Microneedle Patch Use Among Those with Needle Phobia--Are All Needles the Same?

Not all injections are the same.

To the Editor: In metaphorical terms, a problem arises when good apples are pooled with bad apples; they all get tarred with the same brush. This principle applies when all studies pertaining to spinal injections of steroids are pooled, as if they are all equal. Subsequently, the lay press publicizes sweeping conclusions such as “injecting any liquid, even plain saline solution, works just as w...

“ Happy Families Are All The Same ”

All valve malfunctions are not the same.

1. Tautz TJ, Urwyler A, Antognini JF, Riou B: Case scenario: Increased end-tidal carbon dioxide. A diagnostic dilemma. ANESTHESIOLOGY 2010; 112:440 – 6 2. Kwetny IM, Finucane BT: Negative arterial to end-tidal carbon dioxide gradient: An additional sign of malignant hyperthermia during desflurane anesthesia. Anest Analg 2006; 102:815–7 3. Larach MG, Localio AR, Allen GC, Denborough MA, Ellis FR...

Do gymnosperm needles pull water through the xylem produced in the same year as the needle?

This research investigated the longevity of functional connections between leaf traces and stem xylem in 16 species of conifers to better understand the spatial use of sapwood for water transport. The first question was which ring(s) stained when a vacuum was applied to the distal end of the cut surface of a needle attached to a short stem segment. The vacuum was applied to either 1- or 2-yr-ol...

Are Loss Functions All the Same?

In this letter, we investigate the impact of choosing different loss functions from the viewpoint of statistical learning theory. We introduce a convexity assumption, which is met by all loss functions commonly used in the literature, and study how the bound on the estimation error changes with the loss. We also derive a general result on the minimizer of the expected risk for a convex loss fun...