Background—Prior studies of coronary pattern and outcome after arterial switch operation (ASO) for transposition of the great arteries (TGA) have been hindered by limited statistical power. This meta-analysis assesses the effect of coronary anatomy on post-ASO mortality, both overall and adjusted for time. Methods and Results—A literature search revealed 9 independent series that reported post-...

Two experiments were conducted to determine effects of dietary boron (B) on performance, plasma minerals and metabolites, and bone characteristics in young pigs. In Experiment 1, 48 pigs (24 males, 24 females; 21 d old) were allotted to pens, which were randomly assigned to one of the following dietary treatments: 1) control (natural ingredient diet; 6.7 mg B/kg diet), 2) control 1 5 mg B/kg di...

BACKGROUND In recent years there has been a global increase in reports of disease affecting marine sponges. While disease outbreaks have the potential to seriously impact on the survival of sponge populations, the ecology of the marine environment and the health of associated invertebrates, our understanding of sponge disease is extremely limited. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS A collagenolyt...

In many accelerators running positively charged beams, ionization of residual gas and secondary electron emission in the beam pipe will give rise to an electron cloud which can cause beam blow-up or the loss of the circulating beam. One solution to avoid the electron cloud is to ensure that the vacuum wall has low secondary emission yield (SEY). The SEY of thin films of TiN and sputter-deposite...

1. International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation: 2005 International Consensus on Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care Science with Treatment Recommendations. Circulation 2005; 112:III-1–III-136 2. Hazinski MF, Nadkarni VM, Hickey RW, et al: Major changes in the 2005 AHA guidelines for CPR and ECC: Reaching the tipping point for change Circulation 2005; 112(Suppl I...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of caspofungin versus liposomal amphotericin B as empiric antifungal treatment in patients with neutropenic fever in Italy. METHODS The cost-effectiveness of caspofungin versus liposomal amphotericin B was evaluated using a decision-tree model. Patients were stratified by presence or absence of baseline infection. Model outcomes included success in...

One additional skin lightening or whitening quasi-drug (QD) has been developed and officially approved by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan. The active ingredient niacinamide should be included in this review [1]. Its mechanism of skin lightening is based on the inhibition of melanosome transfer from melanocytes to keratinocytes. Niacinamide is listed in Table 1, which classifi...

This study aimed to evaluate the prognostic significance of node ratio (Nr), the ratio of metastatic to retrieved lymph nodes, and to investigate whether a modified staging system based on Nr can improve prognostic ability for gastric cancer patients following gastrectomy. A total of 2572 patients were randomly divided into training set and validation set, and the cutoff points for Nr were prod...

The effect of an artificially-enhanced rough surface on the secondary electron emission yield (SEY) was investigated both theoretically and experimentally. Analytical studies on triangular and rectangular grooved surfaces show the connection between the characteristic parameters of a given geometry to the SEY reduction. The effect of a strong magnetic field is also discussed. SEY of grooved sam...