Rapid detection of BRCA1/2 recurrent mutations in Chinese breast and ovarian cancer patients with multiplex SNaPshot genotyping panels.

BRCA1/2 mutations are significant risk factors for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer (HBOC), its mutation frequency in HBOC of Chinese ethnicity is around 9%, in which nearly half are recurrent mutations. In Hong Kong and China, genetic testing and counseling are not as common as in the West. To reduce the barrier of testing, a multiplex SNaPshot genotyping panel that targeted 25 Chinese BRCA1/2 mutation hotspots was developed, and its feasibility was evaluated in a local cohort of 441 breast and 155 ovarian cancer patients. For those who tested negative, they were then subjected to full-gene testing with next-generation sequencing (NGS). BRCA mutation prevalence in this cohort was 8.05% and the yield of the recurrent panel was 3.52%, identifying over 40% of the mutation carriers. Moreover, from 79 Chinese breast cancer cases recruited overseas, 2 recurrent mutations and one novel BRCA2 mutation were detected by the panel and NGS respectively. The developed genotyping panel showed to be an easy-to-perform and more affordable testing tool that can provide important contributions to improve the healthcare of Chinese women with cancer as well as family members that harbor high risk mutations for HBOC

Voluntary stopping of eating and drinking in Switzerland from different points of view : protocol for a mixed-methods study

“To die with dignity” has reached the significance of a core value in democratic societies. Based on this unconditional value, people require autonomy and care. "Voluntary stopping of eating and drinking" (VSED) represents an alternative to assisted suicide because no one else is involved in the action of death fastening, even though from outside, it might be considered as an extreme form of passive euthanasia. However, there are no data available about the prevalence and frequency of either explicit VSED or the implicit reduction of food and liquid in Switzerland. The responsible and independent ethics committee of the Greater Region of Eastern Switzerland (EKOS 17/083) approved this study

Degrees of tenant isolation for cloud-hosted software services : a cross-case analysis

A challenge, when implementing multi-tenancy in a cloud-hosted software service, is how to ensure that the performance and resource consumption of one tenant does not adversely affect other tenants. Software designers and architects must achieve an optimal degree of tenant isolation for their chosen application requirements. The objective of this research is to reveal the trade-offs, commonalities, and differences to be considered when implementing the required degree of tenant isolation. This research uses a cross-case analysis of selected open source cloud-hosted software engineering tools to empirically evaluate varying degrees of isolation between tenants. Our research reveals five commonalities across the case studies: disk space reduction, use of locking, low cloud resource consumption, customization and use of plug-in architecture, and choice of multi-tenancy pattern. Two of these common factors compromise tenant isolation. The degree of isolation is reduced when there is no strategy to reduce disk space and customization and plug-in architecture is not adopted. In contrast, the degree of isolation improves when careful consideration is given to how to handle a high workload, locking of data and processes is used to prevent clashes between multiple tenants and selection of appropriate multi-tenancy pattern. The research also revealed five case study differences: size of generated data, cloud resource consumption, sensitivity to workload changes, the effect of the software process, client latency and bandwidth, and type of software process. The degree of isolation is impaired, in our results, by the large size of generated data, high resource consumption by certain software processes, high or fluctuating workload, low client latency, and bandwidth when transferring multiple files between repositories. Additionally, this research provides a novel explanatory framework for (i) mapping tenant isolation to different software development processes, cloud resources and layers of the cloud stack; and (ii) explaining the different trade-offs to consider affecting tenant isolation (i.e. resource sharing, the number of users/requests, customizability, the size of generated data, the scope of control of the cloud application stack and business constraints) when implementing multi-tenant cloud-hosted software services. This research suggests that software architects have to pay attention to the trade-offs, commonalities, and differences we identify to achieve their degree of tenant isolation requirements

Measurement of CP-violation asymmetries in D0 to Ks pi+ pi-

We report a measurement of time-integrated CP-violation asymmetries in the resonant substructure of the three-body decay D0 to Ks pi+ pi- using CDF II data corresponding to 6.0 invfb of integrated luminosity from Tevatron ppbar collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV. The charm mesons used in this analysis come from D*+(2010) to D0 pi+ and D*-(2010) to D0bar pi-, where the production flavor of the charm meson is determined by the charge of the accompanying pion. We apply a Dalitz-amplitude analysis for the description of the dynamic decay structure and use two complementary approaches, namely a full Dalitz-plot fit employing the isobar model for the contributing resonances and a model-independent bin-by-bin comparison of the D0 and D0bar Dalitz plots. We find no CP-violation effects and measure an asymmetry of ACP = (-0.05 +- 0.57 (stat) +- 0.54 (syst))% for the overall integrated CP-violation asymmetry, consistent with the standard model prediction.Comment: 15 page

Performance of the CMS Cathode Strip Chambers with Cosmic Rays

The Cathode Strip Chambers (CSCs) constitute the primary muon tracking device in the CMS endcaps. Their performance has been evaluated using data taken during a cosmic ray run in fall 2008. Measured noise levels are low, with the number of noisy channels well below 1%. Coordinate resolution was measured for all types of chambers, and fall in the range 47 microns to 243 microns. The efficiencies for local charged track triggers, for hit and for segments reconstruction were measured, and are above 99%. The timing resolution per layer is approximately 5 ns

Prediction of higher mortality reduction for the UK Breast Screening Frequency Trial: A model-based approach on screening intervals

Background: The optimal interval between two consecutive mammograms is uncertain. The UK Frequency Trial did not show a significant difference in breast cancer mortality between screening every year (study group) and screening every 3 years (control group). In this study, the trial is simulated in order to gain insight into the results of the trial and to predict the effect of different screening intervals on breast cancer mortality. Methods: UK incidence, life tables and information from the trial were used in the microsimulation model MISCAN-Fadia to simulate the trial and predict the number of breast ca

Feasibility and acceptability of expressive writing with postpartum women: a randomised controlled trial

Abstract Background: Pregnancy, birth and adjusting to a new baby is a potentially stressful time that can negatively affect women’s mental and physical health. Expressive writing, where people write about a stressful event for at least 15 minutes on three consecutive days, has been associated with improved health in some groups but it is not clear whether it is feasible and acceptable for use with postpartum women. This study therefore examined the feasibility and acceptability of expressive writing for postpartum women as part of a randomised controlled trial (RCT). Methods: The Health After Birth Trial (HABiT) was an RCT evaluating expressive writing for postpartum women which included measures of feasibility and acceptability. At 6 to 12 weeks after birth 854 women were randomised to expressive writing, a control writing task or normal care, and outcome measures of health were measured at baseline, one month later and six months later. Feasibility was measured by recruitment, attrition, and adherence to the intervention. Quantitative and qualitative measures of acceptability of the materials and the task were completed six months after the intervention. Results: Recruitment was low (10.7% of those invited to participate) and the recruited sample was from a restricted sociodemographic range. Attrition was high, increased as the study progressed (35.8% at baseline, 57.5% at one month, and 68.1% at six months) and was higher in the writing groups than in the normal care group. Women complied with instructions to write expressively or not, but adherence to the instruction to write for 15 minutes per day for three days was low (Expressive writing: 29.3%; Control writing: 23.5%). Acceptability measures showed that women who wrote expressively rated the materials/task both more positively and more negatively than those in the control writing group, and qualitative comments revealed that women enjoyed the writing and/or found it helpful even when it was upsetting. Conclusions: The feasibility of offering expressive writing as a universal self-help intervention to all postpartum women 6 to 12 weeks after birth in the HABiT trial was low, but the expressive writing intervention was acceptable to the majority of women who completed it

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Predicting 2-year survival in stage I-III non-small cell lung cancer: the development and validation of a scoring system from an Australian cohort

Background: There are limited data on survival prediction models in contemporary inoperable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. The objective of this study was to develop and validate a survival prediction model in a cohort of inoperable stage I-III NSCLC patients treated with radiotherapy. Methods: Data from inoperable stage I-III NSCLC patients diagnosed from 1/1/2016 to 31/12/2017 were collected from three radiation oncology clinics. Patient, tumour and treatment-related variables were selected for model inclusion using univariate and multivariate analysis. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to develop a 2-year overall survival prediction model, the South West Sydney Model (SWSM) in one clinic (n = 117) and validated in the other clinics (n = 144). Model performance, assessed internally and on one independent dataset, was expressed as Harrell’s concordance index (c-index). Results: The SWSM contained five variables: Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status, diffusing capacity of the lung for carbon monoxide, histological diagnosis, tumour lobe and equivalent dose in 2 Gy fractions. The SWSM yielded a c-index of 0.70 on internal validation and 0.72 on external validation. Survival probability could be stratified into three groups using a risk score derived from the model. Conclusions: A 2-year survival model with good discrimination was developed. The model included tumour lobe as a novel variable and has the potential to guide treatment decisions. Further validation is needed in a larger patient cohort