Mammographic Vascular Microcalcifications as a Surrogate Parameter for Coronary Heart Disease: Correlation to Cardiac Computer Tomography and Proposal of a Classification Score.

Objective: This study develops a BI-RADS-like scoring system for vascular microcalcifications in mammographies, correlating breast arterial calcification (BAC) in a mammography with coronary artery calcification (CAC), and specifying differences between microcalcifications caused by BAC and microcalcifications potentially associated with malignant disease.

Materials And Methods: This retrospective single-center cohort study evaluated 124 consecutive female patients (with a median age of 57 years). The presence of CAC was evaluated based on the Agatston score obtained from non-enhanced coronary computed tomography, and the calcifications detected in the mammography were graded on a four-point Likert scale, with the following criteria: (1) no visible or sporadically scattered microcalcifications, (2) suspicious microcalcification not distinguishable from breast arterial calcification, (3) minor breast artery calcifications, and (4) major breast artery calcifications.

The connections between personality, ideology and (counter-)empathic emotions depend on the target.

Objectives: Examine the group-specific connections between personality, ideology, and the moral emotions of empathy and schadenfreude.

Background: Empathy and schadenfreude are emotions that often lead to moral prosocial or spiteful harmful behaviors respectively. An outstanding question is what motivates feelings of empathy and schadenfreude towards people from different groups.

A local view of the laser induced magnetic domain dynamics in CoPd stripe domains at the picosecond time scale.

The dynamics of the magnetic structure in a well ordered ferromagnetic CoPd stripe domain pattern has been investigated upon excitation by femtosecond infrared laser pulses. Time-resolved x-ray magnetic circular dichroism in photoemission electron microscopy (TR-XMCD-PEEM) is used to perform real space magnetic imaging with 100 ps time resolution in order to show local transformations of the domains structures. Using the time resolution of the synchrotron radiation facility of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, we are able to image the transient magnetic domains in a repetitive pump and probe experiment.

The Nature of Islamophobia: A Test of a Tripartite View in Five Countries.

This article provides an examination of the structure of Islamophobia across cultures. Our novel measure-the Tripartite Islamophobia Scale (TIS)-embeds three theoretically and statistically grounded subcomponents of Islamophobia: anti-Muslim prejudice, anti-Islamic sentiment, and conspiracy beliefs. Across six samples (i.

New opportunities of real-world data from clinical routine settings in life-cycle management of drugs: example of an integrative approach in multiple sclerosis.

The assessment and demonstration of a positive benefit-risk balance of a drug is a life-long process and includes specific data from preclinical, clinical development and post-launch experience. However, new integrative approaches are needed to enrich evidence from clinical trials and sponsor-initiated observational studies with information from multiple additional sources, including registry information and other existing observational data and, more recently, health-related administrative claims and medical records databases. To illustrate the value of this approach, this paper exemplifies such a cross-package approach to the area of multiple sclerosis, exploring also possible analytic strategies when using these multiple sources of information.

Incidence and geographical variation of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in Southern Germany--completeness of the ALS registry Swabia.

Objective of this paper was to investigate the incidence, potential geographical clusters and the completeness of the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) registry in Southern Germany (Swabia). Age-standardized incidence rates (ASR) and ratios (SIR) as well as 95% confidence intervals (CI) were estimated at county level. Capture-recapture (CARE) procedures were applied taking data source dependency into account to estimate the quality of case ascertainment in the ALS registry Swabia.

Image force microscopy of molecular resonance: A microscope principle.

We demonstrate a technique in microscopy which extends the domain of atomic force microscopy to optical spectroscopy at the nanometer scale. We show that molecular resonance of feature sizes down to the single molecular level can be detected and imaged purely by mechanical detection of the force gradient between the interaction of the optically driven molecular dipole and its mirror image in a platinum coated scanning probe tip. This microscopy and spectroscopy technique is extendable to frequencies ranging from radio to infrared and the ultraviolet.