bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Survey on the function, structure and operation of hospital ethics committees in Shanghai
Authors: Zhou P , Xue D , Wang T , Tang Z L , Zhang S K , Wang J P , Mao P P , Xi Y Q , Wu R , Shi R 
Published: July 2009

Objective:The objectives of this study are to understand the current functions, structure and operation of hospital ethics committees (HECs) in Shanghai and to facilitate their improvement.Methods:(1) A questionnaire survey, (2) interviews with secretaries and (3) on-site document reviews of HECs in Shanghai were used in the study, which surveyed 33 hospitals.Results:In Shanghai, 57.56% of the surveyed hospitals established HECs from 1998 to 2005. Most HECs used bioethical review of research involving human subjects as well as bioethical review or consultation regarding medical care services and administrative decision- making. Of the surveyed HECs, 14.3% did not provide any formal bioethical training to the HECs’ members and many HECs had no standard operating procedures. Some HECs had no clear definition of what was “conflict of interest” that should be considered by the HECs, while 44.4% of the HECs did not perform continuing review.Discussion:After the issues of related national regulations, more and more hospitals established HECs in Shanghai, but the functions of HECs need to be further developed and formal training on bioethics should be provided to HEC members. To assure the independence and good performance of HECs, the conflict of interest procedure, the standard operating procedures and bioethical review should be improved.Conclusion:HECs in Shanghai had developed in the preceding 10 years and they played great roles in protecting the rights and welfare of human subjects and patients; some areas need improvement.
Judgement of suffering in the case of a euthanasia request in The Netherlands
Authors: Rietjens J A C , van Tol D G , Schermer M , van der Heide A 
Published: July 2009

Introduction:In The Netherlands, physicians have to be convinced that the patient suffers unbearably and hopelessly before granting a request for euthanasia. The extent to which general practitioners (GPs), consulted physicians and members of the euthanasia review committees judge this criterion similarly was evaluated.Methods:300 GPs, 150 consultants and 27 members of review committees were sent a questionnaire with patient descriptions. Besides a “standard case” of a patient with physical suffering and limited life expectancy, the descriptions included cases in which the request was mainly rooted in psychosocial or existential suffering, such as fear of future suffering or dependency. For each case, respondents were asked whether they recognised the case from their own practice and whether they considered the suffering to be unbearable.Results:The cases were recognisable for almost all respondents. For the “standard case” nearly all respondents were convinced that the patient suffered unbearably. For the other cases, GPs thought the suffering was unbearable less often (2–49%) than consultants (25–79%) and members of the euthanasia review committees (24–88%). In each group, the suffering of patients with early dementia and patients who were “tired of living” was least often considered to be unbearable.Conclusions:When non-physical aspects of suffering are central in a euthanasia request, there is variance between and within GPs, consultants and members of the euthanasia committees in their judgement of the patient’s suffering. Possible explanations could be differences in their roles in the decision-making process, differences in experience with evaluating a euthanasia request, or differences in views regarding the permissibility of euthanasia.
Androgen Receptor Inhibits Estrogen Receptor-α Activity and Is Prognostic in Breast Cancer
Authors: Peters Amelia A. , Buchanan Grant , Ricciardelli Carmela , Bianco-Miotto Tina , Centenera Margaret M. , Harris Jonathan M. , Jindal Shalini , Segara Davendra , Jia Li , Moore Nicole L. , Henshall Susan M. , Birrell Stephen N. , Coetzee Gerhard A. , Sutherland Robert L. , Butler Lisa M. , Tilley Wayne D. 
Published: July 2009

Abstract
There is emerging evidence that the balance between estrogen receptor-α (ERα) and androgen receptor (AR) signaling is a critical determinant of growth in the normal and malignant breast. In this study, we assessed AR status in a cohort of 215 invasive ductal breast carcinomas. AR and ERα were coexpressed in the majority (80-90%) of breast tumor cells. Kaplan-Meier product limit analysis and multivariate Cox regression showed that AR is an independent prognostic factor in ERα-positive disease, with a low level of AR (less than median of 75% positive cells) conferring a 4.6-fold increased risk of cancer-related death (P = 0.002). Consistent with a role for AR in breast cancer outcome, AR potently inhibited ERα transactivation activity and 17β-estradiol–stimulated growth of breast cancer cells. Transfection of MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells with either functionally impaired AR variants or the DNA-binding domain of the AR indicated that the latter is both necessary and sufficient for inhibition of ERα signaling. Consistent with molecular modeling, electrophoretic mobility shift assays showed binding of the AR to an estrogen-responsive element (ERE). Evidence for a functional interaction of the AR with an ERE in vivo was provided by chromatin immunoprecipitation data, revealing recruitment of the AR to the progesterone receptor promoter in T-47D breast cancer cells. We conclude that, by binding to a subset of EREs, the AR can prevent activation of target genes that mediate the stimulatory effects of 17β-estradiol on breast cancer cells. [Cancer Res 2009;69(15):6131–40]
Paracrine Hedgehog Signaling in Cancer
Authors: Theunissen Jan-Willem , de Sauvage Frederic J. 
Published: July 2009

Abstract
Ligand-dependent and ligand-independent activation of the Hedgehog (Hh) signaling pathway is involved in tumorigenesis. The importance of mutations in Hh pathway components leading to constitutive signaling has been well established in basal cell carcinoma and medulloblastoma. However, the role of ligand-driven Hh pathway activation in cancer remains to be established. Three recent articles support a model in which, in the absence of mutations in the Hh pathway, Hh ligands expressed by a subset of epithelial cancers, including colon, pancreatic, and ovarian cancer, promote tumor growth indirectly by activating Hh signaling in the surrounding stroma, which, in turn, provides a more favorable environment for tumor growth. These data have important implications for the use of Hh pathway inhibitors currently in development and for selection of tumors likely to respond to such inhibitors. [Cancer Res 2009;69(15):6007–10]
Specific Targeting of Brain Tumors with an Optical/Magnetic Resonance Imaging Nanoprobe across the Blood-Brain Barrier
Authors: Veiseh Omid , Sun Conroy , Fang Chen , Bhattarai Narayan , Gunn Jonathan , Kievit Forrest , Du Kim , Pullar Barbara , Lee Donghoon , Ellenbogen Richard G. , Olson Jim , Zhang Miqin 
Published: July 2009

AbstractNanoparticle-based platforms have drawn considerable attention for their potential effect on oncology and other biomedical fields. However, their in vivo application is challenged by insufficient accumulation and retention within tumors due to limited specificity to the target, and an inability to traverse biological barriers. Here, we present a nanoprobe that shows an ability to cross the blood-brain barrier and specifically target brain tumors in a genetically engineered mouse model, as established through in vivo magnetic resonance and biophotonic imaging, and histologic and biodistribution analyses. The nanoprobe is comprised of an iron oxide nanoparticle coated with biocompatible polyethylene glycol–grafted chitosan copolymer, to which a tumor-targeting agent, chlorotoxin, and a near-IR fluorophore are conjugated. The nanoprobe shows an innocuous toxicity profile and sustained retention in tumors. With the versatile affinity of the targeting ligand and the flexible conjugation chemistry for alternative diagnostic and therapeutic agents, this nanoparticle platform can be potentially used for the diagnosis and treatment of a variety of tumor types. [Cancer Res 2009;69(15):6200–7]
Dopamine, Paranormal Belief, and the Detection of Meaningful Stimuli
Authors: Krummenacher Peter , Mohr Christine , Haker Helene , Brugger Peter 
Published: July 2009

AbstractDopamine (DA) is suggested to improve perceptual and cognitive decisions by increasing the signal-to-noise ratio. Somewhat paradoxically, a hyperdopaminergia (arguably more accentuated in the right hemisphere) has also been implied in the genesis of unusual experiences such as hallucinations and paranormal thought. To test these opposing assumptions, we used two lateralized decision tasks, one with lexical (tapping left-hemisphere functions), the other with facial stimuli (tapping right-hemisphere functions). Participants were 40 healthy right-handed men, of whom 20 reported unusual, “paranormal” experiences and beliefs (“believers”), whereas the remaining participants were unexperienced and critical (“skeptics”). In a between-subject design, levodopa (200 mg) or placebo administration was balanced between belief groups (double-blind procedure). For each task and visual field, we calculated sensitivity (d′) and response tendency (criterion) derived from signal detection theory. Results showed the typical right visual field advantage for the lexical decision task and a higher d′ for verbal than facial stimuli. For the skeptics, d′ was lower in the levodopa than in the placebo group. Criterion analyses revealed that believers favored false alarms over misses, whereas skeptics displayed the opposite preference. Unexpectedly, under levodopa, these decision preferences were lower in both groups. We thus infer that levodopa (1) decreases sensitivity in perceptual–cognitive decisions, but only in skeptics, and (2) makes skeptics less and believers slightly more conservative. These results stand at odd to the common view that DA generally improves signal-to-noise ratios. Paranormal ideation seems an important personality dimension and should be assessed in investigations on the detection of signals in noise.
Word Retrieval Failures in Old Age: The Relationship between Structure and Function
Authors: Shafto Meredith A. , Stamatakis Emmanuel A. , Tam Phyllis P. , Tyler L. K. 
Published: July 2009

Abstract
A common complaint of normal aging is the increase in word-finding failures such as tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs). Behavioral research identifies TOTs as phonological retrieval failures, and recent findings [Shafto, M. A., Burke, D. M., Stamatakis, E. A., Tam, P., & Tyler, L. K. On the tip-of-the-tongue: Neural correlates of increased word-finding failures in normal aging. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19, 2060–2070, 2007] link age-related increases in TOTs to atrophy in left insula, a region implicated in phonological production. Here, younger and older adults performed a picture naming task in the fMRI scanner. During successful naming, left insula activity was not affected by age or gray matter integrity. Age differences only emerged during TOTs, with younger but not older adults generating a “boost” of activity during TOTs compared to successful naming. Older adults also had less activity than younger adults during TOTs compared to “don't know” responses, and across all participants, less TOT activity was affiliated with lower gray matter density. For older adults, lower levels of activity during TOTs accompanied higher TOT rates, supporting the role of an age-related neural mechanism impacting older more than younger adults. Results support a neural account of word retrieval in old age wherein, despite widespread age-related atrophy, word production processes are not universally impacted by age. However, atrophy undermines older adults' ability to modulate neural responses needed to overcome retrieval failures.
The Influence of El Niño on the Spring Fallout of Asian Bird Species at Attu Island
Authors: Hameed Sultan , Norwood Henry H. , Flanagan Michael , Feldstein Steven , Yang Chien-hsiung 
Published: July 2009

Abstract
Several studies have documented the effect of the recent secular climate warming on the distributions and geographical ranges of birds. Here the authors report the strong impact of a recurring climatic pattern in the equatorial Pacific, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle of warm (El Niño) and cold (La Niña) events, on spring migrants along the Far Eastern flyway in northeast Asia. In El Niño years, an unusually large number of birds that use the flyway are observed at Attu Island, westernmost of the Aleutian Islands, nearly 960 km away from the Asian coast. This study is based on a 20-yr dataset documenting the year-to-year variation of Asian birds arriving on Attu in the spring season and uses a three-phased analytical methodology to examine climate impacts on bird movements and populations.
The authors offer evidence that birds are displaced toward the Attu area in strong eastward-moving storms. They also present results from a reverse trajectory model that was used to simulate trajectories that a sample of Attu arrivals likely followed in reaching the island. In a statistical analysis, it is shown that 79% of the variation of the Asian birds is explained by a single climate variable: sea surface temperature in the eastern equatorial Pacific in the previous fall. It is the rise in sea surface temperature in this region, more than 8000 km from Attu, that characterizes the onset of an El Niño episode.
Examining those years for which there was a strong ENSO signal in the fall, it is found that the following May is characterized by anomalously strong westerly winds in the northwest Pacific, conditions that are appropriate for large Asian bird fallouts at Attu. Because of the time lag between the fall sea surface temperatures in the El Niño region and the spring Asian bird count at Attu, and the strong correlation between these two quantities, the number of Asian birds arriving at Attu in spring is predictable in the previous autumn. Such predictions are presented for several years.
Measuring Woody Encroachment along a Forest–Savanna Boundary in Central Africa
Authors: Mitchard E. T. A. , Saatchi S. S. , Gerard F. F. , Lewis S. L. , Meir P. 
Published: July 2009

Abstract
Changes in net area of tropical forest are the sum of several processes: deforestation, regeneration of previously deforested areas, and the changing spatial location of the forest–savanna boundary. The authors conducted a long-term (1986–2006) quantification of vegetation change in a 5400 km2 forest–savanna boundary area in central Cameroon. A cross-calibrated normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) change detection method was used to compare three high-resolution images from 1986, 2000, and 2006. The canopy dimensions and locations of over 1000 trees in the study area were measured, and a very strong relationship between canopy area index (CAI) and NDVI was found. Across 5400 km2 12.6% of the area showed significant positive change in canopy cover from 1986 to 2000 (0.9% yr−1) and 7.8% from 2000 to 2006 (1.29% yr−1), whereas &lt;0.4% of the image showed a significant decrease in either period. The largest changes were in the lower canopy cover classes: the area with &lt;0.2 m2 m−2 CAI decreased by 43% in 20 years. One cause may be a recent reduction in fire frequency, as documented by Along Track Scanning Radiometer-2/Advanced ATSR (ATSR-2/AATSR) data on fire frequency over the study area from 1996 to 2006. The authors suggest this is due to a reduction in human pressure caused by urbanization, as rainfall did not alter significantly over the study period. An alternative hypothesis is that increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations are altering the competitive balance between grasses and trees. These data add to a growing weight of evidence that forest encroachment into savanna is an important process, occurring in forest–savanna boundary regions across tropical Africa.
Reanalysis of 47 Years of Climate in the French Alps (1958–2005): Climatology and Trends for Snow Cover
Authors: Durand Yves , Giraud Gérald , Laternser Martin , Etchevers Pierre , Mérindol Laurent , Lesaffre Bernard 
Published: July 2009

Abstract
Since the early 1990s, Météo-France has used an automatic system combining three numerical models to simulate meteorological parameters, snow cover stratigraphy, and avalanche risk at various altitudes, aspects, and slopes for a number of mountainous regions (massifs) in the French Alps and the Pyrenees. This Système d’Analyse Fournissant des Renseignements Atmosphériques à la Neige (SAFRAN)–Crocus–Modèle Expert de Prévision du Risque d’Avalanche (MEPRA) model chain (SCM), usually applied to operational daily avalanche forecasting, is here used for retrospective snow and climate analysis. For this study, the SCM chain used both meteorological observations and guess fields mainly issued from the newly reanalyzed atmospheric model 40-yr ECMWF Re-Analysis (ERA-40) data and ran on an hourly basis over a period starting in the winter of 1958/59 until recent past winters. Snow observations were finally used for validation, and the results presented here concern only the main climatic features of the alpine modeled snowfields at different spatial and temporal scales. The main results obtained confirm the very significant spatial and temporal variability of the modeled snowfields with regard to certain key parameters such as those describing ground coverage or snow depth. Snow patterns in the French Alps are characterized by a marked declining gradient from the northwestern foothills to the southeastern interior regions. This applies mainly to both depths and durations, which exhibit a maximal latitudinal variation at 1500 m of about 60 days, decreasing strongly with the altitude. Enhanced at low elevations, snow depth shows a mainly negative temporal variation over the study period, especially in the north and during late winters, while the south exhibits more smoothed features. The number of days with snow on the ground shows also a significant general signal of decrease at low and midelevation, but this signal is weaker in the south than in the north and less visible at high elevation. Even if a statistically significant test cannot be performed for all elevations and areas, the temporal decrease is present in all the studied quantities. Concerning snow duration, this general decrease can also be interpreted as a sharp variation of the mean values at the end of the 1980s, inducing a step effect in its time series rather than a constant negative temporal trend. The results have also been interpreted in terms of potential for a viable ski industry, especially in the southern areas, and for different changing climatic conditions. Presently, French downhill ski resorts are economically viable from a range of about 1200 m MSL in the northern foothills to 2000 m in the south, but future prospects are uncertain. In addition, no clear and direct relationship between the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) or the ENSO indexes and the studied snow parameters could be established in this study.
Comparative Study of Gaussian Dispersion Formulas within the Polyphemus Platform: Evaluation with Prairie Grass and Kincaid Experiments
Authors: Korsakissok Irène , Mallet Vivien 
Published: July 2009

Abstract
This paper details a number of existing formulations used in Gaussian models in a clear and usable way, and provides a comparison within a single framework—the Gaussian plume and puff models of the air quality modeling system Polyphemus. The emphasis is made on the comparison between 1) the parameterizations to compute the standard deviations and 2) the plume rise schemes. The Gaussian formulas are first described and theoretically compared. Their evaluation is then ensured by comparison with the observations as well as with several well-known Gaussian and computational fluid dynamics model performances. The model results compare well to the other Gaussian models for two of the three parameterizations for standard deviations, Briggs’s and similarity theory, while Doury’s shows a tendency to underestimate the concentrations because of a large horizontal spread. The results with the Kincaid experiment point out the sensitivity to the plume rise scheme and the importance of an accurate modeling of the plume interactions with the inversion layer. Using three parameterizations for the standard deviations and the same number of plume rise schemes, the authors were able to highlight a large variability in the model outputs.
Do Gravity Waves Transport Angular Momentum away from Tropical Cyclones?
Authors: Moon Yumin , Nolan David S. 
Published: July 2009

Abstract
Previous studies have suggested that gravity waves can transport a significantly large amount of angular momentum away from tropical cyclones, as much as 10% of the core angular momentum per hour. These previous studies used the shallow-water equations to model gravity waves radiating outward from rapidly rotating inner-core asymmetries. This issue is reinvestigated with a three-dimensional, nonhydrostatic, linear model of the vortex-anelastic equations. The response of balanced, axisymmetric vortices modeled after tropical cyclones to rotating asymmetric heat sources is examined to assess angular momentum transport by gravity waves radiating away from the core region of the vortices. Calculations show that gravity waves do transport angular momentum away from the vortex core; however, the amount transported is several orders of magnitude smaller than recent estimates.
Insights into Cloud-Top Height and Dynamics from the Seasonal Cycle of Cloud-Top Heights Observed by MISR in the West Pacific Region
Authors: Chae Jung Hyo , Sherwood Steven C. 
Published: July 2009

AbstractThe connection between environmental stability and the height of tropical deep convective clouds is analyzed using stereo cloud height data from the Multiangle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR), focusing on the seasonal cycle of clouds over the western Pacific Ocean. Three peaks in cloud-top height representing low, mid-topped, and deep convective clouds are found as in previous studies. The optically thickest cloud heights are roughly 2 km higher on the summer side of the equator, where CAPE is higher, than on the winter side. Overall cloud height, however, is about the same on both sides of the equator, but ∼600 m higher in December–February (DJF) than in June–August (JJA). Because of variations in stratospheric upwelling, temperatures near the tropopause exhibit a significant seasonal cycle, mainly above 13 km. Using an ensemble of simulations by the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) cloud-resolving model and a simple overshooting parcel calculation, the authors show that the cloud height variation can be explained by that of near-tropopause stability changes, including influence from heights above 14 km, even though the cloud height peaks only near 12 km. This suggests that mixing above cloud top—not typically accounted for in simple models of convection—is important in setting the height of the laminar (anvil) high clouds that result. The MISR data indicate a seasonal variation in peak cloud-top temperature of ∼5 K, despite the recent proposal that cloud-top heights should track a fixed isotherm. That proposal must therefore be applied with caution to any climate-change scenario that may involve significant changes in stratospheric upwelling.