bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Does levator trauma ‘heal’?
Authors: Shek K. L. , Chantarasorn V. , Langer S. , Dietz H. P. 
Published: May 2012

ABSTRACTObjectiveTo evaluate if pregnancy‐ and delivery‐related changes to levator morphology and distensibility regress with time.Methods488 nulliparous pregnant women, recruited between 36 and 38 weeks' gestation, were invited for assessment at 3–6 months and again at 2–3 years postpartum. All underwent an interview and four‐dimensional translabial ultrasound examination. Hiatal morphometry and bladder neck descent (BND) were determined and compared between the two postpartum visits.Results367 participants returned for assessment at 4.1 (interquartile range (IQR), 3.7–5.0) months and 161 returned at 2.6 (IQR, 2.0–3.1) years, allowing a groupwise comparison. There was no significant difference in hiatal area (22 vs 22 cm2, P = 0.95) or BND on Valsalva maneuver (26.3 vs 25.5 mm, P = 0.49). Pairwise comparison in women who had attended both postpartum appointments without second births (n = 77), separately for those who had a Cesarean section (n = 24) and those who had a vaginal delivery (n = 53) originally, showed no significant changes, except a reduction in BND (31.2 vs 28.3 mm, P = 0.025) in those who had delivered vaginally. Two women out of 12 diagnosed with a levator avulsion at 3–6 months showed obvious anatomical improvement on translabial ultrasound at 2–3 years.ConclusionsWe found no evidence of regression or healing of pregnancy‐ and delivery‐related changes to levator distensibility on comparing imaging data obtained at 3–6 months and 2–3 years postpartum. However, we documented anatomical improvement on translabial ultrasound at the second postpartum visit in two women diagnosed with levator avulsion at 3–6 months postpartum.
Fetal growth: a review of terms, concepts and issues relevant to obstetrics
Authors: Mayer C. , Joseph K. S. 
Published: May 2012

ABSTRACTThe perinatal literature includes several potentially confusing and controversial terms and concepts related to fetal size and growth. This article discusses fetal growth from an obstetric perspective and addresses various issues including the physiologic mechanisms that determine fetal growth trajectories, known risk factors for abnormal fetal growth, diagnostic and prognostic issues related to restricted and excessive growth and temporal trends in fetal growth. Also addressed are distinctions between fetal growth ‘standards’ and fetal growth ‘references’, and between fetal growth charts based on estimated fetal weightvsthose based on birth weight. Other concepts discussed include the incidence of fetal growth restriction in pregnancy (does the frequency of fetal growth restriction increase or decrease with increasing gestation?), the obstetric implications of studies showing associations between fetal growth and adult chronic illnesses (such as coronary heart disease) and the need for customizing fetal growth standards.
Chapter 2: Medical Tests Guidance (2) Developing the Topic and Structuring Systematic Reviews of Medical Tests: Utility of PICOTS, Analytic Frameworks, Decision Trees, and Other Frameworks
Authors: Samson David , Schoelles Karen M. 
Published: May 2012

ABSTRACT
Topic development and structuring a systematic review of diagnostic tests are complementary processes. The goals of a medical test review are to identify and synthesize evidence to evaluate the impacts alternative testing strategies on health outcomes and to promote informed decisionmaking. A common challenge is that the request for a review may state the claim for the test ambiguously. Due to the indirect impact of medical tests on clinical outcomes, reviewers need to identify which intermediate outcomes link a medical test to improved clinical outcomes. In this paper, we propose the use of five principles to deal with challenges: the PICOTS typology (patient population, intervention, comparator, outcomes, timing, setting), analytic frameworks, simple decision trees, other organizing frameworks and rules for when diagnostic accuracy is sufficient.
Chapter 10: Deciding Whether to Complement a Systematic Review of Medical Tests with Decision Modeling
Authors: Trikalinos Thomas A. , Kulasingam Shalini , Lawrence William F. 
Published: May 2012

Abstract
Limited by what is reported in the literature, most systematic reviews of medical tests focus on “test accuracy” (or better, test performance), rather than on the impact of testing on patient outcomes. The link between testing, test results and patient outcomes is typically complex: even when testing has high accuracy, there is no guarantee that physicians will act according to test results, that patients will follow their orders, or that the intervention will yield a beneficial endpoint. Therefore, test performance is typically not sufficient for assessing the usefulness of medical tests. Modeling (in the form of decision or economic analysis) is a natural framework for linking test performance data to clinical outcomes. We propose that (some) modeling should be considered to facilitate the interpretation of summary test performance measures by connecting testing and patient outcomes. We discuss a simple algorithm for helping systematic reviewers think through this possibility, and illustrate it by means of an example.
Chapter 5: Assessing Risk of Bias as a Domain of Quality in Medical Test Studies
Authors: Santaguida P. Lina , Riley Crystal M. , Matchar David B. 
Published: May 2012

ABSTRACT
Assessing methodological quality is a necessary activity for any systematic review, including those evaluating the evidence for studies of medical test performance. Judging the overall quality of an individual study involves examining the size of the study, the direction and degree of findings, the relevance of the study, and the risk of bias in the form of systematic error, internal validity, and other study limitations. In this chapter of the Methods Guide for Medical Test Reviews, we focus on the evaluation of risk of bias in the form of systematic error in an individual study as a distinctly important component of quality in studies of medical test performance, specifically in the context of estimating test performance (sensitivity and specificity). We make the following recommendations to systematic reviewers: 1) When assessing study limitations that are relevant to the test under evaluation, reviewers should select validated criteria that examine the risk of systematic error, 2) categorizing the risk of bias for individual studies as “low,” “medium,” or “high” is a useful way to proceed, and 3) methods for determining an overall categorization for the study limitations should be established a priori and documented clearly.
Shape oscillations of an oil drop rising in water: effect of surface contamination
Authors: Abi Chebel Nicolas , Vejražka Jiří , Masbernat Olivier , Risso Frédéric 
Published: May 2012

AbstractInertial shape oscillations of heptane drops rising in water are investigated experimentally. Diameters from 0.59 to 3.52 mm are considered, corresponding to a regime where the rising motion should not affect shape oscillations for pure immiscible fluids. The interface, however, turns out to be contaminated. The drag coefficient is considerably increased compared to that of a clean drop due to the well-known Marangoni effect resulting from a gradient of surfactant concentration generated by the fluid motion along the interface. Thanks to the decomposition of the shape into spherical harmonics, the eigenfrequencies and the damping rates of oscillation modes$n= 2$, 3, 4 and 5 have been measured. Frequencies are not affected by contamination, while damping rates are increased by a considerable amount that depends neither on drop instantaneous velocity nor on diameter. This augmentation, however, depends on the mode number: it is maximum for mode two (multiplied by 2.4) and then relaxes towards the value of a clean drop as$n$increases. A previous similar investigation of a drop attached to a capillary has not revealed such an increase of the damping rates, indicating that the coupling between rising motion and surface contamination is responsible for this effect.
Blacked-out spaces: Freud, censorship and the re-territorialization of mind
Authors: GALISON PETER 
Published: May 2012

AbstractFreud's analogies were legion: hydraulic pipes, military recruitment, magic writing pads. These and some three hundred others took features of the mind and bound them to far-off scenes – the id only very partially resembles an uncontrollable horse, as Freud took pains to note. But there was one relation between psychic and public act that Freud did not delimit in this way: censorship, the process that checked memories and dreams on their way to the conscious. (Freud dubbed the relation between internal and external censorship a ‘parallel’ rather than a limited analogy.) At first, Freud likened this suppression to the blacking out of texts at the Russian frontier. During the First World War, he suffered, and spoke of suffering under, Viennese postal and newspaper censorship – Freud was forced to leave his envelopes unsealed, and to recode or delete content. Over and over, he registered the power of both internal and public censorship in shared form: distortion, anticipatory deletion, softenings, even revision to hide suppression. Political censorship left its mark as the conflict reshaped his view of the psyche into a society on a war footing, with homunculus-like border guards sifting messages as they made their way – or did not – across a topography of mind.
Reduction of dietary glycaemic load modifies the expression of microRNA potentially associated with energy balance and cancer pathways in pre-menopausal women
Authors: McCann Susan E. , Liu Song , Wang Dan , Shen Jie , Hu Qiang , Hong Chi-Chen , Newman Vicky A. , Zhao Hua 
Published: May 2012

Energy metabolism, insulin resistance and adiposity have been implicated in breast cancer, but dietary interventions to reduce breast cancer morbidity and mortality have had limited success. MicroRNA (miRNA) are short, non-coding RNA that participate in the control of metabolic processes through the post-transcriptional modification of RNA. We investigated the effect of a low-glycaemic load dietary intervention on miRNA expression, with subsequent bioinformatics pathway analyses to explore metabolic pathways potentially affected by the diet. Total RNA, including miRNA, was isolated from the serum of fourteen otherwise healthy pre-menopausal women with a high breast cancer risk participating in a 12-month dietary intervention designed to lower glycaemic load by at least 15 % from baseline. Genome-wide miRNA expression was conducted using Illumina BeadChips. In the intervention subjects, three differentially expressed miRNA were validated by real-time (RT)-PCR, and in the twenty control participants, four top differentially expressed miRNA were evaluated to confirm a diet effect. In post-interventionv. baseline serum, twenty miRNA were found to be differentially expressed, with twelve up-regulated and eight down-regulated. These differentially expressed miRNA were predicted to be potentially associated with energy balance and cancer pathways based on exploratory enrichment analysis. Quantitative RT-PCR validations in the controls confirmed that the observed miRNA differential expression was dietary intervention induced. Manipulation of dietary glycaemic load has the potential to modify the expression of multiple miRNA predicted to be involved in energy balance and cancer pathways. Further research is necessary to confirm the role of these miRNA in the control of energy metabolism and relationships with cancer-related processes.
Associations of current and remitted major depressive disorder with brain atrophy: the AGES–Reykjavik Study
Authors: Geerlings M. I. , Sigurdsson S. , Eiriksdottir G. , Garcia M. E. , Harris T. B. , Sigurdsson T. , Gudnason V. , Launer L. J. 
Published: May 2012

BackgroundTo examine whether lifetime DSM-IV diagnosis of major depressive disorder (MDD), including age at onset and number of episodes, is associated with brain atrophy in older persons without dementia.MethodWithin the population-based Age, Gene/Environment Susceptibility (AGES)–Reykjavik Study, 4354 persons (mean age 76 ± 5 years, 58% women) without dementia had a 1.5-T brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan. Automated brain segmentation total and regional brain volumes were calculated. History of MDD, including age at onset and number of episodes, and MDD in the past 2 weeks was diagnosed according to DSM-IV criteria using the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI).ResultsOf the total sample, 4.5% reported a lifetime history of MDD; 1.5% had a current diagnosis of MDD (including 75% with a prior history of depression) and 3.0% had a past but no current diagnosis (remission). After adjusting for multiple covariates, compared to participants never depressed, those with current MDD (irrespective of past) had more global brain atrophy [B = –1.25%, 95% confidence interval (CI) −2.05 to −0.44], including more gray- and white-matter atrophy in most lobes, and also more atrophy of the hippocampus and thalamus. Participants with current, first-onset MDD also had more brain atrophy (B = –1.62%, 95% CI −3.30 to 0.05) whereas those remitted did not (B = 0.06%, 95% CI −0.54 to 0.66).ConclusionsIn older persons without dementia, current MDD, irrespective of prior history, but not remitted MDD was associated with widespread gray- and white-matter brain atrophy. Prospective studies should examine whether MDD is a consequence of, or contributes to, brain volume loss and development of dementia.
Evidence on the prevalence and geographic distribution of major cardiovascular risk factors in Italy
Authors: Laccetti Roberta , Pota Andrea , Stranges Saverio , Falconi Claudio , Memoli Bruno , Bardaro Leopoldo , Guida Bruna 
Published: May 2012

AbstractObjectiveTo assess the prevalence and geographic distribution of major cardiovascular risk factors in a large community-wide sample of the Italian population.DesignA cross-sectional survey. Standardized methods were used to collect and measure cardiovascular risk factors. Data were adjusted for survey weightings. Qualitative and quantitative variables were compared with parametric and non-parametric tests, as appropriate.SettingTowns (n 193) across different Italian regions.SubjectsUnselected adults (n 24 213; 12 626 men; 11 587 women) aged 18–98 years (mean age 56·9 (sd 15·3) years), who volunteered to participate in a community-wide screening programme over a 2 d period in 2007.ResultsOverall, the prevalence of major cardiovascular risk factors was: obesity, 22·7 % (women 18·9 %, men 26·1 %); overweight, 44·7 % (women 31·6 %, men 56·7 %); hypertension, 59·6 % (women 48·3 %, men 70·0 %); dyslipidaemia, 59·1 % (women 57·7 %, men 60·3 %); diabetes, 15·3 % (women 11·2 %, men 19·0 %) and smoking, 19·8 % (women 14·0 %, men 25·2 %). We found a high prevalence of unhealthy eating habits; fruit and vegetable consumption was below the recommended range in 60 % of the study population. Ninety per cent of the study population had more than one cardiovascular risk factor and 84 % had between two and five cardiovascular risk factors. There were differences among Italian macro-areas mainly for obesity, hypertension, dyslipidaemia and diabetes.ConclusionsThe study provides alarming evidence on current prevalence data for major cardiovascular risk factors in a large sample of the Italian population. Particularly, obesity and hypertension represent a relevant public health problem. There is a pressing need for effective preventive health measures which must also take into account the differences among Italian macro-areas.
Potential impact of initialization on decadal predictions as assessed for CMIP5 models
Authors: Branstator Grant , Teng Haiyan 
Published: May 2012

To investigate the potential for initialization to improve decadal range predictions, we quantify the initial value predictability of upper 300 m temperature in the two northern ocean basins for 12 models from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5), and we contrast it with the forced predictability in Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 4.5 climate change projections. We use a recently introduced method that produces predictability estimates from long control runs. Many initial states are considered, and we find on average 1) initialization has the potential to improve skill in the first 5 years in the North Pacific and the first 9 years in the North Atlantic, and 2) the impact from initialization becomes secondary compared to the impact of RCP4.5 forcing after 6 1/2 and 8 years in the two basins, respectively. Model‐to‐model and spatial variations in these limits are, however, substantial.
Attribution of the summer warming since 1970s in Indian Ocean Basin to the inter‐decadal change in the seasonal timing of El Niño decay phase
Authors: Li Qian , Ren R.‐C. , Cai M. , Wu G. X. 
Published: May 2012

This paper reports that, on top of the general warming trend in the Indian Ocean Basin (IOB) SST in the past 140 years, there exists an additional multidecadal‐scale warming in the period from late 1940s to early 2000s, and this warming in IOB is particularly stronger in summer than in other seasons. Our analysis indicates that, the seasonal timing of the decay phase of El Niño events during this period has been delayed from spring to early summer since 1970s, while the seasonal timing of La Niña decay phase remains in spring season. The direct effect of the later decay of El Niño events is the lengthening of the delayed warming effect of El Niño on IOB SST into summer, attributing to the stronger IOB warming in summer from the late 1940s to the early 2000s.
Anti-Arrhenius cleavage of covalent bonds in bottlebrush macromolecules on substrate
Authors: Lebedeva Natalia V. , Nese Alper , Sun Frank C. , Matyjaszewski Krzysztof , Sheiko Sergei S. 
Published: May 2012

Spontaneous degradation of bottlebrush macromolecules on aqueous substrates was monitored by atomic force microscopy. Scission of C─C covalent bonds in the brush backbone occurred due to steric repulsion between the adsorbed side chains, which generated bond tension on the order of several nano-Newtons. Unlike conventional chemical reactions, the rate of bond scission was shown to decrease with temperature. This apparent anti-Arrhenius behavior was caused by a decrease in the surface energy of the underlying substrate upon heating, which results in a corresponding decrease of bond tension in the adsorbed macromolecules. Even though the tension dropped minimally from 2.16 to 1.89 nN, this was sufficient to overpower the increase in the thermal energy (
k
B
T
) in the Arrhenius equation. The rate constant of the bond-scission reaction was measured as a function of temperature and surface energy. Fitting the experimental data by a perturbed Morse potential
V
=
V
0
(1 -
e

-
βx

)
2
-
fx
, we determined the depth and width of the potential to be
V
0
= 141 ± 19 kJ/mol and
β
-1
= 0.18 ± 0.03
Å
, respectively. Whereas the
V
0
value is in reasonable agreement with the activation energy
E

a

= 80–220 kJ/mol of mechanical and thermal degradation of organic polymers, it is significantly lower than the dissociation energy of a C─C bond
D

e

= 350 kJ/mol. Moreover, the force constant
K

x

= 2
β
2
V
0
= 1.45 ± 0.36 kN/m of a strained bottlebrush along its backbone is markedly larger than the force constant of a C─C bond
K

l

= 0.44 kN/m, which is attributed to additional stiffness due to deformation of the side chains.
Regions of kinetic geodesic acoustic modes and streamers in JIPPT-IIU tokamak plasmas
Authors: Hamada Y. , Watari T. , Nishizawa A. , Yamagishi O. , Narihara K. , Kawasumi Y. , Ido T. , Kojima M. , Toi K. 
Published: May 2012

Abstract
The radial extent of kinetic geodesic acoustic modes (KGAMs) and streamers is measured using a heavy ion beam probe. Intense KGAM oscillations are observed in the core region of a low-density ohmic (OH) plasma where T
e ≫ T
i and outside this region, streamers characterized by steepening fronts are observed. The radial profile of plasma density stays flat in the region of the streamers, showing a rise in the plasma density in two regions, one at the scrape-off layer and the other in the core region during the radial scan of sample volumes. Intense (up to eΦ/kT
e ∼ 0.1) and broad GAM oscillations (δf/f ∼ 0.5) are observed in the r < a
p/2 region of tokamak plasmas. GAM oscillations and streamers are strongly reduced in the heated phase. In addition, the radial profile of the spectra of GAM in the heated phase is very different from that of a low-density OH plasma. The streamers and the two-step rise in the density radial profile disappear in the heated phase.
An integrated open framework for thermodynamics of reactions that combines accuracy and coverage
Authors: Noor Elad , Bar-Even Arren , Flamholz Avi , Lubling Yaniv , Davidi Dan , Milo Ron 
Published: May 2012

Abstract
Motivation: The laws of thermodynamics describe a direct, quantitative relationship between metabolite concentrations and reaction directionality. Despite great efforts, thermodynamic data suffer from limited coverage, scattered accessibility and non-standard annotations. We present a framework for unifying thermodynamic data from multiple sources and demonstrate two new techniques for extrapolating the Gibbs energies of unmeasured reactions and conditions.
Results: Both methods account for changes in cellular conditions (pH, ionic strength, etc.) by using linear regression over the ΔG○ of pseudoisomers and reactions. The Pseudoisomeric Reactant Contribution method systematically infers compound formation energies using measured K′ and pKa data. The Pseudoisomeric Group Contribution method extends the group contribution method and achieves a high coverage of unmeasured reactions. We define a continuous index that predicts the reversibility of a reaction under a given physiological concentration range. In the characteristic physiological range 3μM–3mM, we find that roughly half of the reactions in Escherichia coli's metabolism are reversible. These new tools can increase the accuracy of thermodynamic-based models, especially in non-standard pH and ionic strengths. The reversibility index can help modelers decide which reactions are reversible in physiological conditions.
Availability: Freely available on the web at: http://equilibrator.weizmann.ac.il. Website implemented in Python, MySQL, Apache and Django, with all major browsers supported. The framework is open-source (code.google.com/p/milo-lab), implemented in pure Python and tested mainly on Linux.
Contact: ron.milo@weizmann.ac.il
Supplementary Information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
A common ancestry for BAP1 and Uch37 regulators
Authors: Sanchez-Pulido Luis , Kong Lesheng , Ponting Chris P. 
Published: May 2012

Abstract
Summary: To reveal how the polycomb repressive–deubiquitinase (PR–DUB) complex controls substrate selection specificity, we undertook a detailed computational sequence analysis of its components: additional sex combs like 1 (ASXL1) and BRCA1-associated protein 1 (BAP1) proteins. This led to the discovery of two previously unrecognized domains in ASXL1: a forkhead (winged-helix) DNA-binding domain and a deubiquitinase adaptor domain shared with two regulators of ubiquitin carboxyl-terminal hydrolase 37 (Uch37), namely adhesion regulating molecule 1 (ADRM1) and nuclear factor related to kappaB (NFRKB). Our analysis demonstrates a common ancestry for BAP1 and Uch37 regulators in PR–DUB, INO80 chromatin remodelling and proteosome complexes.
Contact: luis.sanchezpulido@dpag.ox.ac.uk
Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.