention is put on the specific angular correlations between the final-state particles. We demonstrate that the final state parton shower plays a crucial role in the description of such observables. The decorrelated part of angular separations can be fully described, if the process $gg^*\rightarrow gg$ is included.Comment: Fig 8,9 10 replaced, small corrections in text A discussion of the delta phi results is adde

The complete mitochondrial genome of the foodborne parasitic pathogen Cyclospora cayetanensis

Cyclospora cayetanensis is a human-specific coccidian parasite responsible for several food and water-related outbreaks around the world, including the most recent ones involving over 900 persons in 2013 and 2014 outbreaks in the USA. Multicopy organellar DNA such as mitochondrion genomes have been particularly informative for detection and genetic traceback analysis in other parasites. We sequenced the C. cayetanensis genomic DNA obtained from stool samples from patients infected with Cyclospora in Nepal using the Illumina MiSeq platform. By bioinformatically filtering out the metagenomic reads of non-coccidian origin sequences and concentrating the reads by targeted alignment, we were able to obtain contigs containing Eimeria-like mitochondrial, apicoplastic and some chromosomal genomic fragments. A mitochondrial genomic sequence was assembled and confirmed by cloning and sequencing targeted PCR products amplified from Cyclospora DNA using primers based on our draft assembly sequence. The results show that the C. cayetanensis mitochondrion genome is 6274 bp in length, with 33% GC content, and likely exists in concatemeric arrays as in Eimeria mitochondrial genomes. Phylogenetic analysis of the C. cayetanensis mitochondrial genome places this organism in a tight cluster with Eimeria species. The mitochondrial genome of C. cayetanensis contains three protein coding genes, cytochrome (cytb), cytochrome C oxidase subunit 1 (cox1), and cytochrome C oxidase subunit 3 (cox3), in addition to 14 large subunit (LSU) and nine small subunit (SSU) fragmented rRNA genes