Ocean temperature and salinity components of the Madden-Julian oscillation observed by Argo floats

New diagnostics of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) cycle in ocean temperature and, for the first time, salinity are presented. The MJO composites are based on 4 years of gridded Argo float data from 2003 to 2006, and extend from the surface to 1,400 m depth in the tropical Indian and Pacific Oceans. The MJO surface salinity anomalies are consistent with precipitation minus evaporation fluxes in the Indian Ocean, and with anomalous zonal advection in the Pacific. The Argo sea surface temperature and thermocline depth anomalies are consistent with previous studies using other data sets. The near-surface density changes due to salinity are comparable to, and partially offset, those due to temperature, emphasising the importance of including salinity as well as temperature changes in mixed-layer modelling of tropical intraseasonal processes. The MJO-forced equatorial Kelvin wave that propagates along the thermocline in the Pacific extends down into the deep ocean, to at least 1,400 m. Coherent, statistically significant, MJO temperature and salinity anomalies are also present in the deep Indian Ocean

Chronic non-specific low back pain - sub-groups or a single mechanism?

Copyright 2008 Wand and O'Connell; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Background: Low back pain is a substantial health problem and has subsequently attracted a considerable amount of research. Clinical trials evaluating the efficacy of a variety of interventions for chronic non-specific low back pain indicate limited effectiveness for most commonly applied interventions and approaches. Discussion: Many clinicians challenge the results of clinical trials as they feel that this lack of effectiveness is at odds with their clinical experience of managing patients with back pain. A common explanation for this discrepancy is the perceived heterogeneity of patients with chronic non-specific low back pain. It is felt that the effects of treatment may be diluted by the application of a single intervention to a complex, heterogeneous group with diverse treatment needs. This argument presupposes that current treatment is effective when applied to the correct patient. An alternative perspective is that the clinical trials are correct and current treatments have limited efficacy. Preoccupation with sub-grouping may stifle engagement with this view and it is important that the sub-grouping paradigm is closely examined. This paper argues that there are numerous problems with the sub-grouping approach and that it may not be an important reason for the disappointing results of clinical trials. We propose instead that current treatment may be ineffective because it has been misdirected. Recent evidence that demonstrates changes within the brain in chronic low back pain sufferers raises the possibility that persistent back pain may be a problem of cortical reorganisation and degeneration. This perspective offers interesting insights into the chronic low back pain experience and suggests alternative models of intervention. Summary: The disappointing results of clinical research are commonly explained by the failure of researchers to adequately attend to sub-grouping of the chronic non-specific low back pain population. Alternatively, current approaches may be ineffective and clinicians and researchers may need to radically rethink the nature of the problem and how it should best be managed

Quality and complexity measures for data linkage and deduplication

Summary. Deduplicating one data set or linking several data sets are increasingly important tasks in the data preparation steps of many data mining projects. The aim of such linkages is to match all records relating to the same entity. Research interest in this area has increased in recent years, with techniques originating from statistics, machine learning, information retrieval, and database research being combined and applied to improve the linkage quality, as well as to increase performance and efficiency when linking or deduplicating very large data sets. Different measures have been used to characterise the quality and complexity of data linkage algorithms, and several new metrics have been proposed. An overview of the issues involved in measuring data linkage and deduplication quality and complexity is presented in this chapter. It is shown that measures in the space of record pair comparisons can produce deceptive quality results. Various measures are discussed and recommendations are given on how to assess data linkage and deduplication quality and complexity. Key words: data or record linkage, data integration and matching, deduplication, data mining pre-processing, quality and complexity measures

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

On Optimal Two-Impulse Earth-Moon Transfers in a Four-Body Model

In this paper two-impulse Earth-Moon transfers are treated in the restricted four-body problem with the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon as primaries. The problem is formulated with mathematical means and solved through direct transcription and multiple shooting strategy. Thousands of solutions are found, which make it possible to frame known cases as special points of a more general picture. Families of solutions are defined and characterized, and their features are discussed. The methodology described in this paper is useful to perform trade-off analyses, where many solutions have to be produced and assessed

Evaluation of serum CEA, CYFRA21-1 and CA125 for the early detection of colorectal cancer using longitudinal preclinical samples

Blood-borne biomarkers for early detection of colorectal cancer (CRC) could markedly increase screening uptake. The aim of this study was to evaluate serum carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), CYFRA21-1 and CA125 for the early detection of CRC in an asymptomatic cohort

Socially learned attitude change is not reduced in medicated patients with schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is often associated with distinctive or odd social behaviours. Previous work suggests this could be due to a general reduction in conformity; however, this work only assessed the tendency to publicly agree with others, which may involve a number of different mechanisms. In this study, we specifically investigated whether patients display a reduced tendency to adopt other people’s opinions (socially learned attitude change). We administered a computerized conformity task, assumed to rely on reinforcement learning circuits, to 32 patients with schizophrenia or schizo-affective disorder and 39 matched controls. Each participant rated 153 faces for trustworthiness. After each rating, they were immediately shown the opinion of a group. After approximately 1 hour, participants were unexpectedly asked to rate all the faces again. We compared the degree of attitude change towards group opinion in patients and controls. Patients presented equal or more social influence on attitudes than controls. This effect may have been medication induced, as increased conformity was seen with higher antipsychotic dose. The results suggest that there is not a general decline in conformity in medicated patients with schizophrenia and that previous findings of reduced conformity are likely related to mechanisms other than reinforcement based social influence on attitudes

Macrophage phenotype is associated with disease severity in preterm infants with chronic lung disease.

The etiology of persistent lung inflammation in preterm infants with chronic lung disease of prematurity (CLD) is poorly characterized, hampering efforts to stratify prognosis and treatment. Airway macrophages are important innate immune cells with roles in both the induction and resolution of tissue inflammation

Correlation of cell growth and heterologous protein production by Saccharomyces cerevisiae

With the increasing demand for biopharmaceutical proteins and industrial enzymes, it is necessary to optimize the production by microbial fermentation or cell cultures. Yeasts are well established for the production of a wide range of recombinant proteins, but there are also some limitations; e.g., metabolic and cellular stresses have a strong impact on recombinant protein production. In this work, we investigated the effect of the specific growth rate on the production of two different recombinant proteins. Our results show that human insulin precursor is produced in a growth-associated manner, whereas alpha-amylase tends to have a higher yield on substrate at low specific growth rates. Based on transcriptional analysis, we found that the difference in the production of the two proteins as function of the specific growth rate is mainly due to differences in endoplasmic reticulum processing, protein turnover, cell cycle, and global stress response. We also found that there is a shift at a specific growth rate of 0.1 h(-1) that influences protein production. Thus, for lower specific growth rates, the alpha-amylase and insulin precursor-producing strains present similar cell responses and phenotypes, whereas for higher specific growth rates, the two strains respond differently to changes in the specific growth rate

Search for rare quark-annihilation decays, B --> Ds(*) Phi

We report on searches for B- --> Ds- Phi and B- --> Ds*- Phi. In the context of the Standard Model, these decays are expected to be highly suppressed since they proceed through annihilation of the b and u-bar quarks in the B- meson. Our results are based on 234 million Upsilon(4S) --> B Bbar decays collected with the BABAR detector at SLAC. We find no evidence for these decays, and we set Bayesian 90% confidence level upper limits on the branching fractions BF(B- --> Ds- Phi) Ds*- Phi)<1.2x10^(-5). These results are consistent with Standard Model expectations.Comment: 8 pages, 3 postscript figues, submitted to Phys. Rev. D (Rapid Communications