An introduction to Criteria for Reporting and Evaluating Exposure Datasets (CREED) for use in environmental assessments.

Risks posed by environmental exposure to chemicals are routinely assessed to inform activities ranging from environmental status reporting to authorization and registration of chemicals for commercial uses. Environmental risk assessment generally relies on two key values generated from exposure data and ecotoxicity data. Data sets of measured concentrations of chemicals in environmental matrices, referred to here as exposure data, are widely used to support environmental risk management, decision-making, and reporting, such as for chemical screening, ecological or human health risk assessments, and establishment of guidelines.

Assessing the relevance of environmental exposure data sets.

Environmental exposure data are used by decision-makers to assess environmental risks and implement actions to mitigate risks from contaminants. The first article in this series summarized the available evaluation schemes for environmental exposure data, of which there are few compared to those available for environmental hazard data. The second article covered the assessment of the reliability of environmental exposure data sets under the Criteria for the Reporting and Evaluation of Exposure Data (CREED).

Microbial community responses to soil tillage and crop rotation in a corn/soybean agroecosystem.

The acreage planted in corn and soybean crops is vast, and these crops contribute substantially to the world economy. The agricultural practices employed for farming these crops have major effects on ecosystem health at a worldwide scale. The microbial communities living in agricultural soils significantly contribute to nutrient uptake and cycling and can have both positive and negative impacts on the crops growing with them.

A spontaneous epithelial-myoepithelial carcinoma of the submandibular gland in a sprague-dawley rat.

The present report describes a rare case of spontaneous tumor of the salivary gland in a male Sprague-Dawley rat. The clinically confirmed mass rapidly developed in the cervical region between 19 and 21 weeks of age, and the animal was subsequently euthanized. At necropsy, a well-circumscribed nodule approximately 7 × 6 cm in diameter was found at the site of the salivary gland.

The changing healthcare landscape: physicians embrace disease management and improve outcomes.

The troubled economy and a new administration in Washington have reinvigorated the debate over the merits of disease management programs and the savings they bring to healthcare. At the forefront of the discussion are physicians who are discovering disease management's innovative approach to treating the chronically ill. Across the country, physicians are responding to evidence-based programs designed to improve patient outcomes that, at the same time, assist them in reaching pay-for-performance goals.

What you do not know about disease management: a new ally in the pay-for-performance era.

Disease management is relatively new, and many medical practices have misconceptions about how it works. Far from being a burden to busy medical practices, disease management programs can reduce hassles for physicians and office managers by coaching patients to be more compliant, better prepared, and less likely to make unnecessary phone calls. Disease management programs cost the medical practices nothing.

Unsupervised segmentation with dynamical units.

In this paper, we present a novel network to separate mixtures of inputs that have been previously learned. A significant capability of the network is that it segments the components of each input object that most contribute to its classification. The network consists of amplitude-phase units that can synchronize their dynamics, so that separation is determined by the amplitude of units in an output layer, and segmentation by phase similarity between input and output layer units.

Temporal relationship between elevation of epstein-barr virus antibody titers and initial onset of neurological symptoms in multiple sclerosis.

Context: Infection with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) has been associated with an increased risk of multiple sclerosis (MS), but the temporal relationship remains unclear.

Objective: To determine whether antibodies to EBV are elevated before the onset of MS.

Design, Setting, And Participants: Nested case-control study conducted among more than 3 million US military personnel with blood samples collected between 1988 and 2000 and stored in the Department of Defense Serum Repository.

Multiple sclerosis and Epstein-Barr virus.

Context: Infection with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) has been associated with an increased risk of multiple sclerosis (MS), but the temporal relationship remains unclear.

Objective: To determine whether antibodies to EBV are elevated before the onset of MS.

Design, Setting, And Population: Nested case-control study conducted among more than 3 million US military personnel with blood samples collected between 1988 and 2000 and stored in the Department of Defense Serum Repository.