Invasive mold infections following combat-related injuries.

Background: Major advances in combat casualty care have led to increased survival of patients with complex extremity trauma. Invasive fungal wound infections (IFIs) are an uncommon, but increasingly recognized, complication following trauma that require greater understanding of risk factors and clinical findings to reduce morbidity.

Methods: The patient population includes US military personnel injured during combat from June 2009 through December 2010.

Analyzing 2D gel images using a two-component empirical Bayes model.

Background: Two-dimensional polyacrylomide gel electrophoresis (2D gel, 2D PAGE, 2-DE) is a powerful tool for analyzing the proteome of a organism. Differential analysis of 2D gel images aims at finding proteins that change under different conditions, which leads to large-scale hypothesis testing as in microarray data analysis. Two-component empirical Bayes (EB) models have been widely discussed for large-scale hypothesis testing and applied in the context of genomic data.

Antimicrobial prescribing practices following publication of guidelines for the prevention of infections associated with combat-related injuries.

Background: Timely and limited antibiotic prophylaxis (postinjury antimicrobial therapy) targeting specific traumatic injuries is a well-recognized measure to lessen posttraumatic infection. Modern military combat injuries raise significant challenges because of complex multiple injuries and limited data derived directly from well-controlled trials to base recommendations. Expert consensus review of available evidence led to published guidance for selection and duration of antimicrobial therapy for combat-related trauma infection prevention.

RegStatGel: proteomic software for identifying differentially expressed proteins based on 2D gel images.

Unlabelled: Image analysis of two-dimensional gel electrophoresis is a key step in proteomic workflow for identifying proteins that change under different experimental conditions. Since there are usually large amount of proteins and variations shown in the gel images, the use of software for analysis of 2D gel images is inevitable. We developed open-source software with graphical user interface for differential analysis of 2D gel images.

Region-based Statistical Analysis of 2D PAGE Images.

A new comprehensive procedure for statistical analysis of two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2D PAGE) images is proposed, including protein region quantification, normalization and statistical analysis. Protein regions are defined by the master watershed map that is obtained from the mean gel. By working with these protein regions, the approach bypasses the current bottleneck in the analysis of 2D PAGE images: it does not require spot matching.