Clinical Judgment Analysis

SUMMARY Judgment is central to the practice of medicine and occurs between making clinical observations and taking clinical decisions. Clinical judgment analysis has developed as a method of making statistically firm models of doctors' judgments. Computed models reveal the differential importance attached to items of clinical, social, or other data which are determinants of clinical decisions. These models can both reveal the causes of conflicts of judgment and may help resolve them in a way that unaided discussion cannot. Revealing experts' models to students speeds learning of diagnostic skills. Clinical judgment analysis offers a method of probing the judgments not just of students and doctors but also of patients who have shown systematic differences in their perceptions of risk and benefit. The power and relevance of clinical trials can be improved by the consistent application of judgment policies generated from both the trialists and those who will use their result

Effect of chromophore-chromophore electrostatic interactions in the NLO response of functionalized organic-inorganic sol-gel materials

In the last years, important non-linear optical results on sol-gel and polymeric materials have been reported, with values comparable to those found in crystals. These new materials contain push-pull chromophores either incorporated as guest in a high Tg polymeric matrix (doped polymers) or grafted onto the polymeric matrix. These systems present several advantages; however they require significant improvement at the molecular level - by designing optimized chromophores with very large molecular figure of merit, specific to each application targeted. Besides, it was recently stated in polymers that the chromophore-chromophore electrostatic interactions, which are dependent of chromophore concentration, have a strong effect into their non-linear optical properties. This has not been explored at all in sol-gel systems. In this work, the sol-gel route was used to prepare hybrid organic-inorganic thin films with different NLO chromophores grafted into the skeleton matrix. Combining a molecular engineering strategy for getting a larger molecular figure of merit and by controlling the intermolecular dipole-dipole interactions through both: the tuning of the push-pull chromophore concentration and the control of TEOS (Tetraethoxysilane) concentration, we have obtained a r33 coefficient around 15 pm/V at 633 nm for the classical DR1 azo-chromophore and a r33 around 50 pm/V at 831 nm for a new optimized chromophore structure.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures, 1 tabl

Small Angle Scattering by Fractal Aggregates: A Numerical Investigation of the Crossover Between the Fractal Regime and the Porod Regime

Fractal aggregates are built on a computer using off-lattice cluster-cluster aggregation models. The aggregates are made of spherical particles of different sizes distributed according to a Gaussian-like distribution characterised by a mean $a_0$ and a standard deviation $\sigma$. The wave vector dependent scattered intensity $I(q)$ is computed in order to study the influence of the particle polydispersity on the crossover between the fractal regime and the Porod regime. It is shown that, given $a_0$, the location $q_c$ of the crossover decreases as $\sigma$ increases. The dependence of $q_c$ on $\sigma$ can be understood from the evolution of the shape of the center-to-center interparticle-distance distribution function.Comment: RevTex, 4 pages + 6 postscript figures, compressed using "uufiles", published in Phys. Rev. B 50, 1305 (1994

Non-monotonic field-dependence of the ZFC magnetization peak in some systems of magnetic nanoparticles

We have performed magnetic measurements on a diluted system of gamma-Fe2O3 nanoparticles (~7nm), and on a ferritin sample. In both cases, the ZFC-peak presents a non-monotonic field dependence, as has already been reported in some experiments,and discussed as a possible evidence of resonant tunneling. Within simple assumptions, we derive expressions for the magnetization obtained in the usual ZFC, FC, TRM procedures. We point out that the ZFC-peak position is extremely sensitive to the width of the particle size distribution, and give some numerical estimates of this effect. We propose to combine the FC magnetization with a modified TRM measurement, a procedure which allows a more direct access to the barrier distribution in a field. The typical barrier values which are obtained with this method show a monotonic decrease for increasing fields, as expected from the simple effect of anisotropy barrier lowering, in contrast with the ZFC results. From our measurements on gamma-Fe2O3 particles, we show that the width of the effective barrier distribution is slightly increasing with the field, an effect which is sufficient for causing the observed initial increase of the ZFC-peak temperatures.Comment: LaTeX file 19 pages, 9 postscript figures. To appear in Phys. Rev. B (tentative schedule: Dec.97

Distinct RNA profiles in subpopulations of extracellular vesicles: apoptotic bodies, microvesicles and exosomes

Introduction: In recent years, there has been an exponential increase in the number of studies aiming to understand the biology of exosomes, as well as other extracellular vesicles. However, classification of membrane vesicles and the appropriate protocols for their isolation are still under intense discussion and investigation. When isolating vesicles, it is crucial to use systems that are able to separate them, to avoid cross-contamination. Method: EVs released from three different kinds of cell lines: HMC-1, TF-1 and BV-2 were isolated using two centrifugation-based protocols. In protocol 1, apoptotic bodies were collected at 2,000×g, followed by filtering the supernatant through 0.8 µm pores and pelleting of microvesicles at 12,200×g. In protocol 2, apoptotic bodies and microvesicles were collected together at 16,500×g, followed by filtering of the supernatant through 0.2 µm pores and pelleting of exosomes at 120,000×g. Extracellular vesicles were analyzed by transmission electron microscopy, flow cytometry and the RNA profiles were investigated using a Bioanalyzer®. Results: RNA profiles showed that ribosomal RNA was primary detectable in apoptotic bodies and smaller RNAs without prominent ribosomal RNA peaks in exosomes. In contrast, microvesicles contained little or no RNA except for microvesicles collected from TF-1 cell cultures. The different vesicle pellets showed highly different distribution of size, shape and electron density with typical apoptotic body, microvesicle and exosome characteristics when analyzed by transmission electron microscopy. Flow cytometry revealed the presence of CD63 and CD81 in all vesicles investigated, as well as CD9 except in the TF-1-derived vesicles, as these cells do not express CD9. Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that centrifugation-based protocols are simple and fast systems to distinguish subpopulations of extracellular vesicles. Different vesicles show different RNA profiles and morphological characteristics, but they are indistinguishable using CD63-coated beads for flow cytometry analysis

Lorenz function of Bi2_{2}Te3_{3}/Sb2_{2}Te3_{3} superlattices

Combining first principles density functional theory and semi-classical Boltzmann transport, the anisotropic Lorenz function was studied for thermoelectric Bi$_{2}$Te$_{3}$/Sb$_{2}$Te$_{3}$ superlattices and their bulk constituents. It was found that already for the bulk materials Bi$_{2}$Te$_{3}$ and Sb$_{2}$Te$_{3}$, the Lorenz function is not a pellucid function on charge carrier concentration and temperature. For electron-doped Bi$_{2}$Te$_{3}$/Sb$_{2}$Te$_{3}$ superlattices large oscillatory deviations for the Lorenz function from the metallic limit were found even at high charge carrier concentrations. The latter can be referred to quantum well effects, which occur at distinct superlattice periods

Giant alkali-metal-induced lattice relaxation as the driving force of the insulating phase of alkali-metal/Si(111):B

Ab initio density-functional theory calculations, photoemission spectroscopy (PES), scanning tunneling microscopy, and spectroscopy (STM, STS) have been used to solve the 2√3 x 2√3R30 surface reconstruction observed previously by LEED on 0.5 ML K/Si:B. A large K-induced vertical lattice relaxation occurring only for 3/4 of Si adatoms is shown to quantitatively explain both the chemical shift of 1.14 eV and the ratio 1/3 measured on the two distinct B 1s core levels. A gap is observed between valence and conduction surface bands by ARPES and STS which is shown to have mainly a Si-B character. Finally, the calculated STM images agree with our experimental results. This work solves the controversy about the origin of the insulating ground state of alkali-metal/Si(111):B semiconducting interfaces which were believed previously to be related to many-body effectsThis work has received the financial support of the French ANR SURMOTT program (ANR-09-BLAN- 0210-01) and the Spanish MICIIN under Project No. FIS2010-1604

Learning object relationships which determine the outcome of actions

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Triangulations and Severi varieties

We consider the problem of constructing triangulations of projective planes over Hurwitz algebras with minimal numbers of vertices. We observe that the numbers of faces of each dimension must be equal to the dimensions of certain representations of the automorphism groups of the corresponding Severi varieties. We construct a complex involving these representations, which should be considered as a geometric version of the (putative) triangulations

Small but crucial : the novel small heat shock protein Hsp21 mediates stress adaptation and virulence in Candida albicans

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