OBJECTIVE To compare the cost-effectiveness of fine-needle aspiration biopsy, iodine 131 scintigraphy, and ultrasonography for the initial diagnostic workup of a solitary palpable thyroid nodule. DESIGN A deterministic cost-effectiveness analysis was conducted using a decision tree to model the diagnostic strategies. SETTING A single, mid-Atlantic academic medical center. MAIN OUTCOME MEA...

Since the discovery of the high Tc superconductors, many researches have been carried out on the different properties of these materials, especially on the transition temperature into the superconducting state. The rutheno-cuprates belong to a new class of composites, which were synthesized for the first time by Bauernfeind in 1995. Bernhard and collaborators discovered, in 1999, the coexistenc...

Since the discovery of the high Tc superconductors, many researches have been carried out on the different properties of these materials, especially on the transition temperature into the superconducting state. The rutheno-cuprates belong to a new class of composites, which were synthesized for the first time by Bauernfeind in 1995. Bernhard and collaborators discovered, in 1999, the coexistenc...

The superconducting transition temperature T, and its pressure dependence dT,IdP of HgBazCaCuz06+8 (Hg-1212) and HgBa,[email protected]+8 (Hg-1223) were measured up to 17 kbar. T, increases with pressure approximately linearly for both compounds before oxidation. However, the nonlinearity in the T,-P correlation shows up after oxidation in both compounds. For Hg-1212, the average dT,ldP decreases as oxy...

Examination of the 1,679-nucleotide (nt) unit-length hepatitis delta virus (HDV) RNAs in the livers of two HDV-infected woodchucks showed that 96% of the antigenomic RNA but only 50% of the genomic RNA was circular. We subsequently found that at least half of the linear unit-length genomic RNA was open at a unique location. Using a modified form of RNA ligation-mediated amplification of cDNA en...