Masticatory/Temporomandibular Disorders: Practical Assessment and Care Concepts for the Otolaryngologist.

This article assists the practicing otolaryngologist to better understand how malfunction within the masticatory system inclusive of the temporomandibular joints and associated musculoskeletal structures can lead to the onset of ear symptoms inclusive of pain, and sensations of fullness, pressure, buzzing, and ringing among others. This article aims to provide physicians evaluating ear symptoms with the listening and examination tools to help determine whether puzzling ear symptoms relate to malfunction within the masticatory system. If a temporomandibular problem is identified, the physician will be better able to ascertain the origins of the problem and provide common treatment options to patients.

Radiation Therapy for Benign Disease: Keloids, Macular Degeneration, Orbital Pseudotumor, Pterygium, Peyronie Disease, Trigeminal Neuralgia.

Although the use of ionizing radiation on malignant conditions has been well established, its application on benign conditions has not been fully accepted and has been inadequately recognized by health care providers outside of radiation therapy. Most frequently, radiation therapy in these benign conditions is used along with other treatment modalities, such as surgery, when the condition causes significant disability or could even lead to death. Radiation therapy can be helpful for inflammatory/proliferative disorders.

Radiation Therapy for Benign Disease: Arteriovenous Malformations, Desmoid Tumor, Dupuytren Contracture, Graves Ophthalmopathy, Gynecomastia, Heterotopic Ossification, Histiocytosis.

Although the use of ionizing radiation in malignant conditions has been well established, its application in benign conditions has not been fully accepted and has been inadequately recognized by health care providers outside of radiation therapy. Most frequently, radiation therapy in these benign conditions is used along with other treatment modalities, such as surgery, in instances where the condition causes significant disability or could even lead to death. Radiation therapy can be helpful for inflammatory/proliferative disorders.

Dosimetric Factors Related to Radiation Necrosis After 5-Fraction Radiosurgery for Patients With Resected Brain Metastases.

Purpose: Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) is increasingly used in the management of patients with resected brain metastases (rBMs). A significant complication of this therapy can be radiation necrosis (RN). Despite radiation therapy dose de-escalation and the delivery of several rather than a single dose fraction, rates of RN after SRS for rBMs remain high.

Prognostic relevance of human papillomavirus infection in anal squamous cell carcinoma: analysis of the national cancer data base.

Background: To examine the prognostic relevance of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection for anal squamous cell carcinoma (ASCC) patients treated with chemoradiation (CRT) in the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB).

Methods: The 2014 NCDB was queried for non-metastatic, histologically confirmed, ASCC patients diagnosed between 2004 and 2013. Patients were required to have HPV status documented in order to be eligible.

Health care disparities among octogenarians and nonagenarians with stage II and III rectal cancer.

Background: Octogenarians and nonagenarians with stage II/III rectal adenocarcinomas are underrepresented in the randomized trials that have established the standard-of-care therapy of preoperative chemoradiation followed by definitive resection (ie, chemoradiation and then surgery [CRT+S]). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of therapies on overall survival (OS) for patients with stage II/III rectal cancers and determine predictors of therapy within the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB).

Methods: In the NCDB, patients who were 80 years old or older and had clinical stage II/III rectal adenocarcinoma from 2004 to 2013 were queried.

TNFRSF10C copy number variation is associated with metastatic colorectal cancer.

Background: Genetic markers for distant metastatic disease in patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) are not well defined. Identification of genetic alterations associated with metastatic CRC could help to guide systemic and local treatment strategies. We evaluated the association of tumor necrosis factor receptor superfamily member 10C (TNFRSF10C) copy number variation (CNV) with distant metastatic disease in patients with CRC using The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA).

Cholangiocarcinoma size on magnetic resonance imaging versus pathologic specimen: Implications for radiation treatment planning.

Purpose: The accuracy of abdominal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in measuring gross tumor volume in patients with resectable cholangiocarcinoma (CC) is unknown. CC is a highly difficult tumor to visualize and treatment with dose-escalated radiation therapy requires clear tumor delineation. We aim to investigate the concordance between imaging and pathologic size in patients with resected CC to determine the usefulness of MRI for image guided treatment modalities.

Comparative Indoor and Outdoor Degradation of Organic Photovoltaic Cells via Inter-laboratory Collaboration.

We report on the degradation of organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells in both indoor and outdoor environments. Eight different research groups contributed state of the art OPV cells to be studied at Pomona College. Power conversion efficiency and fill factor were determined from IV curves collected at regular intervals over six to eight months.

The phenomenology and natural history of idiopathic lower cranial dystonia.

Background: Many patients with lower cranial dystonia (LCrD) are misdiagnosed, and recognition of this condition by general practitioners and dental health professionals is limited.

Methods: We define the phenomenology and natural history of idiopathic LCrD, presenting in 41 patients with the disorder, the largest series of these patients reported to date.

Results: Phenomenology of dystonia included lower cranial and pharyngeal involvement, jaw opening and jaw closing dystonia, and tongue dystonia.

TOF-SIMS investigation of degradation pathways occurring in a variety of organic photovoltaic devices--the ISOS-3 inter-laboratory collaboration.

The present work is the fourth (and final) contribution to an inter-laboratory collaboration that was planned at the 3rd International Summit on Organic Photovoltaic Stability (ISOS-3). The collaboration involved six laboratories capable of producing seven distinct sets of OPV devices that were degraded under well-defined conditions in accordance with the ISOS-3 protocols. The degradation experiments lasted up to 1830 hours and involved more than 300 cells on more than 100 devices.

On the stability of a variety of organic photovoltaic devices by IPCE and in situ IPCE analyses--the ISOS-3 inter-laboratory collaboration.

This work is part of the inter-laboratory collaboration to study the stability of seven distinct sets of state-of-the-art organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices prepared by leading research laboratories. All devices have been shipped to and degraded at RISØ-DTU up to 1830 hours in accordance with established ISOS-3 protocols under defined illumination conditions. In this work, we apply the Incident Photon-to-Electron Conversion Efficiency (IPCE) and the in situ IPCE techniques to determine the relation between solar cell performance and solar cell stability.

Informatics and data quality at collaborative multicenter Breast and Colon Cancer Family Registries.

Quality control and harmonization of data is a vital and challenging undertaking for any successful data coordination center and a responsibility shared between the multiple sites that produce, integrate, and utilize the data. Here we describe a coordinated effort between scientists and data managers in the Cancer Family Registries to implement a data governance infrastructure consisting of both organizational and technical solutions. The technical solution uses a rule-based validation system that facilitates error detection and correction for data centers submitting data to a central informatics database.

Generation of native polythiophene/PCBM composite nanoparticles via the combination of ultrasonic micronization of droplets and thermocleaving from aqueous dispersion.

We report the preparation of native polythiophene (n-PT)/[6, 6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) composite nanoparticles from a poly[3-(2-methylhex-2-yl)oxy-carbonyldithiophene] (P3MHOCT)/PCBM aqueous dispersion prepared from an ultrasonically generated emulsion. The subsequent steps involve both ultrasonic generation of microdroplets in argon as a carrier gas and drying followed by thermocleaving of the P3MHOCT component in the gas phase. The chemical transition from P3MHOCT to n-PT was confirmed by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy.

G-DOC: a systems medicine platform for personalized oncology.

Currently, cancer therapy remains limited by a "one-size-fits-all" approach, whereby treatment decisions are based mainly on the clinical stage of disease, yet fail to reference the individual's underlying biology and its role driving malignancy. Identifying better personalized therapies for cancer treatment is hindered by the lack of high-quality "omics" data of sufficient size to produce meaningful results and the ability to integrate biomedical data from disparate technologies. Resolving these issues will help translation of therapies from research to clinic by helping clinicians develop patient-specific treatments based on the unique signatures of patient's tumor.

The JCVI standard operating procedure for annotating prokaryotic metagenomic shotgun sequencing data.

The JCVI metagenomics analysis pipeline provides for the efficient and consistent annotation of shotgun metagenomics sequencing data for sampling communities of prokaryotic organisms. The process can be equally applied to individual sequence reads from traditional Sanger capillary electrophoresis sequences, newer technologies such as 454 pyrosequencing, or sequence assemblies derived from one or more of these data types. It includes the analysis of both coding and non-coding genes, whether full-length or, as is often the case for shotgun metagenomics, fragmentary.

Roll-to-Roll Processing of Inverted Polymer Solar Cells using Hydrated Vanadium(V)Oxide as a PEDOT:PSS Replacement.

The use of hydrated vanadium(V)oxide as a replacement of the commonly employed hole transporting material PEDOT:PSS was explored in this work. Polymer solar cells were prepared by spin coating on glass. Polymer solar cells and modules comprising 16 serially connected cells were prepared using full roll-to-roll (R2R) processing of all layers.

METAREP: JCVI metagenomics reports--an open source tool for high-performance comparative metagenomics.

Summary: JCVI Metagenomics Reports (METAREP) is a Web 2.0 application designed to help scientists analyze and compare annotated metagenomics datasets. It utilizes Solr/Lucene, a high-performance scalable search engine, to quickly query large data collections.

Pathema: a clade-specific bioinformatics resource center for pathogen research.

Pathema (http://pathema.jcvi.org) is one of the eight Bioinformatics Resource Centers (BRCs) funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) designed to serve as a core resource for the bio-defense and infectious disease research community.

Electromechanical resonators from graphene sheets.

Nanoelectromechanical systems were fabricated from single- and multilayer graphene sheets by mechanically exfoliating thin sheets from graphite over trenches in silicon oxide. Vibrations with fundamental resonant frequencies in the megahertz range are actuated either optically or electrically and detected optically by interferometry. We demonstrate room-temperature charge sensitivities down to 8 x 10(-4) electrons per root hertz.

Measurement of the adhesion force between carbon nanotubes and a silicon dioxide substrate.

Carbon nanotube adhesion force measurements were performed on single-walled nanotubes grown over lithographically defined trenches. An applied vertical force from an atomic force microscope (AFM), in force distance mode, caused the tubes to slip across the 250-nm-wide silicon dioxide trench tops at an axial tension of 8 nN. The nanotubes slipped at an axial tension of 10 nN after being selectively coated with a silicon dioxide layer.

Natural selection on protein-coding genes in the human genome.

Comparisons of DNA polymorphism within species to divergence between species enables the discovery of molecular adaptation in evolutionarily constrained genes as well as the differentiation of weak from strong purifying selection. The extent to which weak negative and positive darwinian selection have driven the molecular evolution of different species varies greatly, with some species, such as Drosophila melanogaster, showing strong evidence of pervasive positive selection, and others, such as the selfing weed Arabidopsis thaliana, showing an excess of deleterious variation within local populations. Here we contrast patterns of coding sequence polymorphism identified by direct sequencing of 39 humans for over 11,000 genes to divergence between humans and chimpanzees, and find strong evidence that natural selection has shaped the recent molecular evolution of our species.

A scan for positively selected genes in the genomes of humans and chimpanzees.

Since the divergence of humans and chimpanzees about 5 million years ago, these species have undergone a remarkable evolution with drastic divergence in anatomy and cognitive abilities. At the molecular level, despite the small overall magnitude of DNA sequence divergence, we might expect such evolutionary changes to leave a noticeable signature throughout the genome. We here compare 13,731 annotated genes from humans to their chimpanzee orthologs to identify genes that show evidence of positive selection.