Osteopathic emergency medicine programs infrequently publish in high-impact emergency medicine journals

Introduction Both the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and the American Osteopathic Association (AOA) require core faculty to engage in scholarly work, including publication in peer-reviewed journals. With the ACGME/AOA merger, we sought to evaluate the frequency of publication in high-impact peer-reviewed EM journals from authors affiliated with osteopathic emergency medicine (EM) programs.Methods: We performed a retrospective literature review using the Journal Citation Report database and identified the top five journals in the category of 'Emergency Medicine' by their 2011 Impact Factor. We examined all publications from each journal for 2011. For each article we recorded article type, authors' names, position of authorship (first, senior or other).Results: The 2011 EM journals with the highest impact factor were the following: Annals of Emergency Medicine, Resuscitation, Journal of Trauma, Injury, and Academic Emergency Medicine. Of the 9,298 authors published in these journals in 2011; 1,309 (15%) claimed affiliation with U.S.-based EM programs, of which 16 (1%) listed their affiliations with eight different osteopathic EM programs. The 16 authors claimed affiliation with 8 of 46 osteopathic EM programs (17%), while 1,301 authors claimed affiliation with 104 of 148 (70%) U.S.-based allopathic programs.Conclusion: Authors from osteopathic EM programs are under-represented in the top EM journals. With the pending ACGME/AOA merger, there is a significant opportunity for improvement in the rate of publication of osteopathic EM programs in top tier EM journals

Filtering of false positive microRNA candidates by a clustering-based approach

B M C BioinformaticsBackground: MicroRNAs are small non-coding RNA gene products that play diversified roles from species to species. The explosive growth of microRNA researches in recent years proves the importance of microRNAs in the biological system and it is believed that microRNAs have valuable therapeutic potentials in human diseases. Continual efforts are therefore required to locate and verify the unknown microRNAs in various genomes. As many miRNAs are found to be arranged in clusters, meaning that they are in close proximity with their neighboring miRNAs, we are interested in utilizing the concept of microRNA clustering and applying it in microRNA computational prediction. Results: We first validate the microRNA clustering phenomenon in the human, mouse and rat genomes. There are 45.45%, 51.86% and 48.67% of the total miRNAs that are clustered in the three genomes, respectively. We then conduct sequence and secondary structure similarity analyses among clustered miRNAs, non-clustered miRNAs, neighboring sequences of clustered miRNAs and random sequences, and find that clustered miRNAs are structurally more similar to one another, and the RNAdistance score can be used to assess the structural similarity between two sequences. We therefore design a clustering-based approach which utilizes this observation to filter false positives from a list of candidates generated by a selected microRNA prediction program, and successfully raise the positive predictive value by a considerable amount ranging from 15.23% to 23.19% in the human, mouse and rat genomes, while keeping a reasonably high sensitivity. Conclusion: Our clustering-based approach is able to increase the effectiveness of currently available microRNA prediction program by raising the positive predictive value while maintaining a high sensitivity, and hence can serve as a filtering step. We believe that it is worthwhile to carry out further experiments and tests with our approach using data from other genomes and other prediction software tools. Better results may be achieved with fine-tuning of parameters. © 2008 Leung et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.published_or_final_versio

Bioactividad de los extractos y aislamiento de los lignanos de las semillas de Centaurea dealbata

Centaurea dealbata Willd. (Family: Asteraceae) belongs to the big genus Centaurea that comprises ca. 500 species. Then-hexane, dichloromethane (DCM) and methanol (MeOH) extracts of the seeds of C. dealbata have been assessed forantioxidant activity and general toxicity using, respectively, the DPPH assay, and the brine shrimp lethality assay. Boththe DCM and the MeOH extract showed signifi cant levels of antioxidant activities with an RC50 value 6.8 x 10-2 and4.7 x 10-2 mg/mL, respectively. None of the extracts exhibited any signifi cant general toxicity (LD50 = >1000 mg/mL).Three major bioactive components of the MeOH extract were found to be the lignans, arctigenin, arctiin and matairesinoside.The structures of these lignans were elucidated by comprehensive spectroscopic analyses, and also by directcomparison with the respective published data. This is the fi rst report on the occurrence of arctiin and matairesionl inC. dealbata. The distribution of these lignans within the genus Centaurea has also been presented.La Centaurea dealbata Willd. (familia: Asteraceae) pertenece al género Centaurea, que comprende unas 500 especies.Para evaluar la actividad antioxidante y la toxicidad general de los extractos de n-hexano, diclorometano (DCM)y metanol (MeOH) de las semillas de C. dealbata se han utilizado, respectivamente, el ensayo DPPH y el ensayo deletalidad de gambas en salmuera. Tanto el extracto de DCM como el de MeOH presentaron niveles signifi cativosde actividad antioxidante, con valores de RC50 de 6,8 x 10-2 y 4,7 x 10-2 mg/mL, respectivamente. Ninguno de losextractos presentó una toxicidad general signifi cativa (LD50 = >1000 mg/mL). Se observó que los tres principalescomponentes bioactivos del extracto de MeOH fueron los lignanos arctigenina, arctiina y matairesinosida. Lasestructuras de estos lignanos se dilucidaron mediante análisis espectroscópicos exhaustivos y comparación directacon los datos respectivos publicados. Éste es el primer informe sobre la ocurrencia de arctiina y matairesinol en C.dealbata. También se presenta la distribución de estos lignanos dentro del género Centaurea

Sharp Global Bounds for the Hessian on Pseudo-Hermitian Manifolds

We find sharp bounds for the norm inequality on a Pseudo-hermitian manifold, where the L^2 norm of all second derivatives of the function involving horizontal derivatives is controlled by the L^2 norm of the sub-Laplacian. Perturbation allows us to get a-priori bounds for solutions to sub-elliptic PDE in non-divergence form with bounded measurable coefficients. The method of proof is through a Bochner technique. The Heisenberg group is seen to be en extremal manifold for our inequality in the class of manifolds whose Ricci curvature is non-negative.Comment: 13 page

Glucose lowering effect of transgenic human insulin-like growth factor-I from rice: in vitro and in vivo studies

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Human insulin-like growth factor-I (hIGF-I) is a growth factor which is highly resemble to insulin. It is essential for cell proliferation and has been proposed for treatment of various endocrine-associated diseases including growth hormone insensitivity syndrome and diabetes mellitus. In the present study, an efficient plant expression system was developed to produce biologically active recombinant hIGF-I (rhIGF-I) in transgenic rice grains.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The plant-codon-optimized hIGF-I was introduced into rice via <it>Agrobacterium</it>-mediated transformation. To enhance the stability and yield of rhIGF-I, the endoplasmic reticulum-retention signal and glutelin signal peptide were used to deliver rhIGF-I to endoplasmic reticulum for stable accumulation. We found that only glutelin signal peptide could lead to successful expression of hIGF-I and one gram of hIGF-I rice grain possessed the maximum activity level equivalent to 3.2 micro molar of commercial rhIGF-I. <it>In vitro </it>functional analysis showed that the rice-derived rhIGF-I was effective in inducing membrane ruffling and glucose uptake on rat skeletal muscle cells. Oral meal test with rice-containing rhIGF-I acutely reduced blood glucose levels in streptozotocin-induced and Zucker diabetic rats, whereas it had no effect in normal rats.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our findings provided an alternative expression system to produce large quantities of biologically active rhIGF-I. The provision of large quantity of recombinant proteins will promote further research on the therapeutic potential of rhIGF-I.</p

Multimodality Treatment with Conventional Transcatheter Arterial Chemoembolization and Radiofrequency Ablation for Unresectable Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Background/Aims: To evaluate the efficacy of multimodality treatment consisting of conventional transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) and radiofrequency ablation (RFA) in patients with non-resectable and non-ablatable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods: In this retrospective study, 85 consecutive patients with HCC (59 solitary, 29 multifocal HCC) received TACE followed by RFA between 2001 and 2010. The mean number of tumors per patient was 1.6 +/- 0.7 with a mean size of 3.0 +/- 0.9 cm. Both local efficacy and patient survival were evaluated. Results: Of 120 treated HCCs, 99 (82.5%) showed a complete response (CR), while in 21 HCCs (17.5%) a partial response was depicted. Patients with solitary HCC revealed CR in 91% (51/56); in patients with multifocal HCC (n = 29) CR was achieved in 75% (48 of 64 HCCs). The median survival for all patients was 25.5 months. The 1-, 2-, 3- and 5-year survival rates were 84.6, 58.7, 37.6 and 14.6%, respectively. Statistical analysis revealed a significant difference in survival between Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) A (73.4 months) and B (50.3 months) patients, while analyses failed to show a difference for Child-Pugh score, Cancer of Liver Italian Program (CLIP) score and tumor distribution pattern. Conclusion: TACE combined with RFA provides an effective treatment approach with high local tumor control rates and promising survival data, especially for BCLC A patients. Randomized trials are needed to compare this multimodality approach with a single modality approach for early-stage HCC. Copyright (C) 2011 S. Karger AG, Base

Electrically controlled long-distance spin transport through an antiferromagnetic insulator

Spintronics uses spins, the intrinsic angular momentum of electrons, as an alternative for the electron charge. Its long-term goal is in the development of beyond-Moore low dissipation technology devices. Recent progress demonstrated the long-distance transport of spin signals across ferromagnetic insulators. Antiferromagnetically ordered materials are however the most common class of magnetic materials with several crucial advantages over ferromagnetic systems. In contrast to the latter, antiferromagnets exhibit no net magnetic moment, which renders them stable and impervious to external fields. In addition, they can be operated at THz frequencies. While fundamentally their properties bode well for spin transport, previous indirect observations indicate that spin transmission through antiferromagnets is limited to short distances of a few nanometers. Here we demonstrate the long-distance, over tens of micrometers, propagation of spin currents through hematite (\alpha-Fe2O3), the most common antiferromagnetic iron oxide, exploiting the spin Hall effect for spin injection. We control the spin current flow by the interfacial spin-bias and by tuning the antiferromagnetic resonance frequency with an external magnetic field. This simple antiferromagnetic insulator is shown to convey spin information parallel to the compensated moment (N\'eel order) over distances exceeding tens of micrometers. This newly-discovered mechanism transports spin as efficiently as the net magnetic moments in the best-suited complex ferromagnets. Our results pave the way to ultra-fast, low-power antiferromagnet-insulator-based spin-logic devices that operate at room temperature and in the absence of magnetic fields