Wildlife mortality from infrastructure collisions: statistical modeling of count data from carcass surveys.

Anthropogenic infrastructure is a mortality source for many vertebrate species. Mortality is often measured using periodic counts of carcasses or remains at infrastructure segments, and bias from carcass removal is estimated via field experiments with wildlife carcasses. We describe a model for combining removal experiment and carcass count data to estimate underlying process parameters using joint likelihood.

Splenic sarcoidosis without focal nodularity: a case of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D-mediated hypercalcemia localized with FDG PET/CT.

Objective: To report an uncommon cause of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D (1,25[OH]2D)-mediated hypercalcemia associated with splenic sarcoidosis and illustrate the evaluation and potential role of fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) in such patients.

Methods: We present detailed clinical features, laboratory results, imaging results, and pathology results for this rare entity, discuss evaluation and management options, and review previous literature.

Results: A 65-year-old male presented with symptomatic hypercalcemia, with a serum calcium level of 14.

The effect of the 16-hour intern workday restriction on surgical residents' in-hospital activities.

Objective: To observe the effects of the 2011 Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education 16-hour intern workday restrictions on surgical residents' clinical and educational activities.

Design: All the residents recorded the following weekly in-hospital activities during February and March 2011 (year before intern work restrictions) and 2012 (first year under new requirements): operating room (OR) and clinic; bedside procedures; rounds and ward work; on-call duties in hospital; communication (e.g.

Gender differences in heterosexual college students' conceptualizations and indicators of sexual consent: implications for contemporary sexual assault prevention education.

Because sexual assault is often defined in terms of nonconsent, many prevention efforts focus on promoting the clear communication of consent as a mechanism to reduce assault. Yet little research has specifically examined how sexual consent is being conceptualized by heterosexual college students. In this study, 185 Midwestern U.

Quality of education and memory test performance in older men: the New York University Paragraph Recall Test normative data.

Objectives: Memory evaluation is a key component in the accurate diagnosis of cognitive disorders.One memory procedure that has shown promise in discriminating disease-related cognitive decline from normal cognitive aging is the New York University Paragraph Recall Test; however, the effects of education have been unexamined as they pertain to one's literacy level. The current study provides normative data stratified by estimated quality of education as indexed by irregular word reading skill.

A tutorial on sensitivity analyses in clinical trials: the what, why, when and how.

Background: Sensitivity analyses play a crucial role in assessing the robustness of the findings or conclusions based on primary analyses of data in clinical trials. They are a critical way to assess the impact, effect or influence of key assumptions or variations--such as different methods of analysis, definitions of outcomes, protocol deviations, missing data, and outliers--on the overall conclusions of a study.The current paper is the second in a series of tutorial-type manuscripts intended to discuss and clarify aspects related to key methodological issues in the design and analysis of clinical trials.

A systematic scoping review of adherence to reporting guidelines in health care literature.

Background: Reporting guidelines have been available for the past 17 years since the inception of the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials statement in 1996. These guidelines were developed to improve the quality of reporting of studies in medical literature. Despite the widespread availability of these guidelines, the quality of reporting of medical literature remained suboptimal.

My 'Fat Girl Complex': a preliminary investigation of sexual health and body image in women of size.

Women of size who inhabit non-normative bodies may have different experiences with body image and sexual health than women of average body size. In this exploratory study, we interviewed four women of size recruited from a larger mixed-methodological study of body image and sexuality. Each woman was interviewed twice on topics of body image, sexuality and sexual health.

Safety of bedside percutaneous tracheostomy in the critically ill: evaluation of more than 3,000 procedures.

Background: Bedside percutaneous dilational tracheostomy has been demonstrated to be equivalent to open tracheostomy. At our institution, percutaneous dilational tracheostomy without routine bronchoscopy is our preferred method. My colleagues and I hypothesized that our 10-year percutaneous dilational tracheostomy experience would demonstrate that the technique is safe with low complication rates, even in obese patient populations.

A randomized controlled Alzheimer's disease prevention trial's evolution into an exposure trial: the PREADViSE Trial.

Objectives: To summarize the ongoing prevention of Alzheimer's disease (AD) by vitamin E and selenium (PREADViSE) trial as an ancillary study to SELECT (a large prostate cancer prevention trial) and to present the blinded results of the first year as an exposure study.

Design: PREADViSE was designed as a double blind randomized controlled trial (RCT).

Setting: SELECT terminated after median of 5.

Oxidative stress and cardiovascular risk in overweight children in an exercise intervention program.

Background: This study aimed to determine whether oxidative stress was related to cardiovascular risk indices in children, and whether an exercise intervention would reduce oxidative stress.

Methods: A randomized trial of two different doses of exercise and a no-exercise control group included 112 overweight and obese children, 7-11 years old. Plasma isoprostane levels were obtained at baseline and after the intervention.

Practice effects in a longitudinal, multi-center Alzheimer's disease prevention clinical trial.

Background: Practice effects are a known threat to reliability and validity in clinical trials. Few studies have investigated the potential influence of practice on repeated screening measures in longitudinal clinical trials with a focus on dementia prevention. The current study investigates whether practice effects exist on a screening measure commonly used in aging research, the Memory Impairment Screen (MIS).

Air impacts from three alternatives for producing JP-8 jet fuel.

Unlabelled: To increase U.S. petroleum energy independence, the University of Texas at Arlington (UT Arlington) has developed a direct coal liquefaction process which uses a hydrogenated solvent and a proprietary catalyst to convert lignite coal to crude oil.

Exercise dose and diabetes risk in overweight and obese children: a randomized controlled trial.

Context: Pediatric studies have shown that aerobic exercise reduces metabolic risk, but dose-response information is not available.

Objectives: To test the effect of different doses of aerobic training on insulin resistance, fatness, visceral fat, and fitness in overweight, sedentary children and to test moderation by sex and race.

Design, Setting, And Participants: Randomized controlled efficacy trial conducted from 2003 through 2007 in which 222 overweight or obese sedentary children (mean age, 9.

Synthesis and characterization of selenium-chondroitin sulfate nanoparticles.

A novel selenium-chondroitin sulfate (SeCS) was synthesized by ultrasonic and dialysis method. With characterization by FTIR, XRD and TEM, the SeCS was found to form nanoparticles in distilled water through a self-aggregation progress. The SeCS nanoparticles had sizes between 30 and 200 nm with selenium entrapment efficiency of about 10.

Interest driven navigation in visualization.

This paper describes a new method to explore and discover within a large data set. We apply techniques from preference elicitation to automatically identify data elements that are of potential interest to the viewer. These "elements of interest (EOI)" are bundled into spatially local clusters, and connected together to form a graph.

Analysis and comparison of inertinite-derived adsorbent with conventional adsorbents.

Unlabelled: To increase U.S. petroleum energy-independence, the University of Texas at Arlington (UT Arlington) has developed a coal liquefaction process that uses a hydrogenated solvent and a proprietary catalyst to convert lignite coal to crude oil.

Reducing sexual risk taking behaviors among adolescents who engage in transactional sex in post-conflict Liberia.

Transactional sex (TS) has been correlated with HIV/STD infection, pregnancy, early marriage, and sexual violence in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Few Western-based HIV prevention programs adapted for SSA have examined intervention impacts for this group. This article examines whether an HIV prevention intervention, delivered to sixth-grade students in Liberia (age range 14-17) and found to increase condom use and other mediators for the larger sample, significantly impacted sexual behaviors and mediators for those who engaged in TS.

[Changes of death receptor regulator expression in the articular cartilage of patients with Kashin-Beck disease].

Objective: To investigate the changes in the expressions of Fas-associated death domain protein (FADD) and cellular-FLICE inhibitory protein (c-FLIP) in the articular cartilage of patients with Kashin-Beck disease (KBD) and the role of these proteins in the pathogenesis of KBD.

Methods: The cartilage samples were collected from patients with established diagnosis of KBD and osteoarthritis and from healthy control subjects undergoing amputation due to traffic accidents. The expressions of Fas-associated death domain protein (FADD) and cellular-FLICE inhibitory protein (c-FLIP) in the cartilage were detected by immunohistochemistry, and the positive chondrocytes were counted in different layers of the articular cartilage under microscope.

An assessment of body appreciation and its relationship to sexual function in women.

Objectification theory posits internalization of an observer's gaze may negatively impact women's feelings about their bodies, which may subsequently affect their sexual function. Subjective body image and body size (i.e.

Implementing a multidisciplinary disaster simulation for undergraduate nursing students.

A liberal-arts-based undergraduate nursing program engaged in curriculum enhancement activities that led to the implementation of a disaster simulation for 81 multidisciplinary undergraduate students. A pretest/posttest design was used to determine the effectiveness of preparation for the simulation. Nursing students in three levels of the program received didactic preparation in disaster preparedness and were assigned to five different simulation response teams.

Observation of nonconventional spin waves in composite-fermion ferromagnets.

We find unexpected low energy excitations of fully spin-polarized composite-fermion ferromagnets in the fractional quantum Hall liquid, resulting from a complex interplay between a topological order manifesting through new energy levels and a magnetic order due to spin polarization. The lowest energy modes, which involve spin reversal, are remarkable in displaying unconventional negative dispersion at small momenta followed by a deep roton minimum at larger momenta. This behavior results from a nontrivial mixing of spin-wave and spin-flip modes creating a spin-flip excitonic state of composite-fermion particle-hole pairs.

A brief review of cognitive assessment in neurotoxicology.

Among commercial and industrial chemicals, cosmetics, food additives, pesticides, and medicinal drugs, there are more than 50,000 substances distributed. Neurotoxic insults to the brain can manifest in many different ways, especially involving cognition. Given many possible differences in the pathophysiology of neurotoxic exposure and related cognitive sequelae, a systematic method of cognitive assessment is important for appropriate management of neurotoxic exposure.