Should tumor depth be included in prognostication of soft tissue sarcoma?

BACKGROUND: Most staging systems for soft tissue sarcoma are based on histologic malignancy-grade, tumor size and tumor depth. These factors are generally dichotomized, size at 5 cm. We believe it is unlikely that tumor depth per se should influence a tumor's metastatic capability. Therefore we hypothesized that the unfavourable prognostic importance of depth could be explained by the close association between size and depth, deep-seated tumors on average being larger than the superficial ones. When tumor size is dichotomized, this effect should be most pronounced in the large size (>5 cm) group in which the size span is larger. METHODS: We analyzed the associations between tumor size and depth and the prognostic importance of grade, size and depth in a population-based series of 490 adult patients with soft tissue sarcoma of the extremity or trunk wall with complete, 4.5 years minimum, follow-up. RESULTS: Multivariate analysis showed no major prognostic effect of tumor depth when grade and size were taken into account. The mean size of small tumors was the same whether superficial or deep but the mean size of large and deep-seated tumors were one third larger than that of large but superficial tumors. Tumor depth influenced the prognosis in the subset of high-grade and large tumors. In this subset deep-seated tumors had poorer survival rate than superficial tumors, which could be explained by the larger mean size of the deep-seated tumors. CONCLUSION: Most of the prognostic value of tumor depth in soft tissue sarcomas of the extremity or trunk wall can be explained by the association between tumor size and depth

Long-Term Smart Grid Planning Under Uncertainty Considering Reliability Indexes

The electricity sector is fast moving towards a new era of clean generation devices dispersed along the network. On one hand, this will largely contribute to achieve the multi-national environment goals agreed via political means. On the other hand, network operators face new complexities and challenges regarding network planning due to the large uncertainties associated with renewable generation and electric vehicles integration. In addition, due to new technologies such as combined heat and power (CHP), the district heat demand is considered in the long-term planning problem. The 13-bus medium voltage network is evaluated considering the possibility of CHP units but also without. Results demonstrate that CHP, together with heat-only boiler units, can supply the district heat demand and contribute to network reliability. They can also reduce the expected energy not supplied and the power losses cost, avoiding the need to invest in new power lines for the considered lifetime project.This work has received funding from the EU's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 641794 (project DREAM-GO) and from FEDER Funds through COMPETE program and from National Funds through FCT under the project UID/EEA/00760/2013. Bruno Canizes is supported by FCT Funds through SFRH/BD/110678/2015 PhD scholarship and M. Ali Fotouhi Ghazvini is supported by FCT Funds through SFRH/BD/94688/2013 PhD scholarship.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Comparative analysis of miRNAs and their targets across four plant species

BACKGROUND: MicroRNA (miRNA) mediated regulation of gene expression has been recognized as a major posttranscriptional regulatory mechanism also in plants. We performed a comparative analysis of miRNAs and their respective gene targets across four plant species: Arabidopsis thaliana (Ath), Medicago truncatula(Mtr), Brassica napus (Bna), and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (Cre). RESULTS: miRNAs were obtained from mirBase with 218 miRNAs for Ath, 375 for Mtr, 46 for Bna, and 73 for Cre, annotated for each species respectively. miRNA targets were obtained from available database annotations, bioinformatic predictions using RNAhybrid as well as predicted from an analysis of mRNA degradation products (degradome sequencing) aimed at identifying miRNA cleavage products. On average, and considering both experimental and bioinformatic predictions together, every miRNA was associated with about 46 unique gene transcripts with considerably variation across species. We observed a positive and linear correlation between the number miRNAs and the total number of transcripts across different plant species suggesting that the repertoire of miRNAs correlates with the size of the transcriptome of an organism. Conserved miRNA-target pairs were found to be associated with developmental processes and transcriptional regulation, while species-specific (in particular, Ath) pairs are involved in signal transduction and response to stress processes. Conserved miRNAs have more targets and higher expression values than non-conserved miRNAs. We found evidence for a conservation of not only the sequence of miRNAs, but their expression levels as well. CONCLUSIONS: Our results support the notion of a high birth and death rate of miRNAs and that miRNAs serve many species specific functions, while conserved miRNA are related mainly to developmental processes and transcriptional regulation with conservation operating at both the sequence and expression level

Maternal Postpartum Distress and Childhood Overweight

OBJECTIVE: We investigated associations between maternal postpartum distress covering anxiety, depression and stress and childhood overweight. METHODS: We performed a prospective cohort study, including 21,121 mother-child-dyads from the Danish National Birth Cohort (DNBC). Maternal distress was measured 6 months postpartum by 9 items covering anxiety, depression and stress. Outcome was childhood overweight at 7-years-of age. Multiple logistic regression analyses were performed and information on maternal age, socioeconomic status, pre-pregnancy BMI, gestational weight gain, parity, smoking during pregnancy, paternal BMI, birth weight, gestational age at birth, sex, breastfeeding and finally infant weight at 5 and 12 month were included in the analyses. RESULTS: We found, that postpartum distress was not associated with childhood risk of overweight, OR 1.00, 95%CI [0.98-1.02]. Neither was anxiety, depression, or stress exposure, separately. There were no significant differences between the genders. Adjustment for potential confounders did not alter the results. CONCLUSION: Maternal postpartum distress is apparently not an independent risk factor for childhood overweight at 7-years-of-age. However, we can confirm previous findings of perinatal determinants as high maternal pre-pregnancy BMI, and smoking during pregnancy being risk factors for childhood overweight

Future Fitness of Female Insect Pests in Temporally Stable and Unstable Habitats and Its Impact on Habitat Utility as Refuges for Insect Resistance Management

The long-term fitness of individuals is examined in complex and temporally dynamic ecosystems. We call this multigeneration fitness measure “future fitness”. Helicoverpa zea (Boddie) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) is a polyphagous insect that feeds on many wild and cultivated hosts. While four generations of H. zea occur during the cropping season in the U.S. Mid Southern agroecosysem, the latter two generations were of most interest, as corn (which has been largely nontransgenic in the Mid-South) dominates the first two generations in the cropping system. In simulations of the evolution of resistance to Bt-transgenic crops, cotton refuge areas were found to be significantly more effective than similar soybean acreages at delaying the evolution of resistance. Cotton is a suitable host for H. zea during two late summer generations, while a soybean field is suitable for only one of these generations, therefore soybean fields of other maturity groups were simulated as being attractive during the alternative generation. A hypothetical soybean variety was tested in which a single field would be attractive over both generations and it was found to be significantly more effective at delaying resistance than simulated conventional soybean varieties. Finally, the placement of individuals emerging at the start of the 3rd (first without corn) generation was simulated in either refuge cotton, conventional soybean and the hypothetical long attractive soybean and the mean number of offspring produced was measured at the end of the season. Although females in conventional and long soybean crops had the same expected fecundity, because of differences in temporal stability of the two crops, the long soybean simulations had significantly more H. zea individuals at the end of the season than the conventional soybean simulations. These simulations demonstrate that the long-term fecundity associated with an individual is dependent not only on the fecundity of that individual in its current habitat, but also the temporal stability of habitats, the ecosystem at large and the likelihood that the individual's offspring will move into different habitats

Search for Gravitational Waves from Primordial Black Hole Binary Coalescences in the Galactic Halo

We use data from the second science run of the LIGO gravitational-wave detectors to search for the gravitational waves from primordial black hole (PBH) binary coalescence with component masses in the range 0.2--$1.0 M_\odot$. The analysis requires a signal to be found in the data from both LIGO observatories, according to a set of coincidence criteria. No inspiral signals were found. Assuming a spherical halo with core radius 5 kpc extending to 50 kpc containing non-spinning black holes with masses in the range 0.2--$1.0 M_\odot$, we place an observational upper limit on the rate of PBH coalescence of 63 per year per Milky Way halo (MWH) with 90% confidence.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, to be submitted to Phys. Rev.

Determination of the mass of the W boson

Previous studies of the physics potential of LEP2 indicated that with the design luminosity of 500 inverse picobarn one may get a direct measurement of the mass of the W-boson with a precision in the range 30 - 50 MeV. This report presents an updated evaluation of the estimated error on the mass of the W-boson based on recent simulation work and improved theoretical input. The most efficient experimental methods which will be used are also described

Saturation of an Intra-Gene Pool Linkage Map: Towards a Unified Consensus Linkage Map for Fine Mapping and Synteny Analysis in Common Bean

Map-based cloning and fine mapping to find genes of interest and marker assisted selection (MAS) requires good genetic maps with reproducible markers. In this study, we saturated the linkage map of the intra-gene pool population of common bean DOR364×BAT477 (DB) by evaluating 2,706 molecular markers including SSR, SNP, and gene-based markers. On average the polymorphism rate was 7.7% due to the narrow genetic base between the parents. The DB linkage map consisted of 291 markers with a total map length of 1,788 cM. A consensus map was built using the core mapping populations derived from inter-gene pool crosses: DOR364×G19833 (DG) and BAT93×JALO EEP558 (BJ). The consensus map consisted of a total of 1,010 markers mapped, with a total map length of 2,041 cM across 11 linkage groups. On average, each linkage group on the consensus map contained 91 markers of which 83% were single copy markers. Finally, a synteny analysis was carried out using our highly saturated consensus maps compared with the soybean pseudo-chromosome assembly. A total of 772 marker sequences were compared with the soybean genome. A total of 44 syntenic blocks were identified. The linkage group Pv6 presented the most diverse pattern of synteny with seven syntenic blocks, and Pv9 showed the most consistent relations with soybean with just two syntenic blocks. Additionally, a co-linear analysis using common bean transcript map information against soybean coding sequences (CDS) revealed the relationship with 787 soybean genes. The common bean consensus map has allowed us to map a larger number of markers, to obtain a more complete coverage of the common bean genome. Our results, combined with synteny relationships provide tools to increase marker density in selected genomic regions to identify closely linked polymorphic markers for indirect selection, fine mapping or for positional cloning

The prevalence of physical, sexual and mental abuse among adolescents and the association with BMI status

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Studies among adults show an association between abuse and Body Mass Index (BMI) status. When an aberrant BMI status as a consequence of abuse is already prevalent in adolescence, early detection and treatment of abuse might prevent these adolescents from developing serious weight problems and other long-term social, emotional and physical problems in adulthood. Therefore, this study investigated the prevalence of physical, sexual and mental abuse among adolescents and examined the association of these abuse subtypes with BMI status.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In total, data of 51,856 secondary school students aged 13–16 who had completed a questionnaire on health, well-being and lifestyle were used. BMI was classified into four categories, underweight, normal weight, overweight and obesity. Adolescents reported if they had ever been physically, sexually or mentally abused. Crude and adjusted General Estimation Equation (GEE) analyses were performed to investigate the association between abuse subtypes and BMI status. Analyses were adjusted for ethnicity and parental communication, and stratified for gender and educational level.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Eighteen percent of the adolescents reported mental abuse, 7% reported sexual abuse, and 6% reported physical abuse. For underweight, overweight and obese adolescents these percentages were 17%, 25%, and 44%; 7%, 8%, and 16%; and 6%, 8%, 18% respectively. For the entire population, all these subtypes of abuse were associated with being overweight and obese (OR=3.67, 1.79 and 1.50) and all but sexual abuse were associated with underweight (OR=1.21 and 1.12). Stratified analyses showed that physical and sexual abuse were significantly associated with obesity among boys (OR=1.77 and 2.49) and among vocational school students (OR=1.60 and 1.69), and with underweight among girls (OR=1.26 and 0.83).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Mental abuse was reported by almost half of the obese adolescents and associated with underweight, overweight and obesity. Longitudinal analyses are recommended to explore the causality of and the mechanisms explaining this association between abuse and overweight.</p

Improving eye care for veterans with diabetes: An example of using the QUERI steps to move from evidence to implementation: QUERI Series

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Despite being a critical part of improving healthcare quality, little is known about how best to move important research findings into clinical practice. To address this issue, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) developed the Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI), which provides a framework, a supportive structure, and resources to promote the more rapid implementation of evidence into practice.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This paper uses a practical example to demonstrate the use of the six-step QUERI process, which was developed as part of QUERI and provides a systematic approach for moving along the research to practice pipeline. Specifically, we describe a series of projects using the six-step framework to illustrate how this process guided work by the Diabetes Mellitus QUERI (DM-QUERI) Center to assess and improve eye care for veterans with diabetes.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Within a relatively short time, DM-QUERI identified a high-priority issue, developed evidence to support a change in the diabetes eye screening performance measure, and identified a gap in quality of care. A prototype scheduling system to address gaps in screening and follow-up also was tested as part of an implementation project. We did not succeed in developing a fully functional pro-active scheduling system. This work did, however, provide important information to help us further understand patients' risk status, gaps in follow-up at participating eye clinics, specific considerations for additional implementation work in the area of proactive scheduling, and contributed to a change in the prevailing diabetes eye care performance measure.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Work by DM-QUERI to promote changes in the delivery of eye care services for veterans with diabetes demonstrates the value of the QUERI process in facilitating the more rapid implementation of evidence into practice. However, our experience with using the QUERI process also highlights certain challenges, including those related to the hybrid nature of the research-operations partnership as a mechanism for promoting rapid, system-wide implementation of important research findings. In addition, this paper suggests a number of important considerations for future implementation work, both in the area of pro-active scheduling interventions, as well as for implementation science in general.</p