PURPOSE Large-scale observational studies based on existing medical databases may have an important role in studies of long-term effects of different treatments in prostate cancer patients if the coding of the treatment is valid. We therefore estimated the positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) of hospital codes for gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonist trea...

PURPOSE Most node-negative breast cancer patients are older and postmenopausal and are increasingly being offered adjuvant chemotherapy despite their low overall risk of distant relapse. A molecular diagnostic test with high negative predictive value (NPV) for distant metastasis in this subgroup would spare many older breast cancer patients adjuvant treatment. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN We determine...

PURPOSE We investigated the effectiveness of tele-mentored ultrasonography between emergency medicine (EM) residents and remote experts in diagnosing acute appendicitis. METHODS This prospective observational study was performed in an academic emergency department. Beginning in June 2014, the EM residents performed the initial ultrasonography for suspected pediatric acute appendicitis; then, ...

The propagation of electromagnetic plane waves in a material with simultaneous mirror-conjugated and racemic chirality (SMCRC) characteristics is investigated. General conditions for negative phase velocity (NPV) (i.e., phase velocity directed opposite to the time-averaged Poynting vector) are derived for both unirefringent and birefringent propagation. Through numerical studies, it is demonstr...

The objective was to compare toluidine blue (TB) and autofluorescence (AF) for the detection of oral dysplasia and squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) in clinically suspicious lesions according to conventional examination. Fifty-six clinically suspicious lesions were subjected to AF and TB examination. Data were compared using two different scenarios: in the first, mild dysplasia was considered as p...

In the genomes of two baculoviruses, Spodoptera exigua and S. littoralis multicapsid nucleopolyhedroviruses (SeMNPV and SpliMNPV, respectively), an open reading frame (ORF) encoding the large subunit of ribonucleotide reductase (RR1) was identified. The predicted amino acid sequences of SeMNPV and SpliMNPV RR1 showed high homology to RR1 proteins from eukaryotes (ca. 70% and 80% similarity, res...

BACKGROUND To assess the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), and accuracy of intraoperative gross examination (IGE) of uterine specimens in determining deep myometrial invasion and cervical invasion compared to final histology. MATERIALS AND METHODS The clinical, surgical and histological data of all FIGO stage I-II endometrial cancer (E...

In this article we show how a project’s option value increases with incremental levels of investment and dis-investment flexibility. We do this by presenting two NPV and seven option pricing models in a strict sequence of increasing flexibility. We illustrate each with numerical examples and determine the maximum value that a project option could ever support. We show that managerial considerat...

The indiscriminate use of pesticides for the last 40 years has almost eliminated natural enemies from many crop eco-systems. This scenario has led many countries to consider the potential of biological control as a component of pest management. At present, the world market for microbial pesticides is in excess of US $ 125 million per annum which is still less than 1 percent of the total global ...